Another Van Board Racking System.

SOme picks after its been padded up and also put a few boards in, including the 11'3 Sup on top.

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stehsegler said..

Funny how much gear some people have. I remember when people had one board and two sails. A normal sail and a "storm sail"...

I guess its down to what you are prepared to sail in and how much TOW you want to get.

My sail range is from 4.7 to 8.0 (5 sails) and have 5 boards that work in that range (94FSW, 112FSW,115 SL, 131 Freeride, 174 SUP). It gets me out in anything 12 knots +.

Some people wont sail in anything under 20 Knots. In that case a couple of sails and one or two boards is all they need.

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peteshea said..

Is there any reason to have the boards vertical (on their sides) rather than horizontal (flat) other than space?

I don't know about others, but for me, you could fit more boards in vertically than horizontally. You could then fit sails in the slots above the boards, to fill up all the space.

Also, with them vertically, the boards are holding their own weight against the base bits of timber (in my version). If I stacked them horizontally, the structure would have to take the weight. Not important if you are using steel, but more important if you are using plastic.

It also seems easier to slide the boards out of the van when they are stacked vertically. I think the nose kick on the boards, when aligned the same way, seems to make it easier to fit more together and then slide them out.

I like the racks, nice

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jermaldan said..

112FSW,115 SL

each to their own... I am just wondering if people are constantly thinking if they have the wrong gear out. EG you have a 112 and a 115 board. How do you decide what's right.

I have seen people standing on the beach for 30 minutes trying to work out what to rig. If you have one or max two boards and three sails it's pretty easy to decide. Plus from my experience the more hours you spend with a board the more you will get out of it in terms of low end performance.

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FormulaNova said..

stehsegler said..

jermaldan said..

112FSW,115 SL

each to their own... I am just wondering if people are constantly thinking if they have the wrong gear out. EG you have a 112 and a 115 board. How do you decide what's right.

I have seen people standing on the beach for 30 minutes trying to work out what to rig. If you have one or max two boards and three sails it's pretty easy to decide. Plus from my experience the more hours you spend with a board the more you will get out of it in terms of low end performance.

Are they different types/styles of boards, to be that close in volume?

I find that if I have boards around the same volume, I always use one of them only.

On the other hand, the number of times I have turned up at a spot and said 'I wish I had brought the bigger boards' is surprising. It never happened when I had a van, as it always had the bigger boards.

Yeah, 115 slalom is more for flat water overpowered reaches, where the 112 is more for bump and jump choppy wavy conditions. The board design is just as important as the volume. Also the Slalom is wider and uses sails 6.5 to 8m, where the FSW is best with 5 - 6.5.

Its apples and oranges.

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Ian K said..

peteshea said..

Is there any reason to have the boards vertical (on their sides) rather than horizontal (flat) other than space?

Trouble is you need to leave about 240mm for the average board to slide in or the footstraps snag. Then there's the width of the rack components.
I've thought an expanda-file system which allows the rack to gently close up until footstraps just touch the neighbours might allow us to get 5 boards in the space of 4. From experience no amount of arithmetic or high powered mathematics will allow one to make this theoretical prediction. Someone just has to try it.

If money was no object...

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aus301 said..

Ian K said..

peteshea said..

Is there any reason to have the boards vertical (on their sides) rather than horizontal (flat) other than space?

Trouble is you need to leave about 240mm for the average board to slide in or the footstraps snag. Then there's the width of the rack components.

If you only put the vertical bars at the front and not at the back you don't have that problem.

I got away with >180mm verticals on an old van I had doing it this way. The rack at the back only had verticals on the outside, all the boards were held in place by the nose and stayed very secure.

I no longer have a van, I'm down to one board, three sails, one mast, one boom. PERFECT.

Thats a brilliant solution. It could mean I could get as much as 7 or 8 boards this way! Not that I have or even need that many...