My very first impression of this board was that it kind of reminded me of my Tabou 3S. with it's curvy outline and scoopy nose rocker with a flat run through the tail and generous double concaves, the hawk has a little bit of a freestyle wave vibe about it.I wonder if the design is influenced by the sucess of the FSW genre? The next thing I noticed was the heavily domed deck. I'm not overly fond of domed decks but I understand the need for it. if you want the best of everything the answer is you can't have it. There's always a trade off somewhere and the high volume and fine rails of the hawk require a domed deck. It turned out to be not as much of an issue with a bigger board like the 113 hawk as it is on my Tabou 3S's. In fact I got used to it almost imediately.

Looking at the info printed on the board I notice fanatic claims a sail range of 5.0 to 8.0 metre. I think that's a bold statement but it's halfway to being true so far. I have ridden the board with my NCX 8.0 metre and to my suprise it felt great, even with the standard 38 cm fin. I thought the 38 cm fin would be way to small for the 8.0 but it turned out to be ok. Not perfect, but quite usable. One of the first things I did when I got the board home was measure the tail at the one foot mark and it came in at a slender 43 cm, compared to the 66cm overall width. I became concerned at this point as by my best guess I would only be able to run a max fin size of 41-42 cm based on that tail width. My concerns turned out to be groundless as after using the 8.0 metre in powered up conditions I would maybe go up to a 39cm fin for the 8.0 but for for my 82 kilos any bigger seems unnecessary. I have also ridden the Hawk 113 with a 7.5 NCX and the 38cm fin was actually feeling a tiny bit to big with this sail. Not from the point of view of being out of control, more a case of feeling unnecessary and a smaller fin would do. I plan on running 7.0 and 7.5 NCX's with this board and I'm thinking of a couple of 35 and 37 select freerides to go with it. There's no need to over fin this board. it simply doesn't need it. It's a very easy board to get on the plane using passive planing techniques only. As for running a 5.0 metre sail on this board, well I suppose it's possible but why would you want to. It's not an issue for me anyway I'll be on my tabou 3S 86 when it's 5.0 metre weather. Personally the smallest sail I would use on this board would probably be my 6.5 NCX but more likely the 7.0 NCX will be the smallest.

Speed and gybes, the Hawk is ok at the former and excellent at the latter. I think the supplied choco 38 cm fin is letting the package down a bit actually as I was having some spin out issues and one of the points of these types of boards is you can push them as hard as you like. The problem is after a while I was getting a bit frustrated with the fin and started easing off a bit. That's no good at all as this board can be pushed very hard indeed both in a straight line and through turns. I was able to reduce the spin out issues a lot by moving the mast foot forward about an inch, I was running it in the middle with the 8.0 metre and this turned out to be a bit to far back. The board felt more balanced and comfortable in the new position. In my defense it was only the second time on the board and I don't have it dialed in yet. Speed wise, the hawk is nothing special on a tight reach but if you pull away a bit and lock it in the Hawk accelerates nicely and puts on a bit of pace.

The Hawk pops up and rides nice and high on the water and rolls up onto the tail for a nice and small wetted surface. This board doesn't feel loggy at all like some freeride boards do sometimes. Despite this, the Hawk is incredibly smooth in chop and maintains it's own trim with only a token amount of input from the rider. This board feels like it's on auto pilot half the time. For intermediates transitioning into smaller and higher performance boards this is gold. Fanatic have done a fantastic job in this regard.

Carve gybing the Hawk is also great fun. I found that the rails had just enough bite in power gybes to give a gratifying knifey feeling while simultaniously being smooth and controlled. For people looking to take their gybes to a higher level, once again this is gold.

Last but not least, I love the paint job. It's my favourite paint job ever. Some boards look like an air strike on a paint factory but The Hawk bamboo comes across as bright and stylish. And speaking of bamboo, I've always wanted a wooden deck board. This is my first and I love it. The baboo deck feels extremely impact resistant. I have no qualms about jumping this board.

Sorry about the wall of text but it's a great board and there's a lot to tell.

