After having a good scare sailing in shallow waters I decided early spring that I'd only be sailing deep water so I traded my beloved Tabou Thunders (absolutely fantastic, deceptively quick and only slightly aesthetically challenged) for the new Rocket Wide.

The main reason being, a freeride board will be easier to deal with the junky conditions in the middle of the Mandurah estuary sacrificing a bit of short run pace for long run comfort (and overall pace).

Have ridden both boards now for a month (10 sessions in total) and I'm a bit embarrassed to say I've only just started to spend some time tuning the wee beasties.

I can't really complain, as each time I've gone out with good intentions of doing some tuning I plug it all together hit the water and blast around for an hour or two having a ball only to realize once again I've not done any tuning.

It just seems to work well.

Impressions.

Up wind and down wind are great better than what I've used previously, so much so that I've sailed 5km upwind on the estuary from Novara up to the Lipton(Kite Beach carpark) for a lark on a day with a crappy breeze and had a good down wind run on the way back.

Both the boards have a lot of "glide" and seems to go for a long time under-powered across some big lulls which we've had this month.

Both boards get up on the plane real easy with passive method, they are at first a bit bizarre as they get going earlier the further you are back on the board, just point the board down wind a bit and get the your feet onto the foot pads and it's away we go.

I tend to do 7-8km runs trying to do at least an hour but sailing as long as I can without stopping, the boards are not tiring, the concaves do their thing, the foot pads are good so that my knees and ankles haven't been sore from belting through the chop, that said although the footpads are comfortable another 1 to 2mm thickness would make this even more comfortable (hint hint Mr Tabou).

Gybing, I've dropped less than a handful of gybes in this month (which for me is exceptional), is not as good as the Thunders which made me look a lot better than reality (ie competent), I've just got to suss out a different technique for gybing these boards compared to what the Thunders let me get away with. This is basically just learning to gybe a bigger arc as I'm pinching it to tight at the moment.

All in all these boards are well deserving of the Rocket (Tabou) name easy and a pleasure to ride with a great turn of pace.

One happy muppet

http://www.tabou-boards.com/boards/2015/boards/rocket_wide







The Red does go well with my fur

Nice review much appreciated as info is scarce on these boards. I find wider boards to be most useful in gusty conditions i.e. almost every direction on lake maquarie. the extra width allows you to maximise glide(like you said) and get better gust response that makes these gusty conditions a bit easier to deal with.

I've always had this belief that narrower is faster but after owning a 79 wide tabou speedster I'm starting to think that it's the one foot off width that is the more relevant measurement these days. My speedster 79 is only slightly slower than my 68 wide JP slalom IX and it's way easier to ride.

One very handy tip for gybing I learnt from sailing my SLW 90 is to move your back hand back along to boom a fair bit when you gybe. I don't know the exact science of it but it does wonders when gybing my SLW 90 and is almost a necessity when gybing my formula board.

What size boards did you get and what's the biggest sails you would be comfortable using on them?

G'day Cluffy

I'm using NP RS Racing's on the boards

108L 73 wide I've used 6.4 & 7.8m recon it will take the 8.6as well.
128L 84 wide I've used 7.8, 8.6 & 9.5m
According to Tabou I can go smaller on both, just haven't had the conditions.

Myself I like the wider boards after reading and article where Peter Volwater advised that high wind choppier days he goes for a wider board rather than narrower as it just rock n rolls over the bumps rather than take a beating like a small board, it was an eye opener and a revelation for me.

The gybing issues are that the Thunders gybed on auto pilot, just running to tight, tonight extended the radius and got some nice ones.

Select to expand quote

elmo said..

Myself I like the wider boards after reading and article where Peter Volwater advised that high wind choppier days he goes for a wider board rather than narrower as it just rock n rolls over the bumps rather than take a beating like a small board, it was an eye opener and a revelation for me.

I've only recently come to that realisation. Why did it take us so long to find that out?