Windsurfing: a guide for beginners in choosing equipment

The first piece of advice we want to give to those who want to windsurf is to buy their own equipment (also used) well in advance and spend as many hours as possible in the water.

In fact, windsurfing is a sport in which practice is essential to make movements on the table, while walking and in instinctive and automatic maneuvers. Therefore, only continuous and frequent exercise can achieve this goal. For this purpose, the availability of your own equipment allows you to do many more outings than you could do by renting. This does not mean that in the first few tests, renting from a good school is the most obvious way, and it is useful for trying and learning about the materials. To get the windsurfing equipment, visit https://easy-surfshop.com/.

Advice for the first windsurfing team

The first set of windsurfing equipment, indicatively, consists of:

Rigid 180-200 liter windsurf board (from friends, amicably called the Savoyard), with retractable swivel stem;
Windsurf sail in 5 meters; SDM mast (Standard diameter mast), suitable for sailing (usually 430 cm), with a 60% carbon percentage (it is useless to start with a mast with a higher and more expensive carbon percentage);
ALUMINUM BOOM (even in this case, at first it is useless to carry a carbon boom), with the possibility of adjustment from 150-160 cm to 200-210 cm.
Adjustable or fixed harness ropes, to attach to the boom with the trapeze hook;
Mast foot; 30 or 45 cm SDM extension;
Recovery cap to be tied to the tree;
Wetsuit suitable for the season, trapeze, life jacket

In the used one, with around 700 - 800 USD, you can find all the material listed from point 1 to 6; for wetsuits, trapezoids and life jackets, focusing on new material, another 200 - 300 euros should be taken into account (it was considered to buy a short wetsuit, or for the intermediate season, even if, for the reasons explained above, we recommend to equip you as soon as possible to go out all year).

We consider a person with an average weight of 70-80 kg. Lighter people (60 kg) can opt for slightly smaller tables (160-180 liters). Only for those who are really heavy (100 kg) we would like to recommend beginner boards with a volume of around 220 liters, given the considerable volume and weight, and the consequent difficulties in transporting such equipment.

Every producer has a retractable drift beginner board model, and one product is worth another.

Rigid beginner boards perform better, but are more manageable for schools that have a fixed location, and must move the table only from the storage location to the water entry beach.

Considerable weight and transport problems can guide you toward purchasing an inflatable windsurf. Nowadays, some brands (for example, Starboard and JP) have developed products that are valid and suitable for beginners, for which an inferior performance, especially in glide stability, compared to rigid boards, is not relevant.

Unfortunately, these are recent products (2017 at the moment) that are hard to find on the used market at low prices and for which you must be willing to pay at least 500 euros.

In any case, whether it is a rigid board for beginners or an inflatable table, we underline the need for the table to be equipped, in addition to the rear fin, with a central pivot stem (rigid board) or a central drift, generally fixed (and removable), in the case of inflatable boards. In fact, beginners tend to drift (ie leeward span), and mistakes in maneuvering only accentuate the problem. Also, inflatable boards, even if they are improving a lot from this point of view, have more rounded rails (edges) that oppose less resistance to the margin.