Chilli Surfboards Mid Strength Review

The outline of the Chill Surfboards Mid Strength has a full-ish nose to help with paddling (you can get into waves so easy on this thing). From there it comes into a more narrow tail (than the nose) and this allows you to turn a lot easier with too much effort. Think long turning arcs/carves, not crazy vertical snaps in the pocket.

Rocker is a lower entry with a medium exit rocker out the tail. Apparently the aim here was to create a fast paddler that would pick up waves with minimal effort and still feel reactive on the turns. This board is king of trimming and going fast down the line.

On the bottom you’ll find a slight single concave running into a deep single/double concave. An effortless combination in this mid-length model that’s sensibly related to a mid strength beer; all the fun with half the effort!

The conditions I surfed the Chilli Surfboards Mid Strength in varied from 1ft low tide shithouse Dbah off the wall, to 4ft Greenmount and Duranbah. So we got a pretty good range of conditions and the waves it really shined in for me were around the 2-3ft mark, playful type waves that weren’t too serious but decent enough to get going on without much fuss.

This board doesn’t enjoy sucky waves, but can be ridden in surf that has ‘push’. By that I mean you’ll catch your front rail more often than not in sucky waves as you try to angle through tubes or down the face. Pushy waves tho, it loves, the extra speed you get and the extra room on the face to open up carves, etc feels amazing. Seriously. If you are riding this as a ‘comeback’ board it’ll really help build your confidence back up – not just in catching waves, etc but also surfing the waves and getting your beloved ChrisBrownWraparound happening again.

While you can surf it in almost every thinkable conditions, I found it’s wasn’t wildly amazing with the short, one and done waves as it’s not super quick off the mark – but you’re also not riding this board to slam a quick closeout either, so…

For me, personally, there’s a certain magic you get when riding Mid Lengths on a point or long stretched out bank – the speed, flow, even the ability to trim and just enjoy the scene of it all. I even caught myself trimming one wave trying to put my hands in the lip like some weirdo…

Overall Best Conditions:
To be honest, I found you could ride this in anything up to 4ft quite comfortably. 2ft and under you’re cruising and just playing around, stoked to get the wave count up on shitty days. 3-4ft and you’ll feel it come alive and allow you to dig into some carves and generally feel the speed under your feet.

Stats were:
23 sessions
95 waves
Top Speed of 26km/h (Duranbah)
Longest ride was 297m (Duranbah)

This isn’t the board for the surfer who just wants to get out there and rip, shred, tear, the Chilli Surfboards Mid is – James outlined –  more for the surfer who is coming back from injury or getting back into surfing after a break or just wants a board that takes the everyday stress off them. It’s a board that’s easy to surf and gives that surf stoke we all love to get when being out in the ocean.

The beauty of the board is how much work it does for you, if you let it. It’ll run around a section with a slight push off the bottom, go the highline and you’ll get an immense amount of speed. Having said that, if you try to over-power or ‘force’ it through turns, you’ll come unstuck or heavily catch/bog more often than not.

You can go straight up, do snaps, round houses, probably even airs, but when you’re trying to surf it like that (like a proper HP shortboard) you tend to catch, lose your arms and generally flail a lot. It’s brilliant at cut down’s, highline speed runs, sectional floaters (long as it’s not dumping) and even pretty good for some larry action.

The fins I used were:
*FCS Mayhem Thruster set in Large
*FCS Al Merrick Twin + Stabiliser
*FCS Al Merrick PC Aircore + Reactor Rear Quad

The FCS Mayhem Large set left the others dead in the water. I started with the Merrick PC Aircore fins but I’m not a huge fan of the smaller back fin and got off them pretty quickly and switched it out for a quad with the Reactors at the back. The Quad set up was ok, and plenty fast but I lost a bit of loose feeling I liked with the Mayhems. The Twin + Stabiliser approach was probably the second best set I used and you could get away with this in most conditions, it loosens the board up a bit but not so much you feel like you’re skipping out.

You can see in the images below the difference in size, rake, depth, etc between the three main fins with the Mayhems providing the right balance (for me) of stability, control and speed. Basically all things I want more of in a board.

Overall, the biggest thing I learnt with this board was to give yourself more time when surfing, more time off the bottom, off the top or doing cutbacks. Which, when you’re coming back from injury, or getting back into surfing after a break, is an amazing feeling. You can hold yourself back from trying to rip in and shred like you used to, which can lead to injuring yourself again (and again, trust me I know), and still get that love and enjoyment of surfing back into your life.

Regardless of the continued comments I was getting about riding Mid Lengths (this is third one I’ve reviewed – The CI Mid and the Mid 6 from Toolhurst) I kept riding it and I can’t express how much fun I had riding this board, to the point I’d keep this in the quiver with the approach to ride when I want to switch things up or have friends who are looking to progress past intermediate stages…

The Chilli Surfboards Mid Strength flows easily, it does most of the work and will help clean up your surfing if you let it. It’s not for the person who wants to get out there and ‘Hulk Smash’ every wave, it’s for the person who enjoys the glide, the challenge of something different (that can be hard or easy to ride) or maybe is just getting a touch older, coming back from injury etc. You’ll get into waves earlier, enjoy the high-lines and even get a renewed energy for smaller waves.

The Wins:
*Glides effortlessly on a wave and allows to enjoy surfing with a new perspective.
*Fin options to play around with
*It’s just a fun board in all honesty, full of smiles and stoke.

The Challenges:
*Tbh, there wasn’t a lot of challenges with this board. Once I found the fins that work for me I had a blast riding it, and it got me amped to be surfing again.

If you’re not quite sold on the Chilli Surfboards Mid Strength but are interested in getting a mid-length some alternatives include the One Bad Egg from Mark Phipps, the Channel Islands Mid or spice it up with the Toolhurst Mid-6 from Harley Ingelby.