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.
From one-off customs to a board built for everyone
Ten years ago, women like Evelien had no choice but to go the custom route, simply because nothing off the shelf was built with them in mind. Every board was a one-off, shaped through trial and error and a lot of back-and-forth with a shaper. Since then we’ve kept collecting exactly that kind of feedback — from Evelien, from our other female team riders, and from former team rider Catharina Edin — about how frustrating the search for a proper kite surfboard for lighter or petite riders could be.
That feedback is what sparked the idea to design a board specifically for women and lightweight riders from the ground up, rather than simply scaling down a men’s shape. After testing plenty of prototypes, we came up with the Apelviken: the first ever kite surfboard designed from the ground up for women and lightweight riders, built to provide ultimate control and performance. No custom order required.
More forgiving rockerline
The rocker acceleration starts more towards the tail of the board. This makes the board more forgiving, loose and easy to turn. You don’t need to throw in a lot of body weight to turn the board, as it reacts very responsively.
The middle of the board is flatter to help with pushing upwind. Combine this with the thinner rails and narrow tail, and you have the recipe for a forgiving yet controllable board.
Smaller stance
Lighter riders tend to have a smaller stance. Another nice benefit of moving the rocker to the back is that you can ride the board better in one position — you don’t need to move a lot from the back to the front to get the most out of the board.
Whether you’re riding a wave or riding upwind, this board reacts equally well if you ride it on the tail. As most smaller riders also have shorter legs and a narrower stance, this helps to keep control.
Snappy feel
The loose feeling of the board is balanced out with a narrow tail. This makes sure that you stay in control while enjoying this snappy feel. You can really push back on the board, which also makes it better when the waves get bigger.
The Apelviken is not a small-wave board — it’s a balanced allrounder that you can ride in most conditions, equally fun on flat water as it is in bigger surf. Finally, the Apelviken features grab rails in the nose to help you hold on to the board, especially with smaller hands.
Still want something fully custom?
The Apelviken covers what most women, lightweight and petite riders need straight off the shelf, but if you just want a board tuned entirely to your own preferences, that option hasn’t gone away. Get in touch and we’ll build you a custom board in the same quality as our stock models, specifically tuned for your needs.
If you’ve got any questions about women specific kiteboards or the Apelviken, send us an email or call us. We’re always here to help and to answer your questions.
Hope to see you next time in one of our future videos, and also check out the other videos we’ve done with Evelien on big wave surfing. It’s a super interesting story.
See you next time!
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