Carbon Art 40

Just had my first serious sail on my Carbon Art 40 and thought I’d share the experience. Please note that I am not sponsored by Carbon Art and payed the normal price for this board. I am 78 kg and a 5m KA Koncept was used with a Time Machine 26 speed fin (Thanks Tom for the loan)

At 60lts ya going to need a lot of wind to get this board going so today wasn’t ideal 30+WNW Gusty wind moderating and lots of confused chop at Sandy Point. Rigged the 5.0 and off we went. Its narrow, as a speed board should be so there’s not a lot of room for your feet. Must be quick into those straps to get the power down. The nose has a good amount of width which really helped in keeping it above the chop. Most of my old speed boards go over the first wave and through the next one. The width didn’t make the board want to take off and fly away, just settled nicely on its tail. Except if you wanted to have a bit of fun and jump a few waves. When the wind dropped right off it would float at about knee depth, but I couldn’t find its balance point today. A bit more practice and I should be able to float on it in marginal winds.

So how does it sail?
Amazing…Nicely balanced and very quick 28.78 10 sec ave with a peak of 34.4 which on a flat course is nothing huge but with the state of the inlet and the gusty wind was pretty good. It sat very quite in the troughs and bounced nicely over the rough stuff without any problems. It just wanted to go faster, but I wasn’t quite ready to find its or my limits just yet.

You can jibe it and I had a rough go at a few, but you will need to practice your laydowns to get the most out of this board.

Tacking…..forget it, it’s a speed board

The great advantage that I found with Carbon Art is that you can customise your board; I had an extra set of plugs put in for the front straps and a nice colour added to the deck. The board took 5 weeks to arrive which is the worst thing about ordering over the net. Waiting for pressies to arrive in the post. The build quality was very good and I didn’t have to finish sand the bottom which was a surprise.

I may add a wider rear strap to help with the board trim.

At $2160 delivered to my door it makes it a good price for a new board built to my changes.

This board will be used with my 5.8 and 5.0 mainly for speed but after today experiences it might become the all-round board for when it gets really windy. Chris Lockwood has done a great job designing a speed board that sails in conditions.