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mercoledì, agosto 08, 2012

Welcome back, windsurfing!

I'm in Italy for the summer holiday with all my family and some friends. I will spend almost all my days off as usual  in  Sabaudia and San Felice Circeo,and since I knew I wouldn't be plenty of time to sail out there (my recently born daughter Sofia is only 4 months old), I decided to look for a board with lot of volume, to help me planning with the typical summer thermal winds... I didn't want to buy a new board since (I had a look at new boards prices - OMG) - meaning wasting money for gear I will be using for some days -  so I went for a used one. The choice has been an RRD X-Fire V2 (yes, Roberto Ricci, I bought one of your board...  despite what happened to my kite surf board). That's definitely the widest and shortest board I ever owned: it's 230cm long and 85 (eightyfive!) wide, and it is sold (new) with no fin, so I had to pay for a 50cm carbon fin (supposedly craft made). So, here it is:



The construction is full carbon, and you can actually see the carbon folders on the deck of the board, something which I personally like. The board is impressively light, even less than my S-Type 116, I can bring it using one hand (if it wouln't be so wide) The rear pad are "aggressively" posioned almos on the poop and I was a little bit concerned about this till I sailed out. More about this later on.
The fin, as said, is hand made full carbon. 50cm long, it's big, big, big.

Ok, now the sailing impression. I sailed out the local spot (Carrubo) with 15 to 20 knots westerly direction, meaning I had to sail out the harbour. I have only one sail (a7.2m Point7 AC-0) so I was a little bit oversized, especially because of the windswell formig out there. Given that, the board runs smootlhy and easy planes with a little bit of wind. The position of the straps and the pads help to keep the board on the water even with strong wind and choppy water. Turning is... well, when you start pushing with you foot on the deck you will feel the board gybing on a rail, but the curve is not exactly what you would define "short radius". Hope to check a different (shorter) fin in the future to see the differences in terms of gybing.
My conclusion: I personally like this board, maybe a smaller size (122lt maybe) would have been fine too. I'm not worried about its wide "angle" since my weight can made with the 85cm for this board, and it will help me to start planning earlier... let's see...I hope I will have the opportunity to sail more during this summer days (hey, I still have 20 days left... :) )