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u/waternomadsnz

r/windsurfing r/VanLife r/AveragePicsOfNZ r/Sup r/newzealand_travel r/wingfoil r/Kayaking r/surfing r/foiling
▲ 1 r/Sup

Vent plug 101,what it is, why it matters, and how to test if yours still works

Thought this might be helpful for some of newer hard board SUP riders who don't know what the little bolt or plastic hex screw is that's usually somewhere in the middle of the board or near the tail. Figured it's worth explaining properly since forgetting about it can genuinely wreck a board.

What it is and why it's there

That's your vent plug, a direct connection to the board's foam core (EPS or similar). Its job is equalizing internal air pressure caused by temperature changes (board heating up in the sun, a hot car) or altitude changes (flying with it). The foam core holds a certain amount of air, and that air expands as it heats up or as external pressure drops. Without a vent plug, that pressure buildup can delaminate the board or make the skin balloon outward. Very small boards or low-air-volume cores (like PU surfboards) often skip the vent plug entirely since there's not enough trapped air to matter.

Two types

Manual vent plug, metal or plastic bolt, ~10mm, with an O-ring. You operate it by hand: closed (hand-tight, squeezing the O-ring) means sealed, no air movement. If the board's going to sit somewhere warm (hot shed, car, direct sun, roof rack), open it a few turns so it can breathe. For flying, remove it completely, it likely can't equalize fast enough during takeoff otherwise.

Big one to remember: close it again before you go in the water, or you'll take on water through it.

Goretex / auto vent plug, has a membrane that lets air through but blocks water, so it equalizes automatically without you doing anything. Fragile to remove (usually has a "do not touch" warning printed right on it), if you do need to pull it for air travel, grip the whole screw head with a socket, not just the top, or you risk snapping it off.

What actually fails

Manual plugs: the O-ring eventually perishes and needs replacing, that's really the only failure point, the bolt itself basically doesn't break.

Goretex plugs: the O-ring rarely fails since it's not being worked constantly, but the membrane clogs with salt buildup over time and stops passing air. Rinsing with fresh water after every session slows this down but won't fully prevent it, eventually the whole plug needs replacing since there's no cleaning/repair option for a clogged membrane.

How to test if yours still works

For a Goretex plug: pour some soapy water over it, put the board in the sun for a few minutes. Once the board heats up, air escaping through a working membrane will make the soapy water bubble. No bubbles after a few minutes in the sun, it's not venting, time to replace it.

For a manual plug: honestly the most reliable check is just unscrewing it fully and visually inspecting the O-ring for cracking/perishing. You can also do the same soapy-water-in-the-sun test with the plug closed, if it bubbles while closed, that means air's escaping and the O-ring needs replacing. But visual inspection is more reliable than the bubble test for this style.

Bonus: checking if a ding let water into the core

Same soapy-water/sun method works here. Seal the vent plug (close it fully, or dab some blue tack over an auto-vent to block airflow), put the board in the sun. If water actually comes out of the damaged area, it's gone through to the core and needs a proper repair, don't just dry it and hope. If no water comes out but you're still not sure it's fully sealed, put soapy water directly on the damage, if it bubbles, damage goes through to the core.

Don't take a board with unrepaired core damage into the water, cold water creates a vacuum effect in the core and will actively suck more water in through the damage, turning a small repair into a much bigger one.

Which style is better

Auto vent is the lower-hassle option day to day, which is probably why most manufacturers moved to it, manual plugs on boards are mostly a pre-2018 thing at this point. But manual plugs have their own advantage: total control, and they'll basically last forever as long as you check/replace the O-ring occasionally. Auto vents have no maintenance option beyond full replacement once they clog.

Whichever type you've got, worth an occasional check, and keeping the board out of direct sun/heat when you can just reduces how hard the vent plug has to work in general.

Anyone had a plug fail on them mid-trip or found a maintenance trick I haven't covered here?