Great revue and vid Cluffy, well done!!!
I love my Fanatics Falcons but haven't ridden a Hawk, they sure have changed over the years.
Very interested in your Gopro harness extension mount. Could you please PM me.
Cheers,
Larko.

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ka43 said..
Great revue and vid Cluffy, well done!!!
I love my Fanatics Falcons but haven't ridden a Hawk, they sure have changed over the years.
Very interested in your Gopro harness extension mount. Could you please PM me.
Cheers,
Larko.

Thanks mate! After a falcon the hawk might be a bit dull but it's nice to have in certain wind directions on lake mac as the cross chop can get quite bad on busy days.

Here's the link to buy the K4 mount
www.k4fins.com/k4-fins-shop/

If you can possibly afford it I recommend getting the gopro hero4 silver to use with it. The reason for this is the super wide view of the hero4. Even with the short tube you get a good shot with the super wide. I found that with the hero 3 on the short tube you still get an ok shot but the feeling of speed is lost from the video due to the small amount of the water that is in view. The down side of the long tube is that it wobbles a lot at times, as you can see from the video. I can't wait to get some wave sailing footage with the super wide. Pity I only wave sail about once every 2 years lol.

Enjoyed the video, and the expletive I think I heard after landing that airborne moment half way through

those ncx sails look nice too

Great and detailed review!

As for fins give some thought to using race fins instead of FSW types. I run Black project race fins on all my FSW boards now under 5 - 7.5 metre sails and they are far better that the curvy FSW types. They grip better, go faster, gybe better and spin out less. I sail almost exclusively in rough water and would not go back to curvy fins now. The designs have come a long way.

Great review.

I think fins depends on the board, I didnt like my slalom fins in my futura, swapped to freeslam & it was much better. Found similar with freewaves & use exclusively bump & jump/wave fins there. I ride both different to slalom board though.

Hawks are a very nice board & look great in bamboo.

Great detailed review Cluffy. Gotta love a nice plug-and-play free-ride board, and the new Hawks sound like a winner. Make sure you bring it up on October. It should be a sweet board here on those 12-16 knot days. Oh, and bring the fancy back camera thingy. Keep to check that out too.

Hey Cluffy:

I LOVE your decriptions, videos et al.
However, your JP SLW description and videos - what happened ??
First the videos went private and then i cannot find the discussion

What happened ??
A fan,
joe

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ka43 said..
Great revue and vid Cluffy, well done!!!
I love my Fanatics Falcons but haven't ridden a Hawk, they sure have changed over the years.
Very interested in your Gopro harness extension mount. Could you please PM me.
Cheers,
Larko.

Thanks for the review, Cluffy. The Hawk looks like a great board.

Hey Larko. I just picked up a Wizmount backpack: boardtests.com/2014/09/wizmount-gopro-mount-test/ Haven't tried it on the water yet, but it goes well on the motorbike. I'll give it a whirl this weekend if the forecast holds and post a vid.

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mkseven said..
Great review.

I think fins depends on the board, I didnt like my slalom fins in my futura, swapped to freeslam & it was much better. Found similar with freewaves & use exclusively bump & jump/wave fins there. I ride both different to slalom board though.

Hawks are a very nice board & look great in bamboo.

Yeah, a lot depends I guess on your style of sailing, and Cluffy will know best what he likes.

I am a back foot sailor and sail everything off the fin all the time, even on big days at Redcliffe with 1-2m swells. My boards are a selection of free ride and FSW types but I find personally that the FSW style fins are too draggy - feels like I'm sailing an accordion.

Thanks for the input on fins fellas. I though seriously about a couple of select S1's for the hawk but I have some slalom gear that I'm going to keep so I went for 35-37-39 select edge freeslams.

Joe my old youtube and vimeo vids are gone but I have a couple of vids on my current vimeo page. One is the hawk vid and the other is some footage of my patrik formula II with fairly mental downwind burst in it. Well it felt mental anyway lol. Don't forget there's 70cm's of fin down there that most of the time has it's own agenda. I also have a pretty good vid of my 3S 86 in some stormy weather but I haven't encoded it yet.

