Review: Firewire Omni Woolight Surfboard

Surfing might seem like it’s a sport for cool, fun people, but we nerds know that it’s actually an engineering problem: How do you get yourself and a board that’s bigger than you are on the shoulder of the wave? Once there, how do you get your board moving fast enough to catch that wave?

It’s generally acknowledged that it’s easier to catch small, mushy waves on a bigger board. This leads many surfers to make a series of tradeoffs when considering what to paddle out. Wear out your arms paddling out a big board for a fun, easy ride? Or venture out on a shortboard, knowing that you might be stuck out in the lineup and swiveling in endless circles?

I’ve long accepted that, as punishment for the sin of preferring smaller waves, I’m stuck paddling out on what is basically a floating ping pong table. It is not unusual for me to emotionally blackmail my spouse into paddling out my funboard while I paddle out his shortboard, and then switch once we’re in the lineup.

But that all changed the minute I hauled myself onto Firewire’s Omni Woolight and paddled it out on Oregon’s Short Sands beach. Once out, I turned and paddled a mere three strokes to catch the very first wave that I saw. This was such a shocking development that I forgot to stand up.

This might be more revealing of my abilities as a surfer than of any of the board’s attributes, but I’ve never, ever caught my very first wave. I spent the rest of the day shrieking in dumbfounded delight. This is an amazing board.

Most surfers are default conservationists, because surfing is pretty icky if the water is unnaturally foamy and full of gross surfactants. But surfing hasn’t exactly been an environmentally-friendly sport since the world stole it from the native Hawaiians. Most of us don’t surf on pieces of polished wood. Instead, we build boards out of non-biodegradable foam, plaster them with fiberglass, and coat them in toxic resins.

One of the ways in which surfers try to mitigate the damage is through organizations like Sustainable Surf. Their Ecoboard certification program promotes boards and shapers that use recycled or biological materials. Of the many surfboard manufacturers who are trying to move towards more eco-friendly boards, Firewire has been one of the most successful. Their landmark move was switching entirely to recyclable bio-resins in 2014. Since then, they're the only manufacturer that exclusively sells certified Ecoboards.

Firewire has also taken other steps, like replacing the toxic polyurethane foam in the blank with expanded polysterene (EPS) and other aerospace-inspired materials. But their Woolight program, which will launch in November, takes that certification one step farther. In a Woolight board, the fiberglass lamination is replaced by a dyed merino wool cloth. Rather than a standard white, the Omni I tried rocked a subdued, yet stylish, navy-purple hue. Other prototypes are in custom-dyed chartreuse, or cobalt.

The sheer effort undertaken to replace that fiberglass cloth with merino wool might seem a little over the top. According to Sustainable Surf, fiberglass’s environmental impacts are minimal. Compared to the resin and the foam blank, fiberglass production only contributes about 5 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions produced by making a surfboard.

However, merino wool has other advantages. Merino is an renewable fiber, which Firewire sources from New Zealand farms that uphold high standards for both animal welfare and ecological preservation. And on the manufacturing side, it’s easy to repurpose any excess material into new fabric.

In addition, merino wool can be buried and composted, which is a significant step towards Firewire's goal of becoming a zero-landfill company by 2020. Over email, Firewire also mentioned that it’s also nice to include materials from New Zealand, a country with a long and rich surfing tradition.

The particular Woolight board that the Firewire team chose to send me was the Omni, which is a board that debuted in 2016. GOAT surfer Kelly Slater designed the board in collaboration with Firewire shaper Daniel Thomson, also known as Tomo.

Honestly, I couldn't tell what difference, if any, there was between having wool or fiberglass lamination. I've had it for a few months and haven't experienced anything that might make me think that it's any less durable than a fiberglass board. What I can say, however, is that the Omni was a mind-blowing board to ride.

I’m 5’2” and Firewire sent me a board that was 6'6" feet long. It has the rounded snub nose of a longboard, with a convertible five-fin design that I set in the three-fin, triangular thruster configuration. It’s concave on the underside, with a series of grooved ridges near the tail. When we got the board, I tied the board on my roof rack and started off for the beach. But we ended up stopping every few minutes.

“What is that?” my spouse kept asking. “Did you tie a motor on the roof?” The bottom of the board was so oddly shaped that the surf straps were suspended, buzzing, over the gaps. We stuffed towels under the straps to make it all the way to the beach.

Much as I might look like Kelly Slater, I don't exactly surf like him. Tomo says that the board is best on two- to eight-foot waves that have a bit of shape to them, but I took it out on a mushy two-to-four day and had a spectacular time. For me, a surfer of middling abilities, the Omni combines all the attributes that you love in both your shortboard and your longboard.

In addition to their adventurous forays into materials science, Firewire also uses computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, to tinker with the board's design and improve performance in a virtual fluid environment. I was skeptical about whether I'd even notice these advancements, but I found that as long as I was positioned in the right spot on the shoulder, the board ended up catching the wave for me.

Two or three strokes, and I felt the wave tickling that ridged bottom and lifting me up like a feather on the breeze. After years spent paddling like a maniac with squirrel arms to catch waves, this was nothing short of a transcendent experience. “I feel like I never even really liked surfing before now,” I yelled at my experienced surfer spouse, sitting in the lineup. Luckily, he was too far away for me to see him rolling his eyes.

It was also responsive and easy to turn, both while sitting and standing on it. And it was remarkably forgiving—even at 21.5 inches, it's more stable than you might think. A few times, I caught a wave and saw the nose start to slip under the water's surface. I braced myself for the pearling, a common type of wipeout whereupon the nose catches, the back lifts up, flips you over, and sends your face towards the ocean floor at high velocity. But the board picks up speed so fast that it rescued me from myself, sending me down the face and none the worse for wear. Whew!

Since I'm not capable of riding the barrel or making sweet cutbacks in the pocket, I also reluctantly lent it to a friend who is a much better surfer than I am and slightly larger, at a little under six feet and weighing 150 pounds. I should have taken pictures of his face when he got out of the water for Firewire to use for promotional materials. I kept getting texts full of heart-eye emojis on the drive home.

This board is better than any of us deserve.

For a long time, using eco-friendly sports goods felt a little like nibbling on vegan pizza. It's wholesome, and I know it would be better for both me and the environment if I did eat it. But the techniques used hadn't quite reached the point where I found eating it to be a pleasant experience, leaving me hungry for the real deal.

But the debate over whether or not eco-friendly surfboards can also be high-performance boards is slowly dying out. I suspect that Firewire's spectacular and eye-catching boards are one reason why. While it's nice knowing that I can safely dispose of my board when it reaches the natural end of its lifespan, it does have to perform well before I throw it away.

To me, the Woolight construction was just the fun cherry on top of an amazing board. Firewire is planning on launching their Woolight line in November, but one of their previous-model Omnis might hold you until you can get your hands on a wool one. I might end up giving vegan 'za another try, too.