Well it has been a while since my last post so I thought I should get something up onto the blog. I have been busy juggling a young family, a BIG cubby house project plus all the usual house jobs that seem to come up all too often. I have tried to have a little fun along the way by getting out on the water(rarely) and dabbling in some design projects, one of which is a new light wind board. I started working on the design in February and it has slowly evolved in various directions to the point where I am now happy with it. Being a bigger guy I am just fedup with the selection of lightwind slalom boards currently on the market(with a few exceptions). Most of them are hard to pop over the bow wave when it is marginal and they seem to stop when you gybe underpowered. They basically have no coasting effect and need power whenever you want to do anything. The volume(or lack thereof) on most boards is aimed at high wind control, not getting a big guy back to his launch.
The final design is not too wide at 82cm but has a much longer length of 250cm and a lower overall rocker of around 180mm. I might lower the nose even more but it may be a problem in the Boggy Lake troughs. Volume is a substantial 147L with a thickness of around 125mm at the front straps. There will be 1.5mm of tail rocker with cutouts. Construction with be a carbon/glass deck with a glass hull for comfort. I hope to make a start when temperatures warm up a bit.
