A Year of Longboarding
November 13, 2008 · Print This Article
Every newbie to windsurfing asks this same question: What board should I get? When I started windsurfing the answer I got most often was a Starboard Go. It’s stable, got good floatation and it planes easily. It even has little side fins you can attach when the wind is low.
I started having problems with the board soon. I sail on the Hudson River, and my launch site is small. When I’d get blown downwind without realizing it, it would take an hour or more to work my way back. When the wind was low, the board wasn’t much fun. It was like sailing a pancake.
Being a bit of an equipment geek, I became obsessed with the idea of “the perfect board”. There were several criteria. It had to sail well in low winds. It had to have a daggerboard. It had to sail well in winds up to about 20-25 mph (32-40 kph).
I’d been hearing about the “longboard revival” and was curious. Why would someone want to bring back an old-fashioned design? Was this some sort of odd exercise in nostalgia?
Now I had a longboard, an old F2 Strato I’d inherited from a family friend. Before I got the Go, I’d sailed it a few times. Something told me to try it again.
After the snazzy Go, I felt pretty dumb pulling out a twenty year-old board, but the difference in sailing was remarkable. The longboard was clearly faster in low winds than the Go. It sliced through the river chop instead of thudding into it. Then there was the daggerboard, the sweet daggerboard. I could pop it up and down whenever I needed it. There was no more worrying about slipping down wind. This longboard pointed upwind at least twenty degrees higher than the Go.
This began my quest for the “perfect river board”. Clearly it had to have a daggerboard. It also needed to be a strong sailor in low winds. (I have a son and twin, infant girls, so my available sailing time depends their schedule, not the strength of the wind.) Since my skills were still in the “low intermediate” range, it needed enough flotation to do an uphaul.
Now I had a spare board in my quiver, an old F2 Strato longboard. It had been gathering dust since I got the Go, but I decided to take it out again. Wow, was I stunned. The Strato did everything I wanted a board to do. It pointed upwind. It sailed well in low wind. The contrast was amazing! Yeah it didn’t tack or jibe as easily, but that was okay.
My critical sailing moment occurred in low winds. I had launched from Peekskill, my favorite spot on the Hudson river, on a Starboard Go with a 7.0 sail. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have to the wind direction and got blown downstream and _ of a mile. “No big deal,” I thought, but then reality hit me. I spent the next hour and a half getting back to my launch site, making tack after tack. The wide board had barely any traction upwind. Any progress I made was measured in feet. Each tack had to count or I’d lose ground. Yes, I did make it back, but that sail wasn’t much fun. The wideboard design just had lousy upwind ability.
So I got a Kona One, and I decided on an experiment. I’ll sail this Kona as my only board for an entire year and see how this changes my sailing. Would this longboard solve all my sailing problems, or would I curse this flowered beast? Read on, and I’ll share the good and the bad.
First thing is, the Kona is big. It’s eleven and a half feet long (350 cm) and weighs over thirty pounds (15.5 kg). It’s a beast to haul onto a small SUV by myself. It’s also tough to haul with the rig attached into the water. I sometimes haul the board on my wife’s VW Jetta instead of my Honda CRV just because shlepping the thing off the high roof rack is a pain.
Low wind areas like the Hudson Valley can be tricky places to sail. This is where a longboard shines. With an 8.5 sail, the Kona moved well in almost any wind. Was I planing in 5 mph winds? No, but the sailing was very pleasant. I could hook in, lean back and enjoy the scenery. This was an entirely different experience than the “always planing” mentality of my sailing buddies. They wouldn’t dream of going out on such a light day. I was loving it.
The real test of the Kona would be higher winds. Was the board fun in planing conditions? I met some experienced sailors on the Hudson when the wind was averaging about 15 mph (24 kph). There was also a serious wind shadow by our bank. While there were whitecaps in the middle of the channel, there was almost no wind at all where we rigged. The Kona was an excellent board for these conditions. The daggerboard was critical for the wind shadow, but once in the higher winds it came up and the board planed. I was noticeably slower than my fellow sailors, they were on shortboards about three fifths the volume of mine and bigger sails, but everybody was on a plane.
On a no-wind day I to tried the longboard’s vaunted stand-up paddling ability. Would it be as easy, or as fun, as my kayak? It was. The daggerboard was a nice feature on my first paddling trip. It kept the board stable and me out of the water (sometimes). One a paddling trip with my wife I noticed the Kona is clearly slower than a dedicated stand-up paddleboard, but the difference wasn’t that much. After a few excursions I got a little hooked on stand-up paddling, too. It’s an excellent exercise.
