A while back Martin Van Meurs approached me to see if I was interested in designing him some speed boards. I was stoked that he asked me as I just love designing stuff, and now the first 3 protos have been built in his factory in Poland. The graphics are just a place holder he did for these proto's, the team will work up something else more inline with his stepped boards for production. Main thing is to get them on the water and test them which he and his lads will be doing as soon as Huey co-operates.
I hope they love them (pardon the pun)

Some images on Martins facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/martin.vanmeurs.9

Thanks Mr Love (too many Martins!!!)

They look awesome Martin(s)!

Thanks Red, I would personally like to see something a bit more adventurous on the graphics so will throw some ideas around once I have got all the sail designs to the factory. Simple is good though and Martin has some great guy's on his Team.
I would love to see the boards in the flesh after spending so many hours buried in the computer on the designs, making sure every curve is super sweet and tweaking things to 100th of mm to get the surfaces as fair as possible. Fortunately I have some pretty powerful tools to analyse the surface quality and 25 years of experience in surface development so even though I haven't seen the end result full size my confidence is pretty high in a quality outcome.
Keen for the guy's to get them on the water and hear what they think.

They look good Martin

Martin is too modest by calling in a humble way for new speed boards. The first pre production Martin Love designs are nearly hitting the waters and I am stoked we are building them. The first line of small boards to me are perfect for conditions like Lake George, our strand Horst, Swedish Weed Speed spots or other flat water venues. Obviously the smallest one is great for super fast runs off the wind. We will find out shortly how well they will do.

The first boards have just arrived in Holland and look great! Martin has put some very interesting design ideas in the boards and with a few tweaks on our side as a start we will be testing as soon as the wind hits. As for the looks I happen to like the clean white shape with just the logo's we use on these proto's a lot but obviously we will come up with the graphics. Perhaps two lines will be coming, one with the clean custom feel to it and one with the look and feel of a pure production board. As Martin is a designer for sure we will listen to his ideas in this regards as well but we've got time. Lets first test the boards and find out what's most important: the sailing characteristics.

First and foremost the finishing is important as translating the extremely smooth rockerlines and subtle V/Double concave/Bevel set-up (current speed line set-up) into perfectly finished boards is not something super simple.The production process we have been setting up the last one and a half year has resulted in a highly sophisticated way to make the boards and for instance the finbox, rockercontrol and other important parts have been thought through by my partner Chris. He has been deeply involved with the winning Volvo Ocean Race boats ABN AMRO and Sony Ericson. He also has a background in Formula One and was composite expert on the Royal Huisman Shipyard in Holland. Amongst other prpjects he worked on this incredible boat; the Meteor.

http://www.royalhuisman.com/en/yacht135.html

We are working hard to get shapes in for Luderitz plus some bigger sizes are on the agenda. We are aiming for the following line of Lovemachines to start out with: 40/44/49/54/60/70/83. There is some interesting work ahead of us.

Great news, Mr. Love!

I hope they find a windier place than Holland to test them soon.

great team effort considering I imagine the correspondence issues , what a combo with the MXR fins

Great stuff guys, seems the speed sailing community is getting spoilt for choice.

Will these designs be available in Australia via Cheeky Monkey?

Hi Moby, Way too early to talk about boards being available here I don't know what Martins plans are, I am sure he would like to at some stage. As far as Stuart is concerned yes I intend to keep working with him, he is making me a board at the moment a 70 cm wide slalom board with a bit of an experimental bottom shape.

I will have the middle one please. I love the tight pintail they each have.....look fast sitting there

They look a bit more pintail than they really are, you will see the guys have painted the side of the tail black so it looks narrower in that top view. They are actually quite wide at 450 off so that exagerates the pintail look, alot of width to midway between the straps then tapering quickly to a narrow tail.

This is a bike developed by the Dutch Tech University and Wim Schermer. We will make parts of this bike in our factory if it's being ratified for production after prototyping testing phase. Note the modern shape with the hips Martin is talking about. Air resistance of the body is extremely low, in fact that low that it is 30-35% faster at the same watts than other covered production bikes now on the market.

In windsurfing a no-nose is a no go as the past has proven but Martin's remarks on the need for power in given parts of the shape and release at other parts is important I feel. It's a joy to talk with him through e-mail. I am sure in near future many nice designs from his hand and brain will hit the market. The 70 and 83 coming up, I like a lot as well. Next to these shallow water solutions for GPS speed, we want to bring open ocean blasters that if it's up to me, run against the current wider and thinner trend which is fuelled by the PWA riders who use insanely large sailsizes and need power underfoot to cope with the lulls at the buoy.

We deliberately focussed on the pinny tail and hips to show where the shapes differentiate themselves from other shapes the most. Like mentioned before I think the shapes will fly on spots like Lake George or Horst. The near future will give us answers for sure.

The wingers on my OES speed board are probably more related to the image Martin has posted above. They provide a clean release edge and prevent any water sticking to the rail as it curves towards the tail and creating drag. The new boards don't have wingers.

The bike doesn't have either. It's just the computer image. I will send a picture of the plug taken from behind to show more in detail and then the comparison with the 54 gets more clear. I think it's just funny to see the resemblance and idea behind the shaping process.

Can't manage to upload the actual picture but if you would translate this shape into a board it would be a no nose like we know from the past. What I like about Martin's idea is to keep the power to the far back and then release it and combine it with a straight outline for control. I will try to upload a picture of an old bike to compare it with the new one which has got 35% less air resistance. If I am boring people I will stop as biking has got little to do with windsurfing if you look at things from one side but to me sometimes it's refreshing to do some cross over research and comparisons. It can help one to get out of the box we are forcing ourselves into by simply following eachother.

News from the Netherlands is that they float. Job done onto the next project

They sure float. Tomorrow next test. This time hopefully with the right sailsize and then I will report. First impression: impressive! If you want to go on. A PWA line, a freerace and possibly also a freeride line Martin. that should keep you busy :-)

KA still making fins? Other than that the board looks great!

No, the KA speed fins are no more I am afraid. Thanks for the nice words re the boards.