In surfing, a quiver is the collection of surfboards you own. That's the whole definition. If you've got three boards in the garage, that's your quiver. If you've got twenty, that's a very nice quiver.
The word gets used the same way in snowboarding and skateboarding, so a snowboarder will talk about their quiver of snowboards and a skater about their quiver of decks. Anywhere you need different equipment for different conditions, the word turns up.
I named this gallery QUIVER, so it's fair to say the word means something to me. Here's what it actually means to a surfer, why we end up with so many boards, and how you choose between them.
What is a surfboard quiver?
Your quiver is simply every board you own and could paddle out on. There's no minimum, no rule about what has to be in it, and no requirement that the boards go together. Some are hand-picked for specific waves. Some were gifts. Some were bought on a whim in a sale and never quite got sold on.
A few boards in a quiver never get surfed at all. It's common to see a surfboard hung on a living room or bedroom wall purely as an object, and honestly, that's a good look. A board on the wall does the same job a print does. It makes a house feel like a home, and it tells you something about whoever lives there.
But most of the time, a quiver is a working collection. The boards are there because different waves ask for different boards.
Why do surfers have more than one board?
Because a board that's brilliant in one wave is useless in another.
Wave size, wave shape and wave power all change what you want under your feet, and so does the kind of surfing you feel like doing that day. Some mornings you want tight, sharp turns in the pocket. Other days you want long, drawn out, smooth lines. Those are two different boards.
Then there's skill level and progression. The board that helps you catch waves and build confidence early on isn't the one you'll want two years later, and the board you'd take out on a serious day isn't the one you'd choose for a knee-high summer beach break.
So the quiver grows. Not because surfers are hoarders, though plenty are, but because the ocean keeps offering different problems and each board solves one of them.
A board can also change the way you surf
This is the bit people miss. You don't only change boards to suit the wave. Sometimes you change boards to change yourself.
I started surfing properly in my early twenties, so I'm still working on technique and flow, and for a long time I rode my everyday shortboard and variations of it and nothing else. What I eventually realised was that it felt like driving a Formula 1 car and taking every corner with the handbrake. Fast, jolty, frantic. All stops and starts, no flow.
So I bought a mid-length, deliberately, to slow myself down. It's like moving into a slower car. It gives you more time on the board, forces you to draw better lines, and makes you actually use your rails instead of hacking at the wave. Calmer, smoother, less frantic. It's helped my surfing more than any shortboard has.
That's worth knowing if you're building a quiver. A board isn't only a tool for a type of wave, it's a tool for a type of surfing, and sometimes the fastest way to improve is to ride something that makes you slow down.
What's in a typical quiver?
Most quivers are built from some mix of these:
- Performance shortboard. The everyday board for punchy, well shaped waves. Built for radical surfing, off the lip, tight in the pocket.
- Groveller. Designed for weak, mushy, gutless conditions. Usually wider and flatter with more volume so you can still generate speed when the waves have none. Most people surf a groveller more often than they'd like to admit, because most days aren't perfect.
- Fish or twin fin. Loose, fast and skatey. Brilliant for slower, mellower waves where you want a smooth, drawn out feeling rather than sharp turns.
- Mid-length. The in-between board. Easy to catch waves on, glides through flat sections, and rewards a more relaxed style.
- Longboard. A different discipline more than a different board. Slower and more classical, though watch someone like Harley Ingleby or a good goofy-footer and you'll see longboards and mid-lengths pushed nearly as hard as a 5'9" shortboard.
- Step-up or gun. For when it gets big and serious. More length, more nose rocker, built to hold a rail in real power.
My quiver, and why each board is in it
I split my time between the UK and the Gold Coast, and the waves in those two places are almost nothing alike. That's the clearest way I can show why a quiver exists.
What's with me in the UK at the moment:
- 5'9" Lost Sub-Driver 2.0 — my everyday shortboard
- 5'4" Lost Hydra — groveller
- 5'5" Lost Puddle Jumper OG — groveller
- 6'4" JS El Baron — performance mid-length
- 6'2" Channel Islands Proton — for when it's bigger and better
- Two longboards, an 8'6" and a 9'2"
What lives on the Gold Coast, plus what travels with me:
- 5'5" Firewire Seaside, run with Machado quad fins
- 6'4" JS Big Baron — twin-pin mid-length
- The Proton, the El Baron and the Sub-Driver all fly back and forth with me
On the Gold Coast you get well shaped, walled up beach breaks, some genuinely heavy ones like South Straddie and D-Bah, and then the points: the Superbank, Burleigh, Currumbin. The waves are cuppier and more pocketed. They wall up properly and give you something to hit. The Sub-Driver is my everyday board there. On the bigger days when the points light up and the cyclone swells arrive, I'll take the Proton instead. As you move through Rainbow Bay into Greenmount, the wave draws up off the sand, sucks out and gets genuinely hollow, and if you're taking off anywhere near there you want nose rocker so you can knife in and pull into the barrel rather than getting pitched.
