Chris 249 said..

Gestalt said..

ptsf1111 said..
It doesn't work like that though. Fat = fast as they say in slalom windsurfing. Apart from early planing, you want to have more weight for speed.



As pointed out about, the small 2% overall difference in weight doesn't do much. However, it's a 30% lighter board and surely that feels like a massive difference on the water. That alone might allow a good sailor to get more out of the board or get planing earlier, not sure. In wave sailing, it's a no brainer.

I don't think it's that straight forward.. 2kg on a board means less volume, more drag etc.. depending on where it's added makes a big difference. adding 2kg to a sailor not so much because we are using leverage against the rig.

here is a test. grab a 2kg dumbell or sand bag and strap it to your board and go for a sail. Bet you notice it.

whilst I have no empirical data on this many years ago when I was course racing we used the idea that 1kg of weight was equivalent to 3kg when including drag etc. I'd love it if there are any naval architects out there that have actual data around this.

Yes, the sailor can notice extra weight, but that doesn't mean that the water can "feel" the extra weight to an extent that is really noticeable because the water doesn't give a stuff whether the weight is in the sailor or the board. To use an analogy, people can certainly feel a bicycle that weighs 2kg more, but the physics show that that a 2kg heavier bike is only about .16 km/h slower at about 35kmh. So feeling the weight doesn't mean you can feel the speed loss..

As noted earlier, if pure weight was so vital, in marginal winds just about all the lightweights would beat all the heavier sailors in one design racing, but that simply doesn't happen. If you like the feel of a lightweight board then that's a great reason to get ?ne, and sure they are easier to flick around.. But for the typical sailor (and I'm not saying you're him) the actual speed advantage would be likely to be nothing noticeable IMHO.

I've sailed in one design yachts against an America's Cup naval architect and skipper. Our boat was about 2% heavier than his. We were first, he was ninth or tenth...

Um the lightweights do beat the heavier sailors. That's why there are weight divs..

I do see myself as a typical sailor..no special ability here..

Its good to see all the different opinion. At some point I would have agreed with al the views here.. more recently though..

Longboard one design racing isn't exactly the most accurate way of determining if dropping 30% of the weight from a waveboard significantly alters performance.

Did another deep dive.

Both ends of the spectrum

Pro lite (11.5kg) for 5.5m 3 batten wave sail and 88lt board complete (picked lightest gear whilst matching mast) so light..
Amateur hd - (16.7kg) for 5.5m 5 batten wave sail and 88lt board (picked heaviest gear)
a windsurfer Lt board weighs 15kg.

5kg difference means loosing 5lt so you need a bigger board to compensate so the amateur would choose a 95lt board being next size up on average. Thats without even contemplating how the heavier gear would handle and feel.

honourable mentions to severne, jp, hot sails lithium and carbonart for pushing things
dishonourable mentions to duotone for not listing weights. Is this intentional to obfuscate their marketing..?

Gestalt said..

Grantmac said..
Longboard one design racing isn't exactly the most accurate way of determining if dropping 30% of the weight from a waveboard significantly alters performance.

True and I guarantee the sailors are weighing their gear to find the lightest boards and rigs before purchasing.

it is also true that skilled sailors beat lighter sailors.

You can't guarantee something that is not true.

I've been national champ in windsurfers and in the world's most popular racing yacht.class and state champ and top 10 nationally in Lasers, so I've been able to win at national and state level in some of the world's most popular classes without weighing the gear. Incidentally eons ago I was top 20 in the slalom worlds. The team manager said I had the fastest board in a straight line, but I still got kicked by Anders, Bjorn etc because their huge skill advantage was vastly more important than my alleged board speed advantage.

I know a bunch of other people who are similar in that they don't weigh the gear or stress about gear weight, but still do well. I mentioned earlier winning a major yacht nationals against two America's Cup skippers in a boat 25kg or so overweight. We had a two-time world champ skipper and an America's Cup winner on board, and while the rules said we had to weigh the boats, they didn't give a stuff about the extra weight ours had. To give another example, a while back I loaned two one design boards to former World Cup sailors, one of whom was also a former Olympian, for the nationals. Neither of them had a chance to select the boards and I didn't know the weights myself. One of those boards then won the nationals. So the reality is that 'the sailors' are NOT weighing their gear as a rule, or even normally.

ptsf1111 said..
the top guys test multiple identical boards until they have found the best board out of them and use that one for the formal races.

Do you know what identical means?

ptsf1111 said..
Haha, are we nitpicking now? Supposedly identical. Better?

No mate, it still doesn't make sense. The words 'similar' and 'identical' are different words with different meanings (that is to say, the words are not identical, get it?). Why would anyone test identical boards? It would be completely pointless. Once again you're literally talking nonsense and it's complete bs that a pro would test multiple identical boards when there is nothing to compare. Words are defined by their actual meanings, not what you decide they mean. If English is your second language, I will certainly cut you some slack, but if not, I suggest you invest in a dictionary and consider what you are actually saying...

