Most of the pads around these days are more along the lines of board-nose padding rather than mast mounted padding. JP (for example) make a really tough nose guard thing that you can glue onto the nose of their boards - they even match the graphics. Other brands have similar things, and there's probably something generic around by now.

The arguments against these things are that if you do smash it hard enough to break the board under the guard, you can't see it, and it could be sucking in tonnes of water without you noticing until it's too late!

You can DIY with a piece of that foam 'pool noodle' stuff which will take some of the sting out of the mast..

OR.. you can just hang on, sheet in and pretend that you're practicing forward loops, that way you'll miss the board entirely, and personally, I reckon it's more fun too!

Hi Steve,
Bitter experience has shown me I NEED mast/nose protectors so I went to Clark Rubber and bought a 1/4 sheet of 25mm eva closed cell foam,cut horse shoe shape nose protectors out using a very sharp kitchen knife and glued them to the nose of my boards.
CAUTION,be very careful using the knife as some effort is required and the knife requires sharpening after every few cuts just so it will slide through the foam.It has to be THAT sharp.
I used Selleys Kwik Grip to glue them down following the instructions to the tee and they appear to be holding down fine.
There was two densities of eva at Clark Rubber and I chose the more dense foam as I wanted to spread the impact loading over the greatest area.
I used a sheet of A3 cardboard to make a template,marked it onto the foam cut the foam and sanded the foam using an aluminium oxide sandpaper (120 grit).
Will try to post photos asap but my computor skills are poor so it may take a while.
Good Luck
Fullmoon.

I use a Prolimit mast foot protector, turned upside down and mounted just below the boom. I purchased it 2 years ago from WindSail'n'Surf in Sydney. Sits in just the right spot.

hi latedropeddy, had the same trouble with my carve , i was told they were bullet proof because of the tectnora but first ride came in with a nice dent in the nose, i rang auswind about a nose protector and was told they didnt have any and if they did wouldent sell me one anyway, so built my own very easy to build ,slip a strong garbo bag over the nose and tape lay up fibre glass matt and resin three layers of cross weave , make sure it over hangs the nose when it sets just pull bag and glass of the board comes of easy ,trim with grinder paint two libral coates of flow coate over out side only sand smooth , apply bathroom white slicon sealant to the protector arond the edge on the in side push on let set its there and wont come of , if you want to remove it you have cut the slicon with a razor blade cheers bazz email if you need any help

Arlo, what about one of the Dakine mast base protectors? Seemed to fit on there pretty well the other day?

We put a boom bra on the boom then the protector on the mast under the boom. Should do the same job?

Arlo said...

I had already considered that an upside down mast base protector might do the trick, but assumed there might be something specificallt designed for this given that the October Windsurf mag mentions it in the Kit Wrecker article. I've emailed Pro-Limit to see if they still make the combined boom/mast protector I came across on the net from a few years ago as it isn't mentioned on their current web-site.