Knowledge is power and gives you more aptitude in making correct choices when buying a new surfboard. Communicating what you want and need for your surfing experience is key to picking up great custom made surfboard equipment. Popular surfboard manufacturer’s websites are a free and convenient way to start checking out what surfboard designs are available and popular in the surf world.

For general information purposes, the following guide can be used for five generalised design categories:

1. High Performance Designs

This design category is used for those with more advanced surfing abilities such as pro riders like Kelly Slater, Joel Parkinson, Taj Burrows and other well known world class pro surfers, and also for advanced ability surfers looking for high performance in all styles and extremes of surf throughout the world.

2. Alternative Hybrid Designs

This category is a middle ground crossover between high-performance designs and retro-style designs. Note that this category, along with the retro designs, has become increasingly popular in the last few years with the surfboard buying public throughout the world.

3. Retro Designs

This category is based on previous board designs over the past 35 years of surfing history and features many models designed and built in the fashion of their time, including resin colour tinted fibreglass layups along with glossed and polished finishes. These board designs can also be traditionally glassed as clear lay-up as well, with a more traditional sanded satin-finish on the finished product.

4. Hybrid Mini-Longboard Designs

This category describes hybrid designs morphed between alternative hybrid design and high-performance longboard design. These models can be easier to ride than most traditional small board designs, and can help the rider to catch waves easily, even with their overall smaller-than-longboard size, and are generally designed for smaller, softer breaking waves. This feature also makes this category a great design for the beginner or the older surfer looking for a fun session when the surf is below average in wave height.

5. Longboard Designs

This category includes traditional longboard and high-performance longboard designs. These models have been known to be extremely easy to ride and catch waves with, and are generally designed for smaller, soft breaking wave. This feature makes the category a favourite design of beginners or older surfers looking for a fun ride in any conditions year round.

Content taken from “Surfing The Manual: Advanced“, check it out for more tips and tricks from the very best.

Head North from Haleiwa on the Kam Hwy, you’ll see the bay and the church. The parking lot is just before the bridge.

Waimea Bay: Justly famed big wave arena, ridden from 6-30ft plus. Waimea proper is a right hand parachute drop monster breaking on a 28ft deep reef ledge. Not the world’s longest wave, but perhaps the most exhilarating drop anywhere, followed by a massive wall section and probable annihilation by the foam ball.

Watch sets for at least 20 minutes before jump-off. Ask the lifeguards about the swell forecast; they will have incredibly accurate info from the wave buoy, and will be able to tell you when the swell will peak and how big that will be. There is even a pressure pad by Kaena Point, that gives a few minutes warning if a 30ft plus set is approaching. Wave size can increase from 8 to 20ft in a few hours.

Getting in: wait for a lull, then get in by running down the bank by the rocks at the Northern end and jumping / paddling like crazy. Keep right, the current will sweep you left into the channel. Too far left and you could be in the horrid dumpers at the South end.

Getting out: get a wave, then try to ride the foam ball back into the North end to beat the sweep and hug the rocks. This is your best bet at escaping the shore break, which is at its most spine-snapping in the middle of the bay. Watch the approaching shore break and try to get in on the back of the last wave of the set.

Crowds. Drop-ins. Experts only. If in any doubt, stay on the beach. On smaller days, Pinballs is an option on the inside. Shore break is notorious and menacing, although occasionally surfable.

Here’s more info on Oahu surf spots and surf breaks in the USA & Hawaii.

Home of the Pipe Masters since 1971 (won by Wavefinder editor in chief Larry Blair in 1978 & 1979) and possibly one of the most photographed surf spots on the planet, Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore is regarded as the world’s deadliest wave. At the Southern end of Ehukai Beach Park, going north from Waimea about 2 miles, down a small alley on the left before Sunset Beach Elementary.

Pipeline: Probably the squarest barrel on earth, when it’s on. Pipe needs trades, and the right swell (W to NW at 4-25ft) to work properly. Take one of these away and you can have a shapeless, punishing mess. The rule of thumb is; the more west the swell, the heavier and hollower the wave.

Pipeline is a series of 3 reefs working from the inside to the outside as the swell increases. First Reef: At 4ft you can have the most perfect barrels followed by a short whack-able section here. The crowds at this size will frustrate, and the dropping in is blatant. The wave is so close to the beach that spectators can get closer to the action than any other surf spot. At 6-8ft the peak appears close to dry sucking off the reef and the drop is free fall. A mistake could see you jammed into a crack in the lava reef, but successful riders will make the bottom turn and stand tall in a super-wide almond shaped barrel. Then it’s a speed race out onto the shoulder, which eventually tapers into a sandy channel.

Second Reef: From 10-12ft plus, another crop of lava pushes up bombs another 100 yards out to sea. These can be mountainous jacking peaks which reform on first reef giving 2 rides in 1. Take-offs here are more critical than any wave anywhere. Timing, commitment and a heavy board are essential to manoeuvre into the elusive time-space window between being pushed over the back by the gusty winds funnelling up the face, and too-late drops straight to the bottom. The entire length of the wave is a full-power situation, with the lip ready to cut a surfer down at any moment, and even the latter half of the ride can produce truck-sized barrels. There’s an occasional Third Reef too, for monsters up to a much contested 30 feet. Now a tow-in domain and quite rare to see it perfect.

Paddle out fast, West of Backdoor. Current will sweep you East of the peak into the channel. Crowds to the extreme. Drop-ins are the rule not the exception. Frustrated caged battery-chicken surfing. Experts only.

Backdoor: The right off the same peak as first reef, is an equally if not more heavy tube machine, with even more shallow reef and rocks to contend with. Backdoor tubes often end in shut-down or dry-suck and the successful surfer will make speed his friend. No time for turns here. Works on similar swells, although likes more North than Pipe itself. Too much West in the swell, or too much size and it will be a dangerous close-out. From 3-10ft. Crowded to the extreme. Drop-ins from body boarders and surfers better than you! Shallow reef with deep cracks to get stuck in. Current, thick guillotine lips.

Both these waves have claimed lives, and may be best experienced vicariously. Try to catch them early if late season or you may not get a single wave.

Here’s more info on Oahu surf spots and surf breaks in the USA & Hawaii.

For a view from inside the barrel, checkout this clip featuring Anthony Walsh