Our Rider/Customer: 85kg kiting for 4 years.
First things first the kiteboard looks sick, good to see a move away from the standard Kite board graphics - even if you've never seen a Wainman Blunt, someone rocks up on the beach with one you'll be drawn to its beauty. Pick it up and you'll be caressing its sleek curves, before your brain realizes how light the dam thing is - including the fins, pads and handle it came in at around 3kg. With regards to durability its minimal weight does nothing to ground any concerns, in your hands you know this thing is strong and built appropriately, no question.
On the water: First thing I noticed and in comparison to my old TT was how locked in I felt the conditions were very choppy but the board just flew across the water cutting its way through everything in its path, it was ridiculously smooth and almost felt like it was on rails hovering a few millimeters above the water. Was not sure how it would cope switching to toeside but it effortlessly made the transition before locking itself in again, without attention I was riding toeside with the same control and stability as heelside with absolutely no loss of ground or speed.Storming upwind on my weaker toeside I was laughing at how good this board was feeling and I still hadn't turned back to shore. At this point I was joined by a mate and, it's always good to see how good the board performs upwind when you have a direct comparison to someone else's wake trail. Switching back to heelside we set off around the same sort of time I was probably about 50 yards further out, he has no problem going upwind but the difference was unbelievable, if observing from above I was probably tracking 30/40 degrees further upwind, the next thing hit me at just how fast I was going within seconds I had overtaken him (we were on the same brand and sized kites) for a board of its size it just fly's.
The next revelation, driving straight into the chop not a single drop of spray was hitting my face, absolutely nothing was being thrown up by the front of the board due to the rocker. Time to try some jumps and test its metal - loading jumps was a synch plenty of power and pop. The board is relatively stiff but this never comes across when landing, such gorgeous soft landings.
Turning into heel or toeside is awesome, the radius of the turns are a tight as they could be without the board skidding of its rail or stalling, no matter how strong the wind was the board was not going to run away.
After about a week of constant riding I took the fins off for a finless session... the wind was around 20 / 25kts choppy but no waves. At times I could have been fooled into thinking I still had fins you need to ride it slightly flatter on the water but there was no loss of upwind performance. Pushing the back out and skating around was great fun but you always felt you had control.
I've had this kiteboard out in 15 - 40kts of wind, overall I couldn't be happier, no complaints.
This review was done by a customer of S2AS Kitesurf shop in poole