Phil, don't worry I'll bring everything except the formula gear to SWR. I hope we get a bit more wind that 16 knots another 25 knot day would be awesome

Great review on the Hawk Cluffy.
I'm interested to know if you set out to get the hawk or was it in a group of boards that you narrowed to the hawk?
What was the determining factors?
I am currently going through this process of elimination - too many boards to choose from but the hawk is towards the top.
cheers

nice choice on the edge freeslams, just be careful not to kick the trailing edge those babies are sharp. Very aptly named fins.

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spanishwog said..
Great review on the Hawk Cluffy.
I'm interested to know if you set out to get the hawk or was it in a group of boards that you narrowed to the hawk?
What was the determining factors?
I am currently going through this process of elimination - too many boards to choose from but the hawk is towards the top.
cheers

Mainly I was looking for a board to fill the medium wind gap below my 3S 106 and also something that had a bit more of a slalom feel to it that I could ride when it was to rough to enjoy slalom gear. I didn't consider the 3S 116 for this reason. I dropped into Windsurfnsnow and I was dithering about a Starboard atom IQ 110 and a JP magic ride 111. The atom IQ looked awesome but was to wide at 75 cm. I knew the wind range I had in mind was to high for 75 wide. The magic ride was narrower at 72cm but still to wide and I didn't get a good vibe off the shape of the magic ride. I've heard the magic rides are a fantastic board but I wanted 68 wide maximum and something with a bit more of the slalom gene pool in it. I could see the hawk 125's in the rack but 125 was to big. Then the sales person mentioned he had a hawk 113 out the back still in the box would I like to see it? Yes please. 66 wide, about 110 litres and a bit of nose rocker with plenty of double concave. Perfect. I think the atom IQ and magic ride are a different genre to the hawks because of the width and I'm still not completely sold on the concept. I've heard these boards gybe beautifully but I think the hawk would smash them through a power gybe. The atom IQ had quite a flat rocker line and looked like it would go like the clappers but yeah.. I like gybing the narrower boards.

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mkseven said..
nice choice on the edge freeslams, just be careful not to kick the trailing edge those babies are sharp. Very aptly named fins.

Thanks for the tip mate much appreciated!! the 4 cm gash in my heel that my techtonics falcon gave me is just about healed. I'll definitely be sanding those freeslams back a bit.

Thanks Cluffy, great review!

thanks again for the insight Cluffy.

Great review and a great board, I got the 2012 hawk 110 a few years ago and love it for the same reasons.

I had a nice session this arvo with a 7.0 ncx and the select 35 cm edge freeslam. The combo worked very nicely indeed. I thought perhaps I was going overboard with 3 fins but it seems not as the 35 cm turned out to be spot for the 7.0 . I'm still waiting for the 37cm to show up but it should be perfect for the 7.5 . My suspicions about the Choco 38 seem to be correct as the Hawk was definitely better with the select fin. Zero spinout issues despite loading up the fin as much as my limited abilities allowed.

I also need to revise my assessment of the speed potential of this board. With the 7.0 and 35 fin it was really motoring along. It's definitely a rocket ship with the right fin in it. Still a piece of cake to sail though. The hawk did precisely the job I bought it for today which was blasting around in choppy conditions. I've got tomorrow off (RDO) I might put on the gps and see how it goes.

I have had a 013 111 bamboo hawk for a while and had a few sessions now. Really needs a 6.5 or bigger sail. Started off the first few times on a 5.8 koncept and wasn't real impressed. But soon as had a 6.6 on it was sweet. I have gone to single back strap as I gybe better and only sail it in the bay where its rougher.
The one time on the lake at LG done 35 easily.
Have a 111 falcon as well but they are completely different boards . would be on the hawk before the falcon.
Hawk is surplus to my needs now as finally got my old favorite F2 back from being repaired.

