Longboard windsurfing in Finland

A Couple years ago the future of longboard windsurfing looked really bad here in Finland, as it probably was around the world. New Olympic Class was too expensive and perhaps too technical for hobby racers, nobody produced the 380 boards etc.

Same thing with sails, all we could use was Formula sails, and for 9,5m2 Raceboard Class you couldn’t find sail at all. So most of RB competitors sailed in the Open Class, which meant that your size or amount of sails was not limited in anyway and you could also use formula hull if you felt like it. That created situation where RB class was the most expensive class to compete in and rules were too complicated. Just the opposite what we originally wanted and we lost lot of competitors to other classes.

Last summer finally changed everything. We started to hear rumours about new longboards. Exocet was first to arrive in Finnish market but Exocet didn’t ´t bring the solution because it didn’t work well enough with large 12,5m2 sails. Old Fanatic Cats and F2:s still ruled in racing.

Rumours about Starboard Phantom 380 got stronger and finally at the end season two first ones came to Finland. At the moment many others are on the waiting list for manufacturer to start production and leverances. Also several 9,5m2 Starboard sails are on the market now and it looks like that we’ll have increased amount of participants in the official 9,5m2 RB-class solely because of that.

During the winter we have translated international class- and competition rules into Finnish language, and hopefully we ´ll get some racers to take part in some international races also and those translated rules will help them out in the jungle of rules.

We have still two classes in our ranking series: official RB 9,5m2 class that is subjected to international rules and Open class where your amount or size of sails is still unlimited. Only RB-hulls are allowed this year, hopefully reducing racing costs. Hybrid- and Kona class can also participate in racing series.

We also made changes into Finnish national ranking competitions rules to invite more new racers along. 2008 we will have more Ranking competitions, seven all together. Idea is to collect as many points as possible. Value of a race is measured by the amount of competitors along with multiplying factor which depends on the location: further away from capital thus higher the factor, also Finnish championships are ranked higher in this competition series.

All together it looks quite bright in Longboard sector here Finland and hopefully the interest towards whole sports will increase also.

Thanks to Veijo Eronen for the photos