First sail today on my RRD and man I'm gonna love it.

92L
5.6 powered up well but not overpowered
94kg rider
cross to slightly onshore
waist to shoulder hi waves - very small for this spot.

First impression was:

Does not get up and boogie like the older 2007 - 2009 Wavecults. The planing threshold was similar to my 2008 85L WaveCult. Fits with the fact that this new model is the same shape as the WaveCult Quad.

Not as fast (once up and planing) as the older WaveCults were, but still has the trademark RRD chop handling ability and smooth ride.
I love that vee up front and not too much concave in the mid section. It handles chop!!! Many of the new school boards bounce all over the place and give me sore knees but this is sweet. Chop does not exist. Typical RRD smoooooth ride!

Does not go upwind as well as I'd expected, but since this is the start of the season I've been on my RRD FSW 100L with 28cm upright fin and also out of practice, so I'd say upwind ability is average for a modern single fin waveboard. I did expect a bit better when it has a 24cm K-One fin, which is onshore oriented.
May have just been me so I'll see....
Will try it with a 23cm DTL fin and report back.

Gybing - mega smooth, and not as sinky at the end as I expected with the volume distribution being quite forward and the narrow thin tail.
In fact you don't notice that thin tail at all - until you're on a wave where it is a good thing

On a wave: I'd heard from a few sources they turn well off the front foot or back foot and to be honest I didn't believe that. It is like the manufacturers' claims every year that their boards are faster to plane, and looser blah blah.
Well after sailing it I reckon they are right! Turns well off the front foot and maintains speed in the bottom turn well. Not as much as a dedicated DTL board, but still pretty damn good. Nice smooth secure bottom turn that never feels bouncy.
BUT off the back foot is really where this board shines.
Make the drop down the wave, start turning with your weight forward in classic down the line style and then change your mind cos the section is real close to you? No problem, stand on the tail, drive off the fin and the board pivots and goes vertical real quick with no loss of speed.
I was astounded - I have never ridden a waveboard where you can do that and it does not bog down!!
And this is with the mast track in centre (at 135cm) - with it at the rear for an onshore setting, geez I reckon it will do the tightest bottom turns ever! ... with no chance of bouncing out still nice and secure

The only downside to wave riding is it won't tail slide on the top turn like a quad or twin. You do have to push it reallly hard in the top turn and I was getting sore legs from doing so! Well I don't really care! Given the draggy feel and skatey nature / bouncy feel on chop with quads, I'd pick this any day. If you want to tail slide the top turn, well too bad you'll just have to leave the turn later and get the fin out the back of the wave. Old school style - and that is harder to do so you'll feel more satisfied that it was all you, not the 4 fins lol

Jumps beautiful as you'd expect with a single fin giving more drive up the face, and with 60cm of width for plenty of lift. I found it a little spongier on landing and harder to plane out of jumps than the older Cults, but only the tiniest bit. It was a nice feeling in the air, just seemed to jump at a nice attitude all by itself.


In short if you loved the older WaveCults (2008 ish age) you will also love this. You may need to work a tiny bit harder to plane but it is worth it for the wave ride!

great review, how it should be done

Still working on this upwind thing.
I think it is partly me, and partly that the fin needs to be run a little further back in the box than I am used to - especially with larger sails in marginal conditions.

I'll add a bad thing too though- I've found the rear strap uses four screws. Great for strength and anti twist but you can't offset the rear strap if you're always riding on the same tack

I don't know why they do it, there are anti-twist washers under the front straps that work just fine. If combined with a toothed washer under the screw head like Starboard's system they don't twist, so 4 screws per strap is redundant.
I'd rather have the adjustability

on our last sail together you definitely seemed to be struggling to get the thing upwind.
Something was wrong as i could see you heading off at 10 degrees or so less than the other sailors and having to do massive tacks just to get to the bottom of the break.

try running a straight line over the rocker under the board - and see where the mast foot sits relative to any entry transitions.

I had a similar first sail on my chopper so Simon Hurrey the tech lord got out the straight edge and we found the front 2/3 of my mast track sat on top of the nose entry rocker. Which means board unbalanced if you threw the base anywhere in this zone.

With super short noses you have less margin for error on track placment



I moved the mast track back next sail and the board was utterly transformed - it was like the difference between having weed on your fin and it suddenly being gone.

The Starboard Evos had a similar set up - which is why so many crew reckon they were slow yet so many riders were killing it in comps on them - if you got the mast base possy wrong it simply killed all the board's performance and they were unpleasant to sail. Get it right and kapow.

the manufacturer just needed to do a better job of educating the customer on correct tuning.

Hopefully its the same for your RRD Mark. Good luck getting the board up to speed.

Thanks Matt glad somebody noticed, very frustrating getting one wave to eveyone else's three
( and then getting dropped in on when I did get one [}:)] grr)

Part of it was was it was a barely planing day for me with a bit of wind shadow in the break so from the inside gybe to just past the break I was already 30m downwind of you

I saw you post re: mast track vs rocker in another thread and tried it but could not make head or tails of it.
On the RRD it is just all curve from one end to the other, there is no long straight in front of the finbox and suddenly the nose rocker starts.

In the pics below the mast track area is marked in tape. I was running in the middle of the box (135cm) or a little forward (137cm ish).
Maybe I need to just try way forward and way back and see what happens? Unless I am missing something with the straight edge below...?

try the mast track all the way back and see what happens

... And try moving your footstraps back as well

Moved the mast base back to about 132-133cm and it seems to have done it - even when going down a fin size it still felt better and went upwind better.
Hard to say today due to gustiness in a frontal wind, but I have good feelings.
WTF is with fronts in November BTW?.....

Nebbs I have straps right forward, as being a fat bastard I can still load up the fin plenty and it just felt wrong being back, plus reduced the front foot steering. I may try again once I have it tracking upwind well.

how many people have taken a straight edge to their boards since reading this?

Now it goes upwind BIG TIME

Mast base at 132cm makes it come alive

Holder you legend

Fair enough it was in more wind than the first few sessions but I also had smaller fin, and more forward in the box.