Is the Kona a perfect board? Certainly not. The daggerboard is poorly designed. The gasket is very tight. Sometimes to bring down the daggerboard I have to get onto my knees and push the knob with my hands. Lately I keep it sticking slightly out of the gasket. This way it can go down without too much effort. The EVA deck stains easily, especially from dirt and the rubber on the top of my roof rack. I wish the surface had some Teflon in it or something that resisted all the mud. The fin is also a little brittle. Most launch sites are strewn with rocks and collisions with the fin are unavoidable. My fin has a nice little chip in the rear, almost as if a tiny shark bit it.
Did the longboard change the way I sail? Definitely. I no longer need to always look over my shoulder towards the launch site, making sure I can get back on a reverse tack. I also don’t care about wind direction as much on the whole. I also don’t worry about chop anymore. On the wideboard it was a drag; on the longboard it’s fun.
To put all this together, the major way my longboard changed how I sail was that it lengthened my horizons. A point-to-point cruise is something I always wanted to do, but the Hudson has some gorgeous twists, like below West Point, that would give a wideboard a problem. Now the whole river is accessible.
The final word on modern longboards and especially my Kona occurred on a beginners’ session on the river. I brought my Kona to practice beach starts. I let someone else use it after a while and didn’t get the board back for about an hour. With all the beginner-style boards around, people wanted to try this one. Later in the evening the winds died down.
Ian on his old F2 board.
Peekskill Bay.
More light wind sailing. The longboard was great for this.
Ian doing the SUP thing on his Kona.
Ian Berger on the left sailing an antique F2 with an 8.5 sail. His brother Tony on the right learning to windsurf on a Kona One and a 5.3 sail.
For more Hudson River cruising check out the The Hudson River Blog
Thanks for sending in the article Ian, alot of people will agree with you on many points. Stories of longboard crusing and lifestyle are at the heart, LBWS needs more of it.
Great to hear that the Kona has been such a good board and opened up new sailing horizons. It is not surprising that the Kona has become such a popular board.
Cheers
Pat
Good job!! And I agree with all this too.
Hey Ian, How much does your F2 Strato weigh? I would think that it’s a litle less than the Kona… maybe?
If it is… wouldn’t it do everything the Kona does, and yet be lighter and easier to get on and off the car? And… perhaps it has an easier to use daggerboard also.
Greg -
Greg, the Strato weighs about 22 lbs (10 kg). It is a nice board but it’s inferior to the Kona (in my opinion) for a few reasons. First it’s about 170 liters of flotation, which means uphauling a large sail isn’t as easy as the Kona with 220 liters inside. The deck is also concave instead of flat. The entire surface is no-skid plastic, not the cool, squishy EVA deck of the Kona. The Strato’s fin is also a lot smaller than the Kona’s, which is a disadvantage in light winds.
That said, the Strato has some advantages. The plastic construction is really tough, which is great when you’re dodging and hitting rocks. The Strato has a great rubber nose, also good for collisions. The daggerboard is a superior design. It’s easy to pop up and down with one foot and I haven’t noticed it spraying water when I’m up on a plane.
I posted a lengthy comparison of the two boards on my blog. Got pictures and everything:
http://hudsonwindsurfer.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-school-vs-old-school.html
Having a lot of experience from virtually the beginning of Kona in the US, (also the beginning of the original WINDSURFER 39 years ago) and ranked somewhere near #1 on the US Kona race circuit, and not on the payroll in any fashion with Exocet, I have the following comments on your one year long board experience with Kona:
None of us has any sticking issues with the Kona centerboard after intital break in times of a few sessions. All you have to do in the meantime is lubricate the lips and board with some bar soap. There are virtually no warranty issues with this product. The fin is made out of the same materials most other fins are made out of as far as I can tell, so maybe check the rocks in New York for hardness???? (However I am also originally from upstate NY, and I am educated as a geologist!). I do not know how speciallized SUPs can be both “clearly faster” than the KONA as well as “not that much faster” in the same sentence…or words to that affect. The board is heavy because it is relatively inexpensive, so it will be attractively priced… Would you have paid another $1000 to have it weigh in at 26 pounds?.
I am also the measurer for the Kona class and had something to do with causing it to be the only non pumping sailbaord class in the world, so that we would attract the numbers of people like we did when there were ethics in racing, and families were buying into the sport. This was all just prior to Peter Brockhause’s “funboard” concept that damn near killed the sport for us all in the 80’s. Check out the History of Windsurfing DVD… “Wind Legends” by Jonathan Weston, and keep sailing longboards!.
Bruce Matlack
What would you suggest for a starting board for sea?
Bruce,
You did catch me in a little editing glitch with the comparison on the Kona with a dedicated SUP board. The Kona is “a little but noticeably slower” than my wife’s SUP board. I tried them both on a low-wind day. As an English teacher I am officially chastised.
