In my shed I now have 2 Cobra boards ( one is for sale), 1 custom made in France and the rest, 4 plus a SUP, are OZ made customs with 1 more coming. Trying to do my bit to support local, be nice to think a few more would look at that option before spending your hard earned dollars but ultimately the consumers choice. In my case it is about experimenting with designs so I am not the norm and it is very easy to walk into a retail shop, see and test what you are going to purchase which will suit many. But I guess to Peters point with a custom you know where your money goes, directly into the materials and labour.

brett_perth said..

I wanted to start a board building factory in this country, the first thing I'd have to do is buy or lease some of the most expensive land in the world to build a factory on. Forgetting over regulation and the myriad of ticket clippers along the way, labour is expensive because people rightly need to be able to afford some of the most expensive shelter in the world (either buy or rent).

This is a point that i feel, not enough of people understand or except.
The cost of doing business in Australia is one of the highest anywhere in the world.
This includes importing and/or running a shop.

As Australian's, we also get paid some of the best base wages in the world.
(we don't rely on tips like our pals in the US for example)

If your the kind of guy that likes buying customs, then cool, i think its awesome to be able to work on a personal product, just for you.
But there is also a market out there for customers that want "Big name Brands" and unfortunately the cost is the cost.

I can openly say that their is no one Getting Rich of selling windsurfing gear.

We do it because we love it!

JBFletch said..

brett_perth said..

I wanted to start a board building factory in this country, the first thing I'd have to do is buy or lease some of the most expensive land in the world to build a factory on. Forgetting over regulation and the myriad of ticket clippers along the way, labour is expensive because people rightly need to be able to afford some of the most expensive shelter in the world (either buy or rent).

This is a point that i feel, not enough of people understand or except.
The cost of doing business in Australia is one of the highest anywhere in the world.
This includes importing and/or running a shop.

As Australian's, we also get paid some of the best base wages in the world.
(we don't rely on tips like our pals in the US for example)

If your the kind of guy that likes buying customs, then cool, i think its awesome to be able to work on a personal product, just for you.
But there is also a market out there for customers that want "Big name Brands" and unfortunately the cost is the cost.

I can openly say that their is no one Getting Rich of selling windsurfing gear.

We do it because we love it!

And the up side of wages being high in Australia is that we can afford relatively decent windsurfing gear. any new gear for me will probably be second hand, but that is still good. Sometimes you have to save for a time to get the next piece of kit. That makes you value what you have and we have a lot to be thankful for. Just wish the wind would pick up a bit!!!

BCF sells wakeboards for $220-$250. These are very similar to the kite boards.
How much are new kiteboards?
Are they that much better to cost 3-4 times more ? Or are we charged for the popularity of the sport.

The BCF wakeboards compared to a dedicated kiteboard, (as a Kitesurfer) is the same comparing a Kmart Huffy bike for $89 against $3k MTB! You can ride them both..but..

Agree with the comments above about 'slim' ranges on manufacturers site, of course what would you expect...that way they can sell you 3-4 sails to cover 0-30knts!! $$

The trick is to be learn your gear well, learn to tune it well (to increase range) and ignore a lot of the marketing BS, I have 1 flat water board for 10-30knts and the same for wave, 2 sails for each.. but realistically use one sail size per board 90% of the time. Could easily change that to 1 x FR/FSW board and 2 sails....That's actually not much gear required at all.

It only gets really Exp when you aim to have the 'perfect kit' for every condition...then you end up with **** loads of gear that costs heaps...the one thing that kitesurfing has taught us, (should of) is that 'less is more'...a 2 kite 1 board quiver covers 10-30knts (in the right hands)....

So regardless of what the new price of kit is or will be...its good value (especially when go back to the early 90's and look at prices and then covert that dollar to today'$, then consider the sales volume is much less now also).

In the meantime I would encourage all that are well cashed, to always purchase the latest gear, heaps of it, lots and lots.. and update each year.. then sell it half price the next season to allow the rest of us access to lower costs.. its a great service you provide, very noble and worthy and we really appreciate the opportunities it provides.

JonesySail said..
The BCF wakeboards compared to a dedicated kiteboard, (as a Kitesurfer) is the same comparing a Kmart Huffy bike for $89 against $3k MTB! You can ride them both..but..

