Windsurfing 1.01-Boards #2

Types of WIndsurf Boards:

With so many different types and sizes of windsurfing board available, the sport might seem just a little confusing at first encounter. Fortunately, it's not as complicated as it seems; the boards are all for fairly specific roles and the large majority are aimed at the more experienced sailor.

So with the choice for the first time sailor being fairly simple, we go into greater detail about the options for first time board buyers later in this supplement, but to ensure you have at least some idea as to what is going on when you’re next in a windsurfing shop or at a popular windsurfing location, here’s a very quick guide to the various types of boards available, starting with the biggest and working down in size.

When we say ‘size’, we actually mean either volume or width (these two quantities being very much inter-related). Once upon a time boards were categorised very much by length, but nowadays pretty much every board on the market is under 3m in length (great for carrying in the back of a hatchback car!).

First-Time/Family/Fun boards
Wide, stable and usually with a soft deck and some sort of daggerboard or centre fins to give more stability, these boards are designed as the ideal first time purchase, to offer good fun and performance in light-moderate wind conditions. These are wide, stable boards that are forgiving of lack of balance and clumsiness associated with beginner problems. They generally come with dagger boards or center fins, and have soft EVA foam decks to protect the board from damage.

Formula Boards
The modern race boards - up to a metre wide, and short. They’re designed for planing racing upwind and downwind, carrying sails of up to 12.5m (i.e. huge!). These boards are designed to be raced around a course and deliver maximum speed in the lightest possible wind. They were designed for a very specific job: Carry enormous sails, plane in next to nothing and go upwind and downwind competitively well. They were not designed for beginners even if they are wide and voluminous.


Recreational Short Boards
We then have a huge hotch-potch of designs covering the requirements of all-round recreational sailing in planing winds - many of the bigger ones giving a reasonable modicum of light wind performance too. These boards span a wide range of volumes and widths, and within this section of the market there are numerous sub-groups and classes focussing on specific sail sizes or wind strengths (as described below), but the boundaries between these groups are very grey and ever changing. Fortunately, you won’t need to worry about making sense of it all for a while as your first time board will do you very nicely for your first season or so - when the time does come to consider purchasing a board more orientated towards performance in stronger winds we recommend you read our regular BOARDS Magazine tests to find out what the best solution will be for your particular requirements. However, just so you don’t get too baffled by the jargon, the three basic types of recreational short boards can be summarised as follows:

Freeride Boards:
Most of the larger designs in the ‘recreational short board’ group are designed to offer ‘Freeride’ performance to at least some degree - it’s a phrase you’ll hear very often in windsurfing. Freeriding refers to simply ‘blasting’ back and forth at speed, which is basically what the vast majority of windsurfers do for the vast majority of their sailing time. This term is also used to describe most of the larger non-specialist ranges that are appropriate to sails above 6.5 m² and/or to intermediates who want a board for marginal-medium winds. In other words, for the vast majority the term Freeride is the most relevant board for progressing on from beginner to intermediate and for carrying 6.0-8.5 sails.


A good freeride board is therefore one that offers good control, a fast, comfortable ride, good/easy cornering, and the ability to cope with a wide range of wind and water conditions. Slalom boards are essentially competition freeride boards in that they too are for fast straight line sailing, but tweaked to offer maximum speed, at the loss of some user-friendliness. (In simplest terms, they’re usually narrower!).

Freestyle Boards
It sounds similar to Freeride, but it’s actually almost the opposite. A good freestyle board is one which offers a manoeuvrable platform for doing tricks on. Most recreational short boards have some degree of freestyle performance built in - and while you may not be thinking about trying tricks just yet, a prime requirement of a good freestyle board is that it is very stable, which is in itself of huge benefit to the inexperienced sailor. So freestyle boards do have a high relevance to intermediates, and can work well as a first purchase in this smaller (110L and less) board size.

Wave Boards
Windsurfing in waves, swell or just big chop is extremely exciting, and thus most competent windsurfers with access to coastal sailing will have a ‘wave board’ in their quiver for those days when the swells are rolling in. Or just for when it’s really really windy - to deliver maximum manoeuverability wave boards are the smallest boards in common use, and thus also offer the best control when it’s all just a bit mad out there. Sailing a wave board is the most technically demanding area of the sport however, so it isn’t something you should be thinking about yet - although if you’re really keen, you could be at a suitable ability level for it in just a couple of seasons...

Freewave Boards:
Because most competent windsurfers enjoy more than one of these three types of sailing, many boards are designed to cater for more than one of the groups. So you may well come across boards categorised as

"freestyle-wave", "ride & style (i.e.; freeride & freestyle) and has the maneuverability of a freestyle board with the reaction time of a wave board. This type of board was introduced into the market in 2003 and has been full steam ahead ever since.

Some parts of this article are Courtesy of Boards Magazine UK