Due to the complete absence of wind here on Maui for the last month, I’ve been spending most of my time surfing, and I’ve come to realize that the board I bought when I first got here, a Hawai’i 6’8” squash tail, was not really the kind of board I should be using. The board is designed to be stable on big waves, but is not an easy board to catch waves or a very loose one, which are the two things I should look for in a board at my level.
Henceforth, I shopped around and found a great deal on a Kazuma Shibi 6’0” , which is exactly the board I needed. It’s a performance fish, which means it has more width in the nose and in the middle of the board, allowing much easier take offs, but it has also a fairly narrow swallow tail, making it very reactive and easy to turn. It is also a quad fin, which makes the board faster. In a nutshell, simply switching to this board has made me enjoy surfing a lot more and already helped my make some progress. In fact, I’m enjoying surfing so much these days that I might take a day trip to Honolua Bay, perhaps the most famous surf spot on Maui.
Hey, business is business. And when a man needs his tools, a man just needs his tools.
Congratulations on the new board!