Newer boards are great for your ego and your status among your peers.
Now, are ALL you guys fat boyz?
My 2001 Naish Freeride 85 liters at 255 length with a 33 cm tail OFO, goes faster and turns better at speed than ANY new board short of the new slalom/speed boards thar cost 2 grand+n
Cost of that FR? Free.

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LeeD said..
Newer boards are great for your ego and your status among your peers.
Now, are ALL you guys fat boyz?
My 2001 Naish Freeride 85 liters at 255 length with a 33 cm tail OFO, goes faster and turns better at speed than ANY new board short of the new slalom/speed boards thar cost 2 grand+n
Cost of that FR? Free.

Clearly you haven't tried one of my Computer Aided Designs

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LeeD said..
Why run the mast base so far back?
Also, modern slalom boards have mast bases well forwards from wave, freestyle, and even freeride boards.
What are we doing out there? Are you doing forwards and airtime spin tricks? If yes, mast base back for sure.
If the goal is simply go semi fast, be stable and comfy, make planing jibes and sharp jibes, jump and heli, old school mast position works just fine.

That's an interesting question.
The change of stance has come with our better understanding of how shortboards work.
The early shortboards tended to have the mast foot set well forwards and some even had a sliding track - and that was based on the false idea (inherited from longboards) that you needed to put the mast foot forwards to go upwind.
A later myth that some still believe is that the mastfoot goes forward to 'hold down the nose' .

What is a 'better' view is that the rig area is set over the buoyancy of any board and the sideways load of the rig is counteracted by the rail in the water and the fin area and fin 'lift'.
Any board planes fastest off its tail and so it makes sense to get rid of all that unnecessary board length up front. It also makes sense to stick the width and buoyancy under the weight of the sailor - and this is why our boards are now shorter and wider. (Although we still understand that boards can be TOO wide or too short in some conditions).

Once you have shifted the buoyancy back in the board the rig comes back too, but we don't want the old school mast rake because that would put the boom end and mast tip well behind the board.
Excessive mast rake also traps you under the rig, in that you have to move a lot further from blasting position when you want to make a turn. The upright stance allows faster changes in turns and other manoeuvres, and can be just as fast in a straight line. For wave sailing and freestyle you want the front foot strap surprisingly close to the mast if you want to get over the rig fast in a cranked bottom turn. The shorter hull lengths also turn in a much tighter arc.

Nowadays we also think about rig position in relation to the fin position - for example where we move the mast foot forwards a touch when the board starts railing or tailwalking on too long a fin.
On slalom gear, for-and-aft board trim is now controlled by fin rake and by the amount of downhaul applied to the slalom rig.
On wave and freestyle gear, for-and-aft trim is easily controlled by us leaning forwards more - now easier with the upright stance used.

None of this is to diss older gear. You can still have a lot of fun on older gear and there are plenty of great older boards you can pick up cheap at a fraction of the price of a new board.
The quality of your windsurf session will usually be a function of wind strength, waves, and sunshine, rather than being determined by the age of your gear.

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Basher said
The quality of your windsurf session will usually be a function of wind strength, waves, and sunshine, rather than being determined by the age of your gear.

BINGO !! It is what you make of it. Ive got boards of the same volume ranging from 90s to now. They go similar speeds but go about it differently.

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LeeD said..
Newer boards are great for your ego and your status among your peers.
Now, are ALL you guys fat boyz?
My 2001 Naish Freeride 85 liters at 255 length with a 33 cm tail OFO, goes faster and turns better at speed than ANY new board short of the new slalom/speed boards thar cost 2 grand+n
Cost of that FR? Free.

I'm fat & really ANY new board pfft.

Once it's properly windy say 25 knots it doesn't matter so much what you are riding, so as long as it's comfortable, you aren't swimming and you enjoy it. Anything over 70w like the rrd 122 will feel very different and unbalanced with short harness lines etc, but in lighter winds there are slightly narrower options in the freerace lines like fanatic jag/blast, severne fox etc which won't feel so alien.

Mistral edge was 94-95, conventional slalom & mast track wasn't far forward, long track anyway.

