A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Alexandre, João (Dapin)

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

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Angourie

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Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

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beachboys

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beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

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Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Smooth, porous blond wood, lighter than cork, grown mainly in Central and South America; the most popular core material for surfboards in the 1940s and 1950s.

Surfers initially used balsa in combination with redwood; Pacific Systems Homes, a Los Angeles-based house-building company that dabbled in surfboard construction, built redwood-balsa composite boards as early as the 1930s. All-balsa board became standard in Southern California after World War II, when boardmakers Bob Simmons, Matt Kivlin, and Joe Quigg developed the "Malibu chip," which weighed as little as 25 pounds—40 pounds less than the average redwood plank boards popular just a few years earlier.

By the mid-'50s, suitably light balsa was becoming hard to find. Boardmakers Dave Sweet and Hobie Alter, along with engineering graduate and surfer Grubby Clark, soon began working on the creation of a polyurethane foam substitute. By the end of the decade, foam blanks had all but replaced balsa as the surfboard's core material.

While foam was lighter, less expensive, and endlessly replicable, not everybody was happy with the change. "The stuff just felt wrong," recalls boardmaker and big-wave pioneer Greg Noll. "Foam was gritty and it didn't have a good smell. It had no life to it. It was just . . . available." Original California power surfer Phil Edwards actually preferred the wood boards, which had less flex than foam; he continued to use "Baby," his favorite balsa board, long after most surfers had switched to foam. "We used to have a saying," Edwards said in 1992. "Spastic on plastic, good on wood."

Balsa is still used for a tiny percentage of new boards—mostly high-end longboards—though the quest for a longer-lasting, sustainable surfboard has motivated a few boardmakers to reconsider balsa as a material for performance boards as well. Nearly all balsa-only shortboards are "chambered," or hollowed out. Composite boards made with foam centers and balsa strips along the rails were popularized in the mid 2000s by shaper Bert Burger and Firewire Surfboards. Foam boards can also be "skinned" with a balsa veneer.

Original balsa surfboards have long been valued as both historical artifacts and objects of beauty, and are hot sellers at surfboard auctions. In 2009, a 10'4" Matt Kivlin-shaped balsa sold for $39,000.

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