DEVELOPMENT
Matteo Iachino has been very involved in the development of the next generation of Isonics that will come out in 2018. We have tried to make some boards more ‘free’ to ride, a bit more lively and I think we have achieved this without losing the control. This is very important. I am pretty sure our 2018 board will be even better than 2017!
We obviously check out boards from the other brands. Last year there were a couple of combos from another brand that were very good. At Starboard we are trying to have a board that will work the best with many brands of sail. For me that is an advantage because I have to make our board work efficiently on all sails. We have Taty on Gaastra, Matteo on Point7, Sarah Quita on Neil Pryde and Gonzalo and Tristan Algret on Severne. So it is important to me to make all these riders satisfied. We have to make the Isonic work on every sail. I look for tiny differences that will make the Isonics faster and easier to ride. One millimetre can make a huge difference but 1 millimetre at the Cobra factory where the boards are made is nothing. With their tolerances you can lose this. You really have to find something with an important change that will not disappear in production. It has to increase the speed without losing the control! It is hard, but when we have this factor of production tolerances we have to take this into account to make sure the modifications on our prototypes do not disappear in production. In Martinique I have models dating back to 2008. So it can happen that my friend is still riding the old boards and sometimes we switch on the water to test 2008 boards against 2017. Usually my findings are ‘Wow! – We have come a long way with the new shapes!’ I test every other brand against ours. All of them! I can see how the other brands are working and which directions they are taking. I would say the perfect board is one that a customer can use at their local beach and a PWA rider can use on the world cup. An easy to use board, this is the key! If the customer can use it and the PWA rider can win the title on it, that means the board performs how I want it. If a racer only has to concentrate on his racing and not controlling his board then he will win races or at least do better.
DREAM JOB
This was always my dream job and I will never get sick of it. My obsession is to discover more and more on how to achieve my goal of making boards faster and easier to ride. I always wanted to be involved in board design from when I first started windsurfing. The first board I shaped was in 1988 when I copied another shape at the time. This board I modified many times after because I thought my ideas would change it for the better. Sometimes this was wrong but I was hungry to change to increase the level of the board. I keep this method for all the boards in production that I am involved with. I am always thinking of something to make my boards better.
