Blame yourself!

When I bought a sailable SUP last summer, one of the main reasons why I picked the Exocet WindSUP 10 were many enthusiastic posts about the Exocet WindSUP on the iWindsurf forum by John Ingebritsen (jingebritsen).

When the WindSUP broke the second time I took it out into the waves, I went back to the dealer, and he contacted Exocet about the warranty. He reported back that Exocet had declined to take this as a warranty claim, and we went ahead and had the board repaired locally. The US distributor for Exocet, Steve Gottlieb, later sent me a check for half of the repair cost, after I had contacted him directly in response to a forum post he had made. I thought this was a fair solution, although I was not happy about having a board that had gotten even heavier than before, and lost a lot of its value due to the repair.

So when some WindSUP sailors posted enthusiastic reviews with titles like "Exocet Wind SUP Saves the Day", I thought I should warn others about the problems that I and others have encountered. That, in turn, provoked several responses by jingebritsen. On the forum, he stated:

"there's another side to this story. too complicated and unfortunate to share online, publicly."

and

"suffice it to say the circumstances with that case had not allowed the normal warranty procedures to unfold."

The second statement is plainly false. Here's what happened:

• September 2012: I buy the WindSUP 10 at full price from the local dealer, Sailworld Cape Cod.
• Dec 2, 2012: WindSUP breaks while light wind sailing it in waves. I describe it in a brief blog post.
• Dec 3, 2012: I bring the board to the dealer, who says he will contact Exocet about the warranty.
• Dec 7, 2012: Sailword Cape Cod sends me a message that starts:
  "Hi Peter, Exocet says that there is no warranty when the board is damaged in the surf." After getting this response, I post pictures of the broken board and additional information about the day on my blog.
• Jan 11, 2013: When another WindSUP owner reports structural problems with his board, and that the Exocet owner had sent him a ridiculous response, I add a link to my blog entry about my board breaking.
• Jan 14, 2013: The US importer for Exocet, Steve Gottlieb, suggests to contact him directly about any Exocet warranty issues. I do, and he agrees to pay 50% of the repair cost.

I think most windsurfers would consider going through the dealer to be the "normal warranty procedure", and all that got me was a denial of the warranty claim, which seemed to be perfectly in line with Exocet's warranty ideas, at least according to the words of the company owner. I ended up with some warranty coverage only after board problems seemed to develop into a public relation night mare for Exocet.

John Ingebritsen seems to take his role in promoting Exocet very seriously. He send me a private message on iWindsurf with the subject "please stop it with your hard on about the exocet".  Here's a screen shot of the message:

I do admit that I find the title offensive, but maybe he is just projecting. But some of the statements he makes deserve a closer look. Perhaps the most telling is hidden in the middle:

"if you blithely ride into mauling waves and don't have the experience or foreknowledge of what to look out for, how can you blame anything/one but yourself?"

Not only does he know that the waves were "mauling",  but he also knows that "rode blithely into them", without any "foreknowledge of what to look out for". Quite amazing for someone who was not there, and heard about what happened third-hand! No surprise he knows that I am the one to blame!

But once again jingebritsen is plainly wrong. It is true that I have little wave sailing experience, but I have some experience in getting out through shore break at least as big as it was that day (which was not very big). I have sailed in Cabarete many times, including during the fall when the shore break was so high that equipment breaks trying to get out was the norm; I have sailed from Old Silver Beach in onshore 20-25 mph winds several times, when getting out was a lot harder; I have watched Peter Hart's wave sailing videos, which deal extensively with getting through shore break; and I had just recently heard the ABK SUP sailing lessons, and gone to practice SUP sailing with Andy Brandt in Hatteras. I certainly do have a basis to state that the damage was way out of proportion to the conditions.

Ingebritsen goes on, reporting that "your story and performance on the water did not ring true". In one sentence, he accuses me of lying as well of "poor performance". Maybe part of my problem was that I was not lying about this. The first board repair guy I contacted advised me to say this happened in flat water, to have a better chance of warranty coverage. Instead, I was truthful, and ended up hearing "not covered by warranty". His ideas about "performance" are also quite wrong. At the last East Coast Windsurfing Festival, which also happened in light winds, I placed 3rd in the freestyle contest, riding a very similar board. The contest level was quite high, with about 15-20 participants. Duck tacks and back-to-back was not good enough for more than 3rd place, the top two did some rather amazing combos.

jingebritsen apparently thinks he knows more about this entire incident than I do:

"i've gotten the dealer perspective about what happened. he never thought your case was worth taking beyond his level."

