Ultracore: Miracle material for windsurf boards

Starboard's board weights for the coming season are very eye-catching. Some of the small sizes of slalom, wave and freeride boards are well under six kilos. A new material, which you call "Ultracore", is supposed to make this possible. What's behind it? I can't tell you in detail, sorry, just this much: it's a new sandwich material (sandwich absorbs a large part of the impact load and is installed between the foam core and carbon/fibreglass laminate in board construction, the ed.). On the outside, it hardly looks any different from a conventional sandwich - which is good, because it makes it more difficult for our competitors to copy. The material has 40-50 per cent better values in terms of impact absorption and shear forces - it is simply much more stable. This allows you to reduce the amount of carbon and resin used on top of the sandwich and build a board with the same durability but significantly less weight.

How do you develop something like this? Do you have partners to help you? We teamed up with a sandwich specialist from the aircraft industry and carried out some laboratory tests together. A series of tests then delivered these amazing results. The only problem was producing the material in sufficient quantities for board construction, as nobody had used it industrially before. We managed to get it together for 2017 production, but what will happen in 2018 is still written in the stars. Another factor in the lower board weights are the mast tracks and fin boxes, which we now produce ourselves at Starboard. These are 40 per cent lighter, which adds up to a lot for a wave board with five boxes.

In the past, it has unfortunately often been the case that the end customer has paid for supposed innovations with higher prices. What about this time? We have given a lot of thought to this and use the new Ultracore sandwich - which costs around twice as much as conventional sandwich material - for freeride boards in the deck and underwater hull and carbon in the rails, without increasing the price. You can only offer better quality at the same price if you reduce your own profit margin, which is what we have done with the freeride boards. In the past, other brands have tried to keep their margins unchanged by using a cheaper foam or by not using sandwich material at all. I don't want to talk shit about other brands' products, they make great boards too and I ride them regularly - before I saw them apart to see what's inside (laughs).