River land offers winter visitors miles of snowmobile and cross country ski trails, hunting, ice fishing and warm hospitality. Transforming into a haven for those hardier outdoor enthusiasts, River land becomes Winter land U.S.A. because of its fun-filled winters and warm hospitality. Several accommodations are strategically placed along some of the major trails.

Long accustomed to winter, residents and visitors have learned to take advantage of the snow and cold. Hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails are groomed and ready for visitors and residents looking for adventure. Skis, skates, snowshoes and ice fishing equipment are commonplace here.

Once ice forms on the rivers and lakes of the area, small ‘communities’ crop up everywhere. Whether in a make-shift fish house or taking it easy in a deluxe model with all the creature comforts of home, all anglers have one thing in common — to land that walleye, crappie or northern pike.

For individuals interested in leisurely paced cross-country skiing, there are hundreds of miles of groomed trails. Cross-country skiers can also make their own ski trails through picturesque forests and parks.

Year round, you will find excellent shopping, fine dining, and exciting night life. For those that like to shop, River land is a treasure trove of craft fairs, antique shops and unique shops all ready fro your enjoyment. River land even has ’slots’ of action with all the excitement of casino gaming. Local casinos have slot machines, blackjack tables, keno, bingo and more.

St. Hilaire

Located just 6 miles south of Thief River Falls, St. Hilaire has responded to recreational needs with its smaller park that offers a playground for the children, horseshoe pits, ball diamonds, a full hook-up campground, tenting area, modern restroom facility with showers, cable television, telephone available, picnic shelters, barbecue grills, canoe landing, river and pond fishing and a walking trail.

St. Hilaire is also connected to the River land Snowmobile trail, a 70-mile groomed trail system that passes through the heart of St. Hilaire. St. Hilaire also produces the All Nations Cultural Festival the 2nd weekend in July. The two day cultural celebration features ethnic performers from around the world. Arts, crafts, food stands, fur trading encampments, kids carnival, and much more.

Businesses in the community offer visitors a variety of services, including a gas station and convenience store, liquor store and laundry.

St. Hilaire has gone through many stages of growth. In 1897, it was going through a boom with the construction of the Shevlin-Carpenter Lumber Mill. The mill shut down in 1906 due to a lack of timber in the nearby area and relocated in the Bemidji area.

The St. Hilaire of today is home to one of the largest grain cooperatives in northern Minnesota &emdash; the St. Hilaire Elevator. In recent years, the elevator has expanded and built plants in several communities including Thief River Falls, Hazel, Plummer, Grygla, Fertile, East Grand Forks and Sherack. Just recently it merged with Harvest States Cooperatives and is now operating under the name of Northwest Grain Company, a division of Harvest States.

St. Hilaire is also home to a business that opened in the fall of 1993 &emdash; the St. Hilaire Seed Company, which is located on the south end of the community. It processes and cleans seed.

Their efficient staffs and asset professional are always there to serve your need.  This is a good means to save your wealth. As gold is near to the liquid form of asset and its value remains high and demanding, investing money in this purpose has been always proved to be a good investment. So, for the tourists buying gold coins is a convenient and secured method of carrying asset.

This combo creates a board that is fast and loose and holds in well, but also releases when you need to do so.

This shape provides the best bang for the buck for intermediate-advanced surfers as it provides maximum speed and maneuverability in small- medium surf, even handling occasional overhead days. For a surfer who will only own one board, this should be a first consideration.

SAMPLE DIMENSIONS: 6’ 0” X 18” X 2 3/16”

NOSE ROCKER: 5 3/8”

TAIL ROCKER: 2 5/16”

AVAILABLE TAIL SHAPE: squash, round pin, swallow, square

All info has been gathered through my brief experiences and discussions with many people but it is not the definitive source on surfboard design, so please let me know if your experiences or opinions differ from the info below and I’d be happy to discuss it with you.

This information provides basic knowledge for the beginner while there are far more subtle and advanced design issues/techniques that this guide cannot come close to describing.

Surfboard design is very complex with new advances made constantly by all the brilliant creative surfers out there. Also, much of the information is second-hand and experiences may vary.