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u/waternomadsnz — 7 hours ago
▲ 18 r/windsurfing

Q&A with the guy behind the YouTube windsurf storyteller and Wave Rally in Geraldton

Chatted with Paul van Bellen, probably known to a lot of this sub for his drone footage and windsurf video edits (his Fiji Pro World Cup behind-the-scenes stuff went pretty wide back in 2023), and for starting Wave Rally, the wave-slalom event out of Geraldton, WA. This is just a good interview I wanted to share. He's openly promoting Wave Rally himself, more on that below.

Getting into filming

Grew up around windsurfing (his dad got him into it around age 8-9, properly hooked by 11-12 on hand-me-down adult gear). Got into drone filming about a decade ago as a hobby, shooting friends at Gerroa and around NSW, noticed at the time there wasn't much windsurf drone content out there and just started making his own. Took 5-6 years of filming purely as a hobby before his first paid gig: filming the Taranaki Wave Classic in NZ in 2018.

Doesn't cover costs even now by his own admission ("I really haven't made enough money to cover even the cost of buying all the equipment"). Makes a living separately, unrelated to the filming.

The "oh shit" moment

Been asked about close calls filming vs. on the water himself, his answer: nothing dramatic filming beyond losing a drone a couple of times, but one windsurf story stands out. During a shark attack scare in Perth in the early 2000s (beaches closed for weeks after a fatal attack), he went out anyway once the wind picked up, reasoning a shark's "either hanging around or not." Wind died over a kilometre offshore, ended up swimming his gear back to shore over 2-3 hours, "waiting for a shark to come take me" the whole way in.

Wave Rally

Started a couple years back, his idea for a windsurfing event that wasn't overly serious, just good sailing and good people, run at Coronation Beach near Geraldton (a spot he rates as one of the best windsurfing locations in the world, reliable summer sea breeze, waves that line up well). Format is wave-slalom style racing from the 80s, sailors race around marks through the surf, gear restricted to multi-fin waveboards and max-5-batten wave sails to keep it levelled and wave-focused rather than a pure speed contest. First event drew 80+ sailors, and it's grown since.

Notably not elite-only, his framing: if you're comfortable in waves and decent wind you can join in, some racing hard, others just enjoying being part of it.

The 80s aesthetic

His videos and the Wave Rally branding lean hard into 80s nostalgia, he was born in '77, so his early, most formative years lined up with the decade. Cites specific memories of windsurfing's boom years, beaches and lakes full of colourful triangle sails, as a big part of where that aesthetic comes from.

He's actively promoting Wave Rally 2027 himself (waverally.org), so that's not me pushing anything, just passing along what he said directly.

Happy to answer anything else people want to know, there was more in the full conversation about his background and philosophy on life if anyone's curious, kept this version focused on the windsurfing/filming side.

u/waternomadsnz — 4 days ago
▲ 24 r/wingfoil

It's the weekend, are you ready?

New Zealand spring is quickly coming, and with it fine winds, longer days and more time on the water 🤙

Love the tension this pic holds...

u/waternomadsnz — 5 days ago
▲ 37 r/wingfoil

Breaking! Wing attacks foiler

Frightening scenes as apparently a wild wing tries to maul a foiler on Lake Aviemore, New Zealand. Fortunately the foiler escaped unharmed although a little shaken by the experience. Witnesses have revealed the wing appeared aggressive when leashed, but has reportedly since been beached and deflated.

u/waternomadsnz — 6 days ago
▲ 30 r/VanLife

Another average sunset on the road...

Parking up for the night on New Zealand's Crown Range that overlooks Queenstown. Chilly but absolutely beautiful views.

u/waternomadsnz — 6 days ago
▲ 33 r/windsurfing

Interviewed Biggie Smithers, the guy who pioneered PVC sandwich windsurf board construction in the early 80s

Sat down with Dave "Biggie" Smithers in his workshop in Oakura, Taranaki, for a proper chat — he's a name a lot of older New Zealand windsurfers will know (brand: Sirocco), and he's still actively building today, now doing prototype work for Armstrong Foils. He was happy to be featured and to have people reach out about custom boards, more on that at the end.

Condensing a long conversation down to what I think this sub will find most interesting.

