Well the new toys have at last arrived. After about 18months of thinking about it and then deciding to take the plunge I finally took delivery of my Carbon Art boards - a 75l thruster 56cm wide wave board, an 86l single fin 59cm wide wave board, a 70cm 110l slalom rocket ship and a 125l 80cm wide slalom summer blaster. And of course that means that I'm now selling off my existing boards. I've sold one already but still need to off-load my 2010 81l Starboard quad (£550) and my 2008 104l Naish Cross-over freeride (£450). If I can't offload them soon I'll take them to France so please let me know if you're interested - matthieu@cwgsy.net
As for my new toys well lets just say they are special, very special. The small wave board is just that and needs a good blow to get it going. At 76l it's getting quite small for Guernsey and the difference between my 81litre quad and this board is really noticeable, those few extra litres making the difference between something that sink and something that don't sink. I remember well swapping over from a 75l JP to and 80l JP and it made all the difference in light winds - but that said give the 75l a good blow (4.7 or less) and she's happy as Larry. I've had her out three times so far this week and used it each time with a 4.7. The last session (which was today) the wind wasn't quite there but the preceding two sessions had been great with great drive through the bottom turn and an easy switch from rail to rail - I even managed a few aerials on my first outing so I can't complain!! Here's a pic which I particularly like because of the way it's framed and I'm mid aerial (the pic don't do it justice but I was in fact a good 5-6ft off the lip - honest).
This was taken yesterday when it was sunny and marginal, today on the other hand was windier and Hutchy was sailing a blinder with a huge stall forward next to me and a couple of cracking aerials and a nice 360.
Here's Phil having just ripped apart a nice grunter.
Cat that got the cream?
We had a good session for a while then then it got too busy and we had to sail out to Le Perron reef, about 1mile upwind. The tide was too low for the reef and she was sucking dry, but with a good ground swell running it meant that we could pick off the shoulders and keep away from the rocks. The sets were pushing through at about mast high and if we'd had another metre of water over the rocks it would have been pretty epic - ah well may be next time. At least it was sunny and warm (i was in my shortie all afternoon)
