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Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad is lightning fast off the mark and turns with the precision of your high performance shortboard.

This surfboard review is “not for a chunky fat fish.” This is the Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad Review + FCS2 Reactors. A surprising ride, this is a high performance shortboard in a more compact, straighter rail surfboard design (modern planing hull-esque?).

The Nomad is lightning fast off the mark and turns with the precision of your high performance shortboard. Yet the more compact outline reduces swing weight and allows the capable surfer to tuck into steep, more critical waves and really throw it around the pocket.

This is the Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad Review + FCS 2 Reactor fins.

Have a question? Let’s talk about it in the comments…

Benny

Have a question? Wondering if the Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad is the right board for you? Let’s talk about it in the comments…

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Pluses

+ A great, fast performance, small wave board, with parallel rail design.
+ Nice to surf in this smaller package and still feel like you can really throw the board around.

Minuses

– The board goes vertical and does really steep, hard driving turns. The nose gets in the way a little bit.

Benny Rides

The Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad model  at 6’1″ x 21 1/2 x 2 11/16 at 39.5L’s has a little bit of nose rocker, not too much entry lift in the nose, and then it comes through, it has a gentle, even rocker and then it has a more aggressive rocker out the tail.

Standard Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad dimensions and volumes may be found at the bottom of this page.

Best Wave Type

This is a performance option for small waves, but is not necessarily just for somebody who wants more forgiving, easy performance small wave option. It can definitely be surfed by more advanced surfers as well.

Features

• This is a high performance short board, squashed down into a smaller, wider frame.
• It has this wider nose, comes through to this wider tail, and a more parallel rail outline.
• Has a wide square tail in combination with the area round the nose to give the outline a fairly straight look.
• The bottom is low nose entry rocker to medium rocker.
• Has a low soft performance rail combined with a thin nose and tail distribution.

Compare To

• DHD Surfboards DX1 Surfboard Review: Jack Freestone’s signature model and Stab in the Dark winning high performance  shortboard.

Video Summary

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This is the Simon Anderson Nomad, and the Nomad, when I looked it for the first time and Compare Surfboards, we don’t like to regurgitate what the manufacturers have in their websites. Nothing wrong with what they have on the website, they’re their products and they should talk about them, but we don’t like to regurgitate. The whole point of what we do here is we like to talk about the boards and how they’re actually going to work for you in the water based on our experience.

The Board

This is an exception to that rule because when I looked at this board for the first time, the first thing it went to my head is “Oh, it just looks like this chunky little fat thing.” On the website for the Simon Anderson Nomad, that’s one of the things that Simon said. “This is not a chunky fat fish. This is a high performance short board, squashed down into a smaller, wider frame” so you can see it has this wider nose, comes through to this wider tail, and a more parallel rail outline going across here like some other boards that we’ve reviewed recently.

The theory behind this type of board is by having that parallel rail on the shorter package, you’re reducing friction, you get the board, the board can therefore pick up and accelerate a lot faster and you can also surf a shorter board and still get performance benefits of a performance short board.

A couple of elements about this board, my Nomad is 6’1″ x 21 1/2 x 2 11/16 at 39.5L’s, has a little bit of nose rocker, not too much entry lift in the nose, and then it comes through, it has a gentle, even rocker and then it has a more aggressive rocker out the tail. It also has a deep vee that you can see if I hold this tail right up to you, you can see that it has a little bit of a vee there, and again, that is intended to allow the board to shift from rail to rail more easily, given the fact that it is, in fact, a wider tail.

You can also see that that tail is quite thinned out so it does feel pretty precise, it doesn’t stick when you’re trying to push it through turns and you can also see that the tip inn the nose is about the same. It’s got a very thin, sensitive nose.

That is the point of the Simon Anderson Nomad. This is a performance option for small waves, not some chunky fat fish. Let’s talk about how it goes on the water.

Experience in the Surf

My experience with the Nomad, I’ll share a few different experiences with it. The first time I surfed this board, I’ve surfed few of these parallel red boards so I had a little bit more of an idea of what to expect from it, but the first time I surfed and I was surfing this wave that was probably about maybe shoulder high on the sets, but it was hitting a shallow sandbank and it was pitching pretty quickly and it was breaking pretty quickly.

I had a couple of waves of waves where I took off, literally the lift just throwing behind me and ducked that wider nose into the face of the wave and I had these beautiful little clean runners with this bowly section, steep little bowly section, we’re just trying to outrun the lift, and it just had this really nice feeling, going flowing up and down and then doing a little bottom turn and coming up doing a little top turn had a really nice feel about it.

Very precise, definitely didn’t feel like that flow that you get out of a fish or anything like that.

