Hello
I'm about to decide which lightwind second hand wave board I buy, and one of the factors I take into account is the strength of the boards. I usually don't have problems with any brand, but I always hear some doubts about Starboard's strength, mainly for the ligther technologies.

I've had two starboards wave boards in the past, both technora technology, no issues at all.

Now I have to choose between starboard carbon 2017 Ultra Kode 105, flax balsa 2018 freewave kode 103/109 and Exocet xwave 111 2014. A guy from a shop told me some flax balsa boards had some issues with bio resin in 2018, so I discard it.

Does somebody have any experience regarding starboard's ultracore carbon 2017? (Ultra Kode is the model, ultracore is the technology)

Apart from the strength, I've read some reviews about the starboard freewave kode 2017/18 and they say it's not as good in waves as others, so I think I prefer the other options. Any opinion is welcome

Thanks.

Accidentally dropped my 2017 107 Reactor (ultracore) directly onto the driveway last month from about 4ft. It bounced & the tail+rail paint was scratched. I sail it pretty hard, loop it, have taken plenty of tumbles wavesailing etc.. & am yet to do a repair in 3 seasons. Not too bad I reckon

Hi I have ultrakode 2017 80l and kode freewave 2017 Carbon and a kode freewave carbofeflex 2019 86. Ultrakode 2017 is 5,8kg and also kode reflex Carbon 2019 very very light boards, but for me no problem. About kode freewave 86 in Waves I like it very much in mode 3 fins example 12 12 17 or 10 10 17 very very nice feeling small Waves or onshore conditions. Top performance in B&J conditions. ultrakode 2017 is a magic board for real Wave conditions. you can find some video on my channel youtube Calimero1255.

Just to confirm, Flax Balsa as starboard said themselves it was a failure of a construction.
Had two FB Ultra Kodes, really heavy and both broke after few sessions, totally love the shape thou. Never seen major problems with Starboard carbon constructions.

here is the comment below outlining it was not bio resin or flax or balsa that caused the issue.

thanks a lot for asking. As Eric mentioned I made the mistake of saying Flax balsa when thinking about LCF tech, apologize. Both techs are made with balsa, which is promoted by our raw mat suppliers ( same supplier of both products ) to have better properties than the PVC we use. However many of the LCF boards were not laminated properly as our single shot instructions were not making it into the production lines at our manufacturer. This internal mistake also changed the way we sign off at the factory , better system in place now. Its a pity for everyone that it went this way for our balsa sandwich boards , now the market may feel that the failure was due to the balsa and a more environmental way to build boards. We were by our distribution partners requested to move back to "fossil fuel" sandwich to " show " that things were" fixed". Perhaps we are back with balsa sandwich again in a few years ? back to the future.

Mark _australia said..
^^ That' interesting and an important clarification I think.
Regardless, using end-grain balsa is still crap. Cheap crap at same price is even worse.

Back to thread - carbon reflex (the special order one) is very weak, I've seen amazing failures from kneeling on the board. A waveboard that will be subject to harder impacts EVERY session so its inexcusable that you can't kneel on the deck. Wow! . The sandwich is so thin its crazy. Flax balsa is crap and any ding would suck so much water its ridiculous. Hard to repair to be unseen.

But the UltraKode carbon from around 2017 the OP refers to is OK.

possibly end grain is crap but it is used widely in the boating industry so there is a precedence. it's great to get clarity around the issue though as i've always wondered.