CrazyFly Strike

The Strike is CrazyFly’s first foray into the ‘noseless’ market. And sometimes coming in a little later is good as it enables you to learn from what has gone before! The Strike is only available in a 5’4 and is built around a genuine PU core (yes, you can see the stringer). The weight is a respectable 3.3kg and with five fin boxes you can ride it as a thruster or a quad.

For us the graphics are very cool. In the flesh the red is more of a fluoro orange and – as with their twin tips this year – the graphics department have done a great job. Volume is relatively low at 23.5 liters and when you first pick it up you notice that the rails are not as ‘boxy’ as other similar boards and come in pretty sharply.

On the water and the Strike trucks around very nicely – the straight rail line, low rocker and wide nose make cruising around in chop easy and ensure that you can get back upwind even if the wind is marginal. The PU core delivers a very smooth ride indeed and is a definite improvement by the CrazyFly team. We generally rode it as a quad and found that you could really snap it around – particularly in more onshore conditions. It spins around quickly but with a nice loose and skatey feel, and you can release the fins and let the tail slide out relatively easily. The slimmer rails mean that you get more drive than on other noseless boards so you can really power into more hollow sections and put it on an edge with confidence. The flip side of this is that it is a little less forgiving, but for us this was a fair trade off and gives the Strike some solid ‘performance’ credentials.

IN A SENTENCE: Impressive entry to the noseless market, and the slimmer rails deliver good performance in more solid conditions.