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Windsurfing Boards

Windsurfing boards are very similar to surf boards.  An apt comparison would be the similarities between a road bike and a mountain bike. There are differences, but the two have far more in common than they have different. This is only natural, since like mountain biking, windsurfing is a spin off sport.

You see, the first windsurfers were actually people who both sailed and surfed. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, since windsurfing is essentially a hybrid of those two activities. It doesn’t require nearly as much rigging as sailing does; but there is still tensioning and angling of the sail to be done. It can be done in a far wider range of conditions than surfing, but it is still done on a board; albeit a windsurfing board.

Windsurfing boards differ from surf boards primarily in that the have a u joint built into them. The U joint is short for a universal joint, and these joints allow a full rotation of both sides of the joint. This is important to windsurfing because not only must the mast be able to rotate to tack and plane with or against the wind; but it must be able to angle anywhere from completely vertical to flat in the water. If a sail cannot lie flat, the wind can pick it up and carry it without the rider on the board, and that’s a recipe for disaster.

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