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AMERICAN WINDSURFER MAGAZINE
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HI-FLY
HiFly should have an excellent year, based on the winning designs of these four new 2000 boards. Nothing radical or experimental—HiFly does not take risks—just excellent execution of the new direction in shape, with lightweight carbon sandwich construction by Cobra. The shapes offer such sailing ease, range and versatility, with so few bugs or limitations for a new design, it’s as if HiFly has been doing this for a long time. And it has, in the the sense that HiFly has always focussed on beginners and intermediates, and thus has deep experience understanding the needs of the average sailor. And it’s not their first experience with epoxy boards, having contracted Seatrend to build a line in the early ‘90s. That sensitivity to intermediates is reflected in these four boards. The Wave 253 and Free 262, especially, dive into the deep end of high performance without losing an ounce of user friendliness.
The four boards were shaped by Klaus Jocham, a freelance designer who’s known for bringing widestyle and deep vee to surfboards. We asked Eric Skemp, the U.S. distributor in Hood River, what HiFly appears to have done so right with them, and he said it was three things:
First, “Do lots of research. That’s the key. Invest the money to test the boards, and change it if it doesn’t ride right. The poor customer can’t be the tester. And don’t let your R&D sailors tell you what you want.’’
Second, stay focussed. “We just sat around the table two years ago and said, ‘Look, we’re just going to make boards that are easy to sail for the category.’ “
And finally, “HiFly doesn’t make many mistakes, because it can’t afford to. Keep in mind that we mostly do machine-built plastic boards, and you can’t change the molds or tooling on those without enormous expense. So we’re used to getting it right the first time.”
All four boards come with top-of-the-line Da Kine Pro Form footstraps, although two female testers said the straps wouldn’t adjust to their small feet, and one guy said they
wouldn’t expand to his size 12s.
WAVE 253
The Wave 253 probably won’t be the biggest seller because it has the smallest market, but it’s the star. Never mind that it got the lowest score (by a touch) of the four, because numbered ratings do not tell the story. It’s the board that testers were most impressed by, and it generated the most enthusiasm. Which is not surprising on Maui, especially with the wind we had during the test.
At about 8’3” long and 22.8 inches wide, its outline seems to hit a very narrow target between wide enough to make things easy, but not so wide as to lose all its quickness. It has a proportionally wide tail but more narrow nose, and carries a solid 85 liters, making it floaty enough to be a high-wind board for big guys, although experts will prefer something more aggressive.
Among our wave boards, its shape most closely resembles the AHD Wave 257 and Starboard Wave 88, but there are enough differences in the rocker (medium amount), rails (healthy tuck), nose kick (right up there) and bottom shape (consistent shallow double concave) that the HiFly is unique.
Of course, they all are. Sailboards are like snowflakes, and that’s the wonderful, maddening mystery to it all.
SCORE: (16 ratings)
Upwind 3.69 Planing 3.94 Speed 4.06 Handling 4.13 Jibe 4.13 Overall 3.99
COMMENTS:
“A superb, gold-standard, medium-wind wave board—great in all conditions. Planes fast, fabulous even overpowered. A very fine production board.” Needless to say, this intermediate gave it straight 5’s. [Russell]
“Easy to use. Not very challenging. Excellent in the air.” [Stella]
“Quick to plane, fast and fun to ride, but bounced a little in the jibes. Good beginner wave board.” [Taylor]
“Excellent in the waves. Turns fast and responsive, goes upwind well and has nice deck and footstrap configuration. Best wave board I’ve sailed so far. Today was also the best wave day, so…” [DeMoraes]
“Fun from the moment you step on it,” said a woman with a keen sense for fun. ‘’It’s light, and flies off ramps with ease.’’ [Butzen]
“A little wiry maybe, for some people. Real snappy feel.” [Coach]
“My favorite small wave board. Very predictable, not skittish or too loose. Good jumping and control in the air. Some of my best rides all week.” [M Stumpp]
STAFF: Hedy Gurtner gave it straight 4’s with a 5 in Jibe.
HIFLY FREE 262
The Free 262 was one of the most popular boards among testers, in a very competitive class including two other winners, the RRD 266 and Bic Saxo 270 RT. This is another case where you can forget about comparing lengths; close your eyes on the water, and all three of these boards—8-7,’’ 8-8.7” and 8-10.3,” with 99, 96 and 97 liters—feel about the same size. The versatility in both directions is intended. The Free 262, for example, doesn’t feel bigger than 8-7, it’s just that it’s capable of doing what an 8-9 can do (and more), so it becomes an 8-9 in your mind.
It’s a fairly shapely board, widest of the three by about half an inch, with its wide point significantly farther back toward the hips. It also has the widest tail, exaggerating the fairly narrow nose. Underneath, the rocker is modest and the vee subtle and consistent, with .5 mm more at the wide point than at the tail, the object being to improve carving response—which is reflected in the high marks for Handling.
The Free 262 came equipped with a straight 31 cm fin, which we found incompatible with the wavy Maui conditions. In addition to being too long, its carbon layered construction split after inevitable contact with the reef. We soon requested a wavier fin, and midway through the test received a 9 “ (24.75 cm) Finworks Wave Blade, which certainly looked much better on the board. As expected, the 262 handled and jibed better and got speedier, although the ratings didn’t climb dramatically as we thought they would.
