We now also offer our famous straps with a Neoprene cover for people who prefer the feel of Neoprene. For barefooted sailors, the neoprene offers more grip to not come out of the straps during aerial maneuvers unwantingly. See here for more info: https://witchcraft.nu/accesoires/footstraps/
We offer the possibility again to pre order the 2025 sails with discounts.
1 sail: 12% discount
2 sails: 16% discount
3 sails and more: 20% discount
ORDER DEAD LINE 22-sept-2024
DELIVERY January 2025
We have a few changes to the sails:
-The top has been reduced in weight on all sails and there are some other weight savings.
-The smaller sails of both ranges have received a little more shape to increase windrange, profile stability and an even smoother power delivery with a less sensitive angle of attack.
-The luff curve and profile in the foot has been modified slightly for lower drag and a smoother batten rotation.
-The Karma now has curved seams and the range has been extended with a 5 batten 3.4 and 3.1
-The Slayer also received small improvements in the panel lay out and the range is extended with a 3.5 and 3.2
Prices: https://witchcraft.nu/sails/
The German Surf Magazin published an interview with Bouke on their website: Click here
There is also a button top right for the english version.
Since we regularly had customers who found it hard to chose between the Wave V5 and the Haka, over the last years we developed the Serum.
In the first place aimed at better riders who are looking for a board that works well in higher wind side to on shore conditions. The shape is a bit of a mix with a similar outline to the Wave V5 with the rocker line and strap positions of the Haka combined with a fairly deep double concave. The double concave is not a linear concave but has the deepest point a little more towards the rail. This gives less of a sharp “keel” in the middle which would turn less good and gives more grip on the rail:
The Serum combines the planing and speed of the Haka with the grip of the Wave V5. And the Serum has more control at speed and the deep double concave provides better shock absorbing properties in chop and the rail grip as comparable to the V5. As one feed back said: It feels like you are riding on air cushions.
With the narrower tail and outline, it is a little more tecnical than the Haka to get going but still very close. For float n ride conditions the Wave V5 is still the best choice.
We do not have the full range ready yet nor a specific graphics but it can be ordered as a custom board with custom graphics.
This instruction is about how to make a carbon boom go shorter than original without reducing the maximum lenght. In this case a Pro Limit Team Carbon 140-190, 24.5mm, made by Aeron. With some booms, the end will slide in deeper but there are no more holes. So by adding holes, this boom can go 6cm shorter: From 140 to 134cm. This may not be possible with all booms.
Step 1: Remove the clips with a screw driver.
Step 2: Slide the end piece in one hole so there is still one hole visible.
Step 3: Take a 6.5mm short drill bit and stick it in the open hole to keep it in its place.
Step 4: Use a longer 6.5mm drill bit to drill the new hole. Be careful and drill slowly not to tear out any fibres, especially towards the end. Towards the end, the drill dust becomes white because the inside of the tube is made with glass fibre. Repeat this process 3 times (or more if there is more space to move the end piece in) on each side.
Step 5: Now you have 3 new holes with 6cm difference
Step 6: Drop a bit of super glue on any frayed fibres and drill again to make sure the holes are 6.5mm again. Grate off the frayed top with a conical Dremel bit.
Step 7: Check if the clips fit in all holes
Step 8: To find the final holes easier you can make a mark with a white Posca pen.
Replacement pads for Witchcraft boards can be bought from our web shop. There are 2 types old (rounded) and new (squarer) in 2 sizes. Please make sure you order the right type.
Peel off the old pad or use a cutter if it is stuck down too well. Remove any loose bits and rests of pads that are uneven. It is not necesary to remove remaining glue if it is stuck down well. Also, if the board has heel cushions, leave them on the board, just remove the pad on top.
To place the new pad:
Step 1: Remove a strip of the backing paper of the 3M autoadhesive.
Step 2: Warm the glue and the board to activate the glue.
Step 3: place the pad in the correct position. If needed make some marks on the pad and board with a pencil before removing the backing paper. Press or hammer it down with a rubber hammer or your fist.
Step 4: Mark the foot strap plug through the pad with a pencil. This step does not necesarily have to be done with the back pad as the plugs do not disappear entirely under the pad.
Step 4: Pull away the remaining backing paper.
Step 5: warm up the glue and board. Warmth activates the glue better.
Step 6: Press or hammer the remaining pad down with special care for the edge.
Step 7: Use a Dremel with conical grinding stone to open the holes for the foot strap plugs and side fin boxes. Drill any glue, pad rests or other debris like sand (on a used board) from the plugs with a 4mm drill bit. Do not drill the holes any deeper, if needed make a mark on the drill bit with tape at 22mm.
Witchcraft sails stand out for being powerful yet light and soft in the hands with a gradual power delivery and a locked in center of effort. You can rig smaller to have a lower weight, better handling and more durability.
