P.C_simpson said..
Chris I think you completely missed my point, I was comparing brand new top of the range equipment from each sport as the original post was about people worrying that boards are going to now cost $4000 which would have to be the best board ever made.
Windsurfing does not offer super budget $800 mass produced no name boards like you see in SUP stores these days, but if they did there would be another post on here saying how you bought a new board and the fin boxs fell out after 2 months and then it exploded on the beach from being made form the cheapest materials they can find..
A cheap sh@t van to carry all your toys around sounds good to me I too drive a van that cost less than the paint on my newest board.
As for wave boards there is always the custom route, get what you need and seam to be a lot cheaper buy the prices I'm hearing on here. I think no more than $3000 for a premium model board seams fare and the price should be scaled by size like sail sizes are.
I didn't miss the point - it's just that I think your figures are tilted to making windsurfing look comparatively cheaper than it is.
The beginner's windsurfing package from one retailer - with just one sail - is $2790. That's about 2.8 times as much as a beginner's road bike, and the windsurfer with just one sail is much more restricted - it's only really good for what, 12-18 knots? The same sort of money will get you a couple of cheap road bikes that could be in the top 25% in a racing club and would burn off all the cafe racing poseurs, or it will get you into a bottom end of a prestige-brand roadbike.
For top-end windsurfing gear the list price is a lot higher than what you're talking - $1000-1380 for a mast, over $4100 for some Raceboards, $1499 booms, let's not mention fins and the extra couple of masts and sails you'll need. I did some rough pricing on Raceboard gear a few months back and got to $7000 pretty quickly.
As another comparison, a Laser (the most popular sailing dinghy) is $11000 with a trolley and covers - but unlike windsurfers you don't get the manufacturer trying to make it obsolete as soon as you buy it, so you can race the boat in big fleets at dozens of clubs for years on end, and still sell it for decent money. And why do you have so many people to race against? Partly because the boats don't become obsolete, so many people can buy a cheap old one and still race competitively. The guys who want to buy new benefit because they get lots of people to sail with and the people who want to by used have access to lots of cheap boats. Everyone wins
because the builder doesn't make the gear obsolete. Sure, windsurfer may never be in the $800 region. I believe they make nothing out of One Designs, which sell for around $1800. But it's not hard to believe that windsurfing has been chasing "performance" (I use the italics because it's only performance over a narrow range of conditions, most modern boards are hideously slow a lot of the time) at the expense of simplicity, versatility, economy and long-term ownership, and that the sport has suffered because of it.
