Help beginner/interm. choose betw Formula or near-formula

[kellygeygan]

[kellygeygan]

[coachg]

[swchandler]

kellygeygen,

If your dollar amounts you've cited are for used formula equipment, I have no real argument. The market for used formula equipment is undoubtedly very soft overall.

However, if high quality components are bought new, a complete kit for $1800 is a pipe dream. Zajicek's current L12 is $2295 alone, less CA sales tax with no fin. I've been buying new boards from Mike for better than 19 years, and the formula board is his most expensive board design. A new Starboard is probably more, but you'll probably get a fin with it. Add other high quality components, and I'm sure that you can double the price for the board to get a kit. Moreover, I seriously doubt that one can readily find new top flight formula equipment in stock at your local shop. Everything would have to be special ordered. Probably though, you could most likely negotiate yourself a notable discount of some sort if you picked a single retailer to buy from.

Overall though, you're probably right that a single kit would cover a big range of light wind sailing, especially considering San Diego conditions or many inland locales around the country. If I lived further south in San Diego, I'd be into formula sailing and crowing its virtues, regardless of the premium costs.

[westadamsvets]

Swchandler, you can indeed order directly the latest Starboard formula hull from trident for about $2,900. So, If someone absolutely insists on brand new equipment it's definitely out there.

http://store.tridentsports.com/us/pc/Formula-167-Wide-Carbon-Windsurfing-Board-175p2843.htm

But, Kelly's suggestion to put together a kit from gear sold by local racers makes a lot more sense financially and can be a fun process in itself.

For one thing, you will get a lot of great advice since most people are eager to share their knowledge. This specialized knowledge about gear and tuning is for me a big part of the fun. And you get to meet some interesting people. After all, the most common ice breaker at any beach in the world is "what sail size are you rigging?"

So while planing windsurfing in a light wind area like san diego necessitates specialized gear and knowledge, as Kelly has described, you can acquire this gear directly from the local sailors for pennies on the dollar and make friends who will give you (hopefully!) good advice.

A lot of this information is also available by searching internet forum archives where often the same questions have been discussed ad naseum. This is fun to do as well.

So, in the end, you don't need to go to a brick and mortar shop and leave with a full set of brand new gear to get you sailing. And the little bit of extra effort hunting for deals can be an enjoyable experience in itself.

[sergio_k]

swchandler, have you tried to price out custom wave boards lately?
I did, checked Witchcraft, Quattro, and few others, over $3000, add
high end set of multi fins and you closer to $3,500;
Prices are relative thing, you can buy close out or slightly used for $500-1000 or buy custom /or new season board for $$$. Actually, prices for
ML formula and slalom are ~$100 diff...
In Miami, lightly used formula in good shape runs $1000.00 or less
On topic of weeds, we have lot of them in the bay, and race fin out performs weed fins 9 out of 10 times on a formula. Shallow /rocky bottom is diff story, you have to go weed or low profile fin...

And you can call it conspiracy or not, but PWA did drop formula in favor of
slalom class, we do have a very bad representation of windsurfing in Olympics in the form of RSX, and you have to looks very hard to find a story in mag that's tells the real FW story, chances are you will not find it.

Last note: most expensive thing for most of us is TIME,
when I drive to the beach, I want a 99% chance that I will get to windsurf/plane that day, in FW in my minivan gives me that.

[perevod13]

SWITCH INTO KITING BEFORE WASTING TOO MUCH MONEY! I really mean it. I have been windsurfing since 2003/04 and what a mistake it was not to go into kiting or switch early. Now I have a shed full of this WS crap - sails, boards, booms, masts, extensions, a bag to carry sails and masts, a bag to carry small stuff, a cart to wheel it around, etc, etc. Although with iwindsurf it has become better, winds are still finicky in Maryland so to insure myself against wind surprises, I ended up getting a buick roadmaster that has room for all. It is long enough to put the sails in, and low enough to easily tie the boards on top. Launches here (except for a few) are not quite right on the water so carrying all that WS stuff is just a pain, especially if the wind changes and you need to get another board and sail (mast, boom, fin...). By the time you are done rigging and carrying, you are pretty much spent. This is a dying sport, MS magazine demised but when you look at the prices, it's like 1980-ies again. $230 for a bent piece of an aluminum tube aka boom? Nobody else can come up with a mast extension with an integrated downhaul system but North? $1500-3K boards - who buys them I wonder? At least Phil Mcgain has been selling some decent crap on ebay.

I sailed a couple of weeks ago on Chesapeake bay. As the wind increased I ended up going from 7.5 on a 125 l board to 5.0 on 97l. By the way the 7.5 is a race sale (neutron by gaastra - what a junk!) and with popping cambers and high mast tension, rigging it is just atrocious. So here I came in my stuffed buick (V8 engine), spending all that time and efforts rigging and carrying gear. A kiter came in a Hyundai elantra and grabbed all he needed in one go. He came after me and was dialed in before me. He finished kiting after me and left the launch way before me even though he talked to his buddies while I kept on hauling all that WS junk from the beach to the car. And then it dawned on me!

Since you are relatively new to this sport, don't waste your time and money. An advantage of kiting is that they teach you to plane right away. Once you start moving with a kite - you are hooked. In WS, the learning curve is endless. Once the coolness factor is gone - forget it. I tried to teach my colleague, and he diligently spent maybe 5-6 long days on the water. He kinda liked the idea and picked up catamaran at a Club med in Dominican republic.

So the bottom line is that while you are still fresh, move into kiting. It will save you money, time, space, gas. I am definitely switching.

[sergio_k]

http://star-board.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15455
http://miamiwindsurfer.blogspot.com/2012/05/kitesurfing-vs-windsurfing-chart.html

[swchandler]

sergio_k,

Regarding your chart in the Miami Windsurfer blog spot, I have to say that the "community attitude" viewpoint for kiters is quite different from my experience. In reality, they have a really involved and helping attitude amongst themselves. Lots of sharing and concern, particularly if a fellow kiter is in need for some reason. This isn't to say that windsurfers don't interact similarly when the need arises, but in my view, windsurfers tend to be more the individualists overall. That's one of the things that I personally like about windsurfing as a sport. You are more independent and less reliant on others.

I have to say that most all of my old windsurfing friends are now kiters who have abandoned windsurfing all together. Still though, at the spots where I sail, there is still a lot of overall good will between windsurfers and kiters. There can be exceptions at times, but that's not the normal scene.

Lastly, have I tried kiting, or am I open to trying it in the future? No, on both issues, because I have no interest in all the lines and the hassles associated with them. It's not the sport for me.

[sergio_k]

swchandler,
from my experience, kiting attracts diff type of people, doesn't mean that
all of them are assh...s, doesn't mean that we don't have few 'bad apples'.
But overall, there's no better group of people to spend the day at the beach for me than windsurfers; while kitesurfers specially have a bad ratio for my taste...
mathematically speaking bad to good apple ratio:
windsurfing: 5% vs. 95%
kitesurfing: 30% vs. 70%

Life is too short to expose yourself to those kind of numbers on
regular bases...