G'day all,

Newly joined...and in a pickle...

I'm an 'ex' windsurfer, I sailed from early to late 90's in capetown (blouberg), who had to give up due to work commitments at the time. Also, I was getting tired of dragging my gear around the place (One piece masts, heavy old rigs et al). I've been living in port melbourne for the past 7 years and been threatening to get back into it for ages. A few days ago I was driving down beach road and stopped to check out about 20 kiteboarders near st kilda. Reason being there were so many in such a small area and given that KB's take up so much room apiece I was interested to see how they avoided getting in a giant tangle (never been tempted by KB'ing, may be fun for some but don't see any 'magic'. Anyway, on the beach is this one lonely windsurfer so I took a walk to see what he was up to. As I got closer to his rig it all came back and I was busting to take it out for a blast. Anyway, point is, I've decided its useless to resist so I'm after a rig.

Now, since I've been 'away' for some time, I'm down on knowledge re today's gear. I'm after a rig that I can 'relearn' on but can still have a lot of fun with in the bay and later in smallish surf, will allow a (semi) easy uphaul, quick plane, good wind range, easy rigging...I know, how long is a piece of string?

Some stats:
Age: 32
Weight: 85kg
Height: 1.82m
Level (previous): Intermediate I guess, could gybe, waterstart, surf and small jumps...loooove speed!
Last quiver: Mistral screamer + F2 Orbit, north infinity + Zeta etc, you get the picture...

I'll swing by a shop next week (any suggestions) but was hoping for some guidance beforehand.

Thanks folks.

There are a few threads on this sort of thing. My thread from a few weeks ago, "Getting Back into it" goes along the same line.

One piece of advice I can give is if you are looking at second hand gear, its best to only consider the new style boards. The new style are so much easier to use than the drawn out designs that were in the 90s. For example I bought a Tabou 140 second hand and its a real nice board, very stable but manouverable and goes very fast when powered up.

By new style I mean short and fat. Back when in the nineties a 240cm board was considered to be pretty radical, now they are light wind boards. The length is irrelevant.

I was like you, but only out for around 8 years. Its good to get back into it, especially with the better gear around nowdays.

Have heard about sandy point, but never been down that way...will have to give that a go!! Yep, will drop in on the lads in Elwood for a chat.

Another vote for what Kato said.

Windy,

Cheers, thinking along same lines. I dropped into RPS y/day and spent some time cecking out the new (to me) designs and chatting to the guys. You're right, there is much more to it these days, or there is less, depends how you look at it I guess.To my uneducated eye, it looks like the width (and where that extra width is) and rail design on these new boards would drop the 'volume requirement' compared o mid 90's boards by about a third at least. After all, its not the 'sinking' bit that gets you, its the lateral wobbly bit that does which I would think would be far less of an issue compared to the last "needle".

Anyhow, I have a solution, I've set up a 'lesson' with RPS to try a few boards from 100 to 114 to 122 in order to get a feel for the differences. I think that ill be the best way to go. But I do like that Kombat...just screams out that it would be fun.

Re kites, I drew a line in the sand early ("gee those kite thingys look just like ironing boards don't they, but not as cool!") so they didn't even try and go there!

Salaams