Getting into it

Started surfing at 12-13 in Christchurch, got into windsurfing almost by accident in 1979 when a mate lent him a board with a broken fin, "I went out, and I couldn't get back in." Was already surfing on 12-foot boards on the beach at Oakura when windsurfing was brand new in NZ. One story that stuck with me: early on he lost a board in the surf, watched it get picked up by the wind and roll "end over end" down an empty beach, "if somebody, or a horse, had been walking, I mean, it would have killed them."

Started the Sirocco Expression Sessions in the early 80s, an informal wave-sailing contest, pulled prizes out of a hat, everyone judged everyone. It ran for over a decade and eventually became what's now the Taranaki Wave Classic.

The accidental invention

This is the best part, in my opinion. In the early 80s he was breaking urethane windsurf boards constantly, snapped two brand new ones in half an hour one session. He asked material suppliers for a fix, they suggested PVC sandwich foam on the bottom (a technique borrowed from yacht building). What followed was pure trial and error: drawing pins to hold PVC sheets onto foam blanks before he had proper vacuum bag equipment, boards delaminating, eventually working out a proper vacuum-bagged PVC/epoxy layup. He believes he was among the first in the world doing this on windsurf boards, a construction method that's still fundamentally how modern boards are built today.

Why the small builders got squeezed out

This is interesting: as mass-production brands like Starboard emerged in the early 90s, they could absorb a 5-10% warranty failure rate because boards cost them almost nothing to produce. Biggie, hand-building everything himself, was seeing 25-30% of his boards come back under warranty from riders pushing them past what the small builders could sustain financially. That's a big part of what pushed him from windsurf boards back toward surfboards and custom work.

On modern foilboard construction (the technical bit)

Explained the engineering logic behind PVC/carbon sandwich construction using an I-beam analogy, the outer "flanges" (top/bottom skins) do almost all the structural work in bending, so doubling the distance between them multiplies stiffness dramatically without needing a heavy stringer running through the board. This is directly why current wingfoil boards use PVC-core/carbon-skin construction rather than solid foam.

Also talked through the actual engineering problem of a foil trying to rip itself off the bottom of a board under load, and how blocks of PVC (not just a single stringer) running through the board help transfer that force properly.

A quote I liked on gear vs skill:

He referenced something Mark Angulo used to say about windsurfing culture getting too obsessed with rigging over riding, his take was that older gear, even 2-3 years old, still fundamentally works fine, and it's mostly marketing that convinces people otherwise.

Workshop disasters

A couple of good ones: microwaving resin to thin it in winter and having carbon specks spark and catch fire inside the microwave more than once. And an old story from the 70s of literally kicking a pot of resin into a bar heater and starting a proper workshop fire.

Where he's at now

69 years old, still actively developing, currently building an e-foil with an internal battery for a client, and doing custom prototype boards for Armstrong's team riders. Genuinely seems to be enjoying wingfoiling more than anything else right now because he's still improving at it, in his words: "I can't surf anymore, I'll never be as good as I windsurfed... but I'm actually getting better at winging... to me, that's really what it is about."

He's happy for people to reach out about custom boards, genuinely offered this himself, not something I'm pushing: biggie@siroccosurf.com his website sirocco.co.nz.

Figured some of you would appreciate the history, happy to dig up more detail on the construction side if anyone's curious, that was honestly the part I found most interesting.

u/waternomadsnz — 6 days ago
▲ 289 r/AveragePicsOfNZ+1 crossposts

Lake Manapouri, NZ

5 days paddling the arms around Lake Manapouri, and treated to one day where the air just didn't move...

u/waternomadsnz — 8 days ago
▲ 27 r/windsurfing+1 crossposts

The weather apps I actually use for wind/wave forecasting, and why

Running a wingfoil/windsurf travel business in NZ means I have a keen eye on the forecast, so I thought I'd share some learnings. I've got no affiliation with any of the apps below, this is purely what I actually use day to day, figured it might help people newer to reading forecasts.

