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I just saw through some photos from the Carolina Cup
Looks like next years Fanatic racer will be called strike?
Different boards, presumably. The wider tail one might be the new cutting nose Flatwater board that is looking more like a Bark for 2016, and the second is the ocean/DW one that is looking increasingly like a SIC Bullet V2. Both look like a useful improvement over the 2015 models to me.
The Strike is the Flatwater board. There are now a few photos of it up on FB and Instagram at Fanaticsupaustralia. The board above is one of the new ocean boards. The Strike and Ocean board are very different. There is another thread showing some of the boards we trialled to come up with the board Jake has in Europe. The board below is a prototype I have been using, however, it is pretty close to the finished model and will give you an idea. The glide on this board is amazing.
Fanatic have rather taken to extreme design solutions in the last couple of years. The problem with extreme design solutions is that while they may work very well in some situations, in others they may not. The new cutting nose looks a bit extreme to me. Great for flatwater sprints on a rowing lake, but perhaps not so good in cross-winds and chop. But I guess time will tell. The open ocean boards of the last couple of years have been great downwind. But maybe not so hot upwind, with that fat lip nose to catch everything. But the new ocean board certainly looks prettier. Are there many races where you can guarantee "flat water "? I guess that most of the competitors at the Carolina Cup expected a flat water race but it certainly didn't turn out like that, and perhaps it's not surprising that a design (DC NSP) aimed at high tolerances for a wide range of activities won. But maybe Fanatic are rotating the appeal of their boards to different sub-genres of racer across the different years, as a marketing strategy.
The new fanatic line up seems to support a trend that I'm not really in to. It seems that you have to have more than one raceboard to be competitive. The flatwater shapes become more and more extreme to a point were they are useless to most people. Starboard has gone in that direction for long time , if I was to buy a starboard I would constantly be thinking about wether or not I should have picked another board.
Naish derserve a lot og praise for having a one-board-race quiver
Thinking the other way around you could say that Naish makes a board that can do things a lot people won,t need while coming a bit short compared to the specialty,s the other brands offer. I paddled last year with my 14 95% on dead flat water. In those conditions I don,t need a rocker that can downwind while a downwinder wouldnt be happy with a true flatwater rocker so offering more flavours makes sense to me.And if comps are becoming a gear-battle and it would make comps inaccessible I would think National racing comitee,s can make a rule of one board only that you need to register with scenario,s on how to handle if the registered board isn,t able to race (for example that you can,t replace it with a faster/better conditions suiting board/penaltys in position etc).
Well, actually Naish were doing the flat water/ocean board divide long before Fanatic, with the earlier model Javelins and Glides. It's only recently that things have got a bit confusing.
But you make a good point. I was arguing that you can have a board that is 90% aimed at one thing without necessarily making it appalling at another (eg. the SIC X14 is ostensibly a flat water board but the sponsored riders have been using them in the sea very successfully). And maybe people would prefer that rather than boards that have a very narrow set of circumstances in which they work well, so you have to have 2 or more boards. Actually, the early Fanatic raceboards were pretty much like that, and I still have one of them because it has a flexibility that is becoming rare.
But raceboards are determined by the nature of races. It seems likely that when eg. 200m sprints on rowing lakes become a standard race format, then boards will emerge just aimed at that. And you can already buy downwind boards that are pretty much useless except for big ocean downwinding.
I guess I just long for a simple solution of having one board that will cope with 90% of what I want to do, when what I want to do encompasses a wide range of activities on the water. But maybe most people will actually just choose one narrow type of activity and only do races that are related to that. It's funny though, because at the moment the top racers are mostly guys and girls who come from an ocean background, not flat water (although they win at that too). Maybe that will change over the next 5 years and we'll see an increasing polarisation of the different SUP sub-genres in personnel and equipment, until the stage that you won't get Kai Lenny or Connor Baxter (or the newer versions of them) doing flat water or river racing. Only ocean. And a flat water board you'll buy from Fanatic or Starboard will be next to useless in the sea.
If you want one board to do it all and now also be competitive in the racing world forget it that is now just a pipe dream!!
In the perfect world yes it would be great to just have one board that does it all but where that falls down is some places around the world have flatwater like lakes and and those guys want a pure design for those conditions and then you have the crew who live somewhere with downwinding the on the doorstep so they want a different board now this is driven by the customers and the brands are only doing what they want.
If you ever have to choose just one board then most of the time the ocean board would be a better choice as with boards like the Fanatic falcon are still pretty competitive in both conditions.
So before you blame the brands for making it hard they are just doing what the market wants and really who can bkame them for that? I know the guy who lives in a lake is happy and the guy who only live for Downwinding is happy as they are getting a choice these days of boards. The down side is if you want to win a race tou might need to boards.
I'm actually not blaming anyone. I'm just seeing that there is a trend and I dont like it .
