Weight classes

Someone asked me about the correlation between weight and surfboards the other day and it's been riding in my mind. I figured I'd post a bit of a graphical representation of how weight affects surfboard design.
Weight affects momentum, simply put more weight allows for a board to carry its forward motion better. This is desirable in boards where the rider seeks "glide" ...down the line trimming ease. Noseriders, 12' glide machines, trim seeking longboards and a lot of the more retro designs often have this characteristic. It is analogous to a freight train moving down the line, and it also dampens the affect of bump and chop in a wave.In the same way the weight of a train pushes the tracks down as it creaks along causing the ride to be pretty smooth, especially considering that trains have no rubber tires to absorb the little bumps and chatter you would normally experience along the roads. 

 Weight is all fine and dandy until you get into performance oriented designs. Modern shortboards, fish and longboards all rely on quick acceleration and maneuverability to achieve the high performance seen in modern surfing. Weight affects inertia, the more weight there is in a board, the slower it will accelerate. This is in turn analogous to the formula one cars of today. Breaking into and accelerating out of turns at high speeds is very similar to the way a shortboard performs. Linking together turns on a modern shortboard is just that, speed up , slow down, speed up, slow down... this is why lighter is often most favorable in these types of boards. Considering that they shave every possible ounce off of formula one cars... lighter is always better in the minds of these multi-million dollar racing teams.  

So the amount of weight in a board is always based on the application. A 20 pound shortboard is going to ride like a beast, heavy and unwilling, and a 6 pound noserider will flick around, even when you want it to sit still. Weight can be a good thing and a bad thing, but as usual it is always up to the rider and how he/she feels about it and what they are trying to achieve. It never hurts to experiment in any direction, and it always pleases me to see people trying new things. As my late friend Mike Croteau once said... Tape a brick to the nose of your board... and you will begin to understand weight. :) -Carl