A bit of Midget Farrelly windsurfing history … 3.3 metre Farrelly Wing sail, personally sailed by Midget in Hawaii. Most of my 10 years of wavesailing was on Farrelly Wing sails. When I phoned him in the early 90s to replace my well-worn 3.3, he had stopped making them. So he said ‘’here, you can have this one’’. Complete with the MF personal Midget Farrelly logo. Very happy to have this collector’s item.
The 3.3 fitted on to a 1 metre boom and a 4.5 metre mast. He only had one mast size. I had several 4.3s which fitted a 125 cm boom and a 5.3 Which fitted a 150 boom. Only ever had the one 5.3, because I didn’t use it very often, always felt too big. The short boom length made them brilliant for tight turns on a wave face. They weren’t much good for straight line speed with max power, but that wasn’t relevant at the time.
While the booms were really short, the sail actually became wider above the boom because of the unique ‘scimitar’ shape of the sail. So they were easier to maintain power despite their small size. When I had a bit of a dabble with ‘’modern’’ sails in recent decades I found a 4.0 North Instinct needed at least as much wind to stay powered as the 3.3 Wing







. Of course what the current crop of wavesailors can do with current sails is a whole other story. But I thought it was worth mentioning a bit of history with the passing of the great man.