Here's some footage of the 2015 NCX 7.0 and the select 35cm. I thought it was worth putting up to show the extra pace the board can put on with the gear dialled in a bit better. Sorry about the glary picture I've been having glare issues with overcast skies and I'm still learning how to filter it out. By the way my oldest NCX is my 2011 6.5 and it's exactly the same sail as the 2015. If it's not broken don't fix it I guess.

Had a go on a 2011 / 110L Hawk today in an epic SW (gusting up to 30knots) with a 4.7m freeride sail.
So the conditions on Moreton Bay were obviously not conducive to the board - choppy and as gusty as, but I wanted to give it a crack as was looking at buying it.
I was surprised how nicely it went through the chop. Had a couple of goes at jumping it over some larger chop and went ok.
The thing that surprised me the most was that I just plugged my rig in and away I went - it was comfortable and was as quick as smaller boards that were on the water. This could have been due to the amount of wind and my comfortable sailing position being close to the current owners but I didn't need to change anything during the session. It would have been nice to give it a go on a less epic day with larger gear (which is what I want it for) but thems the brakes.
I decided not to buy it as there was too much wear and tear including pin bubbles in the gel coat on the bottom of the board, so I thought I would need to upgrade again in 12 to 24 months.
So I guess I will just keep looking or save my pennies and buy a brand spanka!!!
cheers

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spanishwog said...
Had a go on a 2011 / 110L Hawk today in an epic SW (gusting up to 30knots) with a 4.7m freeride sail.
So the conditions on Moreton Bay were obviously not conducive to the board - choppy and as gusty as, but I wanted to give it a crack as was looking at buying it.
I was surprised how nicely it went through the chop. Had a couple of goes at jumping it over some larger chop and went ok.
The thing that surprised me the most was that I just plugged my rig in and away I went - it was comfortable and was as quick as smaller boards that were on the water. This could have been due to the amount of wind and my comfortable sailing position being close to the current owners but I didn't need to change anything during the session. It would have been nice to give it a go on a less epic day with larger gear (which is what I want it for) but thems the brakes.
I decided not to buy it as there was too much wear and tear including pin bubbles in the gel coat on the bottom of the board, so I thought I would need to upgrade again in 12 to 24 months.
So I guess I will just keep looking or save my pennies and buy a brand spanka!!!
cheers

Good to see, they are great boards. If I was to have only one board the hawk 110 would be it.

A bit of an eye opener today! I tried the 6.5 NCX in a strong at times westerly today and it felt fantastic. Better than the other sails even. What a blast, big overpowered bear aways anytime you like and who cares about the chop and some laydowns gybes that would make my slalom board jealous. It felt awesome and the bloody thing was going like a rocket. I wish to modify my original comment about the speed of the 113 hawk being ok, it's way better than ok it's bloody quick.

Here's todays numbers gpsteamchallenge.com.au/sailor_session/show?date=2015-05-10&team=9 . For a freeride board in chop that will do me!

One thing I failed to mention in the original post was that the 2015 hawks are a new shape. I've had it next to the older model and they are still very similar. Only a few subtle differences the most notable being the outline.

Sounds like your getting a good feel for the Hawk, Cluffy. I reckon you'll get 35 knots from her in the right location. My Carve (very simular specs to your Hawk) has a few more knots in her than I've achieved (33.5 so far), just about the right gust in the right spot I guess. One thing smart from Fanatic that Starboard don't do, and that's make a smaller model than 111 litres. That 99 Hawk could be brilliant all-rounder.

PS- What fin were you using today?

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PhilSWR said..
Sounds like your getting a good feel for the Hawk, Cluffy. I reckon you'll get 35 knots from her in the right location. My Carve (very simular specs to your Hawk) has a few more knots in her than I've achieved (33.5 so far), just about the right gust in the right spot I guess. One thing smart from Fanatic that Starboard don't do, and that's make a smaller model than 111 litres. That 99 Hawk could be brilliant all-rounder.

PS- What fin were you using today?

33.5 is motoring for a freeride Phil. I need quite flat water for that kind of speed. The fin I was using was a new select edge freeslam 35cm. I bought it for the 7 metre but it worked fine with the 6.5 as well.