The New Breed Of ‘Fast'

The desire to go fast and the ability for windsurfing to deliver the addictive exhilaration of doing so, will always be one of the sport’s best traits in the world of watersports. It’s what attracts most people to the sport in the first place - seeing people buzzing across the water, going faster than most other waterborne craft and seemingly having more fun than most too. And I’m sure many of you reading this can still account of the first time you experienced the sensation of planing, no matter how long ago that may have been!

- Tris Best

The arms race to uncompromisingly search for ever faster speeds has been tempered by the understanding that control is also key to achieve results, even on the highest podiums such as the PWA World Tour. What’s interesting is to see how this change in awareness has filtered down into the large commercial disciplines, namely the freeride sector. Read the marketing scripts of most brands and the focus is undoubtedly there for boards to become easier and more practical to use, without compromising performance. The short, wide and thin movement of the recent past has certainly hit home and many brands have followed. Yet there’s also the argument on the ground (and we hear it fairly often in the centre) that it has gone too far for some, making the boards hard to get going, too twitchy in a straight line … and ultimately slow!

FINDINGS

Directional stability and the ease at which the sail’s power can be converted to straight-line speed is ultimately the winning formula for early planing and user-friendliness. And the easiest way to achieve this is by increasing a board’s waterline - its length. Looking at the boards in the lineup today, there’s a 50-50 split between short/wide and those returning to a slightly longer length, using 240 cm as the median length. And by reducing width (particularly in the tail) the straps are closer to the centreline, making them easier to locate and get into, no longer requiring a big step out onto the rail.