Help Pick out a shared Surf style board

[vanamp 780]

My wife and I have a budget for one surfboard to share.  We have been losing weight and want to make sure we hit our goal weights before dropping big $$$ on two custom boards with custom graphics.  Luckily our weights seem to land us in a size range where the sharing part won't be that big of a deal and both fit in the suggested range on each end of the scale.

We are pretty good at surfing, my wife won an amateur contest and by the end of last season, I was riding away from 360s consistently and working on airs.  We worked a lot on switch riding and are looking for a blunt nose surfer to help with riding revert.  Our current board is an idol tollie twist carbon.  Its a thicker board soft rails that is really easy to surf.  We could hang back in the wave but we felt like we needed a bit more drive going into our airs.  Our style is usually described as aggressive and like a board that can release when we want it to.  We rode a LF POD with quad fins on it and had trouble getting it to release.  I'm not sure if all quad fin setups feel like that but we were not fans.  The fin setup part is still a mystery to me as we only have boards with a three fin options that we always ride as twins because we notice no real difference with the third fin in.

Here is our (long) short list of boards:

Phase5 - The Wire
Phase5 - Swell
Brigade - Halfie Pro
Soulcraft - SOS
Soulcraft - Jimmi8
Soulcraft - Jordi Pro
Inland Surfer - Keenan Pro
Inland Surfer - Air 134

 

We have settled on a Phase 5 Hammer head as our skim board, feel free to talk us out of that if you have an opinion on it.

 

Any help spending my money is appreciated

[surfdude 385]

The wire is a great board if you are 160 or above, in the shortest length. Will carve nice, yet, is still loose for surface tricks. One of the faster boards I have ridden. That said, I bought a swell, because I thought it would be better for me cause I weigh about 155, and the wire felt a bit big. The swell for some reason is a slow TURD! Haven't put the extra fins on it yet. 2 similar boards, yet very different. For reference, my favorite board of all time is the gen1 flyboy. No over the counter board that is surf style can come close to it IMHO.

[vanamp 780]

Anyone Riding a brigade Surf Stye board?  I know they make good skim style but had only a couple runs on one of their surf style, so could not get a good opinion on it.   They have some sweet graphics and are worth a follow on Instagram.