[Gebi]

Longer and narrower is better than short and wide. Concave helps smooth out the ride as well.

It helps to ride a board that you can stand up on top of and put almost half of your weight on the front foot to be fast down wind. The more you can balance your body on top of the board the lower you can go. Practice getting turned downwind and then find your boatspped angle that allows you to park the kite at the 10 oclock angle (on starboard tack, right foot forward) and 2 oclock on port tack(left foot forward).

If you have the right size board and the right size kite you can just park the kite while going downwind and not need to move it much except to change directions( missing a wave, swell or choppy area)

The idea is not to edge the board downwind but to only edge when you decelerate from going too low (too far downwind) and losing the power in the kite, as you then have to edge slightly to go upwind to catch up to your apparent wind.

It takes a lot of practice as most kiters reach down wind and have not played with the ability to go as low as possible.

Best thing is to test boards, fin combinations and different size kites so you know what works best in all wind speeds.

All you need to do is go 3 or 4 minutes down wind with one of your buddies of similar ability and see what works. Then just go back upwind again and change something and do it again.

Once you are happy with your board, fin, and kite selection, then you can concentrate on doing downwinders to refine your board riding skills.

Its also good to skope out the course so you know when you can go in and out of the surf and obsticles.

Hope this helps

gebi