First Phantom 377 test

About a month ago I was finally able to test the new Phantom 377 with decent wind.  First the specifics:

Board: Starboard Phantom Race 377
Fin: Starboard supplied Drake 52 cms blade
Sail: OLD Neil Pryde V8 StreetRacer 8.0 square meters
Mast: Cheap Neil Pride 460 (40% carbon?)
Boom: Old Hawaiian Pro-Line Aluminium
Adjustable downhaul and outhaul
Wind: 8-10 knots, 12 knot gusts
Sea: open ocean, light wind-driven chop, light swell, 2-3 knot upwind current
Sailor: 80 kgs, 1.85 mts height, windsurfing for 16 years, 8 years since last used a raceboard (IMCO), haven't sailed much last 4 years

Since we're trying to review the board, I'd like to first talk about the sail as I believe the shortcomings I ran into are because of my rusty skills and the slalom design of the sail as well as its old age.

From the start, standing on the beach the sail felt too flat, too rigid and with too loose a leach for the conditions, even with the outhaul and downhaul very loose...  All the patches didn't help either.
On the water the sail felt powerless and physically heavy, loosening the outhaul didn't seem to affect the power too much... 

Now, onto the board... It felt quite small when I was standing on it, the sail certainly takes up a lot of room!!! ;). Also the nose seemed a lot shorter than that of the IMCO, but it may be be a matter of visual inaccuracy as I've recently read on the LBWS forums that the mast track and centerboard are placed farther forward on the board compared to the IMCO. 
Perhaps this was also the reason why I was submerging the nose on my first runs! Easily corrected by standing further back on the board.

Upwind it was a rocket. With the flat V8 sail, the centerboard fully down and decent wind it went to the weather mark like a freight train, it beat 4 RS:Xs by quite a lot and the RS:Xs were sailed by much better sailors!!!

Even with the centerboard fully down the board wasn't railing willingly, I had to coerce it by pushing and pulling with the feet.  Perhaps this is more a reflections of the poorly matched sail and the boom might have been set too low, will try to raise the boom a little bit next time.

The centerboard and mast track worked flawlessly and the fact that you can press down on the mast track pedal by pushing down on the centerboard lever is brilliant, this should save several seconds and win some ground on the upwind-downwind transitions. Gotta pay attention and make sure the mast is locked in position in the track or it WILL move unexpectedly, this wasn't an issue on the IMCO but the again it's track was much harder to move, especially trying to pull it back. For serious racers it seems that the mast track positions are not enough, but it should be easily fixed by disassembling the track and cutting more notches in the aluminum locking plate.
The canted mast track didn't seem to benefit or hinder the railing, planning or downwind ability of the board, but perhaps it's my skills that are lacking. At first it was weird stepping on and around the front part of the track but you get used to it and forget about it really quickly, you can see that Tiesda took the time to shape it properly so it is not uncomfortable under the feet.

On the water the centerboard is easy to deploy and retract and the gaskets prevented water from shooting up trough the opening.  The centerboard is big but very manageable, the board didn't try to go rail-riding or anything weird, will have to try it in stronger winds.

On the reach the rust really showed! I barely managed to get the board planning! The straps seemed to far back even with the mast track in the aft-most position.  Again, too much rust, too little wind...

Downwind it was weird to step around the centerboard, but once I found a comfortable position I was able to sail much deeper than on the IMCO, but still not as deep as the RS:Xs. Gybing was really easy as was tacking.

This board would make a tactical tacking and gybing duel a whole lot of fun!

Once I (inevitably) fell in the water both the board and sail seemed HUGE when trying to wrestle them into position for a waterstart! Handling the Fanatic Bee and the 5.2 North is much easier! Hahahaha

The non-skid is very grippy and will scratch you up if you're not careful. The only shortcoming I find in the manufacture of the board are the footstraps.  They are too soft and with no K-9 anti-twist devices supplied with the board they get twisted very easily and this makes it difficult to get into them. I certainly don't enjoy looking down and fumbling to get into the straps, I will try Bushfire's tip to make the railing straps stiffer, read his great review of the Phantom here:

http://www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Review/Starboard-Phantom-377BW/

All in all I'm really happy with the board, it is great to be back on the water and can't wait to get a new raceboard sail and really sail this board to its full potential. In the mean time I will try to dust off some cobwebs and get the old skills up to muster!

See you on the water!