Last year, Coco Ho and Matt Parker launched their collaboration, the surfboard brand XO Coco. At the time, I went down to San Clemente to chat with Parker and see the boards and wrote a little story for my friends at BeachGrit. The line features six board models from fish to shortboard to longboard.
After roughly a year of playing around with the Bliss from XO Coco, I wanted to revisit the story and chat a bit about the board.
So, here’s some board talk — and thing we’ll try to do here sometimes. As you’ve maybe noticed, we don’t aren’t super routine about this whole newsletter thing. It happens when it does.
But we have plans! So many plans! Sometimes, we just get a little distracted. You know how it is.
Designed to be a performance twin, the Bliss shares a number of characteristics of the XO Coco line. On average, women have smaller feet than men, so Parker slims down the outlines on the XO Coco boards with the goal of smoothing rail-to-rail transitions. A domed deck allows for volume and easy paddling, while keeping the rails sharp. Parker also places the fins close to the tail, which aims to make the board turn more readily.
Does the thing actually work? Sure, it does.
The dims on my Bliss are 5’7” x 18.38 x 2.35. (I’m 5’9” and weigh 150 pounds.) Ngl, I expected to be weirded out by the narrow outline.
In the past, I’ve ridden comparatively narrow boards, but I’d gone trendy and shifted to shorter, wider shortboards. I had pretty much adopted 19 inches as my magic width. Well, that didn’t last.
“You think you know something, and then it turns out that, well, maybe you don’t.”
In fact, I found that I loved the way the Bliss went rail to rail and I didn’t have any trouble adapting to it. It felt like a little skateboard. Fun, whippy, fast.
I liked it so much, actually, that when I replaced my shortboard this winter, I went all-in on narrower. You think you know something, and then it turns out that, well, maybe you don’t.
But Jen, don’t twinfins slide? Don’t they just slide out all over the place?
Push a wide-tail fish too hard, and sure, you’re going to feel that thing start to go a little sideways.
But, it turns out that if you pair two fins with a pulled in, narrow tail design, you get a whole different kind of ride. That’s the idea behind a board like the CI Twin Pin, which I love to the moon and back.
“You are probably more coordinated
than I am.”
The tail on the Bliss is frickin’ narrow. It’s a super drawn in swallowtail, and it almost feels like a third fin. If you’re looking for that jazzy twinfin slide, this isn’t the board for it. The thing holds.
It also carves whippy quick little turns, which I kinda loved, actually! I love how tightly this board turns. I rode the Bliss with Album’s Gemini 5.3 fins, but XO Coco has since released fins designed to pair with their boards.
This song has nothing to do with surfing, but I like it, so I’m putting it right here.
The one quirk of this board for me is the fin placement. I like to move my back foot around on twinfins and I don’t ride ‘em with a pad. Go straight, move the back foot forward. Turning? Move that thing on back.
Occasionally on the Bliss, I just don’t step back far enough. The fins are, well, they’re back there. When I hit it right, the board turns beautifully. When I miss, it’s… not super.
You are probably more coordinated than I am, and can get your dumb foot where it belongs. You might also be smart enough to just like, put a traction pad on your board and stop being such a poser. I just can’t quite do it.
Y’all, this board is so cute. It’s black and pink, and there’s no way I’m putting a pad on it. Eew.
“You might also be smart enough to put a pad on your board and stop being such a poser. I just can’t quite do it.”
I like the way the Bliss combines the magic glide of a twinfin with the hold of a thruster. It walks that line super well. Though the Bliss isn’t a groveler by any means, it’s pretty forgiving of California mediocrity. That goes for both me and the waves.
I’ve been back on my thruster bullshit lately, but the effortless glide twinfins offer has an unbreakable hold on my heart. I love the silly things — and you can too.