Tech Talk: Women specific kiteboards
27.06.2022
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Appletree Surfboards headquarter. My name is Wieger, co-founder of Appletree Surfboards. Today we’re going to talk about women specific kiteboards.
For the occasion we invited Evelien over, Evelien is one of our team riders. Currently we are also doing the big wave project together, which we’ve made another video about, but now we’re going to talk a little bit about women specific kiteboards and why women need different boards than a lot of men.
Evelien, how did you get into strapless wave riding? What decisions did you make in the beginning and how did they work out for you?
I knew quite quickly that I wanted to do strapless wave riding. So I started looking for a suitable board, but I had problems finding one. Because if you go into a shop or if you went to a shop like 10 years ago, you would see that most boards are made for the average men. For that reason I decided to go for a custom specific women kiteboard. I contacted another girl who competed in strapless kitesurfing and got in contact with her shaper. I discussed my needs with him and got a custom board straight away.
It was a board for intermediate high waves and in the beginning I had a lot of trouble with it because it was a bit above my level at that time. So I learned it the hard way.
Does Appletree offer custom boards?
At Appletree we have our stock models, but we also offer custom sizes. Lately we’ve actually updated our stock sizes to accommodate smaller, but actually also bigger boards. Because there are also heavier riders.
What is the biggest difference between boards for men and women specific kiteboards?
One of the things that we’ve noticed with Evelien and with our other female riders is that it’s not just the length of the board or the shape of the board, but it’s mainly the volume and the thickness in the rail that should be different for women specific kiteboards. The reason for that is that men usually put a lot more pressure on their board. So they ride it more like a twin tip with a lot of pressure on the rail. Women are lighter, but they also push less hard, even if their weight might be the same. Usually they also ride smaller kites, which puts a lot of different pressure on the board.
How do you choose the right size and shape for your board?
We always advise girls to go for a board, not necessarily super short but something with a thin rail. The one we have here for instance is a 5’6″ Klokhouse normal shape, but it has a fairly thin rail. So you have that engagement with the water surface. You see it a lot when girls are riding a board with the rails too thick, it’s too bouncy. They cannot push it on the water. You probably know that feeling when you’re bouncing off the board, especially when it’s choppy. The shapes are fairly similar. It it’s really dependent on the conditions that you ride in. Normally it’s nicer to maybe have a slightly wider tail board where you have a little bit more flotation in the back so you can just cruise the board a little bit easier than the guys might.
I would like to design a board to my own needs, is this possible?
Like I said, at Appletree Surfboards, we already offer a lot of boards in different sizes. But if you want one specifically for you, or if you’re really small or on the other scale really big get in touch because we can always make you a custom board that is especially tuned for what you want in the same quality as the normal boards. So you have a really proper board that lasts, but specifically tuned for your needs.
If you got any questions about women specific kiteboards, send us an email or call us, we’re always here to help and always here to answer your questions.
Hope to see you next time in one of our future videos and also check out the other videos that we’ve done with Evelien on big wave surfing. It’s a super interesting story.
See you next time!
Next episode
Excited about our next Tech-Talk video? Or are you wondering if your question will be discussed in the next episode? Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll send you an email when the next video is out!