Surfing Waves

I've been out surfing all summer this year, and I've developed pretty well, I'm relatively confortable trimming down the line on unbroken waves and can catch waves with relative ease. I've been borrowing boards, starting with soft tops and recently riding an 8.6x17x22.5x14.25 southpoint minitanker with thruster fins (although im not a huge fan of this board). My issue has been finding information on buying boards for my body type. I'm a division one athlete, and am 6'3" and 225 pounds, with really low body fat and in great shape. I've also been snowboarding my whole life. I'd like to get two boards, one longboard that is a small wave catching machine, since I'm from the northeast and surf mainly in the summer, and then one that is shorter, thinking along the lines of a fish, that I can use to really push myself and develop, trying to transition towards a, on better days. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks

Since no one has answered, my 2c

Not intending to be rude, but the surf board does not know that you are "a division one athlete, 6'3" and 225 pounds, with really low body fat and in great shape"; so I'm not quite clear what kind of board you think would suit your 'body type' as opposed to someone else's body type.

Basically, your board knows you are 225lbs and it will sink and/or be very hard to paddle if you get a board that is too small (Div 1 athlete or not). What you can do with that weight and muscle and athletic ability etc is a matter of skill, experience, ability etc so far as it applies to surfing (and not to football or whatever). Your surfing ability or speed of learning may or may not be in any way related to your athletic abilities in other sports - surfing is a great humiliator of people who are usually good at land based sports (I say that as a humiliated person). Its also a sport that any person with any kind of body can do (there are one armed surfers, knee surfers, 7yr olds and 70yr olds etc).

So think of yourself as a 225lb beginner/advanced beginner and you will find plenty of boards and information to help out. You are on the right track. A longboard for most days and to help you learn; plus a 'high volume' shorter board to push yourself/transition (it may be too early for the shorter board, but if you want to give it a go knowing the potential issues then by all means do it; you have a longboard to fall back on if you get too frustrated).

There are lots of threads about long boards - for your weight and given your location and waves, something near 9ft. For the shorter board I would look at something 7ft2 - 7ft6 and at least 22.5" wide and close or over 3" thick - the smaller the waves the bigger you will need. I reckon something at least 50-55L volume is the way to go (if not more). You may feel that a mini mal shape is too similar to a longboard (same shape), in which case go for one of the big fish or funboards.

That said, you can certainly use longboards on bigger waves.

dtc wrote:Basically, your board knows you are 225lbs and it will sink

Genius! And accurate too.

biggbenballer13 wrote: I've been borrowing boards, starting with soft tops and recently riding an 8.6x17x22.5x14.25 southpoint minitanker with thruster fins (although im not a huge fan of this board). My issue has been finding information on buying boards for my body type. I'd like to get two boards, one longboard that is a small wave catching machine, since I'm from the northeast and surf mainly in the summer, and then one that is shorter, thinking along the lines of a fish, that I can use to really push myself and develop, trying to transition towards a, on better days. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks

Biggbenballer13, welcome , some thoughts that might help, DTC is spot on about the weight and low body fat muscle is even less floaty than fat.
So you personally are a sinker. But the a good athletic work rate will help greatly. I want to ask about why you are not a fan of the southpoint minitanker, and that might point me in a direction for suggestions.
I am of similar weight (but in a compressed form of 6ft) and I ride performance and custom longboards around 9ft, I have an 8ft short board, and at my weight I can push the point down to about 7'3" if I am really up on my game in epic surf!
Yeah and BTW some of the Hawaiian big guys really perform on 9ft+boards at all the name spots in Hawaii.
Let the forum know where the South point is not suiting and we'll go from there!