I don’t care so much about the weight while the Kona is on the water; it’s just a little heavy to lift onto the roof of my CRV. Would I pay the extra money for a very light longboard? No. I’m very satisfied with the Kona, and the tradeoff of price vs. weight isn’t that important to me. I actually had to tone down how much I like the Kona a bit so I wouldn’t sound like a Kona fanboy. That said, it does have a few shortcomings, as does any board, but the advantages clearly outnumber the problems.
You know, I’ve been sailing the Kona for a full season and the daggerboard still sticks. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong. I’ve lubricated it with WD-40, but I’ll try soap next. I hear there’s a marine lubricant that works well, but I haven’t tried that yet.
-Ian
What do you think about Exocet Warp X 380 ?
I don’t know if I could speak well about the Warp 380. I’ve never sailed it. It’s huge: 295 liters. Wow. It’s also 30 cm longer than the Kona One and about 2 kg lighter. Seems like a really nice board. I also like the footstrap positions on the board. I wish the Kona One had footstraps a little closer to the mast. How much is this puppy?
I’ve also never sailed the Kona on the ocean, only my Starboard Go, which I would not recommend as an ocean board. However, I’ve taken the Kona through chop, and the ride is fine: much nicer than the “thudding” experience of the wideboard.
Warp-X can be checked out in the forum
Ian:
Sorry I was a bit tough on you….. most would just let it all go by, but you had the guts to respond. I respect the fact that you are an English teacher, and are contributing your talents at no doubt a sub standard wage.
I am a bit concerned about your stiff gaskets… I guess they have to make them stiff enough so no water pressures through when there is no centerboard down. The gaskets need to suit the recreational sailor more than the fanatical, race “groupie” like me. Please keep me informed of your progress towards easy operation in this regard. My winter phone in Fla. 941-201-4282. Please feel free to call me anytime. The siicone spray lubricant is maybe called “Sail kote”? We use it for everything on a sailboat. Generic Ace Hardware silicone spray lube is probably just as good at half the price.
I remember the early Windsurfer days when one had to duck to one side to be able to breathe, from all the froth and spray coming up through the daggerboard well and disappearing over your shoulder (no gaskets at all).
In big conditions, I don’t ride my Kona. In the early days, taking 11 and 12 foot boards into the air was very cool. Now a DAYS AND AT MY AGE, IT IS VERY SCARRY!.. When conditions are force 4-5, I take to the small profile boards. BUT, we must not loose sight of the fact that most users never gain the skill to even get into the back footstraps on any board, or feel totally comfortable in a harness… REALLY! ……In which case , the KONA ONE is perfect. They should remove all the footstraps until or unless they feel they need them….which in most cases is NEVER. It is the perfect board in 90% of cases. If they progress to an expert level, the board will perform for them as well. If you are Patrice, you can even loop it!!!!!!
Bruce Matlack
Bruce,
Thanks for your feedback. You know, the funny thing about being an English teacher these days (or any teacher) is that with the economy going south, I’ve got a pretty secure job. Yeah, I’m not getting rich, nor am I buying extra boards for fun, but I’m not really sweating either. An added bonus is that I get to talk about windsurfing a lot with the kids, who are very curious about it.
I’ll try the “Sail Kote”. If that doesn’t work, I’ll get in touch with you. I have heard that the gasket will loosen up, but mine, darn it, seems as tight as ever. (You know, that last comment could seriously be taken in the wrong way.)
I have a footstrap question with the Kona that maybe you can answer. The straps seem really far back on the board. I’ve been in planing mode and they still seem too far back. This is even with a reasonably large sail, like a Sailworks Retro 8.5. When I look at the photos of the Warp X-380, those straps seem like they’re far enough forwards. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be tipping the sail towards the fin?
-Ian
Yes Ian, you are doing something wrong, sort of… You need more time on the water in good planing conditions (>15 knots), to get into teh straps, and to feel comfortable with them. You will then find that the straps are actually located correctly for fully planing windsurfing.
When you state that “I was noticeably slower than my fellow sailors” it leads me to believe that you were planing, but not yet confortably in the straps and thus not fully released. The Kona is actually just as fast as those boards with half the volume, despite its length (if I do 28 knots on my “freeslalom” board I can do 27 knots on the Kona in the same conditions).
You dont need to rake the sail back towards teh fin, it will happen naturally as you move back on the board. Do this gradually and keep the sail loaded while you move back. If you sheet out while trying to get towards the back of the board you will slow down, round up, and feel as if the strap positions are impossibly far back.
You could also verify that the strap – fin – mastfoot geometry actually is very similar to that of boards with half the volume. If they get into the straps, you will eventually find them comfortable!
The stock fin is good for allround use, and the length is good, but you should get a same (about) length replacement fin made in G10 to deal with your local beach rocks.
