Hiya,

I'm looking add to my early 90s mistral explosion 285cm 120L and late 90s mistral Naish 8'7" 89L. I'm 70ish kg. So far my new sails are north natural 5.4 and 6.2. Bigguns are currently old pryde V8 6.5 and 7.6 but they may go in the bin like my old 5 and 6. Littleuns are pryde 3.5, 4 and 4.5 which probably won't.

I (hope I) will be doing mostly middle wind blasting and bump and jump and getting me gybes nailed down when I can get planing easily and nonplaning freestyle when I can't. I'd rather stick hot needles in me eyes than sail bigger than an 8m sail.

So my question is do you reckon that a new or newer freestyle or ride (eg summat like a Gecko 112) would double as my nonplaning freestyle practice board and my lower wind planing bump and jump board or should I get a big monster like a starboard go for freestyle practice and a dedicated lower wind planing board?

Any specific recommendations for me to check out myself would be greatly appreciated people.

Added: forgot to say my fin quiver is powerbox

Have a look at Tabou cool rider. (Powerbox) PaddyMac has been recommending it as an excellent board for the sort of use you are thinking of. If you keep the width at around 32in you will find it is a pretty good board to paddle around on as well.

I'm 75kg, and my 101L freestyle board works fine for sub-planing mucking around. Bigger board would be easier for sure but 100L is plenty of float to do some backwinded sailing, helis, upwind360s etc. Gecko 112L would work fine for dual purposes.

Thanks guys, so it sounds like I'm not talking total rubbish. ;-) I popped into SHQ in Melbourne to looks at some boards. They stock JP and Tabou. Had a long chat with the owner and really thought about what my most rewarding thing would be to get out of this board. I hate to be a total cliche but it is rock solid planing gybes and duck gybes. So the 2014 JPMagic ride has caught my eye. It should still be stable enough for sail work. Any comments anyone?

I ride on the bay. I'm 74kg.

I'm an advanced bump and jump.

I love my JP fsw 101 carbon 2012. I use it to practice light wind tacks and it's hard. And I plane out of 90% of my jibes. It's a great bay board if you are getting one board.

I also have a starboard go 170l. It's so easy to do everything on that it can be a bit boring.

If I got two boards it would be :
Jp fsw 90ish litre and
Starboard futura 115 ish litre

The futura is amazing read any review