Now for something not identical

pro lite

north extension - 0.4kg
north base - 0.25
Hot sails ultra 100% mast - 1.5kg
X boom ultra - 1.8kg
Hot sails lithium 5.5m - 2.35kg
tw custom 86lt - 4kg

Total 10.3 kg
honourable mentions
carbon art 87lt board - 5.2kg
jp magic wave - 5.7kg
severne s1 pro on severne gear - 6.79 kg


HD setup

Simmer sx4 extension - 0.63kg
Chinook base - 0.54kg
Ezzy legacy mast 60% - 2.12kg
Chinook alu boom - 2.85kg
Ezzy zeta 5.5m sail - 3.56kg
Witchcraft wave 86lt hd - 7.0kg

Total 16.7kg

honourable mentions
simmer 90lt 6.5kg

Sorry Muppet they do. They get a bunch a factory made boards and test them. They choose one as it feels faster or lighter or whatever to use in races. Ptsf meant identical as they get a few of the same model

Pushing this thread forward..

imagine. t1100 carbon in windsurfing kit...

Turns out t1100 is old news. it's t1200 these days, a 100 better.

ptsf1111 said..
The best sailors do not only have the best skills, but they are also the best at selecting gear. In PWA slalom racing, the top guys test multiple identical boards until they have found the best board out of them and use that one for the formal races. The others are used for training only. So they might not put them on a scale, but the weight is inherently part of it. Production boards would have very similar weights, but there's still slight variations in shape that makes the one board faster than the other. That, combined with sailing skills, tuning, and tactics, makes a winner.

But Olympic gold medallists, PWA world champs and America's Cup winners do NOT always do that, and they still win. Some of them, like Laser sailors, have found to their cost that worrying about getting fast gear is a very bad thing. There's a great interview with Shirley Robertson chatting to Olympic Laser gold medallist Tom Slingsby. He was stressed about the boat he got at the Beijing Olympics and that, along with suffering psychologically from trying to lose body weight, led to him going from being unbackable favourite to finishing about 24th.

After that, Tom was coached by Michael Blackburn, Olympic bronze medallist and an extremely analytical sailor. Michael and Tom went out and bought "slow" boats - ie ones with the "wrong" mast rake or weight, etc - and learned how to get them to perform just as well as a "fast" boat. That meant that when Tom went into the next Games, he knew that all had to do was measure the supplied boat, apply the technique changes that they had worked out when training with the "slow" boats, and they could get them all going effectively as fast as each other. Tom won that Olympics going away and went on to win the America's Cup.

Similarly, two-time Olympian Krystal Weir didn't stress if a sail was blown away and crumpled because any loss of shape was half of what she would lose in a bad tack. And I know for a fact, because I was one of the crew, that (as noted above) one of the Australia II crew and a multiple world champ did NOT select the best gear when we won a nationals against multiple world champs. Back in the day I was Bjorn's training partner before the worlds, and he did NOT do what you say.

Some of the best sailors do what you say, but others simply do not.

What does one design racing have to do with wavesailing?

Grantmac said..
What does one design racing have to do with wavesailing?

It's a very good testing ground to see if weight makes a significant difference. Hand the average wave sailor a 2kg lighter board and put them in a competition against the world wave champion on a "normal" weight board, then see the difference in their performance. I'll bet that no one could see any difference - the champ will still wipe the average sailor just as the OD champ with 2k extra bolted to the board will win against the average sailor.

As a parallel, I race bicycles against the state champ in my age group. In time trial bikes the physics are easy to work out. I haven't been serious for years so these days I'm slow, and I can crunch the numbers to see that out of the 20% (IIRC) speed difference between us, only about 2% is down to the fact that he has vastly better gear, and 18% of the difference is down to him being a better cyclist. So should I worry about the spending $20,000 to get rid of the 2% I'm losing through having old gear, or should I get my arse into gear, do the hard work and try to reduce the 18% I'm losing because I'm not as fit, strong and hardened as he is? It's a no brainer from my angle, and the champion cyclists I know would all tell me it's not about the bike and that I should ride up grades, not buy upgrades, if I want to get back to being quicker.

IF someone wants to buy lightweight gear because they like the feel of it, or because they like nice stuff, or they love the technology that's fine. Good on them and I hope they have fun with it. But the thing is that the subjective enjoyment they get from that doesn't mean that it's making an objective significant difference. If someone wants to plane earlier, unless they are on the PWA they should probably spend the time they spend thinking about gear working on their fitness, weight or technique.

Grantmac said..
What does one design racing have to do with wavesailing?

They are surprisingly similar disciplines. I only wavesail as far as recreational windsporting goes. But I do our local weekly one design fleet race and travel to our regattas around California and the gorge and do quite well. Wavesailing is all about dealing with gusty, holey wind, quick tacks and pivot gybes. Awkward balance situations. All that transfers directly into one design racing.

And I agree with Chris on the weight stuff. I've got regular weight wave boards and extra heavy wave boards and I don't notice any difference on the water.

And my LT is third hand kit, dinged up and has some water in it. I stlll won Nats on it. Doesn't seem to matter too much.

Because they want it to last a season or two.