Dan Mann with his creation, which he built together with Kelly Slater. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
If we are completely honest, someone like Kelly Slater is probably not the type of guy whose surfboard preferences align with the average surfer. Sure, he has plenty of design knowledge—and the practical skills to put it into action—but Slater’s ability to surf through a door better than the average person on a surfboard makes his explanation a bit like Einstein explaining quantum physics to a second-grader. Still, when Slater, Dan Mann, and the Firewire team introduced the Boss Up, it was an easy lesson for the second-grader to take.
Mid-length surfboards are enjoying a bit of time in the sun right now. The surfing masses have slowly moved on from high-performance pro models with half layers of glass and the volume of a ping pong ball to surfboards they can actually surf on.
The Boss Up is a “performance mid-length,” which basically means it’s a stretched version of the S-Boss, a high-performance sled that’s a little easier to surf than most. The Boss Up, like a million other surfboards, claims to be the one-board quiver.
“Our crew really enjoyed this mid-length surfboard when it came to taking it easy and cruising (or being more mobile to fight through the crowds),” Firewire explains. “However, Dan Mann also rode it in more punchy, open-surfaced waves – as it’s perfect for carving. Michel Bourez has ridden high-rise barrels back home in Tahiti and was just as excited in those conditions.”
Of course, with mid-length boards, a surfer doesn’t necessarily need to be able to control the volume. They are by nature more of an all-around surfboard and you’ll regularly go from 6’8″ to 7’0″. Slater and Shane Dorian, as you might expect, stay on the shorter end of the spectrum and ride mostly 6’8″ boards. Bourez, however, was a fan of the 6’10”.
“We recommend riding this board with about 13 liters more volume than your standard shortboard,” writes Firewire. “The larger volume means incredible paddling power without sacrificing performance.”
