Why I'm into longboards

[LK]

Hi Guest !

Most of the shown board movements ar not doabel in a reasonabel way on a longboard.
This is shortboard freestyle.
You can do sailtricks railriding and other gimmiks and thats fine.
I am not aginst longboards.They are unbeatabel sin SOME conditions.
I maybe buy a Phantome in the near future, cause I enjøy sailing along the coast in non planing conditions too, I do it on the GO which I also use for fooling around and teaching.


BUT James statement :

Longboards are the most practical and most enjoyable boards for most people in most conditions.

is BS !!!

A one board solution for me for 5-20 kn would be a GO. Its not competive i nonplaning conditions, but goes upwind well.
You can learn on it, freeride and even race it in slalom/formula trim.

Come with a 10 kg Phantome type, appr. 320 X 80 cm maybee it could do the job.

We get 20-30 people through our WS School (appr. 13-35 years old)every year and most buy 130-160 L frerideboards, depending on theire weight, two sails and they cover 10-25 knots. And thats the conditions they like to windsurf. In < 7 knots they dont show up, go mountainbiking, swim, go to the gym, or enjoy theire family, friends, dog garden ....

Have fun

[crazychemical]

for guest who posted this:

What about the SB Hybrid Race ? It&#39;s as the name suggests a hybrid, not really long, not super short either.

Has anyone tried this board ?

Maybe even compared it to the old school long boards ?

The hybrid formula is a hybrid between a longboard and a formula board and i think you&#39;ll find its performance is comparable to the Neilpryde RS:X board.. Maybe check their website to get some testresults on their board and compare it to the hybrids of Starboard. However, i do&#39;nt think you&#39;ll find a lot of testresults anywhere as hybrid boards are usually quite unpopular with course racers and if purchased it&#39;s usually by superrecreational surfers.

[crazychemical]

A one board solution for me for 5-20 kn would be a GO.

If you make that 10-22 knots i can agree. Because in less thezn 10 knots the Go boards just float along unless you start using enorous rigs which are not fun to drag out of the water and make sailing the Go a bit too technical for the ones that use one. I&#39;d like to buy my Go139 an 8.5 rig so i can start planning in 7 knots or so, but once i have to start thinking of 9 m² rigs or above, i think you might just aswell take ur 8.5 or even 7.5 rig and start pumping your longboard cuz it&#39;ll be a lot faster than any shortboard up to 13 knots because of it&#39;s glide.
I do have to agree with LK on the statement that the longboard is the solution for most surfers as it is more enjoyable for much longer than other boards: if you compare the windrange of a slalom board, a formula board or a freeride board you see that when the wind picks up you can keep using them for much longer. the downside: you need the wind to be blowing over about 12 knots before you can take them out and blast. But once on, you can keep sailing a shortboard up to 25 knots or so. A slight difference is found in freestyle boards and wave boards but we&#39;ll leave those for the ones that frequent those conditions.

[LK]

Ha !

5 kn on the GO, I ment lightwind freestyle, like Ceasar on the Start,
You also learn a lot when sailing, learning going upwind on a shortboard in <8 kn.

As soon as you can plane on a (wide)shortboard, you are faster than a longboard, even on upwind/downwind course.

And considder, windrange for planing(most fun for most people in most conditions) :-) depends on rider weight.

So planing strarts from appr. 6-7 knots for leightweights and 8-10 knots for heawyweights

:-)))

[Jean-Marc]

Agree with LK above :

1) below 7 knots of wind, Serenity + 10.6 sail is king : a tiny bit faster than a Hobbie cat 18. Board speed is typically twice that of wind speed.
2) in 7/8 knots of wind, the speed of Serenity+70 cm fin combo is topping out at around 12 knots with a 10.6 sail for my 65 kg. By comparison, a Hobbie cat 18 is faster in these conditions because it can accelerate further.
3) in the same wind as above, speed is higher (typically 15 knots) with HS105+54 cm fin with the same sail. At least it&#39;s a good match with the Hobbie cat 18 and I can pass her again in higher wind (12 knots).

