US spot guides, sizing tools and gear advice
Surf, kiteboarding, paddle SUP, windsurf, wing foil and bodyboard — sizing tools, gear guides and spot guides for beginners through experts.
Cape Cod to California, the Outer Banks to the Columbia Gorge, Puerto Rico to Mexico's four coasts — wind and swell season, how the spots differ, and the access rules that actually apply.
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Sizing tools in US units
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Destination guides: US, Mexico & Caribbean
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US states and territories
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Sports covered
Free calculators in US units, and the buying guides the numbers come from.
Wetsuits
Enter the water temperature in °F and get the millimeters, plus whether boots, gloves and a hood are worth it.
Paddleboarding
Your weight sets the minimum volume in liters. The board type sets the dimensions that go with it.
Gear guides
Boards, wetsuits, paddles and safety kit, explained in depth. Written for a European reader, so read prices as European.
We publish guides that have been reviewed, keep the pages up to date, say plainly where our information comes from and lean on reliable sources whenever a topic touches safety, gear or regulations.
Every calculator here works from a figure published in one of our own buying guides, and links back to it. A tool and a guide never tell you two different things — which is more common elsewhere than it should be.
See the tools arrow_forward
Every page follows the same framework – a useful structure, a human review, checks on the sensitive points and an update when the picture changes.
See our method arrow_forward
Access and safety rules are local. Our US pages cite the Coast Guard, the state and the beach ordinance where one exists — and say plainly where we could not find one, rather than repeating a rule from somewhere else.
US destinations arrow_forwardThis locale is new: it is the US spot guides and the sizing tools, and it will grow. The rest of Matosurf — the full gear guides, the worldwide destinations, the technique and safety write-ups — is written for a British and European reader and lives in our UK section. It is worth your time; a wetsuit behaves the same on either side of the Atlantic.
The one thing that does not travel is money. Those pages quote pounds and euros, at European retailers, with European shipping. Treat a price there as a European price, not a converted US one — that mismatch is the reason this locale exists rather than being folded into the UK one.
Here, prices are in dollars and the retailers we send you to are US-based, so an order ships inside the United States. We explain how that works — and how we make money — on pricing and delivery.
