Turning the Tide: Women’s Surfing

The last few years have marked a shift in women’s surfing. For a while its sat on the backbenches unfulfilled, arguably idle without the equal mainstream support of the male surfing scene. But now there’s a changing of the guard, with women getting the front seat in surf flicks, brands, and taking bold moves to explore surfing beyond the WSL jersey.

 

 

It’s been a long time coming, and this year has seen some feats of female ingenuity and fortitude  – from Laura Crane’s endeavors surmounting at 60ft Nazare to 16-year-old Erin Brooks taking a perfect 10 at Snapper.

For far too long, even gear has felt ill-fitting and clunky to surf. Women run warmer, get colder and have a greater diversity of body types and sizes. It wasn’t until around 2009 that wetsuit fits were ever designed with a women’s fit in mind. Until then, it was ‘buy the boys version’ – which the likes of Linda Sharp had to persevere with, yet leaves much to be desired.

 

 

One of these long-awaited strides is a revolution in board design. As with suits, the idea of women’s bodies being simplified to just a smaller scale of men’s runs continues through to sleds. Enter XO COCO – a collaboration between Hawaiian surfing royalty Coco Ho and maestro of board design Matt Parker of ALBUM fame.

After a chance trial of one of Matt’s experiments, the pair began an innovative journey to expand upon the intricate differences that arise when you turn your attention to shaping boards with women’s dimensions, scale, and weight in mind.

When I first took a look through the site, it felt like a blissful recognition. At 5ft 2, I’ve struggled with cumbersome dimensions that never feel right. It felt as though unless I wanted to shortboard a tea tray or get my hands on a grom’s cast-offs, nothing was going to feel right. Always sitting too high on the waterline and feeling disconnected from the board. So when I saw the specs – like 4ft 9 twinnies and 6ft mid-lengths at 31L it made sense what felt missing.

The key differences lie in the width of the deck – women’s feet are mostly smaller than men’s, and there are stock dimensions for women don’t exist.

It’s an incredibly exciting development, and the only one of its kind at the moment – it’s going to be a big year for women in surfing.