With the Flat Water SUP Fest coming up in the next couple of weeks, a lot of you may be thinking about coming to Adelaide. A few weeks ago I decided to paddle the whole Metropolitan coast to get some good footage of the beautiful Adelaide coast line and show you all the great downwind conditions we get here. With a 25kt Southerly the 30km run took me about 3hrs paddling at a cruisey pace.

Here is just a short teaser from all the footage. The SA SUP Crew will be organising downwinders (weather permitting) for the whole weekend if people aren't too tired from the sprints. Registrations close Monday so if your thinking about it hopefully this will help the decision!! Also this is the first time I've used a go pro and tried to make a "movie" When I get a bit more time I will sit down and make a better version including some of the better glides from the day. Enjoy, Bleachy!

Nice..

Thanks DJ. Your vids are always great to watch, I would like to try and experiment with some set ups like yours. I think they give a much better view of the conditions and how long the runners are. Cheers.

DW as well as sprint races?? Wow, it's getting harder and harder to say no..............
Can ocean/DW boards be hired somewhere there?

G'day Kieran , it will be a great weekend to come down to SA, we have a couple of blokes in the SA SUP Crew who hire out boards with a couple of race boards but you will have to check with them for availability (Check with Matt from WindSup and Nat from Stand Up Paddle SA). Also the club itself has a couple of boards kicking around that will be available for use. As a last resort you can always ask on the Facebook page and someone might have a spare board you can borrow, were a friendly bunch down here. Hope that helps.

Cheers for that bleachy. I'll keep that in mind. We're trying to get a few down from NSW .
Hopefully get a trailer of boards too. :)

Yeah its a fair old drive, I was one of the SA guys who drove our trailer up to Port MacQuarie 2 years ago. Definitely worth it tho! Good luck and hope to see you all down here, its shaping up to be one of the biggest events Australia has seen.

Nice vid. How does the NSP DC brushed carbon compare to other boards for downwinding?

I'm surprised to see them so often in clips and pics on this forum. In the UK they are crazy expensive - more than 50% above the price of a GX Glide 14 for instance (which is itself about 50% more than the basic construction Glide). But they sure are pretty.

Hi Area10, first things first, I am a team rider for NSP/DC. I was a bit hesitant to put a full review up as team rider reviews on these forums are not always well received and can be seen as more of a marketing strategy, but since you have asked I will be happy to give you my opinion. Firstly you mentioned about the price, I'm not sure about the prices in the UK however here the boards are similar in price to the other major brands as long as you are comparing apples with apples. The NSP/DC carbon boards are probably closer to 20-25% more expensive than the Glide GX here but the Glide GX is not "Full Carbon"meaning that the deck of the board is actually a timber construction and one of the results of this is the NSP/DC is almost 2kgs lighter. For a fairer comparison I would be looking at the Naish Javelin LE series which have similar "full carbon" technology and a similar weight and these boards are slightly more expensive (10-15%) than the NSP/DC's.

With that aside my thoughts on the performance of the board: I've had the board for a few months now and the one thing that really stands out for me is just how stable it is. It has the stability of a much wider board, for instance in the paddle from the Vid I was on the board for 3hrs just cruising and trying to take some half decent footage and I was never feeling fatigued from standing/balancing or uncomfortable on the board and it was 25kts so I think that is a pretty good testament to a boards stability. I have also given the board to others to try who have been riding 27"-29"s and they have all given me really positive feedback. In regards to speed, its is a quick board, at 26" wide it's not the fastest board I have been on (I have a 24" for that ) but it is still extremely quick. I have won a couple of races on this board and a few top 3 places. I think it is a combination of the slightly larger/rounded nose shape that really glides over the water and almost gets sucked into the troughs when downwinding and how parallel the rails are, the board tracks really well and I am currently using a 6.5" fin for ocean paddling with no issues. I have even been as small as a 4.5"fin, stability was unaffected but I found it lacked drive, but thats probably for another discussion. For a comparison I have not yet tried the glide 26 so can't really comment but I have tried a lot of boards including the Javelin 23LE all though because of the size difference in width these boards are hard to compare also. They have a very similar feel when downwinding and catching swells as they are both very "surfy" and easy to manoeuvre in the ocean, which I love, as opposed to some boards that are more point and shoot. I have also tried Falcons, Ace's, Allstar's and some custom Deeps and the NSP/DC ocean race has been my favourite board so far for heavy downwind conditions. Just to reiterate this just my opinion and I would encourage you to try one as I have only had positive feedback from my friends here in SA. Hopefully soon I will be trading it in for the 25" wide version which I think will be my perfect board, just for interest sake I am about 5'11 and 80kgs. If you have any specific questions let me know. Cheers, Bleachy.