Almond's Intro to: Asymmetrical Surfboards

Asymmetrical: "having parts that fail to correspond to one another in shape, size, or arrangement; lacking symmetry."

By this point, you have very likely seen asymmetrical surfboard designs in the wild or in photos on the internet.

Today, I wanted to take a moment to dispel a few myths and lay out some basic principals for why asymmetrical surfboard designs are fascinating at a minimum and compelling to a growing number of surfers.

Myth:

One common myth (or misunderstanding) is that asymmetrical surfboards are only designed to go one direction.  Like if you lived at Rincon and knew you would only ever go right.  It is an easy conclusion to jump to when you look at an outline of a surfboard that is different on one half than the other. 

Like many things in life, reality is more nuanced than that.

The idea of an asymmetrical surfboard has more to do with the fact that surfing is an asymmetrical activity, no matter how you slice it:

• You have a toe side and a heel side to your stance.
• There's always a rail facing the wave and a rail away from the wave.

Side note: I've been pitched some pretty funny "innovative" surfboard ideas over the years, from the non-initiated, and an interesting commonality is that they all seem to make one major, incorrect assumption... that a surfboard is traveling on flat water. (Which is almost never true—at least not when you are up and riding).

Basic Design Principals:

There are two major portions of a surfboard that are most commonly designed asymmetrically: the tail and the fins. You will certainly see shapers experiment with other parts of a board's shape, but because they are so operative to the way a board engages with the waves, the fins and the tail will always be most commonly experimented with.

When you are riding a wave, the rail that is stuck in the face of the wave is creating lift, harnessing the wave energy to generate speed, and determining where your board will give you as the rider the best combination of speed and control.  Conversely, your opposite rail is mostly out of the water.

Having a longer rail line on your toe-side gives you more board in the water and more rail for generating speed, which gives you the feeling of riding a longer board when you want it most.

Then, having a shorter rail line on your heel side makes for tighter turns when you go to initiate a cutback turn. (It gives the feeling/illusion of riding a smaller board when you want to do a turn). 

Years ago, we built a 9'4 Lumber-Wheel for Wes Francis.  It was a Lumberjack on his toe-side and a Pinwheel on his heel-side, which made for a board that would noseride well but also swing through cutbacks.

What I just described above may initially sound like it contradicts my previous statement about asymmetrical boards being designed for doing more than going one direction, but hang with me...

The fins also play an important factor in the design of many asymmetrical surfboards. 

For example, you will commonly see a board that has a larger twin fin style keel on the toe side, and a smaller split quad style pair of fins on the heel. This is because twin fins provide a loose, flowy feeling (especially front side) but some surfers find them to be limited backside. Whereas quads track a little cleaner through the water and are easier to control backside.

This is doubly felt in the cutback or lateral surfing approach.  

You get all of the benefits of a loose, flow twin fin with plenty of speed on your front-hand AND you get a shorter rail line with more bite when you go to do a cutback turn. 

What's the Downside?

However, one major drawback that has to be mentioned: while you can absolutely surf an asymmetrical board backside, taking advantage of a shorter rail line on your backhand, you can't necessarily swap boards with your goofy-footed friend.  Surfing a short quad on your toe side and a long twin on your backhand would be in direct opposition to conventional surfboard wisdom.

This makes for a challenge for shapers building stock boards, or for surfers looking to sell their equipment later down the road. You have cut your total addressable market down by 50%.

Like I said in the introduction, surfing is a very asymmetrical activity, so exploring asymmetrical board design makes a ton of sense.  And exploring asymmetrical board design is something we are doing behind the scenes. Here's a sneak peak:

Photo: Ernesto Robles