It’s a little strange for me to recommend a first time board buy to anyone. My first board I bought by helping out at my parents surf center and having them pay it. It was a custom made twin fin wave board with something around 50 litres. I must add that I was 11 years old at the time 🙂
My first board next to a 62 l 🙂
However, despite this different initiation, I can still advise my students on what their first board should be like.
First off, dont bother with buying a board with a centreboard. That is, unless you want to stunt your own progress for not pushing yourself. The board you will use for the longest period of time is something in the range of the 140-160 litres. Naturally this will vary a little depending on your weight but generally this is the litre rangeyou will get the most use out of.
This is the board on which you can learn the beachstart, waterstart, use of footstraps and perfect the harness use with. It might be a little chunky to get into the speed jibe. Until you get the beach and waterstart down it still offers enough buoyancy to allow for uphauling.
All in all, my recommendation for a first board should also be one you will be likely to keep for those really low wind days once you progress past it on windy days.
This is a post I wrote a year ago on an old blog and thought I would post it on here also.
When we need to buy a wetsuit there are a couple of things we have to take into account. We have to ask ourselves questions such as:
What sport do we want to do with it?
What temperatures are we going to use it in?
How long will the sessions be that we use it?
And yes, it should make you look sexy as a baboon 😉
The basic things to look out for are:
Thickness
Depending on the temperature of the air and water that you are going to be in and the length of time that you are going to spend in it you will need a different thickness of wetsuit. It hardly bears mentioning that warmer waters require less thickness than cold waters. Also, you may be in a country where the actual temperature is warm but the water is cold so bear that in mind.
I was surfing in Portugal in July and despite the heat on the shore (and boiling inside the wetsuit) the water was rather cold and only permitted sessions of around an hour with long wetsuits.
Naturally ones body constitution will have an impact on the thickness you need. I have seen guys in the water in board shorts while others needed long suits.
Then again, if you are windsurfing and you are rarely in the water and the air is warm, maybe a thinner one will do.
