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THE RETURN OF THE LONGBOARD
By Boards UK (28th. August 2006)
On the water, it certainly feels different. There's on doubt that boards work better for general light wind cruising. They 'glide' so much easier. It's much more point-and shoot sailing. When we had a modern short-and wide beginner board out at the same time as the Kona, it was noticeable that you tended to cover much more ground on the Kona. You slip much easier into that relaxed reverie, just poddling along, not really thinking about the windsurfing, just enjoying the feeling of being afloat. Whereas on the short wide board, after a hundred metres of straight lining you tend to start doing board and sail spinning tricks, a) because the extra width tends to encourage that sort of behaviour, b) because short wide boards are so quick and easy to turn, but c) simply because they just don't feel so good in a straight line.
To keep things as simple as possible, Exocet have decided not to equip the board with a sliding mast-track - the board just has a 35cm finbox track. If you try sailing upwind with the mastfoot back, it's much slower and less well-balanced. (This is where that previous longboard 'baggage' comes in to play - the board has such nice big rails that you instinctively just want to get out there and really crank the board upwind.) So in non-planing conditions you're best off putting the mastfoot quite a long way forward (2/3 to fully) in thetrack, as this means that when you kick the daggerboard down to go upwind, you can get out on the rail reasonably comfortably and the board goes upwind very nicely. It wouldn't match a proper raceboard but it's not bad, and if you've never sailed anything longer than 280cm before you'll feel a huge difference. It's great being on something that genuinely does offer fairly good light-wind upwind performance; your sailing very quickly becomes more '3 dimensional' - especially if you have somewhere to explore.
Having the mastfoot a long way forward (and the extra length of the board anyway), does all mean that tacks are much slower and more labourious than on a shorter board. However, its gibing - in both light winds and strong - is substantially better.
The Kona's not particularly quick to plane - you can feel the drag of the duck-tail while other boards are easily popping up onto the plane all around you. However, this is probably the only real area where its performance was notably below that of short, wide boards. If you're sailing in planning conditions then you're best starting with the foot at the back of the track and sailing it upwind on the plane rather than with the daggerboard.
OTHER LONGBOARDS
As well as Tabou's Windstyler, which has a similar duck-tail to the Kona and is of similar width but slightly shorter (325cm), BiC are bringing out what they are calling the Hybrid but which is 'moderately long' and 'quite wide' at 308 x 82 and actually sits between the other hybrids and the 'quite long boards'. Starboard have a similar board that they are calling the Phantom. Will these offer better crossover performance? Will they catch on? Will the competitively priced BiC Hybrid do for the hybrid / longboard what the Techno did for the widestyle or the Techno Formula did for recreational cruising / racking ? Hopefully we will be able to answer some of these questions in the coming year.
Finally, taking the longboard story a step further into totally new realms, is the very interesting addition to the market of the Starboard Serenity. At 455 x 60m it's an 'exceptionally long' and 'pretty narrow' board and is refreshingly pure in its aims, namely simple non-planing performance. It has no daggerboard but the fin is massive (70cm) and placed well forward, complimented by very deep vee in the hull. By Starboard's own admission, sailing it is "a balancing at that some sailors may find too challenging". It sounds like a modified Div 2 longboard for those of you who have long memories, and just as hard as those displacement hulls to sail, Maybe the best crossover answer is to put one of these on your roofrack next to your early planning freeride / slalom / formula. It's back to the drawing board for the garage racking system though.
Once up and running it feels very nice - smooth, nippy (surprisingly quick in fact, as long as you're well powered up) and as said, it gybes really well considering its size. Obviously you have to watch out for all that nose up front, but if you an crank it round off a bit of swell or a wave, so that the nose is kept well clear, you can really fire it round beautifully on that relatively narrow tail. It is certainly far more fun to gybe with an 8.0+ a big wide-tailed modern early-planer / marginal winds board. If you've got a smaller board to hand for use in planning conditions you're probably going to be on that instead, but if the Kona is your only board it's certainly very useable in stronger winds. That's the great thing about a longboard - you can put pretty much whatever size of sail that you want onto it!
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