Even before this, Eric Skemp had been lobbying the powers in Germany to provide two fins with the new freeride boards, because their versatility deserves if not demands it. Not everyone sails on European lakes. He reports that HiFly has seen the light, and that two fins will indeed come with the boards.
SCORE: (17 ratings)
Upwind 4.06 Planing 3.94 Speed 4.23 Handling 4.12 Jibe 4.0 Overall 4.07
COMMENTS:
“An exceptional board. It’s the surprise of the test for me, on a level above the other freeride boards.” [Gottleib]
“A great bump-and-jump board, but too fast for waves.” Of course, it wasn’t intended for waves. Nor is it exactly a bump-and-jump board. But that’s the thing about testers’ impressions. They’re valid by the mere fact of being. [Watson]
“Slippery between the footstraps.” And in front of them. Other testers also said it needed more or better non-skid. [N Johnson]
“Good padding under the straps. Too bad the glue is giving up.” We let it go, and later a big chunk of the pad ripped off entirely. It’s Cobra’s glue, no different than half the other boards in this test. Maybe the guy who spreads it needs to stop breathing it.
“Easy to use in both waves and flat water. Anyone could have a good time on this board.” [Alford]
“The perfect board for my style of sailing.” [R Johnson]
“Very comfortable convertible board.” [Hughes]
“Very comfortable. Got up on a plane easily, but had trouble feeling locked in (5.0 Pryde Zone sail). Jibe was smooth and predictable, and I managed about half my attempts. Could have used a bigger fin. I think with a bigger fin I could learn to like this board.”
I guess we shouldn’t have taken the big fin away from this dealer, who calls himself a “perpetual intermediate” with 18 years experience. And maybe it indicates HiFly knew what it was doing when it put that 31 cm fin on the board in the first place. [Ruffolo]
FREE 272
This board might be considered a cross between the Bic Techno 273 and RRD Freeride 276. Performance-wise, it’s probably more like the Bic; construction-wise, it’s carbon sandwich like the RRD, which is also made at Cobra; shape-wise, it splits the path between the two. The HiFly (121 liters) doesn’t have as much width or vee as the Bic (123 liters), but it’s not quite as slim as the thinner RRD (105 liters), whose bottom flattens at the tail.
Strength-wise, the reinforcement around the Power finbox passed our most brutal accidental test. One sailor was screaming along overpowered on a Sailworks 7.0 Retro when the Finworks 12.5-inch (31.75 cm) Wave Blade (like with the 262, we switched from the original 38 cm pointer) whacked a coral head so hard it ripped out of the screw. The board was unscathed, not even a crack around the screw head, and just a nick under the tail where the fin flew back and tried to dig in. We were astonished.
SCORE: (12 ratings)
Upwind 4.17 Planing 4.33 Speed 4.17 Handling 3.83 Jibe 3.83 Overall 4.07
COMMENTS:
“A bit too big of a board for my weight,” said one woman. [N Johnson]
“Not a convertible-style board. A good maneuvering slalom board.” [Coach]
“A great board,” said one basic intermediate. “Handles really well, jibes pretty good.” [de Haan]
FREE 282
Like the 272, the Free 282 lies between its Bic Techno 283 and RRD Freeride 286 counterparts. But it leans much more in the Bic direction, intended for sailors of lesser skills or more mellow intent than those who would go for the especially racy RRD 286. However, like the Bic it’s certainly capable of high performance. In fact, its shape is extremely similar: a bit more tuck in the rails, less rocker, and less vee in the bottom. Other than that, including a volume of 147 liters, it might appear as if the Free 282 was inspired by the success of the Techno 283. The apparent idea was to make it lighter and faster by using carbon sandwich construction.
Our scale (admittedly not precise enough, as it rounded to the nearest half pound) indicated a discrepancy in the weights of both the 272 and 282. HiFly publishes 16.5 pounds for the 272 and 17.2 pounds for the 282; we weighed the 272 slightly lighter at 16.0 pounds, and the 282 considerably heavier at 19.0. Such inconsistencies are not that unusual in pre-production boards, as these might have been. Even after the line gets rolling, resin is still applied by humans, who have good days and bad days—some mornings you pour too much cream in your coffee, too. The excess baggage in the 282 doubtless slowed the board down a bit, although it still recorded an excellent rating in Planing. One can only guess at how quickly the fit 282s will plane.
Maybe the next board will have lost those couple of pounds. No problem, if it matters to you, just weigh it before you buy it.
We left the long-as-your-arm 44 cm fin on this board, by the way. Which meant it was only sailed at high tide.
SCORE: (8 ratings)
Upwind 4.0 Planing 4.5 Speed 3.88 Handling 3.75 Jibe 3.88 Overall 4.0
COMMENTS:
“A reasonable purchase for a 300-pound lake sailor,” said a 178-pound tester who used a three-cam 6.7 Windwing Catalyst. He thought the board was slow and handled poorly, although he gave it a 5 in Planing. “Why would anyone want to work so hard to turn a board? I’d give up early planing for better handling.’’ He may not have to, with the second fin that will come with the board. [Hirshberg]
“Extremely easy turning for my weight,” contradicted a guy who weighs 180. Makes you wonder how well it turns for a 179-pounder. This sailor used the 7.9 Sailworks XT Race sail. He added that the rig was “very forgiving, awesome.” [R Johnson]
“This board feels very similar to the Techno 283, though more alive. Extremely user friendly. Moderate outboard footstrap positions make sailing easy.” [Stone]
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