Boardrack Briefing (Ep.6): The 7’4″ Island Hopper

This one was made by a chap on one of our workshop courses. You can either join us for five days in the workshop to make your own or you can have us custom make one for you.’

Check out our YouTube channel for more Boardrack Briefings, we’ll continue to add videos until we have covered our entire range, so be sure to check back or give us a shout if there are any of our wooden surfboards you would like to find out more about.

Here’s the video transcription –

‘At 7’4” long and 23” wide, the Island Hopper is both a great “step-down” board for longboarders as well as an appealing board for surfers looking to inject some fun cruising back into their game. A great mid-length shape, this board is a true all-rounder ideal for “one board” quivers and international travel. Designed and best ridden as a single fin.

This board initially was designed for your average surfer who’s looking to improve and have a board that’s going to last an awfully long time for them. It’s gonna be one they’ll go back to frequently and it’s got a good amount of volume at 59 litres.

So it’s all about volume, catching waves paddle ability, a fairly low entry rocker to allow you to move swiftly around the lineup and catch waves easily. Designed primarily for anything from one foot up to, I guess head-high, up to four foot really. It can be taken out and bigger stuff; we’ve had one of ours out in bigger stuff and it’s worked out pretty well and just because of that paddle ability you can get into waves earlier, which for some of us when it’s a bit bigger is a real benefit.

It was originally designed for that beginner to intermediate range and as a result, it’s become one of our most popular shapes that we produce and that we make on our workshop courses

You can see from the outline, it’s got quite a full template, so it’s what we would describe as an egg shape. It’s got this full rounded nose and it keeps that width through the middle and then it’s got a relatively wide tail. All of that width and surface area creates lift, again making it easy to catch waves and glide along waves. This one’s got a rounded tail, so it rolls from rail to rail really smoothly and for that reason it actually works really well for people who are used to longboards or bigger boards, looking for something a little bit more compact, maybe just to fit in the car more easily, but it’s still got that wave catching ability that the bigger boards have.

The rail again is quite full, being 23 inches wide, it’s a nice stable platform when you get to your feet and being three inches thick and that volume carried out to the rails, it is quite a big board.

So even if you’re a bigger surfer, this is really good because it’s got that flotation, stability and width. Or if you’re used to smaller boards and want something for the slack summer days, with smaller waves, then maybe this is the kind of board that would suit you really well. Because of that versatility, in the amount of waves you can take it out into and also just the fact you’re gonna catch lots of waves on this. It’s a board that I don’t think anyone would really have a problem with having in their quiver.

It’s got a fairly low rocker, it’s also flat (bottom contours) all the way through the front end and has a ‘V’ at the tail. That ‘V’ helps that roll from rail to rail when you’re surfing off the tail and then the flat area up here increases the planing speed.

We typically design it as a single fin, but it can be used with some side bites if you want that extra stability and to make it a little bit more performance oriented. From above, you might be able to see this rocker line is a fairly low rocker line. As you can see from the top, it is a nice wide stable platform to surf on and catch lots of waves on.’