Longboard freestyle – on the railride (rail ride)

This is an article on railriding in general. Further articles will address the different railrides, one at a time. This is special enough a move that it deserves its own introduction.

Railrides is half the specialty for competitive-level longboard freestyling, if there was one. Railriding is more advanced freestyle, but it’s not incredibly difficult either. After all, in the 80s a fair portion of the sailors could do it, and even non-freestyle racer friends could pull at least the basic railride. You can still see on the Internet the railride being ridden on modern Konas and Starboards, for instance. So I must not have dreamt it… [Read more]

The Glide – the new sport of longboard wavesailing

Jeffrey Henderson, sailmaker of Hot Sails Maui, lives in the home of the shortboard. Waveboard heaven. High-wind nirvana. And what is Jeff doing for fun and for the future of windsurfing? He’s becoming a prophet of longboard wavesailing. Longboard wavesailing seemed almost like an oxymoron for years. Wavesailing meant shortboards. Longboards meant flat water. But as Jeff and a few other people realised modern longboards (like SUPs) under sails can be just as effective in the surf as longboards you paddle – and longboard surfing has long been the growth area of windsurfing’s sister sport. Henderson reckons longboard wavesailing can give the same boost to windsurfing.

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The Word from the Worlds

The worlds showed a close contest between the Equipe, Starboard Phantom Race and Exocet Warp X 380. It’s a good situation for the class, because we now have new boards that are highly competitive but don’t outclass the old boards. [Read more]