He seems to know this from talking to the US distributor for Exocet:

"when discussed by your dealer with the distributor (after your public posts)"

I did contact Jim Ballantyne, the dealer in question again about this, and he responded:

"I absolutley contacted exocet, spoke to their manager Curt, and explained what happened to the board and how the damage happened, he told me under those conditions the warranty did not hold, and the answer is what I expected" 

The dealer did not speak to the US distributor when the original warranty claim was made in December; he spoke to him more than a month later, after I had contacted the distributor myself, who stated that paying for half of the repair costs was what they commonly did if no obvious manufacturing defect was found during the repair.

Most of the responses to this incident have fallen into one of two categories:

1. "You did something wrong, so the board broke. Get over it and don't even think about warranty claims."
2. "Exocet markets the board for wave sailing, so it should not break this easily. They should honor the warranty."

The first categorie is somewhat self-confirming: if I had not done anything wrong, how could the board be broken? As soon as I mentioned the word "waves", it got the impression that the dealer also was in this category. Nevertheless, I do believe his statements that he had contacted Exocet.

Ingebritsen ended his message with:

"please refrain from blaming your gear, from any brand, on any inexperience you may have in the future."

Seems he is mixing what he so expertly diagnosed as the cause of the problem ("inexperience") into his sentence, but he clearly wants me to stop blaming gear. That's not going to happen - if I think the gear is faulty, I will say so. I have damaged lots of windsurf gear - broken masts, torn sails, bent booms, dinged fins and boards, broken board noses, broken harness hooks, and more. I usually knew what the problem was, be it gear getting old, running aground at full speed, or practicing loop catapults onto the nose, and would never blame the gear. But if I do encounter gear that does not live up to it's marketing hype, I will certainly say so. And if I see completely one-sided forum messages hyping specific gear that I have had a bad experience with, I will continue to point out the bad things that might happen if you just believe the hype posted by jingebritsen and others.

Exocet boards break, and the company thinks that is fine

I have reported here before that my Exocet WindSUP 10 buckled the second time I took it out in the surf. I thought that the damage taken was way out of proportion to the forces on the board, and therefore was very unhappy when Exocet did not see this as a warranty case.

I was ready to write this off as bad luck, but then I saw posts from "beaglebuddy" on the iWindsurf forum where he described a big structural problem with his Exocet WindSUP. The problem was at a different spot, but also included a major crease - but this board was never taken out into the waves.

What got me a bit upset was the answer that the owner of Exocet sent to beaglebuddy:

Sorry for this late answer, after looking at the pictures and different comments on the forum, i can state that the issue is not due to juncture with PVC
We did have such issues on several short boards with similar crease and in most cases it is due to a hard stress, it does not really matter how many time you have sailed with the board but to me it seems that you "may" have sailed it pretty hard one day in side shore and steep choppy water or took off on a even small jump and got some stress on the board

Such crease can be easily repaired in any shop, but i can't see miss manufacturing from our side 

He acknowledges that the same problem has occurred with a number of Exocet boards. He thinks that "taking off on a even small jump" can cause enough stress to damage the board, but that nothing is wrong with Exocet boards. 

Well, I certainly prefer to have boards that I can jump and take in the surf without breaking! Seeing this attitude by the company owner makes absolutely sure that I will never buy an Exocet board again.

For the record, I have heard from two more Exocet boards that had major problems. One was a WindSUP 10, and the lucky owner got it replaced on warranty "in large part due to the efforts of Steve at Sandy Point Progressive". The other one was an Exocet board that Pete broke in half, but Pete said he had broken other boards, too, and that it was rider error in his case. Still, this makes me wonder. At least around here, Exocet boards are pretty rare, so the number of problem reports seems rather high. 

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A few days after writing this post, the US importer of Exocet boards, Steve Gottlieb, responded on the iWindsurf forum thread. While he clarified that some things (like jumping) are not covered by warranty for the longboards, his overall attitude seems much more reasonable. He suggested to contact him directly with unresolved issues, which I did. He responded to my email very quickly, and offered to pay half of the repair cost, which he eventually did pay. However, I now have a board that I am very hesitant to take into waves; which is even heavier than before the repair; and which I cannot sell without taking a huge loss because of the clearly visible major repair.
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One of the extremely unpleasant things about this experience came when the main Exocet advocate on the iWindsurf forum, John Ingebritsen, basically accused me of lying on the forum, and then followed up with emails telling me to shut up about Exocet. This seems to be a common theme with Exocet: when Ian Berger reported unexpected major damage to his Exocet SUP board, he was also accused of lying, this time by Steve Gottlieb.

