Is it possible to have a windsurfer and just cruise at low speeds? Is that a thing people do, kind of like sailing a bit as slow speeds, instead of going Mach 10 all the time? Is this a thing?

Called One Design

It's certainly possible, but I haven't seen anybody do it around here, this century.

Absolutely its possible and doable. And you should do it. It can be done cheaply. Big old board, small sail and replace the sail to board connection and away you go. You won't need to spend much, and we will help you to make the right choice. A few hundred dollars should do it. Or you could go really old for far less. There is a problem....... when you learn the basics and get back to your starting point on the shore, you will be addicted because it's the best thing in the whole wide world. Then you will want newer gear to go faster. You will become one of us. Be warned. ?
Ps , If you ride a very expensive road bicycle in over-the-top colorful spandex and take up all the road, try kite surfing instead.

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gibbo000001 said..
Is it possible to have a windsurfer and just cruise at low speeds? Is that a thing people do, kind of like sailing a bit as slow speeds, instead of going Mach 10 all the time? Is this a thing?

Yes, it's begining windsurfing. A big board with daggerboard, a small freeride sail, that's all you need. For the board you can look at old raceboard but also flatwater wind sup with daggerboard or modern beginner board are easier to use. Windsurfer lt, ahd tactik, bic windsup or 293 techno, fanatic viper, jp explorer, Starboard go windsurfer... preferably for me longer and not too wide with retractable daggerboard so you can keep it for all conditions. For sail look for a camberless freeride, don't go too old, post 2000 sails are easier to use than older one. And as Imax said you'll want to go faster and faster, increasing sail size.

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gibbo000001 said..
Is it possible to have a windsurfer and just cruise at low speeds? Is that a thing people do, kind of like sailing a bit as slow speeds, instead of going Mach 10 all the time? Is this a thing?

Yes, I get on an old one design every now and then. I just use a modern sail as the old ones are awful.

Yes and I still do it from time to time when the winds are very light.

With the right board with daggerboard/centerboard, you can go high upwind then cruise back downwind.

The board I have can even plane with the daggerboard up, but it is harder to get over the "hump" to get going fast, but it will do 20+mph. It just takes a big sail.

But, can putter around on it with a 4.4 or 5.6 in light stuff and explore or do light wind tricks (like heli tacks, upwind 360s) or find a spot with some light swell and ride the little bumps.

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gibbo000001 said..
Is it possible to have a windsurfer and just cruise at low speeds? Is that a thing people do, kind of like sailing a bit as slow speeds, instead of going Mach 10 all the time? Is this a thing?

Yeah Windsurfer LT is a modern version of this. There are also some more planing optimized longboards i.e. kona one which plane faster.
There are parts of the world where this is very popular, usually in lighter wind areas. I see a fair few in Australia and I only ride longboards and I don't really have much desire to ride a shortboard.

Sub 6 knots of wind it feels like standing on an autopropelling SUP.
Above 8 knots it's a sensation more akin to sailing as the board operates in displacement mode with the oldschool yachtsail swaying in the wind a bit when nicely locked in. Above 12 knots of wind the nose starts lifting out of the water and you reach humpspeed where the board gradually transitions to planing and >15 knots you plane all the time but you are slower than on a shortboard (though it feels very fast). The sweetspot is 10-18 knots of variable wind where foilers are at risk of getting yanked off their foils and shortboards cant reliably plane.

Today when I started it was blowing 10-12 knots so I was capped at displacement speed of ~10km/h. 8 - 12 knots of wind doesn't really make much difference to the speed but it's easier to hang off the harnesslines in more wind and you can reach more upwind. There were some wingfoilers out, a windfoiler and a couple of shortboarders. The shortboarders were probably capped to 5-6km/h or so? I felt like I was going about twice as fast as them. The wingfoilers I reckon went around 50% faster than me so maybe 15km/h?. An hour later the wind picked up to 15 knots - great for the shortboarders. Between 12 and 15 knots of wind you do this weird thing where you skim between hump and displacement speed all the time so you see variable speeds between 10-15 km/h with 15km/h being the cap. After 15km/h the board always planes and jumps straight to 20km/h for me. I got up to hump and then plane speed and was probably similar speed to the foilers. Then it picked up to 20 knots. The wingfoilers got yanked and had to go back home and I think the 2 shortboarders were still going but overpowered. Not sure what happened to the windfoiler.

Paradoxically I find the planing treshold isn't really that different from normal all purpose shortboards and with a modern planing-sail as opposed to vintage rig it's probably below that of a shortboard. I presume this is from the large lenght dependent surface area. Once you get planing though your speed doesn't really increase much with increasing wind unlike on a shortboard....

One thing you see longborders do all the time is to go touring i.e. move from one beach to another, often because they spot another longborder (if they use a vintage style sail) on the horizon or just because they can. The daggerboard and waterline lenght means ultimately it doesnt matter if its 3 knots or 25 knots. you can always get home. And if something aweful happens you just go SUPing.

LT 3-30 knots.

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Kit3kat said..

gibbo000001 said..
Is it possible to have a windsurfer and just cruise at low speeds? Is that a thing people do, kind of like sailing a bit as slow speeds, instead of going Mach 10 all the time? Is this a thing?