The next time I surfed it, the conditions were very different. It was about waist, maybe stomach high, and I was surfing at beach break again but the conditions were not very good. It was on shore and really mushy and sectiony, and I really wasn’t sure how this board was going to perform, but it got up and got going very easily. It’s 39 1/2 liters so I had plenty of paddle power behind me, and then again, I would surf these little waves, and it was easy to making around sections, it didn’t feel too catchy or anything, it’s got low rails that I thought might be a little bit too sensitive for those conditions, but it was okay.

In that session too, I actually had a couple of people out surfing with me. One of my mates, Richard, who is a very, very good surfer from Africa, he actually rode this board and he’s a smaller guy than me. He usually surfs these little toothpicky shortboards, old school shortboards that I wouldn’t be able to even paddle on to a wave with.

When he jumped on this thing, I thought it was going to be A, way too big, and B, I just didn’t think this will suit his style of surfing, but he loved the thing. He was really surprised by how easy it was to throw it around, and he’s one of those guys that when you go surfing with him, you love him but hate him because he’s so good, but he’s just absolutely tearing buckets out of the way, even the smallest of sets that are coming through, and he was just absolutely tearing it to pieces on these lefts and rights, but it was really interesting for me to watch him surf this board because you could see that it was definitely suited for somebody that knew what they were doing as well.

This is not necessarily just for somebody who wants more forgiving, easy performance small wave option. It can definitely be surfed by more advanced surfers as well.

My standout session on the Nomad, I was surfing at my local beach break which is almost like this point like beach break and these really nice, hollow, long running lefts, and when it lines up, it can just be absolutely perfect.

The day that I was surfing the Nomad out there, I paddled out and caught a wave just as I was paddling out, that was wider the pack, and it literally took off and it just sucked up and just went … Just literally, the whole wave just sucked out from under me and just turned in to this big dirty browned out barrel, and I was really impressed by the fact that I could paddle on to and get in to that steeper wave really easily, and then once I got down in the side of it, it just felt really nice flowing through this little tube. I didn’t come out of it but it showed me that this board can be surfed in more critical conditions and still do its thing.

Overall, I would say a board that works well in lots of different situations and can be surfed a little bit more aggressively than you might think. Let’s talk about fins next.

Fin Setup

The fins that you see in my Nomad are the FCS2 Reactors and I wouldn’t have chosen these fins maybe for me to surf ever, unless I’m going to indoor or something. These are the types of fins, they’re quite upright, they don’t have a lot of fold, they’re intended to be surfed for me, in my performance boards, my step up boards, boards that I’ve taken in to Indonesia or taken to Central America to surf punchy, hollow beach breaks, but I contacted my acquaintance at FCS2, lovely guy named Josh, and this is the set of fins that he recommended in this board.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have picked them, but I really didn’t feel the need to change out of this setup. I really enjoyed those fins with this board, probably because this is a more performance oriented small wave board. I did switched out the fins at one point and put performers in the back, performer’s trailers has a quad setup for that mushier day which worked fine as well, but this was definitely my preferred setup, the FCS2 Reactors as a thruster.

Summary

On to the good, the good, and the not so good of the Simon Anderson Nomad. The good, yeah, this is a great, fast performance, small wave board, and this parallel rail design, which for somebody like me who surfs bigger boards, it’s quite nice to surf in this smaller package and still feel like you can really throw the board around, so I really enjoy the feel of it. I was happy with how well it would handle itself in the barrel, really awesome to see Richard throwing it around and just throwing buckets all over the place with it, and just a nice even keel feel on the wave pumping up and down the face. It just has a really nice, settled feel but does feel very precise.

The not so good, the one thing that I did hear about this board, it wasn’t as much of a problem for me, but I let my friend John surf it at one point, and John was surfing it in slightly bigger waves. It was about head high, maybe a foot overhead, and pretty steep faces, and John is also a very good surfer, he really gets his board to vertical and does really steep, hard driving turns, and he said he felt the nose got in the way a little bit. He said it wasn’t a problem, he really enjoyed surfing it overall and he got some great waves on it, but that was one bit of feedback that I’ve heard about it. I wouldn’t change that I think it’s fundamental having this style of nose to compliment this design overall because that is the core of the design, that parallel rail design with the wider tip and tail.

That is the review of the Simon Anderson Nomad model. As always, let us know what you think in the comments. Let’s have a chat about it there, hit that red subscribe button if you haven’t already, and please favorite this video and share if you like it. That really helps us out. Speak to you next week.

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Stock Standard Dimensions & Volume

Standard Simon Anderson Surfboards Nomad Dimensions & Volumes available at the Simon Anderson Surfboards: