Aqua Marina Wave 2022 iSUP surf review

Hello everybody, welcome back to another SUP Boarder video. This video is going to be all about the Acro Marina Wave Inflatable Surf SUP. Acro Marina have got some new features on this board this year, so if you're looking to get an inflatable paddle board to get you into SUP surfing, this is a board video you need to be watching. So the Acro Marina Wave has been in their range for a few years now, and the previous wave we have actually done a full SUP Boarder review on as well. The specifications for that board are very similar. They both were 8'8 long and 30 inches wide and 4 inches thick, and even the volume is pretty close. And this board retails at about €549, very much the same as last year's board. It comes just with a leash, a fin, and a pump and a backpack, so you do not get a paddle with this board at all. But many shops might be throwing in three-piece paddles to go as a complete package if you are after a paddle as well. Like all Acro Marina boards, they are widely available around the world. Many shops stock them and you can find them at pretty affordable prices online as well if you do shop around. Diving into what this board is like to use on and off the water. First off, let's look at the bag that it comes with. It comes with a very basic zipped backpack bag. All of the Acro Marina boards have very basic bags. The nice thing about that is it makes it nice and light, and it's definitely okay to carry at moderate distances. On the session that we took it down, we did carry it down probably 200-300 metres down a cliff and we did have a walk along the beach and the board bag was absolutely fine. But definitely not as refined or as well finished as some more expensive boards on the market. When it comes to unpacking this board and pumping it up, the first thing you'll notice, which is an unfortunate thing, is there is a lot of plastic packaging wrapped around these boards when they come out of the bag brand new first time. So you are going to have to discard that and recycle that where you can. When it comes to inflating the board, it's very easy inflation. There's one inflation valve at the back of the board. You pump it up with the Acro Marina V1 pump. It's a two-way pump, which means it pumps on the upstroke and on the downstroke. And then when the pumping gets hard, you have a little release nozzle that you can take out the back of the pump and just pump on the downstroke to make the pumping a little bit easier. It's a little bit more of a basic pump compared to some of the other Acro Marina boards, but it does get the air into the board absolutely fine. It's not as efficient to use as some more expensive pumps, but you might want to upgrade it in a few years. But it does work absolutely periodically for the board, and it gets the appropriate pressure of 18 psi, which is what they recommend, into the board fairly quickly. And this is also because the board is only four inches thick, remember. Now let's move on to a completely new feature and design that Acro Marina have put on these new wave boards. Looking at the fin system. So they have a click fin system now. This is the first time we've seen this fin system on any board at all. It seems like a very solid but simple looking fin system. You slide the fin in from the front, you push it back, and you push a lever down and it clicks the fin into its place nice and securely. There's a couple good things about this new fin system that Acro Marina have got on their board. It's easy to do, it gives you a very solid and rigid feeling fin, and it enables them to put better fins and stiffer fins on their inflatable paddle boards. The downside to this sort of fin system is you are going to have to worry and watch out about getting sand in your fin box. So when it comes to the inflation process, you might want to put your fins on first before you pump up your board or unroll your board onto a sandy beach, for example. This is what I did, and I didn't have a problem at all getting the fins into the fin boxes. It is what you call a two plus one fin setup, which is where they have the centre fin. It's a bigger fin than the two side fins. The important thing to note about these two side fins is the side fins are actually asymmetric, which means that you have a flat inside edge and you have a profiled or foiled outside edge to the fin. This gives you a lot more grip when it comes to riding on the waves, which we'll speak about in a minute. The big centre fin, it's a big nine inch centre fin, good amount of shape to it, a nice profile, and it's not an asymmetric fin, so it's basically profiled the same on both sides. So it does mean when you install your fins, you have to remember to put the two side fins in the board the right way round, just so it makes it a little bit more efficient when you're surfing. Then you're going to have to install your leash. It comes as standard with a nice nine foot straight leash, not a coiled leash, which is good to see. It's an adequate leash to be surfing in moderate size swells. If you're going to be surfing in really big stuff, you might want to upgrade to a thicker base leash, but this leash is absolutely fine for the package and the sort of surfing you're going to be doing with this board. So with my leash attached, it was time to head