After you make your first glides in harness and footstraps, quickly comes the moment when you want to buy your first more advanced board. Very often this can be one of the most important purchases in your windsurfing career. Such a board usually will serve the role of your main windsurfing equipment for many seasons to come. For this reason it should be a well thought-out choice. Although manufacturers usually help novice windsurfers by clearly suggesting models with a ‚freeride” tag, in practice you can have be a bit wider choice. Let's look at the most popular types of boards for recreational windsurfing.

The term "freeride" means an easy and pleasant recreational funboard. Its main features include: easy planing, good acceleration, a comfortable drive, achieving high-speed, and trouble-free carving jibes. Freeride boards are mainly designed for planing on flat waters with a wide range of sails - from wave to the high-performance race models with camber inducers. Mostly they have moderately long and wide shapes with thin rails. Footstraps on the board (usually four) are located closer to the center of the deck, which make foot inserting much easier and enhances control during plane. Freeride boards are usually equipped with Power Box or Tuttle Box fin systems. Recommended for: the perfect choice for any recreational windsurfer sailing on flat waters who foremost likes comfort, control and pleasure of fast planing. When you should think about different type of board: when you intend to sail on more bumpy/choppy waters and prefer doing more maneuvers than long straight blasting.

Models that combine classic freeride shapes with more geared towards maneuvers, i.e.  wave or freestyle. They offer great recreational properties, such as excellent control, ease of planing and extremely versatile maneuverability. They are shorter and narrower than freeride boards and don’t come in very large sizes. Freemoves  don’t like big sails but work great with medium and smaller sizes with more maneuverable character. On the deck usually we will find 3 footstraps, with only one in the tail, although many manufacturers also offer the possibility of mounting fourth strap (second in the tail, like on freeride boards). They provide much better control in difficult conditions and on waves, facilitate the foot insertion, but reduce the speed potential. Freemove boards most commonly have Power Box fin system. Recommended for: both beginners and advanced windsurfers who are more interested in maneuvers and jumps rather than just speed blasting. Excellent choice to get started with waves or windsurfing on more windy and choppy spots. When you should think about different type of board: when you are mostly interested in speed, usually sail in lighter winds and on flat water.

Those are the fastest boards from the group of "free". Usually they are also the fastest ones for recreational windsurfers. Their design combines elements of a typical  freeride board with high-performance slalom model. They have a lower rocker, thicker and shaper rails with clear focus on delivering the highest possible speed. Freerace boards are very often just a slightly reworked slalom machines, thus offering extremely high performance while maintaining the necessary dose of friendly character for recreational riders. Footstraps on freerace boards are spaced closer to the rails allowing for better speed, but at a price of more difficult foot insertion. In most boards of this type we find the Tuttle Box fin system but sometimes also the Power Box one. Recommended for: ambitious recreational windsurfers who want to achieve maximum speed, compete in amateur races, sail mainly on flat waters, prefer speed blasting over maneuvers, do not have problems with inserting feet into the footstraps, like medium and larger sails with slalom character. When you should think about different type of board: you are just starting getting into footstraps, learning basic planning technique, preferring comfort of sailng over the maximum speed, want to sail with small maneuverable rigs on more bumpy/choppy waters, learning how to jibe, you have no racing ambitions, love jumping and dynamic maneuvers.