Hi again!
Time to revive this thread.
I've just spent summer in Haga Park, Öland and have had time to sail a bit with my new sails. I've also had a lot of people look at my old board and estimate it's size. The most vommon guess seems to be just below 70 L.
One thing I tried was uphauling it. Amazing what 10 kgs do. When I was 20 I weighed 65 kg and could uphaul it after some practice. Now, at 75 kg it sinks like a rock.
Another realisation was that 5.7 really does not match the board. My new 5.7 weighs a lot less than my old 4.5, so I thought it would work, but it doesn't. Even when fully planing it feels "draggy" and in the lulls I sink really deep. With a 4.5 everything changes, the sailing is relaxing and the board feels light and easy to control.
One guy commented that even a board with exactly the same shape, but built in modern sandwitch instead of the good old Clark foam/polyester combination, would plane a lot earlier and float much better.
I did try a modern waveboard, a Lorch Oxygen 85 and it was an interesting experience. Haga is always flat, but it it still felt interesting, I guess I will mainly use the board on flat water anyway. Most of my experience with lorch can be summed up as big. The fin was a 26 cm B&J fin, which I guess added to that experience.
On the good side: I was surprised that an 85 litre board would be dead easy to tack, but it was. The low weight was also nice. The next nice thing was when I did a chop-hop, the board had this "floaty" feel in the air, this feeling that the underside of the board created a lot of lift in the air, something I haven't experienced since I sold my Electric Rock in the early ninties, and I really miss that.
Bad: This was certainly partly due to the big fin, but even on very slightly overpowered 5.7, control started to feel a bit hard, and there was a slight bouncyness, which I guess would become an issue with a 5.0 or 4.5. I guess I'd want one more board for the windy days.
Maybe I shouldn't expect these findings to be applicable to other boards, but it still made me think that maybe I'm asking too much when I expect one board to feel perfect with everything from 5.7 down to that fully maxed Pozo where I really really hope to sail next summer.
I started thinking that a "modern E-rock" for 5.7-sailing, and a very small board might be a better idea. I'm thinking of a board in the 80-100l range, fast, wide-tailed, strong and with the straps way outboard so I could wrap my heels around the rail and push the fin as hard as I can and search for ramps and jump as high as I can, and that floaty feel that gives me the confidence to nose-land, still hooked in, like I always did on the Electric Rock. Could a Hawk 95, an Eagle 101 or any of the freewaves fit the bill?
Then, when it's time to change down to 5.0 I also take the smaller board. How about something like a NW 73 or 75or some other board around 70l?