I see all the points being made . My own paddeling is roughly split 50-50 between ocean and flatwater. I decided on a downwindboard because thats where I find the most fun.
Hopefully there will be a niche in the future market for allround boards
As a disclaimer I am involved with Fanatic and was involved in testing of the flatwater and ocean boards for next year.
I've got to agree with Jacko on this one. It is impossible to get one board to be good in all conditions. You can get something that is close like the Starboard Ace, however, as Naish have found recently one style board just doesn't cut it anymore for the competitive racer. You need specialist boards for specialist races.
A couple of years ago the design team at Fanatic had the aim of designing one board that was good in all conditions. The reason for this was two fold. Firstly the consumer would only need one board and the retailer would be able to order one board model in 3 different widths to accommodate different weight riders. Unfortunately in practice our boards were better in bumps and in the ocean but they weren't fast enough in the flat. World markets had also to be considered in the design process and the year we designed a great downwind board the Europeans were screaming for a specialist flatwater board.
With races around the World primarily being held in flatwater and with the Australian flatwater race scene getting larger, Fanatic have been forced to develop different boards for different conditions. The new Strike has a sharp nose like the 2012 model but that is where the resemblence ends. It is a completely different board and is going to work exceptionally well for the flatwater racer.
Many people will agree that the Open Ocean board last year was exceptional down wind but I found to be really competitive I needed the thinner board for enclosed waters or small swell and the mid width board for big ocean swells. Obviously owning two fourteen footers is not practical for the majority of paddlers. The aim this year was to continue to improve downwind performance but at the same time improve the board's capabilities in cross wind and paddling into the wind. Additionally the stretch target was to improve the range of conditions each board would work in.
There is no doubt in my mind this was achieved. The new boards are better downwind, in cross chop and when heading into the wind. I have ordered only one board for ocean racing this year as I believe the new model will allow me to paddle in all conditions. The new design is quite different to last year's. The design components that provided great lift downwind have been retained but modifications have been made in other areas to improve other aspects of performance.
The testing process has been extremely comprehensive and has included paddlers from Jake's level down to the keen weekend racer.
The retailers are currently in Queensland testing the new models so I am sure feedback isn't too far away.
You can see more photos on Face Book and Instagram at fanaticsupaustralia.
Thanks for your great reply NNSUP !
I really keen to see and at some point test the new fanatic Open ocean board
I think most weekend warriors, like myself, will still want a board that does-it-all like the ACE or the naish
Hee hee hee hee hee.
The malcontent strikes again. Nice.
Unless I've missed something there was never a mention of anything 2015 from Naish being crap.
But I suppose we all interpret comments differently.
Unless I was missing something else, I was certain it was very clear the whole comment/thread revolved around race boards Not the rest of the range?
In Sydney there is a very healthy, respectful, friendly relationship between the people directly affiliated with the brands in question. Never any mud slinging or belittling. We are all part of the same club and surf and race together, even sharing houses etc when travelling for races.
We are very lucky here in Sydney to have access to pretty much every board you can imagine from Starboard, Naish & Fanatic before most of the rest of the SUP world and we do have people that have been around the traps long enough to form unbiased opinions based on that experience.
If the comment had been "the Naish X doesn't work as well in my opinion as the Fanatic/Starboard Y for [insert activity here]" then I wouldn't have needed to ask what board was being referred to. I genuinely wanted to know, because it might inform my own buying choices. But when I got a "Naish in general" reply it was my opinion that if someone had made that comment about eg. all Fanatic or Starboard raceboards then someone would soon have come to their defence. But there seem to be more people here on this forum who promote these other brands so I was just trying to even things out.
And if referring to something as "found wanting" isn't saying something is crap, then I don't know what is.
As I say, I have no brand allegiances at all. I just like to see a fair fight. If you think a particular product is worse than another, then IMO it is best to be specific rather than to dis a whole brand, which is what you risk doing if the only information you give is the brand.
And yep, I am a malcontent. Permanently grumpy. But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes have reason to be.
Thnks for your reply Kieranr.
Unfortunately we still haven't that many raceboards around up here´.
What are the best allround boards around in your opinion? THe Starboard ACE and the naish javelin have been mentioned..
And Area10 dont forget to smile
Nice to see they have stuck with naming their SUP range the same as their Windsurf range. Makes it so much easier to fins stuff on the net
Good post thanks Kieran
When you say the bullet 14 was too big for your weight, what do you mean and how heavy are you?
Did I see Caspar Steinfath on his 2015 Naish Javelin just beat Connor Baxter on a Starboard and Jake Jenson on the new Fanatic Strike in the "fastest paddler on earth" race at the Lost Mills event in Germany?
And Manca Notar came third in the women on a Naish Javelin despite paddling a 12-6 when everyone else was on a 14.
I guess that maybe if you take race results as a sign of a good board then maybe the Naish Jav has NOT been "found wanting" at the intervational level at this event?
