Surfboards Buyers Guide

Lost Puddle Jumper - Who Ate All The Pies?

Walking down the rack of boards in our showroom and at first glance the Lost Surfboards Puddle Jumper  looks the ugly duckling surrounded by beautiful swans. Short and wide it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing surfboard you’ve ever put under your arm. However appearances can be and usually are deceptive and the Puddle Jumper surfboard definitely offers a lot more than first impressions imply. Of course we all see ourselves on high performance shortboards belting the living daylights out of the lip of some spot only accessible by boat in deepest Sumatra, reality bites my friends. Statistically 80% of surf in the UK is shoulder high and below, and only 30% off surf is offshore and clean and what we would call properly lined up.


It’s time to get yourself riding something that not only works but positively revels in these conditions...that wide, flat, short ugly thing in the corner, could that be the answer? Yes.

Matt Biolos came over to see us here at Boardshop last winter, he’s a knowledgeable guy on boards (obviously) but his insight into board design was enlightening, we spent a lot of time talking about the Puddle Jumper in particular and why it might be a good board for surfers in the UK and beyond. Biolos declared the Puddle Jumper as the best small wave board he’d ever built and ridden. Back then we didn’t have any stock so we didn’t have a chance to ride it, it was all theory! We’ve seen a lot of boards that looked like they’d do the job but when ridden, didn’t. That’s why you don’t see every board from every board company in our show room or on our website, happy to say the Puddle Jumper surfboard exceeds expectations.

The design features crucial to performance highlighted by Biolos were based on the double concave and how this worked in conjunction with the rail line and fin positioning. The double concave is pretty extreme and almost creates a spine down the last third of the underside of the board this creates lots of lift and so speed, helps with paddling in, paddling generally and also speed out of your bottom turn. This feature also helps the board deal with surface chop. The board feels loose for something so wide and actually goes from rail to rail pretty easily in a fishy kind of way. It’s a lot of fun and feels forgiving to surf but also pretty responsive when surfed more off the tail.

Been trying to think of a negative about the board to balance up the unadulterated selling job we’ve slipped in to doing here but can’t really think of any!

Size wise, stick to your normal volume plus a litre or two. For example... 

5ft 10 and 75 kgs aged 35 intermediate local customer surfs mainly south coast with regular trips to west country, France, Spain and Portugal surfs a 5’ 8 at 36.9 litres. Works well up to head high even in punchy conditions.

His other boards area Lost Round Up 6’ 4” step up and a CI Sampler utility board.