For 2024 we have reworked the smaller sizes to have a bigger windrange and more stability. We have reduced top weight a little more.
Like usual, we offer for each sail type 2 standard colors. See below.
However, new for 2024 is the possibility to pre order sails in custom colors with an extra cost of 30€ per sail. See the possible color schemes below. Total custom colors is also possible on request with a cost of 50€ per sail. Let us know your ideas and we can see what is possible.
There is also the possibility to chose between heavy duty 4 mil Kevlar scrim, 2.5 medium duty scrim or 2mil light duty scrim. Please note that not all colors are available in all qualities. For the Slayer the 4mil Kevlar scrim will be chosen as standard, for the Karma and Elixir, the 2.5 and 2mil.
When pre-ordering sails before 31st of August 2023 you get 12% on 1 sail, 16% on 2 sails and 20% on 3 sails or more.
Delivery march 2024
To order, please contact us via email
Also on the construction side there seems to be no developments. If anything there are more un-novations with materials like Carbon-Innegra than in-novations. Read more here: https://witchcraft.nu/those-small-but-significant…/
I agree that PWA-rules should limit the amount of board- and sail-types&sizes a competitor is allowed to register for an entire season. This will push to brands to develop gear that suits a larger range of conditions, which is much more relevant for the average customer than squeezing out 5% extra performance from board/sail custom-designed for one specific set of conditions.
I don’t really agree with a rule that would force competitors to use the same one or 2 boards and sails for the entire seasons and penalize them with points if they have to replace broken gear. It would push the brands to develop more reliable gear which is good, but it would introduce a large factor of bad luck to the championship results.
On average, stronger boards & sails will last longer, but in for an individual sailor in a specific season this will not always play out. To what extent you damage your board on the rocks or after a bad landing, or whether you break a mast in a shorebreak, is not solely determined by the strength of the gear. A large part of it is just luck.
The risk on damage is also hugely effected by the spot, so a sailor that trains in a rocky spot ir more likely to danage his gear than one that trains on a sandy beach.
Travel can also cause damage outside the control of the sailor or the manufacturer. Equipment can even get lost.
Some sailors may have 2 or 3 spots where they live and train a lot and will have gear permanently stored on those spots so they don’t have to travel with it.
I guess the biggest difference between the pro-sailor in a competetion and the average recreational surfer is what they expect and need from their gear. There is a world of difference there! Not only the physical fitness and skill-level, but also the complexity of moves, the time spent on the water, the preparation time before a session, …
I remember a test-article in a motor-magazine from a decade ago. They tested a 600cc super-sport roadbike against the fully tuned 600cc racebike based on that same roadbike. The testers were a professional racer and an experienced recreational racer (mid-of-the-pack on national level).
Even on a real racetrack, only the professional racer was faster on the racebike than on the roadbike. The recreational racer was fastest on the roadbike, despite having less horsepower and a bit more weight. The user-friendliness and all-round qualities of the chassis of the roadbike made it the best package for the more ‘regular’ user. If the bikes would have been tested in the real world (the road) the racebike would be far inferior.
I don’t see a way around this; gear will always be optimized for the rules of the competition, whatever they are.
It is the responsibility of the manufacturer but also of the customer to recognize the difference between a competition-environment and a real-world environment.
It is only logical that what is optimal for a competition is almost by definition NOT optimal for real-world use.
That a lot brands market competition-grade equipment to real-world customers is kind of bad but also understandable; many customers choose their gear with their heart instead of their brain, they have a dreamy vision of how they would want their reality to look and brands are eager to sell them that dream.
You see this in all sporting-goods: from tennis to cycling.
Lots of people buy the wrong stuff.
The brands have a responsibiliy to educate their customers but the customers also have a responsibility to use their brain and be realisitic about what they need.
An article like this helps.
But I rarely see an article like this in brand-sponsered media like “windsurfer magazine” or even in the marketing-crap the big brands put out themselves.
This is OK; each brand will end up with the type of customer it deserves.
Answer from Bouke:
It is hard to compare with other sports. Motorbike racing has far less varying conditions plus they use an artificial abundance of power. In windsurfing we use the power of nature so the more efficient you can use this, the better it is both for pro and amateur.
There is no sport where the equipment, that the main brands are offering, has such poor quality for end users, than windsurfing.
Anyone doing the same stuff as you see in the promotion videos of this equipment, will find the equipment lasting less than a year.
I think we can agree that how they promote the gear, you should be able to do this for at least 2 years?
Technically it is well possible. Even going on the rocks is not a major problem. This board missed some paint but did not need a repair:
In most action/equipment intensive sports, it is well possible to buy high tech gear that will last various years even when pushing the limits.