The entire thing seems to come from the top: Exocet's president, Patrice Belbeoch, wrote to Ian:
"This construction is durable and have barely any warranty issues on the entire SUP and Windsurf line".

Saying that they have "barely any warranty issues" works only because they decline all warranty claims! Saying that "This construction is durable" is wrong, and plainly ridiculous if you look at the pictures posted by Ian, my pictures, and the pictures posted by Beaglebuddy on the iWindsurf forum thread.

Exocet thinks their board construction is durable. Many Exocet owners have found out it is not. Exocet's reaction is to deny warranty claims to to accuse users of lying. Do you really want to support such a company?

Exocet WindSUP 10 - not for surf?

As I briefly posted before, I damaged my Exocet WindSUP 10 last Sunday. Today, I heard back from Exocet (through Sailworld Cape Cod) that "there is no warranty when the board is damaged in the surf".

Do they mean that the WindSUP should not be used for wave sailing? The conditions last Sunday seemed easy enough, here are a few pictures from the time that we sailed that the Coast Guard Beach cam took:

Wind was around 10-15 mph. I am a beginner at wave sailing, with about three previous wave sailing days (two in planing conditions, one in light wind on the WindSUP). Last year, we spent six weeks on Maui during the summer and sailed almost everyday, including a number of days at Sprecks when small summer waves were breaking. Yes, those were summer waves, but they sure were bigger than the waves last Sunday.

However, I am a pretty decent light wind sailor (3rd in freestyle at the 2012 East Coast Windsurfing Festival). After reading lots of posts of the iWindsurf forum, I had gotten the impression that the WindSUP 10 would be a great board to get into light wind wave sailing, and bought one at full price at the local dealer. But nothing prepared me for the board breaking the second time I tried it in waves.

I have occasionally damaged windsurf gear before: in the last 3 years I bent two booms when running aground during speed runs; poked holes into maybe four sails during various crashes; and dinged the nose of my Skate when a gust hit me in a loop exercise catapult. I positively hate breaking equipment, but with about 100 sailing sessions a year, the level of damage was tolerable. I also understand that waves will increase the chances that something breaks, which is why we decided not to go out on two previous visits to Coast Guard Beach, when the waves were higher. Last Sunday looked manageable, though...

The first time I went out, I did everything right - I watched the waves for a while, picked a spot where few waves broke, and followed the advice of a local wave surfer to just get through the shore break and then swim as fast as I could into cleaner water. It worked like a charm, and I had a blast. The second time, I spent too little time observing the waves, and went out to early and perhaps at the wrong spot, which is why I got washed. I recovered the gear within maybe a minute or at most two, and made it out of the water without any problems. When I saw the damage to the board, I was quite surprised - it definitely looked like way too much damage what happened. Here are two more pictures of the board:

The top of the board actually has three long lines in across the board, which extend to the sides. It appears that the board buckled, and then kept bending at a couple more places.

I have owned four Exocet boards in the past few years, and still have three of these. Two of the boards have had structural problems that seemed out of proportion to what happened to them. When I bought the WindSUP 10, I got the AST version because I hoped that it would be more durable than the wood version - but it seems that did not help at all. For a board that is almost twice as heavy as my wife's Fanatic SUP, it seems way to fragile, at least for beginners in moderate waves. I thought that maybe I got a lemon, but Exocet's reaction does not support this - maybe they have seen a lot of similar problems? After this experience, it is extremely unlikely that I will by another Exocet board in the future. I can't really recommend the WindSUP to friends anymore, either, quite the opposite. I will get this board repaired, but I do not think that I will let anyone else try it in the future.

The broken board has added to the windsurfing frustration this fall, which has been the least-windy fall in years. Light wind SUP sailing might be just what helps to get through this wind-less time, but I don't have a SUP right now. Even when I get it back, I will be hesitant to go out with it in any interesting surf - it might just break again! So I started looking for a more robust alternative, and discovered the 10'6 Ace-Tec Wind SUP from BIC. The board has about the same length, volume, and width as the Exocet WindSUP 10. It does not have a daggerboard, but the daggerboard on the WindSUP is disappointing, anyway: it wants to come out of the board when trying to move it into the "down" position; and when the wind gets stronger, so that a traditional longboard (or even my Kona Mahalo) would rail up, the WindSUP does not rail, and instead just feels quite unbalanced.

