Wakesurf boards aspect ratio

Over the years we’ve been critical of wakesurf boards that don’t have tow-in or cant of the fins. Then doing some research we tripped across a Tomo Surfboard. We were fortunate to have seen several of this brands boards at Sacred Craft here in Northern California in Santa Cruz. The Tomo surfboards are unique in that they basically have straight outlines and rather wide tails. The Flyboy Wakesurf boards were design from the onset with straight outlines, because they have proven to be faster down the line.  At least one of those boards has no tow-in, the offest is zero degrees.  That got us thinking about wakesurf boards and their design.  We tend to be students first and designers second.  We thoroughly enjoy understanding the principles put into effect in designs used by others. 

Way back in the day, Lyndsey Lord a naval architetch wrote and published a book on Planing Hulls. As the story goes, back in the days of Prohibition, he was funded by wealthy clients (mafia) to develop fast planing hulls that could run rum to the US and outrun US law enforcement. It’s a fun story, even if it’s more myth than not. In his book, one of his theories is that straight’ish parallel outlines were faster and created less drag. We’ve certainly felt that was an accurate theory, maybe the rum runners did too? In handling the Tomo surfboards at Sacred Craft, those surfboards also had very straight parallel outlines, with wider tails which supported the straighter outline.

Here is the cover of that book.

To further our history lesson, you may have heard of a mini-simmons surfboard. An early pioneer in surfboard design, Bob Simmons developed a number of surfboards that used some of the formulas presented in the Lord book on Planing Hulls. Simmons’ surfboards had very straight outlines, wide tails and low rocker. They were fast boards and a deviation from what was popular at that time. The mini-simmons variety, sometimes called “bars of soap” are shortened lengths. Typical measurements would be 5’6″ and 22″ wide. In the Lord book, he defined aspect ratios that seemed to work best in ocean settings, with the best ratio being 40% or 0.4. That is, the width of the craft was .4 of the length.  He documented that higher aspect ratios, in the 50% and 60% range created smoother “release” and less trailing wakes.

Here is a visual of a Mini-Simmons. Note the relatively straight outline, twin keel fins and a sort of bump towards the tail where it is pulled in.

Jump forward almost 50 years and a young shaper by the name of Ryan Burch took it upon himself to unravel some of the mystery associated with the early Lord and Simmons formulas. He crafted what is referred to as the “Lord Board”, which translated much of what the architetch and surfboard shaper therorized. Straigt’ish outline, low rocker and an aspect ratio that is around 40% What was more interesting is that this is just a hunk of unlaminated closed cell foam. No fiberglass or resin, just foam. Below is a picture of that Lord Board. Look closely at the profile view, do you see the nose rocker? It’s just a thinned bottom!

Doesn’t it just look like a slab of foam? Probably because it is! You can see there is a very shallow rocker and it is mostly a very straight outline, with exceptionally wide tail. Did you get a good look at the tail channels?

Ok, Ok, Ok, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Wanna see how Ryan surfs that slab o’ foam? here you go, his video:

How does your wakesurfing compare? Do you have those surface reverses down like that? His style encompasses such creativity, it embraces a skatey-style that is fluid and slides around on the wave. What would you give to be able to ride and slide like that?  It got us thinking that we’d like to explore the design elements encompassed by Lord and Simmons.  In particular the 40%’ish aspect ratio and the super wide nose and tail.  There isn’t much carving going on, but that doesn’t invalidate the style, it’s just different.  Love it or hate it, we think you’d like to be able to wakesurf like Ryan surfs that slab o’ foam.

We have a chunk of 2 pound EPS foam and we want to try shaping that Lord Board with an Aspect Ratio of around 40%. Think we can ride it behind the board? All finless and the like?  Think we can slide it like that on our Supreme V226′s wake?  It has a wonderful transition, but we may have to tone it down some.  This is something we love, being able to create a wake a wake surf a design that isn’t currently done and mastering a new style of riding.  Fortunately we are narrow minded and locked into just one style or type of riding and can explore the myriad options.

Wish us luck and we hope you’ll follow along, because this is something that anyone with a local Home Depot can make!

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