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World’s Most Expensive Surfboard Is $1.3 Million and Reaches 35mph

And just when you thought some things can never get that expensive, it hits you. Master surfboard craftsman Roy Stuart has recently released his latest design, the Rampant. Having a flexible design and allegedly ground-braking engineering, the super expensive board is able to reach up to 35 miles per hour (56 km/h).
Rampart surboard 9 photos
Photo: www.roystuart.biz
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Rampant is the product of 20 years of water-testing development and a year of craftsmanship. This one-of-a-kind surfboard is made of Paulownia wood, a tree known for its high strength-to-weight ratio, making it well suited to surfboard service. It measures 10’6’’ (320 cm) and is able to hit 35 mph (56 km/h) or even more.

Roy Stuart, whose studio is in Putaruru, New Zealand, has chronicled the development of Rampant over the past two years, and explained its features on his website. “The axis of rotation of the tubular fin is aligned with the axis of the surfboard hull, so there is no added resistance to roll. Fine tuning of his hydrofoil over a 16 year period ensures that the optimal foil section, water flow volume, placement and lift angle is achieved to suit each surfboard hull,” Stuart notes.

As to its high performance, the world’s most expensive surfboard relies on a 6-inch (15 cm) Vort-X tunnel fin, made of the heartwood of the Kahikatea tree, a species indigenous to New Zealand. According to its creator, this improvement is what helps the board slice through the surf with such great speed.

Is 35 mph (56 km/h) fast? Well, according to Guinness World Records, the fastest speed achieved on a surfboard is 48.62 mph (78.26 km/h), but the board was being towed by a car. However, we still don’t know if it’s fast enough to be worth $1,3 million (EUR 950,000)...

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