One argument often used for the Exocet WindSUP is that it planes quite well for a windsurfable SUP. However, the BIC Wind SUP also seems to plane well and early - just look at the this video (from 3:45 on), where the guy planes without any whitecaps in sight. BIC mostly downplays the wave suitability of the board, but at least one top SUP racer and windsurfer seems to think it's plenty of fun in waves.

The biggest reasons to go for the BIC, however, are durability and price. For the longest time over the past 10 years, my go-to boards were made by BIC: a Techno 293 and a Nova 120. Both boards took lots of abuse over the years without any problems whatsoever, and the SUP uses very similar technology. The older boards were a bit heavy, but the weight of the BIC (13.5 kg) is actually a bit lower than the weight of the Exocet (13.9 kg). The BIC is also a lot cheaper, with a list price of $1,100, compared to $1,600 for the Exocet. Paying $500 extra for a boards that weighs the same, but is more fragile, just does not make sense. I may get the BIC just to have a board that I do not need to worry about as much!

Let me end this post by repeating what Exocet seems to be telling me:

Do not take the WindSUP into the waves, unless you are an expert,
or at least willing to replace the board!

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Shortly after posting this post, I got some pretty emotional feedback from David, a fellow ABK student. He suggested that I "just get over it", and blamed "absurd warranty and liability claims" for rising prices of windsurf equipment, and predicted that windsurf shops would blacklist me for the post. Just in case someone else has similar feelings, let me clarify and add a few things:

The warranty claim

The board broke on Sunday. I also use the board for SUP touring, so I needed to repair or replace it as soon as possible. I contacted a local board repair guy who also builds custom surfboards on Monday morning. His response was that I first should check with the manufacturer , because he had seen many boards replaced after this happened.

On Monday afternoon, I drove the board to Sailword Cape Cod, where I had bought the board. Jim looked at it and said that he would contact Exocet, though he was not optimistic about their response. He also showed me a SUP that arrived in two pieces at his shop, and had been repaired by his local repair guy (a boat builder and windsurfer). It looked good, so this was the fallback option.

It then took until Friday afternoon to hear back from Exocet, who denied the claim. Jim wrote: "Exocet says that there is no warranty when the board is damaged in the surf". If that's their policy, why does it take them 4 days to answer?

Jim also gave me a quote for the repair ($280), and I told him to go ahead. The repair will not include painting (unlike the excellent repairs Donny Bowers does in Hatteras), but I plan to use the board many times before we get to Hatteras again in the spring. I asked Jim to go ahead with the repair. Jim has been really friendly and helpful in this whole thing. I am glad that we still have a local windsurf shop, and I will continue to support him by buying my gear locally when possible, even if I could get it a bit cheaper on the internet.

The liability claim

There never was one. I have not heard about many liability claims, either. Perhaps David has to deal with these things in his corporate life in other business areas, so he simply assumes it's a problem in windsurfing, too. But for windsurf boards, the general consensus seems to be that higher prices are caused by lower volumes. 

Product durability and warranty policies

I had hoped that the WindSUP would be more durable than very light SUPs. I think it is with regard to light wind flat water sailing and freestyle. Nina's very light SUP got dinged the first day she used it when the boom hit it; the Exocet WindSUP has taken similar things many times without problems. However, it was obviously not as durable as I had hoped for in the waves. Maybe I got a lemon, or maybe it was just bad luck, we'll never know. What I do know, however, is that the washing did not look bad enough to cause anything like the damage that happened.

At least here in the US, it is entirely up to a company how they deal with warranties. We could argue about legal terms, but it's pointless - nobody will sue a company because a board breaks. What this boils down to is reputation. Exocet never gave me anything about warranties, nor can I find anything on their web site. In stark contrast, North sails come with a 5-year warranty, and they also sell a boom with an "unconditional" warranty. When I recently spent $700 for my first carbon boom, the 1-year warranty that Chinook offered was very important, and the dealer (Jim again) assured me that Chinook would definitely honor it if something happened.

For some brands, high durability and good warranties are why they are successful - Ezzy is one company that comes to mind. Other companies are known for less durable products and non-existing warranties; I, for one, mostly stay away from them. But this brings another French company in the windsurfing industry to mind: Select Fins. When I started GPS speed surfing a few years ago, Select was the fin brand. Most top speeds were posted on Select fins like the Caspar. Then, several speed surfers had problems with Select fins disintegrating after very few uses, and not getting helpful responses from the company. Now, three years later, I rarely see anyone posting GPS speeds with Select fins. Everyone has seems to have switched to different brands.