It was not a cynical question. Just don't know much about either.
I do have a $100 bike from Big W, which is a total piece of sh... so I can relate to this comment.

If anything, the BCD wakeboards look similar, and have more "hardware" as they supply the boots, and the kiteboards supply the pads and straps.
Also, they dont' have as many moving parts as a bicycle...

Not that I'll experiment with them

JonesySail said...
In the meantime I would encourage all that are well cashed, to always purchase the latest gear, heaps of it, lots and lots.. and update each year.. then sell it half price the next season to allow the rest of us access to lower costs.. its a great service you provide, very noble and worthy and we really appreciate the opportunities it provides.

Hmmm great opening for me to pimp my gear, look at my profile and check out my seabreeze ads

Al Planet said..
While as a basic concept I can imagine that if gear was half the price there might be twice as many people sailing (imagine the start of the Defi wind with double the competitors). The part of the sport that seems to have seen the most growth in the last 10 years is GPS racing. This is a part of the sport where competitors will purchase a board and fin(s) and sail for that one day of the year when all the conditions come together to provide them with a PB. This seems to defy the common sense of economics and suggests that there is a bit of the Greek attitude in all of us, or in teen speak YOLO. Its hard to expect the manufacturers to follow some logical minimum cost retail model when most of their customers seem intent on avoiding all common sense logic. Wave sailors are no better, while %90 of the time I use one board (78l) and one sail (5m) I seem to have a whole shed full of boards and sails.

Good points, but IMHO given that the sport these days is so small, from some points of view the customers and industry must be doing the wrong thing.

It's hard to be sure what the growth in GPS racing means - isn't it probably cheaper and less time-consuming than course racing? Secondly, to continue the bike comparison, GPS speedsailing seems to be pretty similar to Strava tables, where people compete to get the best speed on a particular stretch of road. It's also pretty popular.

One interesting thing is that Strava seems to ban bikes that are faster than the standard road-racing bike - they will "flag" and ban fast times set on recumbent-type bikes, which are faster on the flat and downhill than the standard road-racing bike. The point is that in a comparable sport, even those who are competing on GPS speed will normally do it on kit that is designed to be comparatively easy to use and slow. The culture of the sport and industry is to concentrate on the slow but versatile gear and to give the fast but restricted gear the flick, even in GPS comps. That's very different to windsurfing.

Every sport has its own culture and IMHO, the culture of windsurfing is pretty crook these days because it generally ignores cost and practicality - and it seems that it believes its own publicity when it does things like claim that sails have a wide range, when in fact compared to boat sails windsurfer sails have really narrow ranges in terms of wind strength and angle.

Scoob said..

Chris 249 said...claim that sails have a wide range, when in fact compared to boat sails windsurfer sails have really narrow ranges in terms of wind strength and angle.

A yacht with a displacement hull which does 6 knots up wind, 6 knots down wind and 6 knots cross the wind, still needs three to four headsails and reefing, to deliver a wide performance range of 5 (yawning) to 6 knots.

The culture of windsurfing is fine with me. My money is no good to me when I'm dead.

If folks are making money keeping me happy, keeping me out of the office and healthy, good on them.

Working conditions in Thailand I have no experience with. The jobs were creating in Thailand and Shenzhen I would believe are a win for which the locals would compete for.

Is there a reason for me to loose sleep? If you flew drone and camera through Cobra would there be a controversy to expose?

If you don't like the price of product from a South East Asian factory there are first world alternatives. Choices every where. Life is great.

I didn't say anything about a "yacht with a displacement hull" and I've never seen one that did 6 knots in all directions. If you want to talk displacement hulls, then some will go from 0-14 knots boatspeed and 0-30+ knots windspeed with just two sails, and they will do it racing while carrying a full cruising interior. That is a lot more versatile than most windsurfer sails.

There are boats that can go from 0 to 20-30+ knots boatspeed and can handle from 0 to 20-30 knots+ windspeed with just one sail, including Moths and cats. Boats as big as the TP52 will also sail from 0-30 knots speed and sail across oceans in 0-50+ knots with just nine sails. And the boats will also sail efficiently at many different wind angles, therefore there seems to be no evidence that windsurfer sails have particularly wide ranges like some sailmakers have claimed.

