Hey Franco

i too live in Montreal, butt weigh much more than you.
as such, my BIC Dufour longboard and my 8.5 sail are my most used combo.
with your weight that board and sail should be great !!
if u go to cartier, aao/l'anse a l'orme or vaudreuils you will see NO longboards
on the lake, the longboard and the 8.5 are the way to go.
if you want to see some longboards in action, go to ottawa on the weekend of 31JUL
they are holding kona one races and other longboards are welcome
information can be found at windsurf.ca/

GOOD luck !!
joewindsurfer.com

yeah and even you are in MTL now

Hey, Joe Windsurf! Canadian, eh? How do you know I am from Montreal?
Maybe I have even seen you at the L'Anse-à-l'orme. I am easily recognizable because I am the only ( oldish) guy doing windsurfing most of the time swimming around the board!
According to my Seabreeze profile, for some strange reasons, I should be in Australia, Wa! Love to be there, though! Australia must be a wonderful country and an even more wonderful windsurfers paradise! Unfortunately here, in this part of the Commonwealth, we are stuck with the ice for many long months , even though Canada, too, is very beautiful, in other respects.

Going back to windsurfing, I have heard, too, people extolling the good old and almost vanished longboards!Some even deplore that the manufacturers, in search of ever increasing profit venues, have killed the longboard market in favor of pricey shortboards advertised as true gates to heaven, when in reality these boards are a mixed blessing, catering to a specific segment of the market, i.e. those who love adrenaline, speed, aerial acrobatics, etc., which is not what a substantial part of windsurfers go for. Not only this, but short boards, with their lack of a removable daggerboard, are in reality crippled boards as you can hardly sail them on a close haul, no matter what the shortboard gurus try to make us believe, when they claim you can easily keep them on a close-haul upwind course just with foot-work and banking on the rail. Yes, it can work for a while,( with a lot of footwork and possibly an extra-long fin ), but when it comes to some serious upwind , how can we seriously compare the efficiency of a 60 cm dagger board and the powerful lift and lateral resistance it creates, with a shortboard rail biting only a few inches into the water? Anyway, it is a question of taste and style, after all. So let people have and enjoy their shortboards!

However good the longboards may be, there is a major problem, though: their size and weight. I used to have a longboard many many years ago: I was already exhausted by the time I reached the beach, just carrying it! My Rocket is marvelous, if only because it weighs a mere 8.5 kgs and you can easily lift it with one hand. With a 245 cm length, I can even fit it easily inside my car. So may be I should be looking for a compromise: a board midway between a shortboard and a real longboard. Bic offers the Core 293 with a 293 cm length, substantially longer than the typical shortboard, with a retractable daggerboard, a 79 cm width and a weight of only 11 kgs. Would such a board come close enough to the performance of a true longboard? I'd love to hear your comments on this, if there is anybody broadminded enough to be willing to come out of the shortboard cocoon. Probably more easily said then done, though, when you have the bliss of planing your shortboard at bullet speed !

Cheers

Francone

I've ridden a bigger Tabou (around 160 L) and I noticed that they have a lot of vee in the bottom shape to make them smoother in chop and this also makes them less stable side to side.

may be wothwhile getting some lessons to help you progress on the existing board, may be cheaper and easier than a new board.

145 is a massive board, biggest i use is 121 with a 8.0 and get going in a fart and im 105 Kg, but i guess experience helps, but still 145 is a lot of board to try hold down in any thing over 13knots

Macroscien said...

From my personal experience the smaller the board the faster the progress is.
Pretty much I wasted years on on bigger board to find that small board you can just "feel"
everything counts, foots on the board to the sides or forward or back.
With bigger you could do same mistakes for years.
There is no margin for errors on small one but since you have this right you never looking back for bigger.
That just me.

Sorta agree, well said.
An option is to persevere with small, an get into large only to cater for lighter wind sailing.
IMO.

Windsurfing is an accessory sport, there's a setup for every condition and you could own a different board and sail for every 5 knot wind increment on the wind scale. This is all fine and dandy if have plenty of coin but for most of us it's about compromise and finding something that works for us in the conditions we sail in. Everything makes a difference, the wind strength, flatwater or chop and fresh or saltwater. The learning curve is steep but how steep is up to the individual and only you should set it. Coming from a freshwater lake background I started on a 180 beginners board for a few months and then switched to a 145 which at the time I found super wobbly, but now it seems like a monster. When your getting the hang of everything you need the floaty board and the lighter winds, but to progress you need to get out in stronger wind but when you make mistakes on the bigger kit you tend to get spanked big time. The 145 normally has a big fin(45-50cm) and when you get these up and rockin they tend to get very lively under foot. Until I got myself fully sorted with the straps and harness the 145 gave me some scary moments and some back slapping, nose crushing catapults. You would benefit from a smaller fin on the 145 for the windier days, say 5-8cm shorter...It will make a big difference to the handling of the board. Once I was sorted I switched to a 120L board which became my everything board on fresh water, didn't matter if it was 10 knots with a 8.5 or 25 knots with a 5.0 I just sailed my 120L, just had 3 fins 42cm, 38cm and 34cm for different wind strengths. Modern boards are short and wide but the float is still only around the middle of the board, if you step back, forward, left or right you are going to sink the board and end up in the drink. Everything you do while underpowered needs to be done right around the mast base and it needs to be done fast. If you spend a week getting from one side of the board to the other you are going to end up back in the water, Speed and with the least amount of steps as possible will keep the board stable and you dry. As soon as you step to the left, right, front or back on a modern board you tilt it, loose your balance, pull the rig towards you and splash your back in the water again. Quick steps around the mast base while keeping the rig away from you will keep you in balance and dry. Try and keep some part of your foot touching the mast base pad at all times, If you do you know your close enough. Only step back when you get wind in the sail and start to power up.
If your into just cruising and only get lightwind you might be better off with something like a SUP with a mast tack, I took a Nasih SUP for a ride one day(I think it was about 11 foot)and had a ball. They float very well and glide along in light winds better then any windsurf board I've ever ridden, Keep your 145 for days when its planing conditions and ride the SUP all other times, I think the SUP will be a better option compared to going back to a 200L windsurfing board, Don't set yourself back..Plus you'll be able to paddle when there's no wind.
Yep smaller boards will make you learn quicker but It's also frustrating as all hell spending all day swimming around your board, uphauling and falling in again and again but it's all part of the learning curve and the rite of passage we all must take. Have 2 boards, the one your good at sailing and the one you want to be sailing next. Rig the both if you can, go out on the smaller one first and get in some practice and when you've had enough come in and change to the bigger kit and then go have some fun....Only you will work out what's right for you.

