Wind Obsession

In case you have never heard, Benoit Gauthier was known around Montreal for the Wind Obsession custom boards he made. Unfortunately this seems to be in the past tense. We, Helmut and I, met the other Benoit - do not remember his name and cannot find him on the web, in the repair shop. The other Benoit took us on a tour and explained that they have not made a board for about 3 years. That is, until just recently. They have many WO used boards for sale : http://www.windspirit-direct.com . Their shop is on the "South Shore" and you will miss it if you blink twice AND it is about 45 minutes from Montreal. The sign can be seen at the left of the picture and the shop is in the back. There are two(2) doors where the last one is to a kind of show room with lots of standard windsurf stuff, SUP paddles, and people busy. They work off the web and the season is around the corner, so ... The reason they do not make boards any more is: just cheaper to buy ready made and they are all good - they sell: JP, RRD, Starboard and Exocet. My big disappointment was : there were three(3) AHD boards in repair. One even was an AHD FF 130 where the area around the footstraps had gone soft. Benoit was going to cut it out and put epoxy re-enforced with carbon and/or kevlar and then paint it all white. The other AHD (model unknown since it was on it's back} had what Benwah called a styrofoam splitter. When one tapped on the bottom, one could hear there was a space between the bottom and the styrofoam. This to fix is apparently a $300 job. I am so flabbergasted that I do not remember what the third board problem was. Unfortunately this means I cannot buy another AHD - no matter how much I love mine. Tinho Dornellas of Florida and Bruno of 2-rad warned me of this. VERY SAD.

We had originally gone to pick up a brand new Sailworks Retro 6.0 from Patrick Bergeron of SW, who is still at Hawaii. Pat sells stuff as patsurf on a local website and is always worth checking ...My joy was going in the repair shop and i had to tear myself away. Felt like a kid in the candy store learning how they make the candy.

On the way back we stopped at 30noeuds, which is also on the South Shore of Montreal. This shop seems to have gone over to the kite side. I was looking at a used MS Pursuit 7.5 and no-one even asked if they could help me. The sail still has the 484 luff and should fit on my 490 even if Barry Spanier says NON. So, I am torn between MS and SW 7.5. I will wait it out and see if i really need the 7.5. May go with the SW because the smaller sails are all starting to go with RDM masts. Originally thought I could get a mast for MS 7.5 and 6.x. If the Switch 6.4 goes well on an RDM - then why bother getting a 460 MS mast ?? AND there is a company called SAILWORLD in the NE States that sells a sail called the Blast 7.5 for a very reasonable price. These sails are known to be good for heavyweights like myself. The luff is 487 cm - thus a 490 mast should work just fine ...