And as for the "yawn"; OK, so you may get bored at 5 knots - so what? There are plenty of things that bore some people and don't bore other intelligent people. Reaching back and forth on flat water on a windsurfer bores me and GPS speedsailing has limited appeal, but that's no reason to sneer at them.

By the way I never said that Cobra were exploiting anyone or that anyone should lose sleep. And I've already pointed out that the price of a product from a SEA factory is a lot cheaper than they used to be, adjusted for inflation.

/\

As someone with many years of sailing boats and boards, I can't see why the comparison is not valid. Moth sailors, for example, don't seem to accept that they will be off foils any better than windsurfers accept being off the plane, but Moth sailors still don't use a full quiver of foils and sails. Yacht sailors would quite like to go faster, but they accept that it's better for the sport as a whole if they keep things comparatively simple. And many of the windsurfers I know are quite happy being off the plane because some of our boards are designed for non-planing conditions.

Free enterprise doesn't always get it right. It didn't fix the issues when windsurfing in Australia declined to 75% of its peak. It didn't work when windsurfing in Australia declined to 50% of its peak. It didn't work when windsurfing in Australia declined to 25% of its peak, or 15% of its peak, or 10% of its peak. Why will it suddenly kick into gear when windsurfing in Australia gets below 5% of its peak?

Lots of other sports have examined their culture, their marketing and other aspects of themselves - why can't windsurfing? And when many figures in the industry say that there is a problem why can't we listen to them?

The other funny thing is that the much vaunted development in windsurfers is no longer looking so impressive in some ways.
Not only the kites apparently going faster a lot of the time, but it seems that the Moths are probably faster around the course most of the time. Sure, it's not all about going fast, and boards are sometimes faster and fantastic in other ways, but surely when other types are going faster with less gear we could consider whether windsurfing's approach is the optimum one when it comes to combining efficiency with economy?

Chris 249 said..
I think that pretty much happened, which is why the sport is so much smaller these days. A book on the economics of sport by a professor at the Sorbonne mentions that in the '80s, one third of all households in France had a windsurfer.

You'll find that the 80s windsurfer cost close to $3000... albeit it included the sail, mast and boom. I also remember that later on most boards cost around $2000. I bought a Fanatic Mamba for $1995 in 1990... sadly some ****er stole it of my car roof but that's a different story.

The way Cobra builds boards these days is quite different. It allows smaller production runs and because they operate out of Thailand labour is also cheaper. Without these advantages I believe boards today would cost in excess of $5000.

No one likes spending more money than they have to but there is always the option of buying second hand. I have bought some dirt cheap gear from team riders as early as March essentially being the current season gear. One of those boards is till going strong 6 years later.

stehsegler said..

Chris 249 said..
I think that pretty much happened, which is why the sport is so much smaller these days. A book on the economics of sport by a professor at the Sorbonne mentions that in the '80s, one third of all households in France had a windsurfer.

You'll find that the 80s windsurfer cost close to $3000... albeit it included the sail, mast and boom. I also remember that later on most boards cost around $2000. I bought a Fanatic Mamba for $1995 in 1990... sadly some ****er stole it of my car roof but that's a different story.

The way Cobra builds boards these days is quite different. It allows smaller production runs and because they operate out of Thailand labour is also cheaper. Without these advantages I believe boards today would cost in excess of $5000.

No one likes spending more money than they have to but there is always the option of buying second hand. I have bought some dirt cheap gear from team riders as early as March essentially being the current season gear. One of those boards is till going strong 6 years later.

I noted pages back that boards are cheaper in inflation-adjusted terms when compared to the very early days of the sport. However, the current prices don't look all that great compared to the prices in the hey-day of windsurfing.

Very, very few mid '80s boards cost $5000 in today's values. Yes, there were $3000 packages in the '80s, but for most of the time the industry was selling people much cheaper boards. A popular beginner board like the Bic 250 was $750 complete in early 1985, which equals $2113 today. Mid-range boards (TC Runner/Hi Fly 300CS/Windsurfer 1 Design/Wayler) were the big sellers and they were less than 1/3 of what you're claiming. They were $995 complete, which equals $2,803 today. All of them were complete board and rig packages and with two sails they could sail in 0-30 knots.

