Raceboard

There is only one sensible choice of board for any sort of long distance windsurfing, and that is a raceboard. Raceboards are long, typically around 3.8m, and unlike most windsurfers have a centreboard. The centreboard, and the raceboard's long parallel sides, work together to prevent the board slipping sideways through the water and this gives impressive upwind performance in terms of angle and speed. The technique of railing (harnessing the lift generated by the daggerboard to tilt the board onto the sharply angled 'rail' edge) further reduces sideslip - and drag - and allows good upwind speed from about a force 2.

Off the wind the raceboard has good glide (low drag) in lighter winds, and in stronger winds has comparable speed to most recreational boards. In medium winds and flat sea conditions planing speeds in excess of 20 knots can be maintained with ease.

But perhaps more impressive than out and out speed are the angles that a raceboard is capable of sailing. Whereas most boards prefer to be sailed (more or less) across the wind, the raceboard is ideally suited to sailing very close to the wind or pointing deep downwind. Given that a majority of coastal sailing will tend to be either against the wind or with the wind (as opposed to across the wind) this is the real clincher.

Raceboards also like (feel well matched to) bigger sails, and having plenty of sail area is essential to covering significant distance when the wind isn't blowing.

The sheer size of the raceboard (and the more recent models have become more volumous still) makes it well suited to carrying weight. My testing suggests I should be able to carry up to about 8 kilos of additional gear before the extra weight becomes seriously detrimental to performance.

I've been training on a Mistral IMCO (quite a small raceboard by modern standards) and a chunkier F2 380 - which at the moment is the board lined up for the attempt.