I guess the most difficult part is to find the correct board quiver that nicely matches your wind range, sail quiver and body weight. I don&#39;t know if a Phantom 380 can combine the best of both world : the performance of a gliding Serenity with that of a planing hull Ã* la HS105 in light winds (say 2-12 knots with my 65 kg) with a single large 10.x sail ?

Cheers !

JM

[crazychemical]

a small comment to what Jean-Marc said: he uses the serenity as the longboard. The serenity is a nonplanning board so it&#39;s logically that from 8 knots onwards it&#39;s slower then a wide shortboard because it sticks to the water and can&#39;t accelerate further. The phantom 380 or lets say Kona would still accellerate in those contidions as these both are planning boards.
However i still agree that at a certain point because of 1) their length and 2) their weight they would start to stagger and they are surpassed in performance by a wide shortboard.
As for freestyle, i don&#39;t think it is really possible to do the tricks you can pull off on a shortboard on a longboard and vica versa appart from a few exceptions. Though i doubt that the difference in lightwind freestyle on shortboard defferes much from longboard.
But then again, all of this, and this entire thread is pure speculation as nobody seems to have ever used a phantom 320/380 or bothered to propperly compare both long and shortboards in different conditions. And i haven&#39;t heard from anyone in the SB crew that enlighted us with their views.

[Guest]

Well the phantom 380 is a race board so we can expect it to behave like one. Certainly the F2 380 is not far behind Serenity sub planning and will still plane well given 12 knots plus. Impressive, but pretty technical (awkward) to sail and not able to fly upwind on it&#39;s fin nor go deep downwind. It won&#39;t (fully) plane as early nor be as easy to sail as a Go. *board has said the 320 is slower than the 380 in all conditions.

The hybrids promise much but the weight makes them slow to plane and &#39;sticky&#39; when they do. Very unpopular at Minocra sailing when I visited recently. As LK says they might make sense in the future if they can be made lighter.

So no perfect lightwind board but I guess a toss up between a Kona type or a Go type for most.
PaulM

[Guest]

However i still agree that at a certain point because of 1) their length and 2) their weight they would start to stagger and they are surpassed in performance by a wide shortboard

The kona style has been clocked at over 34 knots...doesn&#39;t seem to be limited by its weight or length.

[Guest]

"Most of the shown board movements ar not doabel in a reasonabel way on a longboard.
This is shortboard freestyle."

I&#39;ve just watched the video yet again, and while it&#39;s very impressive I still can&#39;t see much in the board movements that a longboard couldn&#39;t do as well, almost as well, or perhaps even better.

Please bear in mind that I&#39;m not talking about Raceboards, which do turn very slowly. I&#39;m thinking about Windsurfer One Designs (which are still a major class where I come from) or Kona Ones. You have to move further back to get them to turn as fast, perhaps, but that&#39;s part of the skill and the fun. They move faster; a Windsurfer One Design with 6m sail is as fast as an RSX upwind under about 10 knots and as fast or faster around a windward/leeward course up to about 8 knots.

I don&#39;t think a railride is any more of a "gimmick" than a sail spin - they&#39;re both just freestyle tricks.

We get 20-30 people through our windsurf school a year, from 8 to 45 years old, and they buy longboards because were we are, they work better. That doesn&#39;t mean they&#39;d work better where you are. We get reasonably good wind, but it&#39;s fluky and we&#39;re on a narrow bay.

[Guest]

I do believe that the future in recreational (as opposed to pure course racing) longboards belong to the KONA style of boards. The KONA is actually quite impressive for general cruising and blasting.

This style of is about as fast, or faster, as any freeride on the water in planing conditions. I have done 26 knots with 9 m camless sail, not even fully powered. Thanks to the actual planing scoop-rocker line it turns like any 140 liter freeride.

These new style longboards are just very versatile tools. I do hope that Starboard soon will admit that also other brands can do major innovations, and then launch their own variant of a freeride oriented longboard.

regards
PG