Waxing a surfboard is never as straightforward as it should be. It’s messy. It doles out chafing across that naked torso. It flattens out in the spots where you sit on your board between sets, creating a slippery surface that completely nullifies the point of having wax on your board in the first place. When it gets dirty and too clumpy you’re responsible for cleaning it off, otherwise looking like the a-hole who doesn’t care about their surfing tools of the trade. Honestly, when you start to break it down, wax sucks.
It has one redeeming quality in that it smells all pretty.
But in spite of that we jump at few wax alternatives. Full deck traction pads aren’t the sexiest of inventions. But this isn’t a full deck traction pad. It’s just a sheet of clear vinyl that adheres to the deck of a board. It has raised traction patterns that give an even distribution of wax over the surface of the board, and you get cool little designs to go along with it. So now we have “smells pretty” and “cool patterns” on the short list of redeemable qualities. Then, when it’s time to change out that dirty wax you just peel the sheet off your board. No scraping away. Be gone with you old wax.
