THE PLACE SAILS ARE DEVELOPED AND TESTED…

The windsurfing research&development methods are sometimes questionable… I just want to stick to sails for this article. Now I was thinking a few minutes ago:

Who would be faster, the sandy point riders or the dutch top 10?

The dutch speedsurfers have claimed to be faster (The “wait till we go to sandy point hehe” thought). These are the reasons:

  • The KA Koncept is slower, some fast riders tested them on our waters. Not enough drive to accelerate on our courses. This is really not working, so far I know we don’t have a long enough speedcourse that showed the Koncept potential. Or maybe another reason
  • Sandy Point is the fastest place in the world (curved course etc.), we don’t have such a course
  • All these crazy findesigns that also don’t work “great” around here. Wait till we take our “conventional” designs

Now I keep my eyes on the Australian speedsurfing websites too. Because I don’t believe all written above is true. When I speak for results in the down-under, I could think up a few reasons why they could be faster:

  • With the Neilpryde RS:Racing Evo2, Chris Lockwood couldn’t get settled on a recordday. I don’t know it for sure, but I can imagen the sail being to powerfull. Before pryde nothing stopped Chris on sandy point. Maybe KA Koncept are not that bad…
  • Our findesigns from europe don’t seem to accelerate that good on the sandy point course

Back to the story: I am getting more and more convinced there are big differences between speedspots. You can’t trim for example one sail that is fastest in all conditions. But this is the keyword TRIM, which sail trimpossibilities allows the most conditions, with the highest average efficiency? I think the best average efficiency would be Neilpryde RS, but in some conditions there could be better solutions… For Sandy Point it would be very plausible the KA Koncept to be faster on recorddays.

In the Netherlands I had in a lot conditions problems with trimming the Gaastra Vapor 2008, however Robbert Seinen proved to be very fast with the same sail (in the Netherlands). Now Robbert is in some conditions fast or even some days unbeatable, would the Gaastra Vapor be fastest design on those days? I think so!!

To all developers in windsurfing industry I would like to say: Test on as much different surfspots as possible, this will help to see what the market really wants. Now some saildesigns only suit a very small group of windsurfers sailing a few “not common” locations. Some brands have 3 different sails for straight out speed, I think you can make at least 2 different sailranges suitable for different conditions/needs. In the end this would mean overall higher speeds.