jh2703 said...

Have 2 boards, the one your good at sailing and the one you want to be sailing next. Rig the both if you can, go out on the smaller one first and get in some practice and when you've had enough come in and change to the bigger kit and then go have some fun....Only you will work out what's right for you.

Having two boards, a smaller one to practice( and sweat on!) in stronger winds , the other for easy fun in lighter winds , is certainly the ideal solution, but not everybody can afford two boards.. I was wondering whether keeping only one large,relatively long, high volume board,( without necessarily going into the real longboards) , would give a satisfactory, albeit not ideal performance in stronger winds as well. By doing so, I'd be covered both ways.
How should I expect such a board to perform in stronger winds? What would I lose out on? A marginal loss of speed and manoeuverability, would still be acceptable, as a compromise, provided I can still plane the board. After all, I won't be sailing in stronger winds too often :1st because they rarely occur in this lake, 2nd because when they do occur, even at 16-18 knts, the lake becomes very choppy and it is no fun to sail, as the waves kind of brake or slow down the board and swerve it off course.
Yesterday, winds were probably around 18 knts and I did have a measure of my progress because, unlike last year, I was I able to enjoy long stretches of fast downwind sailing in spite of the chop. However, more often than not, perhaps depending on the angle at which the board met the wave, I found myself suddenly swerved back upwind smack in the 12:00 o'clock direction , with the board going no where, bobbing up and down in the wave. It seemed as though I had lost the fin and the control. Usually I would get the board back downwind by tilting the mast forward and across, but it seemed as though the board resisted going back down wind and eventually I would be bumped off! No doubt, as my learning curve progresses, I will one day be able to understand why this happens and prevent it from happening again, with a better control, but I'd like to trade off some of the finer technicalities of strong wind performance for some plain, easy cruising around.

Thank you for any suggestions and comments, especially on the question of the performance of larger, beginner-oriented in stronger winds.

Cheers

Francone

Me the one who mentioned Kona as a possibility for the gent.

Not sure I get the drift in this thread, as I have a short attention span.
However if it is about sailing all conditions with the least possible equipment, then a Kona or an old-style modern Windsurfer will do the trick from 5 to 20+ knots easy.

Nothing wrong with a 1-string banjo (mine has 2-3 strings, not much better).

(going somewhere to check out Konas: same mileage, YouTube is all ya need to see the product.)

Chris 249 said...

jh2703 said...
If your into just cruising and only get lightwind you might be better off with something like a SUP with a mast tack, I took a Nasih SUP for a ride one day(I think it was about 11 foot)and had a ball. They float very well and glide along in light winds better then any windsurf board I've ever ridden, Keep your 145 for days when its planing conditions and ride the SUP all other times, I think the SUP will be a better option compared to going back to a 200L windsurfing board, Don't set yourself back..Plus you'll be able to paddle when there's no wind.

Good post, but if you don't mind me saying it I think you'll find that a 200L windsurfing longboard is a faster performer almost all the time than an SUP (although of course speed certainly isn't everything) and sailing a 200L longboard doesn't have to be "setting yourself back".

As an example of the speed difference between a typical SUP and even a slower longboard windsurfer, at the Melbourne North Sails event the Windsurfer One Design won by completing 10 laps with the first SUP (carrying a 25% bigger sail IIRC) doing just 7 laps. And a 200L longboard allows you to cruise, club race or sail in light winds in a way shorter boards can't, plus you can learn a lot or just enjoy whipping a big board around.

As I said, I'm not knocking your point of view or SUPs (which are great in many ways), just putting the case for 200L (approx) or bigger longboards. And if you were referring to short fat 200L beginner boards, I apologise and agree - they probably would be going backwards.

I too would be hesitant to recomend a SUP for anything other than occasional sail use, given they are generally used with paddle they are not built nearly as tough as most windsurf boards. I have seen the outcome of mast vs SUP and it was not pretty, and didn't take much to cause the damage.

If you want to occasionally put a sail on a SUP for some light wind surf fun, by all means do that. But if you are looking for a basic light wind board that will allow you to cruise around in marginal conditions and just enjoy the sailing experience, and you would like it to be tough enough to stand up to all sorts of punsihment then it is pretty hard to go past a Wally, IMHO.