The core of each windsurfing board is made of lightweight polystyrene polymer foam. The outer skin layer of the board is made of carbon fiber-reinforced composite with high impact resistance.

Both the boom and the mast of the sail are made of strong, lightweight carbon fiber-reinforced composites with high strength-to-weight ratios.

The sail is made of waterproof polymer fabric made from nylon or aramid fibers. The transparent windows on the sail are made of vinyl, another polymeric material.

The best souvenirs of all are the stories you bring home–the memories, the laughs, the family folklore that’s created. Now’s the time to start dreaming about the stories you’ll take home this summer.

Look through our website to get started, or contact a travel counselor for personalized travel planning help.

The 3-stage bottoms are designed to be forgiving and have the most utility in the widest range of conditions. The front third of the board has a teardrop concave for nose riding the back third of the board has a moderate vee panel. The rocker is custom and proprietary.

These boards do most things very well, they are forgiving, catch a lot of waves, are very predictable, and nose ride like banshees even in small sloppy waves. They turn good from the back and middle of the board so you don’t have to walk very much. I always have a 9′2″ x 22 1/4″ round pintail around for small conditions. If your not sure what you want stick with the three stage bottom.

The 2-stage bottoms are very fast, but more temperamental than the 3-stage boards. They are setup with a moderate single concave in the front 2/3 rds of the board, the back third of the board has a moderate vee panel with a double concave overlain on it. Again, The rocker is custom and proprietary.

They turn very well from the sweet spot on the tail and because of the con-caves are fairly stiff when trying to turn from the middle of the board. But, and this is a big but, they are truly rockets and really, really stable at speed. When you step onto the concave you accelerate, step-up more and accelerate again. They are very fast and extremely exhilarating in good lined up waves.

Mainly these are for are intermediate to advanced surfers who don’t mind a little work in terms of moving on the board for excessive speed. I normally keep a 9′0″ x 22″ squash tail in my quiver for those days where the waves are a little bigger and I don’t mind working a little. But again, default goes to the three stage long boards where you aren’t sure.

Standard glassing is a 6 + 4 ounce deck and a 6 ounce bottom. I prefer a gloss but that’s just my personal preference. Board fiber glassing can always be requested to be lighter and less strong, or heavier and more durable-with no additional cost.

Concept:

Design: There are two size ranges which are distinctly different in concept: 6′3″ to 7′0″ and from 7′4″ to 8′4″. All are round pin tails with very clean, beautiful lines. My absolute favorite boards to shape.

The smaller range should be considered an extension of your standard short board and should be ridden 3″ to 6″ longer for medium sized waves. The longer size range are for days that are way overhead to triple overhead. These are for the making days where you are mainly looking for paddling advantage.

They are setup with a lot of entry and tail rocker, this keeps them loose. The bottom configuration is a combination of standard vee in the tail with a forward spiral vee toward the nose. The exact bottom configuration is proprietary and keeps them stable and predictable at high speed. Standard dimensions are shown in Table 1

These dimension ranges work very well in California winter conditions, which include both open faced and relatively hollow conditions. For North Shore conditions the width dimensions can be pulled in from 1/4″ to 3/4″. This will significantly stiffen up the board but allow for more stability in really hollow waves.

We recommend not narrowing the boards up unless you really need it. Standard glassing is a 6 + 4 ounce deck and a 6 ounce bottom. Board fiber glassing can always be requested to be lighter and less strong, or heavier and more durable-with no additional cost.

It will take off on an avenue, put on a blinder, and will take 10 years to to look back. Open Ocean has taken old good ideas with some new good ideas and has designed the 90’s version of the three fin system.

Surfing also saw the three fin system come and go four or five times in a 40 year period. In 1980 the concept was introduced again by Simon Anderson, a shaper from Australia. His three fin concept is now the standard in the surfboard industry.

And 250,000 boards are made every year. Just like surfing, windsurfing will have to pull old ideas from the past and put them together with new ideas to create great ideas. Open Ocean has done this with its three fin system.

What are the Benefits of the three fin system?

1. Early planning
2. Better weather performance
3. More control in all degrees of jibing
4. Better control in high wind sailing
5. Overall ease in all aspects of sailing
6. Better trim

Why they work!

