A Rising Influence

The birth and subsequent growth of stand-up-paddling brought about a positive and much needed injection of interest into watersports in general. One of the key drivers was that it was easy to understand, and more importantly easy to access, bringing the sport into the mainstream. Simply grab a board and paddle, and away you go! And with the first boards that hit the market being long and wide, the early-adopting windsurfing brands quickly realised there was an opportunity for some crossover between the two sports. So not long after the dawn of SUP production came the emergence of the windsurfing-SUP board – a.k.a. windSUP.

- Tris Best

However, the road ahead served up a few bumps along the way, and certainly didn’t become the ‘golden ticket’ for new windsurf-ing blood that many had hoped. Rapid progression in the SUP market soon highlighted stark differences and conflicts in design directions between the two sports. A wave specific SUP for example, would be highly rockered for best performance, with soft rails in all but the tail, to grip the water during transition. By contrast, planing windsurf performance would demand minimal tail rocker (tail kick at best) and at least some ‘flat’ in the board’s profile to release onto the plane, along with a harder edge to maintain speed whilst being sailed flat. So using a wave SUP for windsurfing just didn’t tick many boxes, the board feeling painfully slow and even creating sail handling issues as it stubbornly refused to release. Similarly, using an early touring SUP for windsurfing didn’t fair much better - great for long distance cruising, but terrible for making any headway to an upwind goal … and no good at all for teaching any friends or family how to windsurf. Meanwhile the SUP all-rounder felt more of a compromise than ever, not really offering any upside in windsurfing, other than a board to pootle around on in light winds.