out onto the water and to give this new Aquamarine Wave board a good going over in some clean, small to moderate size swell. The sort of swell I think you'll be riding this board in. I had a number of fun waves with this board on this day, but let's hear from myself on the day of what I first thought of the Aquamarine Wave. So that was a nice little session. It was about shoulder, waist high, and my first impression straight away, unfortunately, this board needs more nose rocker. You can notice that on the bottom turn, you have to be right at the back of the board. And also because of that, the kick pad unfortunately needs to be a little bit further back. But on the wave, the board has got a really serious amount of good grip. And this is obviously due to the fin setup that they've put on this board. I really like having the stiffer fins. Again, these fins are a little bit more profiled than normal. So a load of hold, even on the steeper waves. And usually that is usually a problem with a flatter nose board as well. But actually, the fins do get you out of a lot of situations, even though it's got a flatter rocker line. The board isn't that fast to paddle in on the wave, and it does require a little bit more paddle strokes than some other boards I have seen. Maybe this is due to it being a little bit wider up towards the nose. Stability of the board seems about average, okay at 30 wide. But really, even when you're paddling on the flat, you'll notice that lack of nose rocker to get out over chop. It's a lot more technical. You've got to step back further on the board. I would say really this board works well. Waist are high and below. You could be a first timer on this board, but definitely using it in smaller waves makes it a lot easier to use. So just watching that makes me realise how I look pretty much like a drowned rat, and I look like I've been pulled through a hedge backwards. Got to sort that hair out the next time. But anyway, it's good to get my straight away feedback about that board. So again, the lack of rocker line, it's a shame there needs to be more rocker with this inflatable paddle board. It's a really hard thing to get right. And the reason is, is because you actually need so much rocker on these inflatable surfs ups to actually work that it doesn't really look very nice. And in my experience, the surfing ice ups for many years, the big banana boards do actually serve much better, but they do not look as nice. And they are quite slow to paddle because of extra rocker line. But this board does have a similar feel to the previous board that we've tested, but it's definitely an upgrade. It's a much better surfing feel. It's still relatively flat in the rocker. It still has that slightly wider nose, but the previous board had a much wider nose, which made it much slower to paddle in and slower to catch waves. So this board is a vast improvement on its shape, but definitely that fin setup is where it's all at. It makes such a big difference having that fin setup. Good amount of grip, good amount of hold, and they really will help you get way more out of your board than maybe your ability will allow you when you're surfing a board with certain characteristics like flatter rocker line or even just a nice up in general. When it comes to the stiffness of this board, the board actually has the same amount of stiffness as the previous years board that we tested as well. We did our deflection test with this board, which is where we put it on a gap of 1.5 meters apart and put a weight of 75 kilograms on the center of the board. And then we measure how much the board bends or deflects in millimeters, and it bent 19 millimeters, which is stiffer than some of the leading surf SUPs that we've already tested on the market. It's not as stiff as some of the stiffest ones, but it's nicely in the middle and it's a good place to start. And I do find that for moderate weight people, you're not going to find the stiffness too much of a problem when you're SUP surfing. The construction of the board is fairly tough. It's very similar again to the previous years boards. You've got multiple layers of PVC, you've got an extra little rail band around the side of the board, and the construction of that board does keep the weight down the board as well, which is nice. So when we weighed it with its fins and its leash on, it came out at 8.2 kilograms, which is a nice weight for a board of that size. Definitely, as I said in the video, the best conditions for this type of board is going to be this smaller based wave, something around waist high. You're going to be able to catch lots of waves and those fins are really going to help hold you to the wave. For the manoeuvrability and the turning of the board, because of the lack of rocker, it does struggle. As in, you can put a board into a turn, but getting out of the turn and recovering the turn or the manoeuvre without nose diving is really, really hard to do. When it comes to packing the board up, it's very easy to deflate. You've got one valve, you undo it at the back there, you roll the nose of the board up. The most important thing is when you roll up the end of the board, you finish the last folded section around the fins is pretty much flat, so the fins don't get bent and pulled away from maybe the PVC. So let's drill