Keep Your Surfing Consistent With Channel Islands' Happy Family

My wife told me that if I bought one more surfboard she'd leave me.

Gosh, I miss her.

Bad, cliche surf humor aside, what is a "family" of surfboards? Padre Britt Merrick explains:

"Here's the idea behind a family of boards, what we're trying to do with this is have a continuity of rockers and the general feel of the board, so that as you move from your small-wave board to your good-wave board, to your step-up, you want to have a continuity of feel between those boards."

Specifically, Merrick is breaking down Channel Islands' Happy Everyday, which as the name implies, is designed for smaller, everyday waves, the Two Happy and Big Happy, which are made for those days when the surf turns on, and the Happy Traveler, which is the big brother of the family, made for more sizable conditions.

"For example, I'm probably on the Happy Everyday 80 percent of the time around here when I'm surfing Rincon or the beachbreaks," Merrick continues. "But if the swell turns on, like it did today, and Rincon's overhead and you want to get out there, I'm going to either be on the Two Happy or the Big Happy, and I want to minimize a totally different feeling in the boards ... because you don't get that many waves at Rincon."

So, for those seeking stability in their surfing, the family life is the way to go. Keeping rockers, foils, sweet spots and performance points will go a long way in bringing consistency to your surfing in any conditions. Admittedly, my surfboard family life is a mess. I'm a dead beat dad jumping from a fish, to a single-fin, to a mid-length, and a tried-and-true thruster ... but I'm working on.