Choosing a begiiner(ish) board

[Jamie_magee1234]

Hi
I've been surfing for a year now on the west coast of Ireland and I've just been using an 8ft soft top board and ive been doing pretty good:) I wanted to progress onto a better board (not a soft board) but there are a lot of rocks around where I surf so I've been recommended getting a BIC due to there durability! I've always wanted a shortboard so I was looking at the BIC 6ft7 shortboard but I thought moving from a longer board to a short board might be hard to I was looking at the BIC 7ft6 mini mal and the 7ft3. I usually surf in Strandhill and the waves a usually decent and can get very big during a storm:)
I'm 14, I'm 5ft9 (and growing fast) and weigh about 9 stone.
Anyone want to point me in the right direction of these boards or suggest other boards not to high in price:)
Thanks for suggestions:)
Jamie

[still-learning]

Welcome to the forum!!

Anything over 7 ft would suffice I think. Remember the longer and wider the board the better.

Good luck!

[dtc]

At 9st the 7ft6 should be fine. However, how are you going on the softtop - eg can you catch unbroken waves, able to do a bottom turn, getting the pop up about 80%+? If so, then the 7ft3 or even a wide 7ft board (hybrid/fun board type) would probably be ok, especially if you surf reasonably often. At your age you will/should learn pretty quick.

However, if you arent at that level yet or dont surf all that frequently, then try for the 7ft6 if you can (if you can't, the 7ft3 will still be a much better choice than anything shorter).

BICs are tough - heavy and not high performance, but that is fine for your first 'real' board. In due course (when your skills have improved) you may well want a better board, or a shorter board - that is just part of the game. No point getting a high performance board at the moment. Or one that cracks open when it gets close to a rock!

[Jamie_magee1234]

Thanks for the reply!
I'm doing good on the soft top:)I can catch unbroken waves, can do a bottom turn (usually) and I can defiantly get the pop up 80% of the time!

[Jamie_magee1234]

And from the start of April until the end of September I'm surfing around 4 times a week!

[drowningbitbybit]

^^^ What dtc said

If you've got the basics on your soft-top, then yeah, I think you'll be fine on something a little shorter than the 7'6, so the 7'3 would be good, or maybe even a touch shorter.

And we don't say that on SW very often!