patronus said..
In the early days of windsurfing there were different fin and UJ connections which standardised into today's. We has US box, Powerbox and Tuttle as no single fin box design could meet all needs but it seems to work well. How did this happen?
One thing is that windsurf boards and sails were usually bought from different brands early on. Sure, the windsurfer had its own sail, but other companies soon offered much better alternatives. Connecting them in a standardized way was somewhat important. Similar things happened in foiling with the foil-board connection.
A second thing is that mast bases and fins were a small-ticket item relative to boards and rigs, so if someone else sold them, no big loss for board or sail makers. In contrast, foil masts can be the most expensive piece of foiling equipment, so manufacturers see a big incentive to keep customers limited to their specific masts. The fuse becomes an instrument of locking buyers not just into masts, but also into the other "high revenue" items: front and tail wings.
Finally, standard screw-in mast bases with a mast track were clearly superior to older alternatives like the windsurfer plug-in mast feet. With the different mast-fuselage and fuselage-wing connections, it's much harder to see big differences in performance. Sure, some older models were clearly inferior by design, but many others are pretty similar in how well they work.
Unfortunately, the logical conclusion of this is that the different incompatible foil gear connection systems are here to stay.
