Given you are there for a short time I would be inclined to rent, this way you will have the best gear for the conditions.

You can negotiate the price a little, most of the places will give you a discount on their published price.

I've done about 6 trips I think and used to rent from the budget places or from whoever would give me a good deal. Sometimes the budget places would run out of the later model gear and I ended up with older stuff until something came back that I liked

On the last trip I rented from NP Maui which are more premium but in the end it was very good value (they gave me a shhh 20% discount on rentals). They allways have current model gear but they ended up runing out of the current model boards (had a big plane of Japanese sailors come in). So they gave me next years board which they just finished the JP photoshoot with.

I gotta say that the service we had was great, they were very flexible to say the least. In fact they extended the 20% discount to everthing in the store. Needless to say we ended up with a lot of excess baggage.

PS. If you buy a board, alleays check it in to the plane as a surforboard, much cheaper for excess baggage.

am envious wetty

Thanks heaps, guys!

JP, you are in the Phils, that's not so far from Hawaii, you know!

The other bonus to renting in maui is that you can try out different boards / sails and can change gear to suit the wind on a particular day.

It can be worthwile just hiring stuff for a day trying a different brand each day then going back and getting a weekly deal on whichever one took your fancy the most.

It will cost you more to hire from differnt shops but you do get to use a huge variety of boards / sails to find the one that suits.

Each brand pretty much has its own shop that rents its own gear.

Neil Pryde - JP boards pryde sails
www.neilprydemaui.com/

Maui Windsurf company - Goya + F2 boards / goya sails
http://www.mauiwindsurfcompany.com/rental.php

Naish Maui Pro center - Naish + quatro boards / sails
naishmaui.com

Kanaha kai maui - Starboard boards / Maui sails
www.kanahakai.com/gear-rentals.html

Pritchard windsurfing - Tabou boards / Gastra sails
www.pritchardwindsurfing.com/
( I used pricahrd last year and he delivered the gear to my apartment on sprecks beach)

Second Wind Maui - North, Mistral, Ezzy, RRD, Sailworks,OES, Chinook, HPL,PowerX, MFC
secondwindmaui.com/