Yikes, that’s a lot of options! How does one even begin to go about finding the right board? At Big Winds we love chatting with our customers, either in our store or on the phone or via email, and getting a really good feel for what sort of gear they really need. In addition to our own personal experience with the gear, our expert staff make their recommendations based on all sorts of variables like rider height and weight, skill level, favorite conditions and preferred riding style.

To help you with your purchasing decision, we’ve put together a handy series of comparison charts that will let you quickly browse and sort through products that share similar traits. Whether you’re looking for a 90 liter board, a 5.2 meter sail or a 400 cm mast, these new tools will make it far easier for you to zero in on your options.

Check it out! On our usual category page, we now have a sidebar that offers some common product comparisons:

If you click on an option it takes you to a list of all the products that match those criteria. In this case, we see all windsurf boards between 90 and 100 liters, sorted by volume:

Here’s the gravy, though. If you click on any of the column headings, it will instantly resort the list based on the items in that column. If you want to reverse the order that a column is sorted by, simply click on the column heading again. In this case, we’ve resorted the list based on price, descending:

Cool, eh? Our comparison tool is currently available on the following products:

• Windsurf Boards by Volume
• Windsurf Sails by Size
• Masts by Length and by Carbon Content
• Kites by Size
• Kiteboards by Length
• Stand Up Boards by Length

We hope you like it!

We here at Big Winds recently launched a new section of our website dedicated to stand up paddling. There’s certainly a ton of cross-pollination between stand up paddling and windsurfing, and a number of the boards we carry have mast tracks so you can use them for either sport. That said, stand up has its own special finesse, a certain je ne sais qoi, and continuing to lump it in with windsurfing just doesn’t do it justice.

What’s more, we’re getting pretty crazy into stand up ourselves! Daryl picked up two Amundson stand up boards for her sons, David refuses to be separated from his Werner paddle, and Steve has both a Pacifico Wave and a Naish Stand Up board permanently mounted on his truck, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

This summer is going to the Year of the Paddlers here in the Gorge, and we’re really excited to have a way to get out on the water on those rare no-wind days. Even in light winds, we have a number of shop riders who would rather go paddle some chop than go out on a huge sail. We’re totally stoked on this sport, and we hope we can share our passion and excitement with you!