The New ‘Go-To' Size?

Another season starts and another crop of the latest and greatest wave boards land on our doorstep to try. There are certainly worse jobs in the world! After what has seemed like an eternity waiting for the winds to return this summer, at last the high pressure broke and low pressures rumbled in from the Atlantic, giving the team and I the chance to put 2019’s 90 litre wave boards through their paces on UK shores.

FINDINGS

We chose to test 90 litre wave boards this year for the simple reason that many brands are sensibly adopting a two-year life cycle for their ranges, so we’d be going over raked ground if we were to test 85 litre boards like last year. The quandary arose when the choice was to specify compact or conventional designs … a really tough vote, which we ultimately left for the brands to decide themselves. Not surprisingly, most opted for convention.

Ninety-litre boards were once classed as the ‘big daddies’ of a discerning wave rider’s quiver; the boards of the larger rider, that to others felt like a forced compromise when the 80 litre board was just too impractical. The introduction of multi-fin options has totally changed the landscape of wave board design, enabling large boards to behave much more akin to their smaller siblings. And in the gusty, variable conditions we experience here in the UK thanks to our frontal weather patterns, using a larger board can transform a typical session. In gusty marginal winds it could be the difference between an average sail with a few golden powered minutes but bogging the rest of the time … or comfortable float and ride with enough release to catch double the number of waves.

Whilst testing in Rhosneigr the wind continued to increase on one day, from being marginally powered on 5.0m sails to overpowered on 4.2m. And I have to say, we were mightily impressed with just how well mannered these 90 litre boards were in challenging seas. Most importantly we didn’t feel at any disadvantage or over-boarded whilst dropping into a wave or asking them to respond in an instant. Yes, perhaps they felt a little larger and bulky in the air when compared to their smaller siblings … but the advantage swung back the other way when the clouds darkened and the wind turned off as the next front approached.