Boards 2004 Trip to Isla de Coche New world speed record ...

curvature in the rocker and inthe outline and maybe an extrafin or two on the heal side of theboard.The freestyle category is arather broad one. In thiscategory I include all boards thatare designed for high speed andgood control, even when theconditions are difficult. This typeof boards suites both theaverage freerider and thecompetitor that want to pull offthe highest jumps. A board inthis category is often between130 and 140 cm with a widthbetween 34 and 38 cmdepending on whether the boardis designed for light or strongwinds. Also in this category youwill mainly find twin-tip boards.The wake category consists ofshort and relatively wide twin-tipboards with lots of pop. Thelength can be 120 cm or evenshorter with a relatively flatrocker line and not too much ofcurve in the outline. Even if theboards are mainly designed toprovide lots of pop for the latestwake-style manoeuvres, theycan also be very fast if the wateris flat so you can remain control.If we look at the wave boardsthis is a relatively undevelopedcategory. Here we are mainlylooking for a board with a goodgrip in the turns. To be able topull off a good bottom turn weneed to have a fair amount ofrail to dig into the wave. A tooshort board doesn’t give thedesired stability that we want inthe turns. We also need lots ofcurvature in both the rocker andthe outline, even more than on afreestyle board. To furtherincrease the grip it the boardcan be equipped with longer finsin the back of the board. On theother hand we don’t want thefins in the front of the board togrip during the turn. It istherefore usual to have smallerfins in the front or no fins at all.A symmetrical twin-tip board istherefore less suited for waveriding. It is therefore common touse directionals or mutants, orat least to make it possible toadjust the placement of thefootstraps towards the back ofthe board and provide the boardwith different sized fins. Anotherthing with the waveboards isthat you might want some extrafloatation in order to prevent theboard from loosing speed whenyou do a cut back and don’thave any power from the kite.Lots of people even recommendthe use of traditional surfboardsinstead of the kiteboards thatcan be found on the markettoday.10