Other Exocet experiences

I had eluded to other problems that I have had with Exocet boards above. Since I have also been accused of unfairly blasting Exocet, I think it it necessary that I expand on this. 

In the last two years, I have bought 2 used Exocet Warp slalom boards. I am still using the Warp 71 as my go-to board when I want to plane in light winds. The colored dual layer footpads on the board are coming off, so it's not that pretty anymore, but otherwise the board is fine. However, the Warp 66 that I bought this year was a bit more problematic. It arrived with a long scratch that the previous user had considered harmless; however, it did penetrate to the core, as I discovered when I fixed it up. I'd blame the previous user for this issue. The bigger problem was the fin box: it was a lot bigger than the box on the Warp 71, so switching fins was simply not possible. I have often borrowed fins from my friend Dani, who uses Fanatic Falcons and Starboard Isonics, and never had a problem with the fins fitting in my RRD XFire 90 or the Warp 71. Similarly, my regular tuttle fins all fit my F2 Missile, the XFire, and the Warp 71 without problems. The Warp 71, however, required it's own fin; instead of sanding the fin to make it fit, I had to add layers of tape. I ended up selling the Warp 66 the same year I got it, and the different fin box sizes where one big reason for selling it. It seems that Exocet had some quality control problems when they build the Warp 66 and 71 which resulted in very different tuttle box sizes. 

SUP sailing in waves

My light wind SUP wave sailing days are over - but only for now, until I have a new board or the repaired WindSUP. It's too much fun to give it up. Windsurfers have to be optimists, and I seriously hope I won't break a board every second time I go out into waves. But there are a few things that I need to keep in mind when SUP sailing on waves. Most importantly, a SUP board is a lot bigger than a short board, so the forces on it will also be a lot bigger. I am 99.9% certain that a 100 l wave board would not have taken any damage in the washing that broke the WindSUP; but I think there is a higher chance that another SUP would also have gotten damaged. Some things to do to avoid damage in the shore break are:

1. Take time to study the waves before deciding whether to go out. If in doubt, don't go out (this rule applied a few times before last Sunday, but Sunday looked harmless enough).
2. Before going out, take the time to study the wave patterns and the currents. Wait until you get a good idea about the sets. This will probably take longer than you think if you are a newbie to waves. I did this the first time I went out, but not the second time.
3. Pick your spot carefully. Go out where the current goes out, not sideways, and where the breaks are smaller. Again, thanks to PK for the tip about the currents. That's still a bit hard for me to see, though.
4. Never, ever even think about going in with your back to the waves. It's always a bad idea, but turning a big SUP around in shore break takes way to long.
5. Keep the nose pointing straight into the wind - not just when sailing out, but also when going into shore break. If the board is partially sideways, the wave will want to turn it more, and you have no chance of holding on to it once the wave hits the side of the board.
6. Pick the right time, and get out quickly. You should have a good idea when to start from point #2 - if not, look longer. Then, don't dawdle - if you wait long enough, something bad will happen. Don't try to be cool - if necessary, simply swim for your life to drag the board into a safe zone (another helpful tip from PK).
7. When coming back in, ride the back of a wave onto shore, then grab the handle a the back quickly and drag the board all the way up.

I wrote this mainly as a reminder for myself, but maybe it will help other wave SUP sailing newbies, too. For me, I just have to remember to do all these things...

No more SUP wave sailing

Very unhappy, will keep this short. Warm today, long-promised winds showed up briefly in the morning, then went away. Decided to go SUP sailing at Coast Guard with Nina and Jeff. Waves were initially small, then got a bit bigger, but looked doable. I had no problem getting out the first time, caught a few waves, back in upwind without a problem.

Nina fought hard, got through the shore break eventually, only to be thrown off and not being able to hang on to the equipment in the waves. Had to swim back in, but I caught the equipment in time, no problem.

Let Jeff try my board, he looked good and liked it. Did not study the waves before I went out again. Got punished for lack of respect. When I thought I had made it through, a big one piled up behind me and ripped the gear out of my hands. Got it back a short while later, retreat. PK came over with some useful tips.

Pulled the board further up the beach, noticed major damage on both sides and top. Almost broken through, except no damage to underside, and rocker line seems unchanged to the eye. PK said he has repaired similar damage before, but my repair experience is very limited. Will probably have to wait until the next Hatteras trip, unless Exocet takes this as a warranty case. Bought the board at full list price about 3 months ago - the first board I bought new and full price in decades.

Bummer.