Start with the models, not the apps

Every app is just a UI on top of one or more underlying forecast models. The main global ones are GFS (American) and ECMWF (European), plus some smaller/commercial ones like SPIRE, ICON (German), and UKMO (UK). Each has different strengths — some are better for wind, some for rain/temp, some trade resolution for range (higher detail but only a few days out, vs longer range but blurrier).

The first thing worth figuring out for your own spot: is your wind mostly thermal (sea breeze driven by land/water temperature difference) or frontal/trade wind (driven by larger weather systems)? That answer changes which metrics actually matter for predicting your sessions, thermal spots need you paying attention to cloud cover and temperature, not just the wind number itself.

The apps I actually use

PredictWind, my most-used one. Free tier exists, but the paid tier (~$55/year) gets you spot history which is invaluable for use measuring realtime change. There's the usual models GFS, ECMWF, SPIRE, plus their own PWG/PWE models which take the big global models and add local terrain detail down to 1km resolution in some areas — enough to pick up local thermals the big models miss entirely. I use the map view first to see where the wind actually is and whether it's wrapping around any points, then switch to the table/graph view for a specific spot. When multiple model lines on the graph roughly agree with each other, that's a much stronger signal than any one model alone, when they diverge, that's your cue to check another source or wait for confidence to improve.

Windguru, my usual second opinion once I've narrowed down a spot. Good all-in-one table: wind, wave height/direction/period, rain, tide. Not the most specialized wave forecast out there, but having everything in one table is genuinely convenient.

Windy.app, built specifically for wind/water sports (windsurfing, wingfoiling, kiting, sailing, etc). Sits between Windguru and Windy.com in terms of depth. Also gives you multi-year wind history for a spot, which is normally a paid-only feature elsewhere — useful for figuring out if a location is even worth the drive on an average day, not just today's forecast.

Windy.com, similar map-based interface to PredictWind, mainly GFS/ECMWF. Personally find it stronger for coastal spots than inland lakes, where local microclimates matter more than the big models capture. Huge range of extra parameters if you care about anything beyond wind.

Wonderground, not a forecast, just live private weather station readings. Most individual stations aren't useful for wind (mounted in someone's backyard), but seeing a temperature gradient across a region can hint at an incoming thermal/sea breeze before it shows up on any forecast.

Wave-specific: I use Surf-forecast.com, though Magicseaweed and others give similar data, wave height, energy, direction, period, and whether there's one clean swell or several overlapping and making things messy.

Takeaway

No single app or model is right everywhere, it depends entirely on what drives the wind at your specific spot, and honestly a lot of it comes down to what you're used to reading. Worth trying a few in parallel until you find the combination that actually predicts your local conditions well, rather than assuming the "best" app on paper will work for your spot specifically.

What's everyone else using? Always curious what works well for spots I don't know.

u/waternomadsnz — 8 days ago
▲ 252 r/AveragePicsOfNZ

Living in...

Five years traveling Aotearoa New Zealand in our humble van and and we still keep discovering little pockets of paradise that simply blow us away! This below average pic is from our first year on the road 2021 🤙

u/waternomadsnz — 9 days ago
▲ 3 r/foiling

Sub-level foiling...

As soon as your back is turned, we're there, capturing your greatest moments!

u/waternomadsnz — 10 days ago
▲ 21 r/windsurfing

Interviewed a guy who spent 3 months windsurfing solo, unsupported, around most of NZ's North Island

Met this guy on the water earlier this year and found out he was windsurfing around most of the North Island of NZ, solo and unsupported, in stages over a few months. He's not after any publicity (kept things private, no name/photos of him), but he agreed to a written interview and was happy for me to share it here.

Paraphrasing/trimming a longer conversation down to the parts I think matter most to this sub. Happy to dig up more detail on anything if people want it.

Background

Been windsurfing on and off for about 9 years, also windfoils and kites a bit. Got the idea after doing shorter unsupported crossings first, windsurfing back and forth across Tasman Bay, then multiple attempts at Cook Strait (it took him about 5 tries over one week before finally making it across, one attempt ended with a long swim back when the wind died completely). After nailing the Strait, "the North Island seemed like a good trip."

