Winter Windsurfing
Fun Projects | | Links: Hoofer Sailing Club
Custom winter windsurfing board for ice and snow.
I based my winter windsurfing board off the popular Savo Sledge design. Dimensions are roughly the same, but the construction is quite different. Joe Windsurfer has a great page on many of the designs seen in North America and is worth the read.
While there is a strong snow kiting presence on the lake every winter, I was never interested as I can’t ski or snowboard. The concept of snow windsurfing really excited me as my windsurfing experience was enough to get sailing.
The winter windsurfing board consists of a molded carbon fiber board, skis, and aluminum brackets to hold everything together. The board is a 0.5in thick composite sandwich combining carbon fiber, fiberglass and divinicell PVC foam. The board by itself is incredibly light. The aluminum brackets connect the skis to the board and set the ski camber. I have two sets of skis that I swap depending on conditions. For mostly ice conditions, I use straight steel edged skis that are ~210cm long. For my much preferred snow conditions, I use 260cm long and very wide jumping skis. These jumping skis can handle a foot of powder snow without issue. I later added footstraps which made blasting along much more secure.
Safety gear is incredibly important as ice is much less forgiving than water. I wear an armored snowboarding vest under my jacket that has padding and hard inserts protecting my elbows, shoulders and back. I wear an open faced ski helmet but had an accident in the past where the boom hit my jaw. The impact was relatively low force, but still strained my jaw for a week or so and could have been significantly worse if my teeth were hit. I’ve since bought a molded sports mouthguard from Python, which I highly recommend.