Most masts indeed are made the best way technically possible and they can still break, that is why they should not have to be included in the limitation of gear. Same for fins but that is because they cost far less. Good booms hardly ever break these days. Even when going on the rocks.
A PWA rider would definately benefit from stronger gear with a bigger range because she/he could travel with less equipment and there is less waste. Just by having loads of equipment ready for any change in conditions, they get around this. So there is less of a push to develop equipment that has a bigger range and lasts longer. Just a push for having more equipment, which is a sign of weakness IMO.
What are the differences between the Witchcraft SDT, CBC and HDD constructions? The HDD lasts longer and is more impact resistant but CBC is lighter and SDT is cheaper, which can be tempting. So what makes sense when it comes down to invest your hard earned cash in a new board? Let´s have a look at the whole picture for different types of windsurfers.
Being an action sport, accidents will sooner or later happen plus over time fatigue can play a role. So, one important factor is how resistant and durable boards are. First of all there is the repair costs of a board at a repair shop. Say on average a repair of a ding costs 150€. The biggest factor that people tend to forget is time. And time is extremely valuable, which should be taken into account when there is damage. The whole process to get a board repaired takes a lot more than you think. I have presumed someone´s time is 10€/hour worth, some people may value their time (much) higher, others less. The communication plus driving or shipping to a good repair shop up and down AND to collect it again, will cost a good few hours in time.
One important factor is if you have a good repair shop close by or not but since there are not that many, let´s presume there is one at 50km distance. Meaning you will have to drive 200km to bring the board and pick it up. For some this may be a lot more. With all the costs of driving a car costs, insurance, loss of value, repairs, fuel, the total costs add up to around 0,50€/km.
Also a repair causes a loss of resale value of a board, which also needs to be taken into account.
Plus, because of the repair you will likely lose time on the water: Equipment usually does not break when there is no wind. You will likely miss time on the water when the damage occurred and you have to stop sailing. And during the repair time of say 3 weeks you may miss two more sessions. With a session of on average 2.5 hours lets presume you miss out on 6 hours of sailing, causing an additional damage of 120€ on average. This can become a lot worse when such a damage happens when you are on holiday. If you are lucky you may be able to rent a board but also that costs. Now you can say, I have a spare board, but also that costs, is usually not the ideal board, thus less fun to sail, you will need to store and transport it and may get damaged as well. Some may say that they can repair the board themselves. However this also takes time and the quality is usually less so the loss of value is higher.
What also matters is how the equipment is used and how frequent.
There are different types of windsurfers who will treat their equipment different. So let’s look at 3 different categories of our customers:
Sailor type 1 is the careful windsurfer. Mostly or always sailing flat water with maybe the occasional jump/chop hop. He will hardly have any accident/impact apart from the occasional catapult nor does the equipment suffer from fatigue much. Probably around 20% of our customers are in this group. From our experiences and feedback, this type of sailor will have 2 repairs on a CBC over a 6 year period and none on a HDD. The resale value of a CBC after 6 years will be 800€ and of an HDD 1000€.
Sailor type 2 is the average wave sailor. Sailing in waves but usually at beaches without rocks, jumping, maybe even some looping, wave riding. The equipment will get washed in wave and there will be some flat landings as well. Around 65% of our customers are in this group. This type of sailor may have 6 repairs on a CBC over a 6 year period. None on an HDD. An But a board will need a bit of an overhaul (new non slip, new pads) after 5 years. However an overhaul can be done in a period when there is no wind and maybe one drive to the repair shop can be combined with something else. A CBC will be worth 700€ after 3 years and 300 after 6 years. An HDD will be worth 1300 after 3 years and 800 after 6 years.
Sailor type 3 is the radical hard core wave sailors. Looking for more powerful waves to make aerials or jumping higher. He will prefer reef breaks with rocks. The equipment will get some severe impacts and suffer from heavy flat landings as well. Around 15% of our customers fit in this group. A CBC may need 20 repairs in 6 years but with the use of superglue will manage to only need to go to the repair shop 10 times and an HDD none. After 4 years, the HDD may need an overhaul. After 6 years the resale value of a CBC will be zero and of an HDD 600€.
See the spread sheet further below. I have presumed that all 3 types sail equally frequent, in reality this may vary but depends more on someone personal situation.
This is an extreme demonstration of the durability of an HDD that was used for 2.5 years at Jameos by Tim. Jameos is already quite a demanding spot but Tim likes more hollow clean waves and prefers to sail at El Cartel around the corner of Jameos where the cleaner more powerful wave breaks closer to the rocks. He said the board must have been washed on the rocks over 20 times. There are over 100 paint chips and dents but not one single hole. Now we can heat the dents out and repaint it and it will be like new and has many more years of sailing fun in it. Even when a CBC board is still somewhat more impact resistant than most boards, it would not have survived such treatment.
