New Board Help

[shady]

I'm looking at getting a new board. We will have 4 people using it with weights between 130 and 170. We have beginners who have never gotten up on any kind of board to intermediate riders looking to advance.

The boards I was looking at are the Drew Danielo Pro Carbon, Drew Danielo Pro Diamond, Inland Surfer Squirt, and the Inland Surfer Infectious.

I have heard a ton of great things about the Drew Danielo boards but not sure about the differences between the models and worried they might be too advance. We want to be able to get everyone riding and allow the better people to advance with one board.

The Inland Surfer Boards are appealing because of the removable fins allowing you to adjust the level of stability. The Squirt is a great deal but worried how far some us can advance with it and seems to long since we want a skim style board. The infectious seems great but haven't heard any feedback on it. Any more suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[skippabcool]

Welcome to the site and good luck on your search.

You just missed the Polar Bear event put on by Wake9. You can search the threads for the follow up of the event.

Where are you located? If you are close to Wake9 you might still be able to get with Ragboy to test some different boards.

I have a Hyperlite Broadcast, good for beginners and a Lakewakes 55" wide and like those. Although I have never tried the ones that you have mentioned. If you are in the GA area you could get with Lakewakes to test a board.

If you search I believe that WaBoating did an extensive review of a couple of different boards, I think some were the IS, in his search.

[majestic]

If your looking strictly for a skim board take a look at Calibrated.

[NICKYPOO]

You also might want to consider the IS 4Skim. That it a great riding board for new folks and also agile enough for some advanced intermediate riding. I also hear great things about Calibrated.

I've yet to ride the newer P5s but, my wife rides an older P5 Prop and loves it. Too small for me (6'-185#) to be comfortable on but, it is hyper quick to turn but not all that fast down the line. I'm a skimmer as well and speed seems to be the hardest thing to get out of a skim style board. They spin, turn and shove like nothing but, generating enough speed for airs is tough. I wish Sean Walzer was still making boards. I would have him make a 3/4" x 57" pin tail with full length hard rails and Futures fin boxes. Maybe even a squash-pin.

Maybe I should just contract surfdad to build it.

[IDBoating]

As noted by skippabecool, we selected the Inland Surfer Infectious after looking at quite a few boards and talking to lots of people with various levels of experience.

Our needs: We were absolute beginners ranging in age from us in our 40's from my 9YO son. By "absolute beginners" I mean I and my son had been on wakesurf boards once each the previous summer behind someone else's boat. What we wanted was a board that would get us started but also have lots of room to grow into surface tricks, maybe some lightweight air moves, etc. Those things are often contradictory but we were willing to endure a steeper learning curve to buy more growth potential. Another desire was a board that was symmetrical, or nearly so, front-to-back because we figured that would help us learn switch moves. Removable fins were on the list as well, since I prefer to wakeboard finless while others prefer to have some assortment of fins; we didn't know how that would work out for wakesurfing and wanted the flexibility.

We also were hoping to buy a single board rather than a separate board for my 9YO, but accepted the possibility that we might need to get him his own board if the first one proved too large/heavy.

We chose the Infectious, untested and unseen, because several people said it fit the above list of requirements. Our son was right on the bottom of the weight range so that was a little questionable, but given that he's very strong on a wakeboard and has good body dynamics the "experts" felt he'd power through the board's size when first learning and then benefit from the skim-style design as he started playing around.

The Infectious proved to be everything we wanted. Our son, who could not tilt and control the board to get up by himself the previous summer, quickly mastered getting up on the Infectious and is starting to throw it around a bit. I got up on it immediately and by mid-summer had gotten my first two 360's on it.

Newbies we put on the Infectious had excellent results. This includes a couple of teenage girls who were self-professed "athletic zeroes". They obviously didn't go ropeless, but they were able to get up and stay up and had huge grins on their faces.

With the single exception of a semi-pro who has a Phase 5 he's modified to his preferences, all of the experienced surfers who tried the Infectious preferred it to their own boards. They described it as "faster" and "looser". They were able to recover from farther back than with their own boards. A couple of them hit their first 360's on it, having never been able to do so on their own boards (even when they tried it behind our boat).

I'm not sure why it's faster and looser. We held it side-by-side with other boards, comparing rocker and surface area, and no consistent pattern emerged. I had lots of offers to trade, though.

I hope this helps. If the board broke tomorrow I would order another Infectious to replace it. I'm sure there are other boards that are better for specific things, but as an all-around, beginner to semi-experienced, learn but also progress, kids to adults board, it's a definite keeper.

For fun, here's a shot of my 9YO son carving up to the top of the wave on the Infectious:


EDIT: With respect to weight ranges, yours is perfect for the Infectious. My son weighs ~75 pounds and we've had guys at 230+ on it doing just fine. I'm ~170 and it does whatever I ask. Your 130-170 range will work great.

[shady]

Thanks for all the responses and feedback! I have looked more into the calibrated boards and they seem to be a pretty sweet board too. I'm still not completely decided just because there are so many great options out there but your feedback has given me a better understanding of some of the boards.