jumptheshark wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 6:46 pm
You professing to others about straps on surfboards is misrepresenting things.
You don't ride a surfboard. It was designed for use behind a boat and has been adapted to kite and foil. No one surfs that board.
Shape, weight, construction, fins. All not quite a surfboard despite the broad nature of that label.
Your doing something quite different than even the guys in this thread who ride a surfboard with straps on it.
Please stop misrepresenting your perspective.
Thanks for letting me clarify, jumpy!
I used old (circa 2001) Naish surfboards at first. I hated them and I hated the straps (couldn't get in them). Then I moved on to North surfboards, of which my favorite surfboard of all time was the 2012 north whip. While I was riding these kitesurfboards and some of my prone surfboards strapless, I cam across the Kitefish. I immediately modified it to quad, and thought it would be a great board. IT WAS TOTAL JUNK!!! It was too heavy for strapless airs, and it was not wide enough for me to be a good light wind board, nor did it have any surfboard "pop" for jumping and was too heavy for jumping anyway.
So I stuck with what you call "real surfboards"...........until I went completely back to strapped and destroyed pretty much all of them. I like to ride in shallow, do rotations on the wave face, from behind the wave onto the face, and occasionally jump (no 20m jumps for me anymore after heel injuries). But hard strapped turns with high torque on the straps in chop is the real deck destroyer (second worst after bad landings). And that is how you destroy production boards - by pushing them. This left me with no other board but the LF Kitefish to use for about 2 months of vacation on the coast. I tried to get at least one of my "real surfboards" watertight, but it quickly cracked across the board.
So while searching for a durable "real surfboard", I was making due with the KiteFish with quad fins. Even though jibing the short low rockered board was harder than longer "real surfboards", I figured out the technique. And I quickly realized that I could not destroy this board. It also was much more stable at high speeds than any of my other corky boards except maybe the gun. But the thing that got me to stop looking for a "real surfboard" was the fact that I could not damage my aftermarket fins, nor crack the poured G-flex fin plugs (for the bolt through fins), no matter how many times I hit the concrete-surfpound sand when I ran in shallow like a TT. In the river, I could hit logs with the fins or the board and not have to stop to get another board.
So for this indestructibility I was willing to sacrifice performance. But after those 2 months on the coast, I had figured out how to get almost as high performance out of the kite fish. And the proof is in people asking me about the board, how I do what I do with it, and wanting to try it. Now that I own 6 of them, I lend them out and watch the mayhem. Every one that comes from a real surfboard and tries one of my KF's asks me "how can I move such a heavy board around so fast?" The answer is that I had a background on snappy boards like the North whip and "pop-out" to custom surfboards. I was also forced to deal with the limitations and handicap that this board presents in certain conditions. But I never allowed those handicaps to hold me back, and I had to make the only board I could never break, work as well as "real" kitesurfboards.
Over all, once you are forced to deal with, and overcome the shortcomings of the LF Kitefish, you will find a true kitesurfboard. Durability is second to none as it is indestructible. It is wide enough to work in all but the lightest winds, where you just can put a hydrofoil on it. And it will go fast through nasty chop with no issues due to thin rail shape, v-bottom at the tail, and high weight.
Just a note, I do weight 100kg and I do not recommend the LF Kitefish for anyone under 90kg, as it will turn into a high weight light wind board for lighter riders. But if you weight as much or more than me, it is an all wind board that is very capable.
Thanks for the opportunity to explain further. Your comment is appreciated.