Apparition

Q: What size Apparition should I order if I'm 5'10" and 175 pounds and my daily driver is a 5'11" × 19 1/4" × 2 1/2" performance shortboard at 29 liters?

A: Stay close to the volume you're already riding — 29 liters — but expect the Apparition to surf a touch fuller than a contest HPSB at the same number, because the wide point sits forward of center. At your weight, that puts you in the 5'10" or 5'11" row of the featured table, around 30–31 liters. If you mostly surf softer SoCal days and want the board to paddle into San Onofre slop or a dawn Salt Creek session before the wind comes up, take the higher number. If you're chasing the days when Lowers turns on with a clean south, hold the 29 and let the contour do the work. The Apparition is designed so most riders pick a single number and trust it across a four-foot swell range — that's the whole point of the board.

Q: Should I order the Apparition as a thruster, a quad, or 5-fin?

A: Thruster is stock and what I'd recommend for most riders — it's the standard everyday-shortboard feel and matches the design brief for this board. Quad makes sense if you spend a lot of time on cleaner, faster waves where you want extra down-the-line drive — think a clean Lowers morning, a Saladita right-hander that runs forever, or a head-high Mentawais reef wall. Five-fin gives you both options on the same board, which is what I'd order if you can't decide between thruster and quad and don't want to commit. Twin and single-fin aren't offered on the Apparition — different brief, different board. Specific fin templates (Futures vs. FCS II, rake vs. pivot) are still being finalized across the lineup; once you start the order, I'll recommend templates based on your weight, stance, and the waves you're riding.

Q: I mostly surf knee-to-waist at my home break, with a few overhead days a year on travel. Is the Apparition the right call, or am I better off with a dedicated grovel board?

A: Honest answer: if your home break is *consistently* knee-to- waist mush with no shape, you're a candidate for a different category — a fish or a wider, flatter grovel board will paddle and plane better in that surf. The Apparition is built for the rider whose home break gives them at least waist-high with some shape on most sessions, with the swell occasionally jumping to head-high or overhead. If you only get the bigger swells on travel and your day-to-day is sub-waist, the Apparition will under-paddle on the home days and over-perform on the travel days — wrong tool for the average session. Tell me what your home break is and how often the size actually gets to waist-high or above, and I'll give you a sharper recommendation.

Q: I'm an early intermediate and I'm thinking about ordering an Apparition as my first "real" shortboard. Is that the right move?

A: Probably not as your first one, but maybe as your second. The Apparition rewards a rider who will trim the front foot — find the gas pedal under the lead foot and ride the board through flat sections — rather than just punting off the tail. If you're not yet consistently hitting the lead-foot drive on a board you've ridden, the Apparition's design will feel under-utilized; you'll like the paddle and the forgiveness, but you won't be getting what the contour is built to give. If you're ready for that next step — the "ride the whole board, not just the back third" step — the Apparition is a good board to grow into, and the wide-point-forward outline gives you margin while you're learning. Tell me where you are with your surfing and I'll tell you straight whether to start here or with something more forgiving first.

Q: How long does an Apparition take to build, and what's the process?

A: Every Apparition is built to order in San Diego, California. Designed by me in Shape3D, CNC-cut, and finished by Jack Sykes. Turnaround depends on the finish tier you pick: 4–6 weeks for the clear sanded build, 6–8 weeks for tint with gloss + polish, 8–10 weeks for tint sanded. Timeline reflects current shop queue and gets confirmed when you place the order. We take a 25% deposit at order; balance is due on completion. If you're ordering a non-standard length or volume outside the featured stock dims, expect the upper end of the range — custom dims add a Shape3D pass before the blank goes on the CNC.

Q: How does the Apparition compare to a Channel Islands Happy Everyday?

A: Same neighborhood, slightly different build philosophy. The Happy Everyday is the canonical reference for the everyday-shortboard category — Britt Merrick popularised the "single concave under the front foot acts as a gas pedal" framing that pretty much every modern HPSB-leaning hybrid has adopted, including the Apparition. Where we differ is in the build path: the Happy Everyday is a stock model in a stock-dim run, and the Apparition is built to your specs in San Diego — different dim, different glass schedule, different fin system, different finish tier. If you've ridden a Happy Everyday and liked it, you're exactly the customer the Apparition is built for. If you want a board built for your weight, your home break, and the waves you actually ride — rather than the closest stock dim on the rack — that's what we do here. Either way, the design intent is in the same neighborhood, and that's not an accident.

Q: I'm planning to surf this thing four or five times a week. Is the standard glass schedule going to hold up, or should I order something heavier?

A: The standard shortboard schedule is 4 + 4 oz deck, 4 oz bottom — that holds up fine for the typical mix of one-to-three sessions a week. For an everyday rider who's on the board four or five times weekly, I'd add a deck patch (~$30) at minimum; for the real beat-on-it daily-driver use case, a 4 + 4 + 4 oz deck or a 6 oz deck override is worth the small weight penalty. The boards I've seen come back for repairs over the years are mostly the high-frequency riders running standard glass, and the cost of an extra cloth is much less than a heel dent that grows into a delam. Tell me how often you're surfing and I'll size the glass schedule to match.

Q: Is there any way to ride an Apparition before I commit to a custom build?

A: We don't run a formal demo program, but there are a couple of options. We currently have two 5'1" Apparition inventory boards (boards `1202204AT` and `2862201NR`) listed under inventory clearance — if you're a lighter rider or you're looking for a sub-band size anyway, those are buy-and-ride right now at $315. For everyone else: if you're local to San Diego and want to swing by the shop before ordering, message me and I'll show you the master file in Shape3D, walk you through the contour, and let you pick up the closest stock build we have on hand. That's not a wave-test, but it gets you closer than ordering blind. The other option, if you have a friend who already rides one, is to ask them — I'd rather you ride someone else's Apparition for an hour than commit to a six-week custom build on something that doesn't fit how you surf.

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*End — Apparition FAQ.*