I hope what you refer as "old school" does'nt mean '80's to early '90's.
Maybe....but I meant no nose to 2016 slalom and go fast freeride gear.
Wave split off in the mid '90's to mast track back for turning, forward n backs, and keeping the nose up on steeps.
Freestyle emerged early 2000's, following wave gear.
My assumption was that 80 % of all windsurfers actually just go back and forth.
So 2 in 10 ride waves or actually perform new school aerials, those actually benefitting from track back.
The slalom pros and fast free riders use track well forward and CAN close the gap.
That leaves a whole bunch of progressing sailors right in the middle. Where should those sailors place their tracks?

My boards are all about 130 centre of track, thats on slaloms, speed, freewave & wave.

Old school I refer to as anything now before modern shapes so pre-2005??? Though I like to think of old school as gear from before I started in 1994.

I never go forward of 135. The old setup a board thing was set to 135, thats a good start for them but ideally just put it in middle since designers mostly put middle to match rocker etc. The edge centre mast track seems to be around middle of board which would be about 135-140.

132-135 is modern slalom and freerace.
128-131 is modern freestyle and wave.
So, rec freeride should be closer to the former, not the latter.
But feel free to choose anywhere you want if you get the combination of comfort, speed, good jibing, and still accommodate some tricks.

It's maybe interesting to go on the Fanatic boards site - because they now mark tuning measurements on their board mast tracks.
The freeride board has 120cms and the standard 125cms recommendation.
Whereas the Skate freestyle board has markings for 120cms or 115cms.

Just saying. This is how designs have moved on.
www.fanatic.com/windsurf/boards/wave-freestyle/skate-te

What's the mastfoot centre to tail measurement for a Mistral Edge?

My Skate is old, 2013. Rear strap fully back, fronts 1 hole back from very front giving a 22.5" wide stance.
Mast base centered only works for barely planing power, perfect for freestyle sailing.
To freeride, move mast track forwards 2.5". That would be 132cm from tail.

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Basher said..

What's the mastfoot centre to tail measurement for a Mistral Edge?

I just measured my old Missy Edge. 140 cm from mast foot to tail (and that is just shy of its rear-most setting. Looking at this video from a few years ago, the old girl seems pretty good to me.
Start about halfway through - the vid is nothing special to watch as its mast footage only, but you can see my stance and board trim pretty clearly. Windspeed on the day probably around 18 knots, Sail is a Koncept 6.6



Just found this one - it's like going through an old photo album! The Missy went around corners pretty nicely too.

Great footage Fangy!!
SHALLOW n SMOOTH...
Also blows the Flat Earth theory right out the window. NICE....

Looks like it's six inches deep .
Id have a spincter puc meltdowm .
Mesmorizing .

After an hour or so of reminiscing, I have found a stack of old videos, of very shallow water, very weedy water - where I am supposedly fin testing, but more truthfully just falling off the Missy Edge. So before I hijack this thread any further, the water depth is probably 50cm deep, for the most part...

Looks good Fangman-nice jibes. So is the "new" riding style more upright than you were in the video? Thats what everyone is telling me with the new rigs....

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RE57 said..
Looks good Fangman-nice jibes. So is the "new" riding style more upright than you were in the video? Thats what everyone is telling me with the new rigs....

RE57 I swap between a 2018 and 1995 board on a regular basis. There is definitely a different stance. For me, the 2018 board gives me the feeling that I am markedly more upright. The benefits of that have been shared by those above. The downside is I 'feel' far more vulnerable to a catapult. On the 1995 board, I am back and down and bogged on the arse of the board, just waiting for the wind pressure to build enough to lift everything up. My teammates on new boards will just fly past me. But there is a noticeable gear change when the 1995 board hits the 30 knots, and all of a sudden the drag drops off as the board gets up on its tail and boogies. By contrast, the 2018 board is already scooting along 10 knots sooner and like a silky automatic in its acceleration. However, once I am past that 30 knot mark , I reckon my position on both boards is getting closer; back, and pointing the front leg, flexing the rear, letting my weight do all the work. But this may be just me, I am 190 cms, 110 kgs and as dainty as a hippo in a ballet costume...who has a good time on a board that I picked up for nothing and the board I picked up for a few thousand. Smiles on Dials peeps

Nicely described.