fjdoug said.. so without weight divisions what would be the optimum weight for a sailor on a 220 litre board and a 5.7 sail ?
I'd reckon at a guess that 65-70 kg would be very quick because we get so many marginal planing days and therefore everyone would get close to that range.
Your comment got me thinking so please excuse the following essay. My impression is that the One Design was less sensitive to weight than the IMCO 7.4, and probably less sensitive than an 8.5 Raceboard. I haven't sailed Raceboards with 9.5 so can't comment. The LT is significantly less weight sensitive than the OD, from what I can see.
The thing is that Raceboards have a real jump in their downwind speed when you can get the track back, the gap closed, and the centreboard up. In my experience in marginal planing conditions, particularly in IMCOs, that gave the top light sailors an advantage of several knots. In Windsurfers you don't have that same difference between modes so although lights have an advantage in marginal stuff, it's much smaller. In light winds there seems to be little difference and when it gets around 20 knots the stronger/heavier sailors have an advantage.
The course races at the Nats were sailed in two starts; HEavy, Super HEavy and Cruiser in one and Women, Lights and Mediums in the other. I don't know the order in the HEavy/Super heavy group but from what I recall, the Heavies utterly dominated.
Lanee Beashel, who looks very light and is a four-time (?) Olympian, was actually the fastest sailor overall in the 49-strong Women/Light/Medium start and if everyone was scored together she would have killed it. Even by her high standards it was great sailing and she cleaned up a fleet that included a six time world women's champ.
The overall order in the W/M/L group ran 1- Woman; 2- Light/youth (Hamish); 3- Light/Grand Master (the flying Lloydie); 4- Medium; 5- Medium; 6- Light; 7- Light; 8- Light; 9 - Medium; 10- Light. Obviously results are affected by the fact that people are playing tactics in their weight division rather than trying to be first home in their start group.
It was a light regatta, with probably all bar one course race sailed in less than 10 knots. The race that was probably the lightest saw Michael Lancey, a Mediumweight, finish first of the entire L/M/W fleet while the strongest race (only 12 knots or so in the long gusts and with lighter patches) saw a Medium in second to Hamish. That fits in with the norm - the Ls have a bit of an advantage in marginal planing but not necessarily in non-planing winds or stronger winds.
There was also a bit of marginal planing in the marathonl which started off in a medium breeze that died. Hamish (Light, Youth) won overall from Lanee, with the order in the top 15 going L, W, L, L, Heavy (Dennis), L, L, L, M, L. L, M,M,L,M. The second heavy was 18th, the first Super Heavy 44th. Again, the results were affected by tactics within weight groups.
In the slalom the winds were mainly non-planing, as far as I can remember, and Dennis (H) won overall from Mike Lancey (M) with Hamish (L) in third, followed by Jason Morris (L), Cam Harrison (like Mike, a Medium weight, a Youth Worlds runner-up in his younger days and a Raceboard champ), Sam Treharne (M), and Will Wright (M). Again we see that in light winds when no one is planing, there's a good mixture of weights.
At a guess if we'd all raced together in all events I'd have thought that Lanee would have been fastest overall, followed by Hamish, Jason Morris (L), Mike (Med), Dennis (H) or the next Med, then some Lights, etc. However, of course, I'm sure that none of us were trying to win racing overall and that has a huge effect on tactics, strategy, motivation etc. In addition, it was a regatta that was largely sailed in non-planing winds with the occasional marginal planing race and that would have favoured the lights.
Given the fact that only two light guys beat the top two medium guys, and looking at Dennis's results in the Marathon and Slalom, I would say that the results indicate that the new board is less weight sensitive than the old one, by a fair margin.
EDIT -many thanks to Mal R for the overall placings information.