Hi. I have used my Kona One for about a year- I’m sailing in Norway. I have had the same experience with the stiff gasket. The dagger got stucked in transition between retracting and setting. I talked with the surfshop, and they told me the same- it have to be that stiff for good planning condition and I could try some soap. What I found out as a way to use it is to complete retract the dagger before setting it again. Then it did not lock by the tight gasket. Often when retract I stopped when it still have some surface of the dagger in contact with the gasket- the lips will then block the Dagger from going out again. When I found out this I have not had any trouble.
Bruce,
Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, most of my Kona sailing has been in non-planing conditions. (The wind gods seem to enjoy taunting me with good winds whenever my wife requires my help with the twin girls.) You’re also right that I wasn’t completely in the straps while planing — that’s been the thing I’ve been working on. When our windsurfing season begins again, sometime around late March, I’ll be back at it.
Tor, I was having the opposite problem with the gasket. If I completely retracted the daggerboard then the gasket would keep it retracted, almost like two lips snapped shut. keeping the daggerboard slightly extended, even just a little, solved that problem.
Ian,
SailKote uses some kind of propriatary solid lubricant (not Teflon) made by McLube, that doesn’t wash off like soap, spray silicones or oils (WD-40) do. Haven’t used “SailKote” but the original “McLube” works very well on the long really stiff daggerboard on our Mahalo. It reduces extraction forces by 80% (measured) and lasts through multiple trips to the beach. It’s a good product.
Bruce,
What a good set of posts. Why is it that no one in the industry recognizes the truth in your observations that most people will never end up using their footstraps or a harness? IMO the idea behind “Expedition Windsurfer”/SUP board featured above is really interesting.
I’ve sailed longboards for five years now and have made a transition to free ride boards in the last three. I might be fairly qualified to make an observation on the footstrap/harness and wide style board issue.
All windsurfers should try very hard to get a hang of the footstraps and harness. It makes a big difference in all wind speeds, and once you’ve got the skill you’ve got it forever as long as you can commit to maintaining it through time on the water.
The harness will help with railing a raceboard, you’ll really feel upwind power in only 10 knots. You’ll also plane as early as possible on a reach, kick up the dagger, step into the front foot strap and be able to load the power into the fin.
Short board oriented companies have a design bias towards wide-open locations that supply steady wind pressure. Most boards under 65cm wide and fins smaller than 40 cm are not good for upwind planing in constricted waters or light gusty winds. Wide style boards like the GO and Formula class have been designed for this reason.
Any narrow board will outpoint such boards when not planing, daggerboard or not. It’s a width/waterline issue. The wider GO will in turn outpoint the narrow board when powered up and planing. A planing designed board is inherently lighter than a longboard and will let you plane upwind.
Modern planing windsurfing is partially a motorized sport, if your home conditions don’t offer planing-quality wind, it might be time to pack the car and find a spot that does.
All the harness/ footstrap skills learned on a longboard will make a transition to pure planing shapes much faster, and as you load the power directly into the larger fin, you might find a surprising amount of efficiency.
Chris,
I’m pretty comfortable in the harness: it’s the straps on the Kona I’m having trouble with. Compared to the shortboards I’ve sailed, they seem really far back, even in the furthest forward position. Solution 1: Cant the sail back, which I’m working on. Solution 2: get a new wide/shortboard, which I just did, this time with a daggerboard to address some of the shortcomings of my old Starboard Go.
Unfortunately with infant twin girls and a son living on a teacher’s salary, I’m not going to make any trips to Hatteras soon, but point taken. I have to sail in the conditions I have, which can be pretty marginal in the summer. That’s why I have the longboard in the first place, and an SUP board.
-Ian
hi, really liked these comments about the Kona.
I sail Kona for 2.5 years, without sponsoring. I have 6 exocet boards and I can tell you honestly that the one I use most is the Kona. Today I really had a great session with 8.5 V8 (I use most of the time 9.5). I sail the most of all belgian windsurfers (with gps) and probably did more or less 5000 Kona kilometers
So I think I know a lot about it : sailed with 6 bf on the sea with boxer 6.2 and 1.5 m side waves and also with no wind …
Concerning the footstraps : I place them outside but in front, because in the back it is impossible to get in (180 cm lenght).
In Belgium and Holland Kona sales are very bad, I think that the problem is that :
1. people only windsurf with a lot of wind
2. they don’t like putting a board on the roof ot their car
3. they don’t like not planing
4. exocet doesn’t give enough margin to distributor which cannot give enough margin to shop : shop sells boards with more margin ? the board is the same for nearly 5 years now, it’s time to lower the price I think so sales can really start here ….
5. the “new” “kona” rigs are expensive and worthless : it is less expensive to buy a good boom + good np sail + 100% carbon mast to go freeriding.
I was told the first year Kona was rigged with np v6 rig, it’s a mistake to change that …
anyway, I like the board and hope the exocet company will do the right efforts soon !