freestyle, the last bastion of windsurfing.

When did they beat a formula board around a course?

Well S.U.P. boards are currently outselling windsurfing boards according to some sources, and there are a dozen kiters to every windsurfer at many windy surf beaches, so we may soon be an endangered species!

It won't take the manufacturers long to jump ship if the trend continues so thank goodness freestyle is still a growth market.

I don't believe freestyle is the last bastion - people are still having fun getting around. However freestyle is a new trend, at last (in thems parts anyways).

We now have a lot of people getting out in 13-15 knot range to practice moves for when the wind picks up. Great crowd, very fast improvement, always fun.

I'm thinking of buying a SUP, but not because it's 'trendy', but for the same reason I'm spending more time on the MB...lack of wind in these parts! The other obvious reason I'd get one is because I've never surfed, but I can stand on a buoyant board & paddle...plus apparently it has some fitness benefits.

there was a bit of tongue in cheek with this topic.

reality is i'm not worried about windsurfing disappearing. there's a lot of people in the world and windsurfings definitely growing again.

good on the kites beating a formula board, no easy feat!

but

freestyle is something you can do anywhere in any wind and kiting will never be able to do it. sweet!

From the photos its evident wind was howling, so its no surprise kiters were faster than windsurfers on formulas and 9m sails. IMHO they should have gone out with slalom boards and 7.5m sails, a much faster outfit specially off the wind.

How do you figure that? If you drive from Port Melbourne to Frankston you might see 20-30 windsurfers. Just at St Kilda alone there would be more than 50 kiters and every beach along the way will have 5-10-20 kiters. Where are the big numbers of windsurfers?

I think the race results of kites vs sailboards are kind of meaningless. It all comes down to the sailors. Adam Koch was an olympic 49er sailor so that's why he is fast.

When you think about it, a sail is a sail whether it is on a pole or at the end of strings. A planing hull is a planing hull and fins are fins. You will be able to get all sorts of advantages and improvements for different configurations but in terms of order of magnitude they will be similar.

Kites have access to a much greater wind area and I guess a kite lets you carry a much bigger sail and do some control tricks. A sailboard can have a flatter, cleaner sail with no bridle or line drag and much more direct transfer of power. These are fiddling around the edge. They don't make such a difference that anyone should claim one craft is better at racing than another.

Fair enough. I haven't popped in to Dawson Ave in a southerly for ages. I'll give it a look next summer.

Ricketts always has more sailboards than kiters, especially in an Easterly, unless the wind is light.

Not so sure about the other beaches. I've never noticed large numbers of sailboards when I've been there.

Actually always thought the difficulty of a move is objective: the more people that can perform a trick, the easier it must be.
I don't know about now, but in the old Windsurfing freestyle comps, moves were rated in 4 categories of difficulty, based on how many or few people could do it.

Having said that, freestyle at any level is just pure fun. Succeeding at something after 300-400 tries: nothing like it.

yeah, i can't do much either. but watvhing the good guys as soon as the wind drops they start doing all of the old school sail tricks.

when it picks up again they start doing loops and slidey flicky spinny stuff.