Windfoil Tech: Patrik ‘Air Inside’. The Carbon/Nomex hollow board.

Video source by Patrik Boards yt channel. Patrik Diethelm is a former shaper/designer for known Windsurf brands like F2. He also designed a proto for the Olympic selection where the Neil Pryde RSX was selected. Now he has his own brand ‘Patrik’. Being a shaper himself and putting his name on the line he really needs to deliver. Aside marketing and promotional stuff there is always someone building top quality equipment in any sport.

His ‘Air Inside’ tech featured in Patrik top of the line Windsurf boards is quite known by Marstrom Tornado or A-Class sailors , the carbon nomex honeycomb laminate which consist of a honeycomb core in a carbon laminate sandwich. Same Tech also used in the Americas Cup / Sail GP or any high tech beach cat/yacht.

But I have never seen this method chosen to build Windsurf boards. Standard windsurf boards are built by a cheap styrofoam core and a mix of super thin divynycell/airex foam layer plus carbon / fiberglass ones above. Windsurf boards are not cheap, neither this Patrik Air Inside series, which are the most expensive boards in the market.

But the added cost in this case comes with a real asset, sometimes we hear promotional slogans or marketing tricks which are not indeed as advertised, but when you are confident on your product and you deliver what you promote you can do as video above.

Watch Patrik Diethelm literally cutting his board with a hand saw to show those with doubts in the construction (plus those asking if the board will sink after a crash or ding) how his ‘Air inside’ line is built.

Structural integrity has been an issue for years with windsurf boards, but now we are seeing an exponential number of boards breaking due to the foiling mode. Even boards built with foiling in mind are failing.

This construction method is the ideal for a Windsurf board as add the structural strenght needed, but as noted comes with an added elevated cost. Maybe in the future all boards can be built like this, more now with the Oil prices going down, but we don’t know when it will rebound.

Surely in the future also boards will be 3D printed, along with our beachcats, but we are a long way to reach that level of refinement.

Next post on windsurf we’ll check Patrik’s new foil board designs, which address an issue we have also reviewed (and sent to a known sailmaker) last year when designing a dedicated foiling board.