Frequent breakage
You don't have to challenge Jaws or Teahupoo to break equipment. A nice session in small waves is sometimes enough to ruin your surfboard. The power of the lip on a Landaise session is capable of calling into question the integrity of your board. This applies to all boards, from entry-level mass-produced models to custom-built boards shaped to order.
Once you're back on the beach - and this is the most important thing - you have to ask yourself the right questions.
Everything can be repaired, but not without consequences
From a technical point of view, a board broken in two can be repaired. But the further the break is from the nose, the more difficult the repair will be. The shaper will find it difficult to restore the board's original rocker. What's more, a full-width glue-up will lead to peripheral weaknesses in other areas of the board, especially in the support area.
You also need to take into account the weight of the repair, which will vary between 200 and 500 grams, depending on the resin used and the laths added.
Economically, a questionable interest
This is the main obstacle to having your board repaired. Provided you can find a craftsman willing to do it, a repair of this type will cost you between ?350 and ?600.
For an off-the-shelf longboard costing a few hundred euros, repair is pointless. For a top-of-the-range model costing more than ?1,000, repairs make sense.
Nevertheless, even after such a repair, the surfer will have to learn to regain confidence in a board that has undergone major surgery.
Passing on or recycling
If you choose not to have your board repaired, there are other solutions. A number of associations are happy to salvage deteriorated equipment, to be used as a basis for learning the shaper's trade, or to send repaired boards to countries in need.
You can also carry out a purely aesthetic repair to display it somewhere, or give free rein to your imagination. Chair, clock, dartboard, anything is possible...
