Every time someone asks about getting into the sport, everyone seems to be pushing them towards a short widestyle board. Now, of course that gear is great for a lot of conditions. If you're in a breezy place with open water, it's fast and great for learning.

But it's interesting to see what happens in lighter winds or places where there's holes in the breeze. Check out this pic. It was taken at the biggest event in the UK. It shows the leaders of the Freeride fleet coming back to the finish. See all those nice shiny big modern sails? See the little old dacron sail centre right?

That board - an original Windsurfer - finished 2nd out of 229 entries ("only" about 110 raced), with three seconds and a first. It was beaten only by a Raceboard with 10.4. It ate all the short wide boards, bones and all. Sure, it was light - but it's normally light in most places.

So maybe we shouldn't all move so quickly to knock old gear for beginners - who are more likely to often be sailing in light winds like in the pic. Our memories of handling longboards when we were ALL pretty much beginners and they had no decent training sails shouldn't colour our views of the longboards.

For instance, 'round here, the widestyle boards rarely work that well for experts or for beginners. It's too narrow and shifty. I'm not knocking them, they are brilliant in their place. But the opposite extreme sure has its place too.

Well it certainly happened.....either that or the results are wrong and the witnesses (including the only guy who beat the Windsurfer) are liars and no one's called them for it.

Considering this is the biggest event in the UK and it has been much discussed over there, I would be very surprised if it's all a pack of lies. And he never finished worse than second, so it wasn't a fluke.

The small, deep sail is actually surprisingly efficient in light winds compared to the big, flat modern sail - especially when the modern sail is trying to push a short fat board below planing speeds. The pinhead with deep head can generate the same (or better) aerodynamics as a fathead with a flat head, and since form resistance increases by the square of the width below planing speeds, the skinny boards have less drag up 'till planing.

When Windsurfer One Designs race against other boards in extreme conditions (hard and puffy or light) they often do very well. The One Designs can quite often go faster than the RSXs, and we've shared regattas several times with FW and I'm sure they'll admit we're quicker in the light stuff. Of course, the wide boards murder the One Designs when they get consistent planing conditions.

Same thing happened in Round 1 of the NSW Interclub series this year - a Windsurfer finished second overall against Raceboards.

He must certainly have been stoked - I know I'm certainly jealous!

Go the Wally. That's classic.

Earlier in the year I was overtaken by an old Mistral & triangle sail (half the size of mine) in light wind.

I traded gear (temporarily) with the guy and found that it didn't have the 3 stages - 'slog', to 'sub-plane' to 'plane'. It was a smoother transition, from moving slowly, to gradually increasing speed onto the plane...in saying that, as soon as the wind picked up, back on my gear, once planing, he couldn't keep up.

Bit of fun though!

No no, it was Mr Bean, he was just floating around and got in the way

Getting back to beginners, I learnt on a wally and would love a dollar for every time I went a-up uphauling and turning etc, and the frustration trying to teach others. Don't get me wrong, after getting the hang of it, I loved it
Years later I dragged it out again to teach my young fella, what a beast, and frustration all over again. So we got a Starboard Start with a Wally type sail, wow everyones happy, so easy now.
I'm not selling it, as I let everyone play with it, only takes them a short while to get going, and it turns on a dime so getting back is easy.

An advantage of a Wally is price, I gave mine away (2) to a couple of family's.

But racing in no wind, I can see the advantage of a wally, built like an arrow

maybe its a hull speed issue. at displacement speeds ,square root of length in feet times 1.3 , I think.

There was a Serenity in the Pro Class. It did well but I don't think it won.

Interesting boards, but slower to tack and a lot more one-dimensional than a Div 2 board in my very limited experience.

We just had our first twilight. 16 Wallies, 17 Raceboards, plus a couple of under 10 year olds on Wallies who were having a ball but didn't race - they'll race on the weekend. I totally agree with Little Jon, longboard windsurfing is where mal surfing was a long while ago.

"SUCKERS !!!!
That's the worst attempt at Photoshop i've seen."

Caught me

I was sailing a friend's Wayler (1980s polyethylene longboard) at applecross are few months ago in conditions that were just too light for the formula guys to get planing.

The Wayler with a 6.2 freeride sail was marginally quicker than the formula boards with 10m sails.

Nothing like chasing down, then overtaking someone who's gear costs 100x more than yours