mikey100, I don't know the answer, but I notice a lot of guys having their straps right back, but then swinging their body a long way forward, almost poking their head in front of the mast. What is this about?

OK big G, thanks 4 da information. Now, does everyone else agree??? So, I have 3 possible positions for the back footstraps- which do I use:- front, middle, rear??

I recently changed my footstraps on my smaller wave board which I had set up for speed (i know wrong board for this) from having the footstraps at the back holes.

This was all well and good when there was an absolute truck load of wind but generally it made the board behave like a dog when you didn't have power, it just didn't want to stay on the plane. It got to the stage where I just wouldn't use the board.

Recently I read an article about footstrap positioning so I had a play, totally repositioned the footstraps further forward and WOW did this make a radical change in the board.

It got up to speed easy, stayed on the plane wonderfully and overall I'm quite happy to through the beastie now into my car to have a play with.

Another change which I did was one which I had noted from a Mistral board and that was to have the out side screw of the front wave riding footstrap moved one hole futher forward making the foostrap closer to parralel with the axis of the board.

This I found gave me much better leverage when putting the board into a bottom turn.

Hope this helps.

Alby

if the modern board was longer, then 2 rear foot straps would be the answer. had an old glass wave board 15 or so years ago (never used it in waves-no waves in Townsville)with 2 rear straps, the one further back was excellent for strong winds and cyclones the one slightly more forward was good position for the lighter winds, however using the forward one resulted in a narrow stance which was not too good for chop jumping.

My experience is, (wave boards only) too far back, it spins out under back foot load. (Sucks air from the back of the board)
Too far forward it spins out at speed and in sharp turns. (I presume exposes the front of the fin to air when going over chop & tilting the board at extreme angles)
Theory is further forward the fin the looser the board is, but the amount I can move my fin and still have a board that isn't spinning out, doesn't make an appreciable difference to loosenes