Yes, a custom raceboard was $2,000-$3,000, which is $5600 to $8,400 today, and a Gaastra Powerfoil race sail was $600, which equates to $1700 today. But at the time they were only being sold to the tiny minority, ranges had fewer sails with a wider wind range, and many of those who were buying them were getting sponsorship and prizemoney - Australian windsurfing events received over $100,000 in sponsorship that year, or almost $300,000 in 2015 dollars.

By the early '90s there were package deals like Bombora South Pacific 2s, Zots or Xits with rigs for $999 to $1399 - $1800 to $2,500 today. A Bic Astro Rock or a cheaper custom were $2000 in today's dollars while sails were around $1000 to $1500. Mistrals, board only, were from $1995 rrp (Shredder, Screamer) to $2950 rrp (Equipe CHS raceboard) which equals $3600 to $5400 in 2015 dollars.

In 1992 there was $60,000 in prizemoney in West Australian events alone, which is about $110,000 today, so the top guys could get a fair bit of cash back.

PS - I just found some info about sail ranges from 1985. In that year, Pryde gave their World Cup wavesailors just three sails each; Hood Sails gave guys five wavesails. Top World Cup racer Bjorn Schrader had five course-racing sails to get from 10 knots to 35 knots. He used the same five sails for slalom up to 35 knots of wind, but had three smaller sails as well.

It doesn't seem that the sail range has really increased much, looking at that.

Te Hau said..

"Windsurfers, they get the wind for free and want everything else for nothing."

Just lately I'd be happy to pay for some wind, already have a truckload of gear.

If we all vote communist we might get a free Flying Pigeon sailboard each -

strong, durable, light, and beautiful. You know you want one.

This needs a picture but all I can find is bicycles.

Chris 249 said..
/\

As someone with many years of sailing boats and boards, I can't see why the comparison is not valid. Moth sailors, for example, don't seem to accept that they will be off foils any better than windsurfers accept being off the plane, but Moth sailors still don't use a full quiver of foils and sails. Yacht sailors would quite like to go faster, but they accept that it's better for the sport as a whole if they keep things comparatively simple. And many of the windsurfers I know are quite happy being off the plane because some of our boards are designed for non-planing conditions.

Free enterprise doesn't always get it right. It didn't fix the issues when windsurfing in Australia declined to 75% of its peak. It didn't work when windsurfing in Australia declined to 50% of its peak. It didn't work when windsurfing in Australia declined to 25% of its peak, or 15% of its peak, or 10% of its peak. Why will it suddenly kick into gear when windsurfing in Australia gets below 5% of its peak?

Lots of other sports have examined their culture, their marketing and other aspects of themselves - why can't windsurfing? And when many figures in the industry say that there is a problem why can't we listen to them?

The other funny thing is that the much vaunted development in windsurfers is no longer looking so impressive in some ways.
Not only the kites apparently going faster a lot of the time, but it seems that the Moths are probably faster around the course most of the time. Sure, it's not all about going fast, and boards are sometimes faster and fantastic in other ways, but surely when other types are going faster with less gear we could consider whether windsurfing's approach is the optimum one when it comes to combining efficiency with economy?

My comments are as follows:

As someone who started in Sabots as a 8 year old, I beg to differ in regards to it being valid to compare sailing boats and windsurfers. The windsurfer's addiction to planning is the key difference. With regard to keeping things simple, once you have mastered the art of windsurfing, nothing is as simple to do. You don't see many sailing boats just going out for a sail like you see windsurfers. They either compete in organised racing or use the boat to get from A to B. Windsurfers sail just for the fun of it. I agree moth sailors get the planning thing, but there is so much more effort involved in rigging, launching and sailing one compared to windsurfing. If they were so good, you'd see heaps of them. As for non planning windsurfers, they are a curiosity, they might be good to learn on and they will always have their niche supporters but their glory days are long past.

You may not have noticed but windsurfing is actually stronger now than 7 years ago. This is as a result of better boards and sails, many sailors coming back to the sport, better wind forecasting so sailors can plan their lives and the group participation afforded by GPSTC and this forum. There are 6 active teams from SE QLD in the GPSTC . There are organised clubs with Windwanders Freerace series, Bayside slalom series, RQYS world (this December) and national Raceboard titles and LCSC state Raceboard titles. There are active learner and improver groups. Windsurfing has evolved and will continue to evolve.

In regard to the free enterprise, I agree its not perfect, but it certainly work better than a command economy.