Planning

He scouted landing spots entirely on Google Earth, looking for sheltered sandy bays, prioritizing ease of launching back out over ease of landing ("worst thing you kinda wash up when there are waves, but it's hard work to get out through them"). He'd pre-tag every viable spot on Google Maps (works offline, satellite imagery doesn't) so he could check options quickly if plans changed mid-crossing.

His daily safety buffer: aim to be on land by 3pm. If not, stick close to shore from then on. That gave him a stacked margin, still 2 hours of daylight buffer even if things went sideways at 5pm, and more beyond that. Only once did he land with just 90 minutes of daylight left.

Gear

Started on a 109L Starboard Futura ("great, but couldn't uphaul or waterstart under about 5 knots with any waves"), a 7.5m Ezzy sail he didn't originally buy for this trip but turned out ideal (reinforced construction, put a hole in it and it didn't rip through, unlike some of his other sails). Eventually moved to a 122L Patrick board after the Futura got destroyed (delaminated, footstrap plug pulled out entirely).

Small but important tweaks: adjustable harness lines he could slide back on the boom to dump backhand pressure in overpowered conditions, and a "cross-footing" stance (front foot in the front strap, back foot in the opposite rear strap) for more control going downwind in big following seas.

Food/water

2.5L water carried (1.5L in a camelback, 1L extra in the bag, deliberately weighted low for balance). On big days he'd go through 5-6 energy bars, plus two packet meals for dinner instead of one. Interestingly, he said he didn't notice being especially hungry during the effort, it caught up with him once he stopped moving for a day or two.

The trip itself

Not a single continuous push, done in stages over months, going home between weather windows, sometimes changing direction entirely based on what the forecast gave him (one plan flipped from clockwise to counterclockwise because a rare good window opened for the remote southeast coast instead). Best single day was ~130km. Boards got wrecked, repaired on the go with epoxy, eventually fully replaced.

The near-miss

The one time it got genuinely dangerous: came around a rocky point misjudging his clearance, had to tack back out, didn't make the tack, ended up in the water ~60-70m off rocks with waves breaking on them. Wind died at the worst possible moment while he drifted closer in. He was watching for the next wave set, knowing if it caught him or he drifted any closer he'd likely have had to ditch the gear and swim. Made it out just in time. His framing of the risk overall: not fundamentally different from being deep in the mountains tramping, the risk isn't zero, but it's manageable with the right preparation and realistic acceptance of what you'd do if things go wrong.

On why people underestimate what they can handle

"People shy away from doing things because they think it is too risky... it's actually not that big a trouble if you're prepared in advance and you're willing to accept the outcome... I've gone out on my board and swam around for a while just to see how quickly I could swim the board. It's all preparation."

Advice for anyone wanting to try something similar

"Get out there! Get a bunch of people and do it as a group. Let someone know what you're doing, but then, just go for it!"

Happy to answer questions, I've got the full conversation with a few images and can dig up more specifics on gear, routing, or anything else people are curious about.

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u/waternomadsnz — 10 days ago
▲ 8 r/wingfoil

Interesting gybe technique

One of those amusing moments frozen in time...

Neil actually made this gybe successfully, eventually recovering control of his wing. I suppose there's no real wrong way to do something if ultimately it works.

u/waternomadsnz — 11 days ago
▲ 79 r/AveragePicsOfNZ

Below average sunset pic in Nelson

Back Beach, Nelson is a fabulous wingfoil location, and a stunning place to be...

u/waternomadsnz — 12 days ago
▲ 23 r/newzealand_travel

Doubleganger?

A funny random moment awaiting in the Picton Bluebridge ferry parking in the boarding queue... Our logo inspiration parks behind us...

What a gorgeous splitty!

This has been our home for the last 5 years traveling all over New Zealand, what an amazing journey 🤙

u/waternomadsnz — 13 days ago
▲ 68 r/windsurfing

Bucket list locations are within your reach...

Heidi windsurfing Lake Pukaki, New Zealand, with the stunning majestic Aoraki Mt Cook as the backdrop...

Where's your bucket list sailing spots?

u/waternomadsnz — 13 days ago