Maui Project Project (Part 3)

Nice pictures from Mr Waite’s Cornish adventure. Particularly the one of Casey, he’s starting to show his personality a lot more now. I wonder if this blog will still be going when he’s into windsurfing?

Anyway, Maui Project Project part three is slightly overdue, since I got to try it out on the water at the weekend. I didn’t have long to sail, as I was booked into a posh spa hotel with the heavily pregnant Maria to celebrate imminent parenthood. I hope celebrate is the right word. Anyway, sulking worked wonders as ever, and I got to go sailing. And I think I lucked out, as Boscombe was working really well, with nice sized waves rolling in, holding up long enough for two or three hits. Low tide was helping too, and since it was the first day for weeks that wasn’t sub zero it just felt all spring-like and joyous.

It looked windy enough to go with a waveboard, and I even put the Evo on the beach, but couldn’t resist trying out the no nose project. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and did consider that it just might not work, might keep catching on the waves and throwing me forward into involuntary forwards. This would increase my forward count considerably, but would have to be called a failure nonetheless.

I shouldn’t have worried. It was immediately clear on the first run that the nose was still plenty high out of the water, and the way I cut it off, to maintain a rocker line to scoop out of trouble, meant even when you ploughed into a piece of chop heading out it always dug itself out of trouble.

I was always pretty convinced the back half of the board is the important bit, and this experience has confirmed that for me. The MP feels a good balance between a flat tail for speed and get up and go, and overly rockered turniness, possibly erring towards the flat speed end of the spectrum. It certainly seemed to get going easily and was good for jumping. For riding the tail is quite thick and it doesn’t have the lovely looseness of a waveboard, but still turned easier than my old RRD FSW 90.

I’d like to report on what difference cutting the front of the board off actually makes, but that would be to mistake this for a genuine experiment. Since I didn’t bother to sail it before getting the saw involved, I can’t say with any authority. But it did feel very compact and quite gunny when going along – I think that’s the relative narrowness compared to more modern boards. I certainly didn’t feel in any way restricted for what I wanted to do, which for me as ever is about 15% jumping and 65% waveriding and 20% not spending any money.

I hear that Clyde is after a 90 litre quad, and will be interested to have a go, as I get the sneaking feeling that this ten year old cut-down single fin will be every bit as capable as a £1500 2013 quad. I half hope I’m wrong about that as it would mean that windsurfing has really disappeared up its own ass this time, and I half hope I’m right as I can’t afford £1500 and will have to wait – oh, three years – before I can pick one up for next to nothing!

Pics wise I can only supply these, taken by Matt Wigham. It was raining by then and I forgot to mention the camera had a zoom. Nuff said really.