Early planning and better up wind ability is due to the added fin area and core selection from the fins. Plus, the fin helps to trim the board out. This trimming effect is due from the windward fin diving the nose down just like a trim plate on a ski boat.

This trimming effect of the board is brought out by the depth, angle of the fins and the profile of the fins. Better trim produces better performance in all aspects of sailing. Trim is the key word in all water craft. When you optimize your trim, performance goes up.

As with all materials selection and design processes, the first step is to decide what properties we want from our component. Make a list of all these properties and discuss how you might try to achieve these with different materials.

The other important factor that needs considering in this case is how our board is to be made. The manufacturing process can have a large influence on which materials we should use and what properties we end up with. For instance, we might like to :

a) make our board from the very best materials. This, however, normally involves complex and expensive manufacturing processes, often including lab our intensive methods. This is therefore reserved for the top end of the market. or :

b) ensure that our manufacturing process does not increase the cost of the board too much. By doing this, we often have to limit our choice of materials which can compromise performance to some extent and so this forms the lower, mass produced end of the market.

On the following pages, you will see how the manufacture of modern boards illustrates these points

PROPERTIES NEEDED FOR WINDSURFING BOARDS:

a) Buoyancy, therefore low density or hollow materials are needed.
b) Stiffness; to be rigid enough to stand on without bending.
c) Strength, so as not to break, particularly with impacts due to waves.
d) A smooth surface, to reduce friction against the water and to enable painting.
e) A hard surface, to resist denting by small impacts.

In order to reduce weight, polymers and composites are the most widely used materials.

Carbon fiber composite is the optimum material, but performance almost as good at lower cost can be achieved by combining the advantages of different materials in specific locations. In most of these cases, the inner part is made from polymer foam to reduce weight and an outer casing of a fiber reinforced composite for strength and stiffness. Details on both of these types of materials are given later.

These are hollow boards with an outer casing of carbon fiber reinforced plastic. This gives the best combination of buoyancy, stiffness and strength. However, not only is carbon fiber expensive, but so are the manufacturing methods (which are a closely guarded secret) and so these are definitely the top of the range boards.

Hand made custom boards are intermediate in quality and price. They combine several different materials to give the desired properties. The inner core is a polymer foam (polyurethane) that is cut to the desired shape.

An aluminum honeycombe is then pressed into the deck to prevent denting and carbon fiber strips are laid along the length of the board to provide stiffness. This is then covered with glass fiber reinforced plastic to provide strength and a thin plastic outer layer to give a good surface finish.

Mass produced boards are made from a polyethylene moulded shell that is injected with polyurethane foam. This gives boards that are lower in stiffness and strength, but are significantly cheaper and thus form the low end of the market.

POLYMER FOAMS:

Although polymers are relatively light materials, they can be made even lighter by being made into the form of a foam. Such foams are used in many applications such as furnishings, crash helmets, packaging as well as windsurfing boards.

They are made using a ‘blowing agent’ to produce the bubbles in the foam. These blowing agents are normally volatile liquids that are added to the polymer before moulding. At the higher temperatures in the moulding process, when the polymer is molten, the liquid evaporates, forming gas bubbles.

The polymer solidifies before the gas changes back to a liquid and so the foam structure remains. Early blowing agents were CFC’s but these have now been replaced with hydrocarbons due to environmental concerns.

Polymer foam can be supplied in the form of blocks to be cut to the required shape, as a moulded article or in unreacted liquid form that can be injected into hollow spaces (e.g. cavity wall insulation). The density of these foams ranges from 250 kg/m3 to 750 kg/m3.

You might like to calculate how much foam (of density 500 kg/m3) is needed to support your own weight in the water (density 1000 kg/m3).

FIBER REINFORCED POLYMERS:

Composite materials with high stiffness and strength can be made by incorporating fibers into a polymer material. This gives a combination of the strength and stiffness of the fibers with the toughness and ease of processing of the polymers.

The most common fibers used are glass, though more expensive fibers such as carbon (higher strength and stiffness) and Kevlar (for better toughness) are also often used. for instance, for a windsurf board designed for racing on calm lakes (where rigidity is important), carbon fiber would be used, whereas for a board to be used in rough waves (where resistance to impact is more important), Kevlar fibers would be used.