Longboard Windsurfing article

http://www.lbwindsurfing.com/ just published an article I wrote about the Expedition Windsurfer. Pretty cool stuff. Check it out.

Sail and fin testing

Video is a bit jumpy and short. I put my 11 year old on an old johnboat and had him work the camera. To get Jace out to the boat he stood on the deck just in front of the mast. The board did very well. Even with his 70lbs.

Sail testing

These are some photos of the local color. I missed a great shot of some bottle nose dolphin jumping out of the water. Looked just like Sea World.

I took the board out today in a light westerly sea breeze using a 7.4 Aerotech Zenith and the board performed very well. I like the sail size and boom size, they felt light and comfortable. The sail rolls small enough to store in the board when not in use. I did not use my GPS so I don't have any numbers for speed.

Dagger board

Here are some photos of the modified dagger board. I will need to have one made correctly so it will hold up under use.

Details

I wanted to provide a better view of the board, so here are a few photos from different angles.

Last Friday I took the boat out to test the sailing capabilities and to try to determine where to put the foot straps. I rigged a 9.5m sail with cambers. The wind was South to South West at about 10-15kts. Using my GPS to track my speed and distence,
I maxed out 11.8kts and sailed 9 nautical miles in about an hour twenty minutes.
In increasing winds, approximatly 15-18 reached a maximum speed of 12.6kts and traveled 5.16 nm in 42 minutes.
All of this sailing was done in the typical back and forth short distance sailing of windsurfing.

What I learned:

• Even with a large sail and increasing winds it seems that the max speed is around 12-13 kts. This could improve with properly positioned foot straps
• In low winds the boat is very fast on all points of sail.
• The boat jibs very easily and is very stable.
• As the wind increased the need for a dagger board decreased. I was able to head up into the wind about as high without the dagger board as with it.
• The hull seems to be all displacement. I was not able to pop it up on a plane even when the wind seemed to be strong enough. This might be due to the weight, length ratio. It may also be that with foot straps I could push it enough to get to plane. But if we consider the normal speed of a kayak even at 12kts its pretty fast.

More testing this week. I want to try to use a smaller sail and rig and try some different size fins. I have been using weed fin that might not be enough area for the boat.

Here I'm trying the boats standup paddling abilities. It's a lot more stable than I thought it would be. I did not have the skeg in the boat so it fishtails a bit. I think that I need to add some no skid to the deck. It seems a bit too slippery in some conditions.