In Devon & Cornwall it's a different world. The waves are generally fatter, slower and mushier. As I understand it, a lot of that comes down to the continental shelf: off south-west England the shelf is wide and shallows very gradually, so swell spends a long time dragging over shallow ground and loses much of its energy before it ever reaches the beach. Compare that to parts of Portugal where the shelf is narrower and swell arrives with far more of its power intact. Nazaré is the extreme version, where a deep underwater canyon funnels swell straight into the coast and amplifies it, which is exactly why the waves there get so absurd.
So here I'm mostly on a mid-length, because it keeps its speed through the flat, fat sections where a shortboard just bogs. Even within one beach it changes: at Fistral, the north end walls up and has a bit more grunt about it, while the middle and south end are flatter and mushier, which is mid-length territory. On a bigger day at Porthtowan or Godrevy, I'd have the Sub-Driver under my arm instead.
And then there's reef. Surf somewhere like Indonesia or the Maldives and the whole equation changes again. Those waves break over shallow reef, so they're hollow, fast and genuinely powerful, and they hold their shape in a way an English beach break never does. That's proper performance board territory. You want real nose rocker and something you can set a rail with to knife into a steep drop, not a forgiving mid-length that'll catch an edge. The board that makes a mushy Cornish afternoon fun would be the wrong board entirely, and possibly a dangerous one, on a reef pass.
How I actually choose which board to ride
Not scientifically. I look at the waves and pick.
My boards live in the back of my van, which is where most of them spend their lives. I've got a Volkswagen Caddy in England and another one in Australia, so whichever country I'm in, the boards are already loaded. I pull up at the spot, look at what the ocean is doing, and decide there and then. Heavy, hollow beach break? One board. Long, slow point? A completely different one.
Two real examples. Turn up at Bells Beach in Victoria on a road trip and it's six foot, and I'm reaching for the Big Baron, because Bells is long, walled and drawn out and rewards a board you can carve properly on. Paddle across to South Straddie island from the Spit at first light knowing it's going to be overhead and heaving, and I'm taking the Proton, because that's a board built for pulling into barrels.
Same surfer, same fortnight, two boards that have almost nothing in common.
And I'll be honest about the storage, because surf photography makes it look tidier than it is. I do have a board rack in the shed, and racks are genuinely the right answer: wall-mounted vertical racks that stand a group of boards up together, timber multi-board racks you drill straight to the wall to hold boards horizontally, or simpler mounts that take up to about eight boards. But in practice mine just live thrown in the back of the van, because they're always in there and it's easier. Usually alongside a bit of sand and a soaking wet, freezing wetsuit I never got round to hanging up.
Keeping a quiver lean
I'm a bit of a minimalist about it. I try not to keep too many boards, and if I'm not riding something, I sell it.
The test I use is simple: can I say out loud what this board is for? If a board doesn't have a specific job that the others can't do, it goes. That keeps the quiver useful rather than just large, and it means every board in the van earns its space.
How to build your first quiver
Slowly, and in the order you actually need them.
I first tried surfing when I was eleven, at Watergate Bay in Cornwall, and then didn't properly start until my early twenties. For most of that time, one board would have been plenty. You don't need a quiver on day one. You need a board that catches waves and doesn't put you off.
The sensible order for most people is: start with something with plenty of volume that makes waves easy to catch, then add the board that covers the conditions you surf most often, which for the majority of us means something that works in average, mediocre surf. After that you add for the extremes, something for the small mushy days and something for the good ones.
Buy for the waves you actually surf, not the waves you see on Instagram.
Why I called this gallery QUIVER
Because a quiver isn't just a pile of gear. It's a personal collection, built slowly, chosen piece by piece, and every item in it says something about the person who owns it and the waves they chase.
That's exactly what a wall of surf art is.
You don't buy it all at once. You add a piece because it reminds you of a trip, or a break you grew up on, or a feeling you get in the water that you can't quite explain to people who don't surf. The one below is mine. I picked it up on a trip to Nicaragua from an artist I met out there, Osci, and every time I walk past it I'm back on that coast.
Over time the wall becomes yours, in the same way the boards in the van become yours. Getting the size right matters more than people expect, and so does buying things you'll still want in ten years.
So that's what we're building here. A place to find the pieces worth adding.
