Is a 5'1 surfboard worth trying to Kite on?

i snapped a 6'0 recently and just wanted something cheap to play around on.

cheers

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James01 said..
Is a 5'1 surfboard worth trying to Kite on?

i snapped a 6'0 recently and just wanted something cheap to play around on.

cheers

I demoed a Naish Skater surfboard yesterday

Was only 5'2 ,went unreal

My reveiw is in Gear Reveiws

Thought it would be too small

But it definitely wasnt

But it wasnt cheap

I have hit up to triple head on my mutant which is essentially a small minimal shape. 145cm or 4'9 in the old money. So I don't see why not.

Certainly worth giving it a go for the experience. you can expect to be needing more kite power because you won't get as much drive from your board, but it'll be pretty lively.
Col

I'm 86kg and ride a 5'4

Ive got a 4ft and a couple of 4'5" from last year but i now ride 5'4" @ 74 kg I still love my little rockets but they lack the rail to really carve surf

i have a custom made 5 foot surf board , love it in high wind and it goes upwind really well .
It has futures thruster fins and footstraps are a must for me .
one thing is that it is built really strong and I have never creased it in 7 years

I'd say a lot will depend on the conditions, and board shape
if it's onshore and your well powered and using the kite power on the wave it will probably be heaps of fun.... If you just want to park/drift the kite and actually surf the wave face under wave power you may find it a little slow and feel bogged down in sections. Unless it's quite wide (esp in the tail)
Then again you didn't mention your weight ... If your < 70kg it's probably not going to be a problem.

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harry potter said..
I'd say a lot will depend on the conditions, and board shape
if it's onshore and your well powered and using the kite power on the wave it will probably be heaps of fun.... If you just want to park/drift the kite and actually surf the wave face under wave power you may find it a little slow and feel bogged down in sections. Unless it's quite wide (esp in the tail)
Then again you didn't mention your weight ... If your < 70kg it's probably not going to be a problem.

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jamesstorm said..
Ive got a 4ft and a couple of 4'5" from last year but i now ride 5'4" @ 74 kg I still love my little rockets but they lack the rail to really carve surf

James and Harry are spot on. Bottom shape width and volume come into play. More so where your riding. Forehand, the smaller boards are more balanced under your stance without sliding your front foot up the nose for punting. I prefer more rail on my backhand and a narrowerl tail outline. I have a few boards in the 5'2"- 5'4" range. My shorter wider boards need your back foot to be right back virtually hanging toes over the tail to maintain a rail carve. Otherwise they have tendency to flatten out into a skatey sliding turn if you start moving your back foot further forward. You may lose some ability to hold ground if it's a short low volume board, although they are good for punching out through whitewash. I'd grab it if was cheap and trash it. Every board u get is a learning curve to what suits!

You can ride anything on a kite, you aren't surfing.

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sir ROWDY said..
You can ride anything on a kite, you aren't surfing.

Maccas tray

I USE 5 FT X 17 1/2 CUSTOM AND 5'5 X 17" CUSTOM AT ONE EYE MAURITIUS (75KLG AND 5' 10") you do not need to paddle them They just need to be the right shape

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sir ROWDY said..
You can ride anything on a kite, you aren't surfing.

Do these little boards run full single con caves thru them?, Thinking of going smaller, around 5'4"and 18"......thoughts?

I bought a second hand beaten up Grommets surf board for next to nothing, 4'6 I think it was. Great fun in strong winds and small waves and practicing stapless jumps, rode it for years until one boost too many finally broke in half.

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squidink69 said...

sir ROWDY said..
You can ride anything on a kite, you aren't surfing.

Do these little boards run full single con caves thru them?, Thinking of going smaller, around 5'4"and 18"......thoughts?

The boards I have are single con ,for me they work. Also we made Grom 4'8"x 18"x2" for team rider ,fun board to play around

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squidink69 said..

sir ROWDY said..
You can ride anything on a kite, you aren't surfing.

Do these little boards run full single con caves thru them?, Thinking of going smaller, around 5'4"and 18"......thoughts?

I'm not sure what the majority are, personally though all surfboards I've had with single concave in the tail I've really hated, for both surf and kite... maybe it just doesn't suit my style though.
As I said you can ride anything, although I think boards under 5ft feel way too short to turn properly on a wave. For me the limit is about 5'3ft. I've pushed it to 5'1 on the Tomo style boards but I still think it feels a bit short for my height (6'3ft). For a regular shortboard shape I actually prefer something in the 5'9-6'0 range for kiting.

Single concave boards do take a bit of getting used to, but they sure do crank on a nice open face, you can really drive of those rails and draw some cool lines. Never used one for kiting tho, but different strokes for different folkes, will be interesting to hear people's experiences with single concave boards and kiting.

if u on goldie there are like 8 00 000 second hand surfboards to try out for under $150.... anything without a ridiculous water pushing rocker sub 6'1 5'8+ and not too narrow is all good imo - lighter the better... but the weaker... unfortunately - any old yellowing firewire and a block of wax all good

glue your 6 back together... is not that hard with all the online knowledge available. On of my fave boards has laster 3 times longer glued back together than it did to start with....

This is a little 5'2". I could go smaller in this model. It gives you a good look at the outline we have been mucking around on; with parallel rails, fuller nose and tail.
photo courtesy of Rupert.

You're a fair bit shorter than me though Pearl .I think that the really short boards are great for slop and general tom foolery, but when the waves get decent and you want to surf top to bottom the extra nose on a normal sized surfboard helps even more kiting than it does surfing. Kiting you really have to weight your front foot to get back into the wave a lot of times, this is where the nose can help bring you back out of it better.My 2 cents.

^^^ know what you mean.^^^^ This actual board was a total fail in Indo this year. I was hoping the smaller outline would work better tighter in the pocket, but it didn't. It's fun in the slop, (which is a large proportion of what I ride). I'm all for a regular board in decent waves. The small wide boards and tomo shapes also look pretty ordinary on film.

Every board rides differently. Try it. Also try putting some big side fins on along with a smallish centre fin to make it loose and let you carve but still keep it from spinning out.

Yep, you guys are on it. Also your right that they look a bit funny on film, I think they only look semi normal to me when people are doing airs on them haha. They just don't have that aesthetic when trying to draw out a nice turn. There are those tomo shapes with the regular nose though (V3?), I would love to get on one of those kiting.

Like my doctor said, width is more important than length.