Another extreme case is our team rider Nestor in Pozo. His HDD board lasted 6 years, with on average 120 session per year and 20 jumps (back loops, push loops, forwards) per session makes around 14.000 jumps. A CBC board lasted 2 years with him. Being used to Pozo, his boards hardly get any impacts from the stones but any one who has sailed there knows it is not easy to get into the water over the slippery round stones which are rolling around in the surf combined with gales force winds and it is easy to slip and ding your board.
Have a look at the total break down of the costs in this spread sheet:
| Board Use cost table | Board | Average amount of repairs in 6 years | Average repair costs | Total costs Repair shop | Average distance to repair shop x 4 in km | total km | costs per km | time to repair shop | Time on water lost | hourly rate | total costs of repairs |
| Sailor type 1 | Witchcraft SDT | 1.5 | 150 € | 225 € | 50 | 300 | 0.50 € | 5 | 6 | 10 € | 485 € |
| Witchcraft CBC | 1.5 | 150 € | 225 € | 50 | 300 | 0.50 € | 5 | 6 | 10 € | 485 € | |
| Witchcraft HDD | 0.5 | 150 € | 75 € | 50 | 100 | 0.50 € | 0 | 0 | 10 € | 125 € | |
| Sailor type 2 | Witchcraft SDT | 3 | 150 € | 450 € | 50 | 600 | 0.50 € | 15 | 18 | 10 € | 1,080 € |
| Witchcraft CBC | 3 | 150 € | 450 € | 50 | 600 | 0.50 € | 15 | 18 | 10 € | 1,080 € | |
| Witchcraft HDD | 1 | 150 € | 150 € | 50 | 200 | 0.50 € | 2.5 | 0 | 10 € | 275 € | |
| Sailor type 3 | Witchcraft SDT | 6 | 150 € | 900 € | 50 | 1200 | 0.50 € | 50 | 60 | 10 € | 2,600 € |
| Witchcraft CBC | 6 | 150 € | 900 € | 50 | 1200 | 0.50 € | 50 | 60 | 10 € | 2,600 € | |
| Witchcraft HDD | 1.5 | 150 € | 225 € | 50 | 300 | 0.50 € | 2.5 | 0 | 10 € | 400 € | |
| New value plus delivery +/- | Resale value after 6 years | Loss of value | total costs | costs per year | |||||||
| Sailor type 1 | Witchcraft SDT | 2,600 € | 500 € | 2,100 € | 2,585 € | 431 € | |||||
| Witchcraft CBC | 3,000 € | 800 € | 2,200 € | 2,685 € | 448 € | ||||||
| Witchcraft HDD | 3,000 € | 1,000 € | 2,000 € | 2,125 € | 354 € | ||||||
| Sailor type 2 | Witchcraft SDT | 2,600 € | 200 € | 2,400 € | 3,480 € | 580 € | |||||
| Witchcraft CBC | 3,000 € | 300 € | 2,700 € | 3,780 € | 630 € | ||||||
| Witchcraft HDD | 3,000 € | 800 € | 2,200 € | 2,475 € | 413 € | ||||||
| Sailor type 3 | Witchcraft SDT | 2,600 € | 0 € | 2,600 € | 5,200 € | 867 € | |||||
| Witchcraft CBC | 3,000 € | 0 € | 3,000 € | 5,600 € | 933 € | ||||||
| Witchcraft HDD | 3,000 € | 600 € | 2,400 € | 2,800 € | 467 € | ||||||
As for the difference in weight, CBC is a bit lighter and thus a bit more more fun to sail. To our experience however, the difference is just a feel and not measurable in any way in early planing or better turning. On the other hand, having to be more careful on the water can also reduce your fun on the water. So even if there is a temptation to chose the CBC for it´s lower price and lighter weight, it does not offer the best FOI (Fun On Investment) ratio.
Plus, even if “protecting the environment” is misused for other political goals these days, I think it is clear it is also beneficial for our planet to reduce the amount of waste we produce, not just our own wallet.
Anyone can also do such a calculation for their own personal circumstances and equipment and see what comes out.
How to tell from which year a Witchcraft board is. As we do not work with different shapes or graphics each year, it can be hard to tell how old a Witchcraft board is. At times we get requests from people asking us for more info about a used Witchcraft for sale on the internet, and a bit too often we found out that the Witchcraft in question was up 3 times older than the advertised age.
And also we had customers saying: “My Witchcraft is now 4 years old so I was thinking it is time to replace it.” Hmmmm, I just checked and it actually is 7 years old……. So a few years ago we started writing the month and year a board was made on the custom boards. If a board on offer does not have this information, feel free to ask us.
Our semi customs do have a serial nr. which includes the month and year it was made. See the image what it means. The serial nr is laminated into the board below a layer of glass fibre so pretty hard to remove.