Yeah Windsurfer LT is a modern version of this. There are also some more planing optimized longboards i.e. kona one which plane faster.
There are parts of the world where this is very popular, usually in lighter wind areas. I see a fair few in Australia and I only ride longboards and I don't really have much desire to ride a shortboard.

Sub 6 knots of wind it feels like standing on an autopropelling SUP.
Above 8 knots it's a sensation more akin to sailing as the board operates in displacement mode with the oldschool yachtsail swaying in the wind a bit when nicely locked in. Above 12 knots of wind the nose starts lifting out of the water and you reach humpspeed where the board gradually transitions to planing and >15 knots you plane all the time but you are slower than on a shortboard (though it feels very fast). The sweetspot is 10-18 knots of variable wind where foilers are at risk of getting yanked off their foils and shortboards cant reliably plane.

Today when I started it was blowing 10-12 knots so I was capped at displacement speed of ~10km/h. 8 - 12 knots of wind doesn't really make much difference to the speed but it's easier to hang off the harnesslines in more wind and you can reach more upwind. There were some wingfoilers out, a windfoiler and a couple of shortboarders. The shortboarders were probably capped to 5-6km/h or so? I felt like I was going about twice as fast as them. The wingfoilers I reckon went around 50% faster than me so maybe 15km/h?. An hour later the wind picked up to 15 knots - great for the shortboarders. Between 12 and 15 knots of wind you do this weird thing where you skim between hump and displacement speed all the time so you see variable speeds between 10-15 km/h with 15km/h being the cap. After 15km/h the board always planes and jumps straight to 20km/h for me. I got up to hump and then plane speed and was probably similar speed to the foilers. Then it picked up to 20 knots. The wingfoilers got yanked and had to go back home and I think the 2 shortboarders were still going but overpowered. Not sure what happened to the windfoiler.

Paradoxically I find the planing treshold isn't really that different from normal all purpose shortboards and with a modern planing-sail as opposed to vintage rig it's probably below that of a shortboard. I presume this is from the large lenght dependent surface area. Once you get planing though your speed doesn't really increase much with increasing wind unlike on a shortboard....

One thing you see longborders do all the time is to go touring i.e. move from one beach to another, often because they spot another longborder (if they use a vintage style sail) on the horizon or just because they can. The daggerboard and waterline lenght means ultimately it doesnt matter if its 3 knots or 25 knots. you can always get home. And if something aweful happens you just go SUPing.

Cheers for the info. Yeah super interested in the long distance slow stuff. Going to give it a go near Victoria point and would love to start trying to do a bit of island hopping there in the arvo's

Victoria point is very popular for longboarding. i learned there. You see longboards there all the time. Bear in mind that unless you are planing you are not that fast and the islands are quite far away. A crossing to stradbrook in displacement mode is like an hour and it can be risky alone being 5km from either shore. Also waves can be unpleasant in displacement mode especially if there is not enough power in the rig to lean back against. The annoying zone is 7-10 knots where the rig has enough power to carry you but not enough to carry you agressively especially in luls. You then have to stand up straight and then waves pound you without much speed. Depending on the direction of the swell/waves it'll push and turn the board and can end up in a bit of a mess. You have to deal with it by manouvering the rig which after a while gets a bit tireing as you cannot rely on the harness alone. Do that for an hour an you'll get sick of it.

The other thing worth mentioning is that a lot of the speed in displacement mode comes from deployment of the centreboard which allows for the the pullforce on the sail to be transformed into forward momentum This allows you to be overconfident with your speed while reaching upwind and being on beam reach. Do that for a bit and when you turn back and want to go downwind you may struggle with a very unstable and slow board as it is hard to effectively force the board downwind with the centreboard deployed. You can fold the centreboard up 50-70% which is a reasonable compromise and gives some extra speed, leeway and stability but having a slow board in the chop is very annoying and makes the arms tired. Running straight downwind is also hard as you get tired holding the rig up too and waves pounding the board make the board quite unstable yet again. None of that is an issue though if you reliably get >11 knots of wind and the nice thing is that out on the water there is often quite a bit more wind than near the shore and it is more steady too.

A friend learned windsurfing on an old SUP board that he customised himself - just added an insert for the mast base, the board already had a place for a small center fin. The only "big" investment he did was buying a modern trainer sail. And a fun fact, something I did not anticipate at all before trying, that same cheap and super light dacron trainer sail is super good for wind foiling. Here's a clip from that day. At 03:31 and onwards there are some moments of wind foiling with that trainer rig.

Of course! That was the whole intent of long boards early on.
Anyone could move around any body of water with a slight breeze. Fell out of style except on lakes during the summer time in Europe where people rent out equipment and sail around.

I love slogging even on my 85L + 4.7, it's eventually to get me to the waves but the sailing along is still entertaining even at my level!

The serenity was developed for this sole purpose and was quite fast too.

Cruising on an old windsurfing board is the most leveraged value for money you can get. I use those calm days to ride my Mistral Competition with my little son onboard hanging from the boom with me. Classicwindsurfing website from Jon Randall is full of information.