Jus,
warning..essay ahead ..
past few years i've used 3 boards. The Fish 96 was the most used, floaty, easy to get out through mush and took up to a 6.9 sailworks bongo (!). Prior to the fish i used a 62cm wide rogue wave freestyle as my light air "wave" board. The EVO 92 will replace the fish96 which is now in Kelly Fecho's good hands.
2nd most used board is the middle board in the picture below. Its a rogue wave custom about 56cm wide, thin tail, overall volume about 80liters. Perfect for 5.8 conditions, fin 22cm or 24. Can take down to a 4.8 or so sail. Fast rocker, very tucked rails from front to back.
one other board i've used alot is a old rogue wave custom which is 52.5cm wide (left board in the picture). This has a big sail range even though its quite narrow, volume is even front to back and i've used from 4.2 to 6.0 on this board. Its not as slashy as the previous board. Fast rocker, moderate tuck on rails.
I had one more board which I used but it didnt work too well, this was a pure sideshore wave board, excellent in maui, very slashy but too slow for bintan conditions.
[out of curiosity the right most board is a very thin 49cm wide high wind slalom]
My learnings from all these boards are:
- you need float in our conditions. Bintan is onshore so a board with good upwind, good float and decent speed is important. Desaru is breakers and can be a challenge when its big. Jason's bay is fairly easy and so is Kuantan.
- board should have speed and good upwind and be able to carry speed through the turn. our mushy junky waves collapse fast and are close together, a slow board stalls as the waves dont have enough push. The fish worked great as the wide tail kept it going through even fairly slow turns. A true wave board would just stall in such turns.
- Once the wind is up the smaller the better. However, a good 60cm hull will remain controllable in pretty high winds (our high winds that is).
I'd suggest you start with quite a "big" board. This will give security in gybes, plane easily and carry a reasonable sail range. It takes skill to sail small hulls and it can be a frustrating experience if the hull is too responsive. Also, the smaller boards will rarely see any use outside of the monsoon (thats why they are in my living room). I've had one rare afternoon 2 years ago when I sailed the middle board at east coast and the smallest one (on the right) only ever got truly used in one huge storm about 3+ years ago. There is nothing quite like the feel of a small lightweight hull under the feet, but..reality is we rarely get such conditions and at your size something in the 9xlitre 6xcm width will see year round use. This means a hull that you get to know well long before the monsoon kicks in (reality: how many monsoon weekends are there?). You can always go way smaller later, i would contend that you will know when you can/want to handle a much smaller board.
as you can see this is a topic close to my heart..something about boards in this category that just brings out the soul of windsurfing (now..dont get me started on sails...
gotta excuse me for this picture..the boards are just too pretty not to share..and if anybody wants a rogue wave, we would be happy to help, lee brittain makes incredible wave boards...
