Mid-lengths can go really fast… if you’re doing it right. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
In the last few years, mid-length surfboards have really started to come into their own. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember when every surfer, no matter their skill level, was riding a paper-thin, rockered-out little elf shoe of a surfboard, strugglingly mightily to catch waves, and, on the off-chance they did, sinking immediately. It was a tough time to be a middling surfer. But these days? Middling surfers rejoice!
Devon Howard, a man who is not a middling surfer by any stretch of the imagination, sat down for the Basis Surf podcast to talk about many things, one of which was mid-lengths. Howard, as you probably are aware is one of the most fantastically talented mid-length surfers around.
In this portion of the interview, Howard dives into one thing in particular that many people struggle with when a surfboard gets a bit of length in it: generating speed. Of course, doing that on a standard shortboard is very different than doing it on a log, so a new mid-length surfer might run into a problem or two.
Howard, in all his wisdom, has a handful of pretty good tips that we could all stand to try out — especially if you’ve fallen into the wonderful trap that is the mid-length.
