Thursday, November 10, 2011

Race boards: Laird's latest and greatest... hey, wait a minute!

Typically, where Laird goes others follow. I'm sure by now you've seen his new 10k dollar race board- modeled after racing yachts and heading in exactly the opposite design direction of all the other race boards I've seen out on the water here in California. Check it out:


No gurgling, sucking pintail, no ultra narrow outline- fat ass, square box rails.... kind of like...


Mine! The Poison Arrow- wide, thick, boxy, beautiful- and for me (210lbs, 5'10) it's fast and importantly stable. Interesting to see how two designs develop- totally independent of each other and the outcome is the same. It will be interesting to see how the board goes with a fit, serious racer on it. For me, this design (along with a year of racing and a 30 lb weight loss) helped me drop twenty minutes off my time in my last race (compared to a year ago- same race, same course). Thanks Tim Stamps for building me a true custom race board, a board that only Laird (and I) could love (well maybe not- there's a lot of buzz about the "new" wide tailed race boards).



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Laird's board has a full displacement (curved) bottom, that is what makes this type of design fast....low draught even though it is wide overall, the part of the board in the water is not.

Anonymous said...

in the end-the x factor is the paddler-lairds board is fast cuz laird is on it! The elite paddlers could paddle a Brewer balsa and dominate most of the field, but for us average guys design is very important to make up for our shortcomings-looks crazy-i think Laird owes you and Stamps some $$$$!!!

engberang said...

thanks for the info