straight into the cons that you need to be aware about with this board. I do not like the amount of plastic that comes with this board when it's brand new. There is far too much plastic. Acromarina, please, can you try and get some cardboard, some paper? I know it's hard, I know it requires a lot more time and effort and maybe when you're transporting your stuff, they might get damaged more, but a lot of people are looking to reduce that plastic in the boards when they first come. One thing you definitely have to be aware about is keeping those fin boxes out of the sand, keeping the grit out of the fin boxes. It's something that you can easily clean them out, but you are going to have to be aware about it, so you're going to be thinking about when you put your fins in, when you take your fins out as you roll your board up, getting that sand and getting it clean again. Easy to do, but something you are going to have to be aware of. As I said, it needs more rocker line on the board, it needs more curve of the board from the front to the back. Also, because of that, the tail kick pad could be further back. It could be five or six inches further back, really, to get your foot right at the back of the board to help those turns. There is no tail release edge or release runner like you see on some inflatable paddle boards. Because they've got this fin set up on this board, it doesn't seem like that much of a problem, but I think maybe if there was a tail release edge or PVC strip around the back of the board, it would help the board surf a little bit more again. Another annoying negative, unfortunately, is the handle wasn't actually balanced. The board was falling down towards the back of the board, so the handle needs to be further back. It's something you can easily overcome, but it's definitely something that gets a little bit annoying if you're going to be walking at long distances with the handle. Looking at the pros of the boards, well, actually, there is a fair amount of pros for this board. For a start, the quality of the board, the finish, the gluing, the way the EVA deck pad is stuck on, all of that type of stuff is finished off really well and quite a high level for the price point of the board. So Akramarina are doing a really good job when it comes to the quality finish of all their boards, to be honest, that we've seen so far. The look of the board as well is really cool. It's nice, funky graphics. I think they've done a good job there. Definitely the big standout for me is that click-in fin system. It's easy to use. It really holds the board to the wave. I like the way that they even thought about having asymmetric fins on the side there. Nice to see this in surfing sucks. It really does make a difference. Obviously, we haven't used this over time, so we don't know how this works over months and months of use, but I think if you do keep that clean, it will be a fairly easy system to keep up in tip-top condition. Because of the fin setup, the board actually does track really well when you're catching waves. It's nice and easy to paddle in a straight line. Much, much easier than a lot of other inflatable surf sucks that we've already tested. Who would best suit the Akramarina Wave for 2022? Weight-wise, you could be a really light paddler, 50, 45, 60, 65, 75, up to about 90 kilos of rider, I would say. The sweet spot weight would probably be 60 to 80 kilos would be really comfortable. It's not got too much width there, so it's not like other boards which are 32 wide maybe. Surfing ice ups, if you're a little bit 90, 85, 95, 100 kilos, looking towards those wider boards would be better for you. Definitely, for a lot of you though, up to 80 kilos, definitely around the 75 kilos, 80 kilos, this will be a really good board to look at. You could obviously use this board on flat water as well, and if you're a lighter paddler, you're going to get more out of that. Because it hasn't got that much heavily, you know, it's not that heavily rockered, the shape of the board underneath does actually mean that it paddles quite well on flat water, and it's a little bit faster than a heavier rockered board would do. So if you're a lighter paddler, 60 kg, 55 kg, you could use this as a flat water paddling board as well. But obviously, it's not going to be as fast as a longer 10 foot wide, 11 foot board. But definitely, if you're looking to get into subsurfing this year, this is going to be a board that's easy to paddle in a straight line to catch those waves, and when you're on those waves, it's going to easily hold you in the waves as you trim along the line to get your real basics in subsurfing. So there we go, I hope you found that SUP board review of the Aquamarino Wave for 2022 useful and informative, and it's helped you understand if this board is a board that you should be looking at. If you've got this board, or you're thinking about getting this board, or this video has helped you, please get a review on the SUP boarder site. We've got a great new box there at the bottom of the post below this video. Let us know what you think of the board, and if you've got it, give us a full-blown review to help others understand if they should be buying it too. But until next time, we'll see you on another SUP boarder video on YouTube, or on our main SUP boarder website really soon.