The road to kite surfboard perfection...

The never ending debate about strapless kite surf boards rumbles along on the interweb forums. Amongst some of the garbage/shameless brand promotion/interesting peeved customer feedback, it seems there are basically two schools of thought.

 1. Spend big bucks, and get something kite specific/branded, and put up with it being heavy and lifeless (therefor lacking performance) but hey, it will last for ages, just like my twin tip.

2. Pick up a cheap performance epoxy surfboard, maybe 20% of the price of a kite specific one and if it lasts 6 months, great. The beater. Patch it up and if you sell it eventually great, if not make a novelty wall decoration.

My quiver has consisted of 2 boards for a while now. I have a strapped 6’2” JN Big Fish which came out of the Cobra factory in 2005, has a tucked rail, MT bolt through glass fins, very little concave and a relatively small rocker. It’s fast. You can ride it at approximately 100mph though whatever your legs can take, you can boost huge on it, and crank out big turns with a lot of confidence, but it’s heavy(ish) and it has little flex.

Although I ride strapless maybe 95% of the time, as that’s been my personal development focus for a couple of years now, there are still occasionally conditions when I prefer to ride strapped. Big onshore storm swell and unstable gusty arsed wind for instance. Or just messy bumpy short swell period wave faces. I will get more enjoyment out of a session to riding strapped. If I am pioneering a new/dodgy spot I normally go strapped as well. I love the Big Fish, and long may it live. For fast bump and jump kite led wave riding it rules supreme.

Big Fish, strapped and dangerous

The other board in my quiver has been various incarnations of cheap/free poly surfboards (previous to this I would take the straps off my various strapped boards). This originally started several years ago with a 6’6” Poly board left behind by a friend who couldn't be bothered to take it back to Australia with him. This lasted an alarming amount of time considering the instant heel dents, spreader bar sized holes in the rails. It taught me to patch things up with epoxy, and it taught me I really didn't need anything kite specific any more. The start of beater board heaven. Performance wise, it was completely different, but all in good ways. It also gives you the chance to try loads of different shapes (cheaply) and work out what suits you, and various conditions. My most expensive purchase was £80. Your only nemesis is your spreader bar.

My super slow quad, improving my shacking chances

Through pure chance really, I recently acquired some Resin8 surfboards, which I have always really liked the look of (Lee Pasty absolutely shredding on one for the last few years has helped) but have been prohibitively expensive to try one for kiting where you might murder a pure surfboard very quickly. It has been something of a revelation.

The Resin8 Tokoro precision instrument

Turns out they were too expensive to manufacture, and not enough people bought them (@ ~£600) in a very competitive surf market to make it viable, and the company has ceased production. This meant dead stock heaven, and the vultures (me) swooped. The Tokoro 6'3" rounded pin is a superb bit of kit, really comfortable carving rail to rail in bigger swell, and if you need to run round a section, you can do it FAST. Because of the slender/efficient shape, the upwind ability is ridiculous. It's super light, which is tricky if it's really windy (40 knots) as it wants to fly away all the time, and the extremely lean shape and flex means the board is very smooth through the water.

The compromise as ever is in the strength for kiting use, but thus far, after a month of some really hardcore poundings, from 90kgs of Richard, no heel dents (miraculously) and the only dent is where my spreader bar got in on the action, and that’s not really a sporting chance. It’s also nice to be back on a thruster setup after being on a quad fin (Bunty 6’2” beater poly board) for a while. This was great for stalling on the wave, and amusingly skatey, but in comparison to the Tokoro it was crap upwind, felt extremely draggy in light wind and just not that fast in a straight line.

It's a crying shame they aren't producing these boards any more, but I will be looking out for similar epoxy/vacuum formed boards. Hindsight and all that. Hydroflex make some interesting looking stuff, but it's just too darned expensive for kite use and abuse. I want a 6 month stand, not a pricey long termer. Only one thing for it, perhaps it's time to build one myself.

Circle One Bamboo 2012 6' x 19" x 2 1/4"

New Circle One boards are here, and they are looking sweet. The 6' was the most popular board last year, and a lot of people locally have been getting on really well with the shape and buoyancy which works well in local conditions where it's slightly more onshore and you need a little extra float/volume to really use the wave. Considering its volume, it rides smooth as silk and it's not bouncy on chop as you would expect.

What I like about it, is that it's an easy enough board to ride, but still has a lot of performance. It also has just enough rocker not to nose dive if you are front foot heavy, and has enough in the mid section to steam upwind. I mainly ride it strapless, as does Sarah.

The lay up is slightly different this year, promising the same relatively low weight, but more robust construction. This is always a trade off so we will see how it fairs after some abuse.

For around £400 new with fins, deck pads and straps I don't think you will find a better kite board for your money.

New graphic

Single concave

Medium rocker

A touch of extra nose rocker, and flat mid section

Same fin box as last year accepting FCS plugs.

Double strap inserts this year

Finish is as good as ever

This time last year.....

Remember the good times?

So last year we were graced with decent ground swell from the south and some cranking north westerly wind, and this year we seem to have nothing but light offshores and fog, which is all well and good for surfing but the kitemonster is literally clucking to get out.

Bored out of my tiny mind yesterday, I decided to take advantage of the massive spring tide (0.4m low) and go and see what makes this wave jack up so nicely.

Mordor. Wouldn't want your leash stuck round that.

OK, so you are always aware that it's rocky under there, but I wasn't expecting it to look quite so evil. This is definitely a no leash situation (board or kite leash for that matter) The only saving grace is that I normally only ride this at a highish tide meaning that if the proverbial did hit the fan there would be some safety margin. The wave also isn't exactly heavy so chances of being taken this far downstairs would be fairly slim. So as you walk out west from here, further towards the sea it shelves off pretty steeply down to sand. When I had my mega washing incident a year or two back I swam in and clambered out over similar stuff, the secret being to duck dive the wave as best as possible, and if it does throw you down, protect your head.

The mind boggleth....

Extreme Dog Walking - 2012 storms

Ever wondered what the sea would look like with wind gusting about 60 knots? Well Bert, Donna, Finn and I decided to go and have a look this morning.


 The swell wasn't as big as we have seen it recently but it was really windy. On the cliff the wind would do it's best to knock you over in the gusts.

South Devon Kite Club 2011 Christmas Video

We made a very last minute video for the local kitesurf club (www.sdkc.co.uk) Christmas dinner a few weeks ago. As usual this was shot and edited in a hasty fashion, but I did actually manage to bang a tripod out for the evening and we got some nice light, even if the waves were really small, it was bolt onshore, and Sarah wasn't riding at her best! She was stacked on a 9m and strapless. I may reuse some of the footage for the English Riveira Part II, the yet to be planned or even thought about sequel. The evidence stacks up below:

The summer of wind 2011

Last year we were starting to get a little depressed by the lack of wind in the UK. We had two fairly iffy seasons. In a place where most of the trees near the beach have all grown at a 45 degree slant from being battered by the prevailing south westerly, the evidence wasn't stacking up.

A friend of mine works in renewable energy research, and has access to MET office data. He said the wind stats last year were the lowest in 150 odd years. Most of the turbines performed under capacity compared to what was forecasted.

This year has been ridiculously windy in comparison, and with decent southerly swell from the hurricanes whizzing around in the Atlantic we have had some great wave sessions and new spots have been opening up.

This sort of wind is also very good for business. We can watch our sales figures go up and down literally like the wind.

So the moral of the story is to keep the faith.

In the wise words words of King Crimson:

"I talk to the wind , The wind cannot hear"