the gun paddlers are away so I though I would take the maliko 26" board to training today
pretty good speed but not jaw dropping. its lot faster than it looks
its the ride in the wash that really impressive. stable and handles it all. wash rides awesome and deals with the side stuff.
paddling in the wash ride even at sprint it kept going without digging in, or pearling. nor did it drop speed.
often in washy wakes sprinting at some stages it can feel like your not moving or stuck.
but that never happened.ive never experienced any other board not do this.
my way of thinking its makes a good race board if your not going to be in front first up which is most of us.
you'll be able to stay in touch with the race without exhausting yourself trying to paddle in messy water
naish have got something good happening here. ive had every level of paddler comment on how good the board looks moving in the water .
and you don't have to be an elite paddler to enjoy the board
cheers
wait till you get the 24"......I managed 9.5km/h on our 1.9km time trial and in the flats it's perfectly stable even at my 90kg...
I also drafted a couple of guys on the weekend in a small local race - too easy, I agree, they really are onto something here.
And tomorrow is wind for the first time since we got the boards......frothing......
Got to try the 26" Maliko today in a race on our Millers run - solid conditions 30-35knots and I think I came 4th. Thomas King smoked us by 4-5min over 11.4km and I was in a tussle with two guys for 2nd but got pipped in the last kms. Board felt amazing, especially off the start we were flying and another guy on Maliko 26" was leading out.
Board really catches alot of bumps, I was battling a bit to get my head around the sweet-spot as you seem able to step quite far back and still get onto bumps, once on a run the board feels really slippery and I managed to push over a few bumps in front, something I've never been able to do before on the Millers run which has much bigger bumps than our Milnerton run.
Footsteering really came alive in these bigger bumps and the nose just swallows any little cross bumps. I got blown into bumps by the wind only on several occasions and I even had the nearly fall off backward moment where board accelerates faster than you anticipated.....
The nose does bury every now and again and it does slow you down when it happens but you can ride out of it most times still on the bump other times not. Stability is excellent, more stable than 2014 Javelin x 26 and this means you don't miss too many opportunities, lots of guys came feeling it was rough and my legs were feeeling perfectly ok so way less strenuous than the old board.
I really liked it, not much to improve, perhaps lift the nose a fraction for the shortswell type downwinders, so it goes over more but that would be about it - stoked it handled these rough conditions so effortlessly and can't wait to really work out the finer details of the trim, its a flyer!
in decent dw conditions I stand at the back of the light grey grip. then I just like to move a bit forward a bit if I have too.
the ride from the back of the board is similar to the 17.4 bullet for me 
