2017 JP All Ride vs Magic Ride

Hi all,

Im considering getting one of these boards for Melbourne and probably most of the time would use it in the bay.

Does anyone have any opinions or used one/both of these that can give any thoughts on them?

I know the Magic Ride is one of the wider body style freeride boards compared to the All Ride which is a more traditional thinner body freeride.

Any thoughts?

Hey Steely, I'm an intermediate sailor and I use the big 154 Magic Ride and am 100kg. It's great for me because it does nothing perfectly, but does everything pretty well. It's probably not as fast as the All Ride but is just a great general purpose board. My reasons for the Magic were that I wanted something with enough buoyancy to easily uphaul, enough width to be stable for tacking and enough looseness in the tail to be manouvreable and to help me learn to gybe and a shape that eats up chop, it hits all of these targets. The 140 Magic ride is very similar to the 154 in shape with less volume, but the smaller ones are apparently quite different to what I've got. I'm super happy with my Magic Ride.

I dont have a board yet but i have a 4.8 and a 5.5 sail.

If i did get a magic ride, i was looking at maybe the 103L board and for the All ride probably the 106L. Im 70kg andI dont really like using larger sails.

I know it will restrict the conditions i can go out in, but if it gets lighter, i can kite.

Greetings. My sailing is mostly on a fresh water lake in Colorado, USA. The lake is about 800 acres (3.25 square kilometers) and is roughly a mile across (1.6 kilometers). I weigh about 165 pounds (75 kg) and stand 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm). I sail about 50 to 70 days each year. I consider myself good but I am definitely not one of the better sailors at my lake; this is not false modesty---my top GPS speeds are 5 mph slower compared to those of my friends and my planing jibe completion rate probably is only 20% or so.

I owned the All Ride 106 for two years, then traded it for a Magic Ride 104, mostly because I couldn't tack the All Ride to save my life. More about this in a second. I sold the Magic Ride after two seasons and will replace it with a narrower board, something in the 65 cm range. (The Magic was 69, if I recall.) Both were in wood construction.

Here are my thoughts.

First, I know the wider Magic Ride is supposed to plane earlier, but it didn't. The All Ride was an amazing early planing machine; it would plane with a 6.5 meter Ezzy Cheetah whenever there were dark spots on the water (and this is in thin air at 6000 feet, where the air is 18% thinner), which usually happens here at about 17 mph of wind. No white caps were required. I think it took at least another 3 or 4 mph of wind to make the Magic Ride plane. Maybe it was just me, but the Magic seemed really slow to get planing.

Second, when planing, the All Ride was faster by a lot. My best speed on the All Ride was 30.0 mph and I was almost always reaching speeds of 25 to 30-ish. My speeds on the Magic were usually around 24 to 25 mph with a high of 27 mph. I keep a very detailed sailing log, so these numbers are accurate.

Third, sailing the All Ride was much more fun. It was livelier, easier to control in chop, faster, and far easier to plane through a jibe. I hate to say it, but the wide boards are not that much fun. They have their place--I enjoy using my formula with a 9.5. But for normal sailing, the wider boards like the Magic ride seem a bit dull. I also owned an RRD FireMove 122 (79 cm wide) and sold it last summer, and I replaced it with a Goya Bolt (72 cm wide). The Bolt is a lot more fun. Narrow is better. I spent a lot of money buying the FireMove and Magic Ride and neither did what it was supposed to do as far as planing and jibing. And they just were not that much fun to sail.

Fourth, the one thing the Magic does better than the All Ride is tack. I am a horrible tacker. I would fall on about 75% of my tacks on the All Ride, which is why I got rid of it, but I think I never fell tacking the Magic Ride. Good thing, too, because the water at 6000 feet is COLD!!! The Magic is quite easy to tack. I think its mast track location front to rear is better and its width helps too.

Lastly, if you go for a wide free move board, go smaller in volume than you think. As I said, I had a Firemove 122. I think I would still be sailing and be happy with a FireMove if I had gotten the 112. The 122 was just too large. The step across for the jibe was too awkward. The width--which is supposed to be an advantage for early planing--created drag and hindered planing. The width makes up for smaller volume than you might be accustomed to.

By the way, if you have wide feet (and I do), be careful with the straps on either the Magic or All Ride. It is hard to make the strap opening on JP products wide enough with JP's system. The straps on the FireMove were much better quality and much easier to adjust.

The fin on the JP wood construction is decent but not great.

In short, I regret trading the All Ride for the Magic Ride. If I were you and if the choice were between the Magic Ride and All Ride, I would take the All Ride. But I would also look at a Naish Starship 100 or a Goya Bolt 105. I don't know about availability where you are, so if these are not available, that makes the decision easy, right?

Best of luck on your choice. Knowing what to buy is one of the harder things about our sport. And there is so much hype from the board makers about short wide boards that I got all confused and spent far too much money because I believed it.

I'm also an All Ride owner, the 97Lt., I use it only in the ocean when the winds are light (my light wind board). I've tried wider boards, but I didn't like them, they just didn't fit my sailing style. Very pleased with the All Ride, early planer for sure, better than the wide boards I've tried, and I get so much speed on the thing that when I sail into a hole, it just cruises right thru it, maintains it's own speed very well. It felt to me like the wider boards scrubbed off speed quicker, I'm pretty sure it's because of its width.
That's about as far as I can go with my opinion, I no longer sail on lakes or bays. Give me a several more years of age, and I'll probably be back on lakes and bays................... with my All Ride, or a newer one by then.

Bad choice Marty. I'll swap you my Carve for it...

MF2, that's the same year that I have, mine's the 96 (not 97), you'll be happy.
I ride mine in heavy chop quite often (and waves), so I have the front straps in the inboard holes, and a single strap in the rear.
Works really well in that configuration, for flatter stuff, the way it's set up in the pic works really well also.
Stock fin for flatter stuff, wave fin for the waves.

One other thing about the All Ride 106 vs. Magic Ride 104 (and as I said, I have owned both. The Magic performs better with a 7.5, probably due to its width. Neither board is ideal for 7.5 or an early planer with a sail that large, but the Magic carries the 7.5 decently enough.

great review by many people here
can we get conclusions after ??
and perhaps even some videos ??

Well said Paul, I have 3 magic rides now, and 5 JP Slalom and speed boards, you can not go wrong with the magic rides they great all round boards,great in chop and are very quick to get on the plane also they are fast have done over 34 knots in open ocean on the 104.

^^^ Nice view - the drone makes the little Pond look huge