Every spring, snow melt from the Rocky Mountains floods river canyons and creates standing river waves. Ocean surfboards are not optimized for these waves, and river-specific designs are hard to come by. I designed and built 3 river surfboards from EPS foam with a basswood stringer and epoxy-fiberglass layup. While each design is uniquely optimized for different river waves, common design traits create a short, wide, and thick board to maximize buoyancy and prevent pearling on steeper waves. All boards have a thruster fin setup and take 2-tab FCS fins. The foam blanks were shaped with a hand planer, and glassed in the living room of my apartment. All boards were thoroughly tested on waves such as the Scout Wave in Salida, Colorado, Lunch Counter Wave in Alpine, WY, and my backyard wave on the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
The first board I built was 5'6"x23"x2.5". The goal for this board was to surf slower waves, and I prioritized volume and width while using a modified Mini-Simmons shape. While this board allows you to surf smaller waves, the width at the tail and overall volume makes it hard to sink an edge and make turns on faster waves. My second board refined the first design to make a 5'x23"x3" board with sharper edges and a more true Mini-Simmons shape. This board is higher performance and turns much nicer, but does not work as well on smaller waves as the first board. The third board I made is the closest to an ocean design, and used an experimental/fun shape with a pin tail to help sink the edges and turn on a faster wave. This board is 5'8"x21.5x2.5" and is fun for fast waves like Lunch Counter.