waist leash or calf leash

[neilhapgood]

Hi all,

any thoughts on whether a waist leash is better than a calf leash for the board?

Is a wrist leash the way to go for the wing?

many thanks

Neil

[beebad]

I am a novice and i am outfitting myself the hard way….personally, i think a curly waist leash would stay out of the way, although growing up surfing , i always wore a kook cord around my ankle!

[Peter_Frank]

Yes, waist leash for the board, absolutely no doubt.

A bit trickier what to use for the wing though

Peter

[OzBungy]

I have waist leash for the board and wrist leash for the wing. Both are coiled urethane leashes. I have had zero problems since I went for these, about 100 hours.

The coiled waist leash generally stays out of the way. It never tangles in my feet or drags in the water. It's easy to rotate the leash around my torso after a crash to get everything tidy and ready to go.

My wings came with dyneema leashes with bungie down the middle. Bungie always breaks. The untensioned leash would get caught around my neck during gybes. The dyneema would get fluffy and stick to the velcro on the wrist cuff. The coiled urethane leash does none of that.

People talk about two coiled leashes getting tangled. I have not experienced that. Rarely the coils from the two leashes hook on each other, but normal tension on the leashes easily separates them.

I have only one reservation about urethane leashes. The urethane can get damaged and weakened with age and break. It's never happened to me in decades of surfing but I would be very annoyed to lose my wing or foil board because a leash broke.

I'm also a little suspicious of the velcro cuffs and waist bands for leashes. The wrist leash needs to be loose enough to rotate around your wrist but not be so tight that it can't move. You also want the leash easily removed in an emergency. Velcro does the job but it seems to be a single point of failure. I would prefer something with a more positive connection that could not self release but is easy to adjust and release when you need to.

[irwe]

Waist Leash attached to my Quick Release White Water Kayak Belt.

I like the North Board Release. Short (outof the way) Pin Quick Release. I haven't had the board snap back at me.