Issue 316 - JUNE 2012
SAIL SIZE – so VERY important
Sail size. It’s not a case of ‘big good, small bad.’ It has to be right for the occasion. Photo Annette Hart
A Sizeable Question
SIZE – so VERY important. Have you got the right amount of the right kind? Peter Hart examines the element that has the most immediate influence on your performance.
Peter Hart
“What you got up mate?” Like the doggys’ mutual bottom-sniffing ritual, it’s the call that bonds windsurfers across the world. Geoffrey Average from Luton can stroll onto Ho’okipa Beach and deliver the question to Jason, Robby or Kauli and expect a perfectly civil answer and a strong handshake. It’s a question that bridges class, age and competence, breaks ice and says, without fear of a slap in the face, “it’s OK, I’m one of you.” If only there 84
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was such a failsafe expression around when we were spotty adolescents trying to make contact with the opposite sex. Yes on the one hand it’s a friendly greeting; but on the other it’s a genuine cry for help -or perhaps something more sinister. The sight I fear most is that of someone approaching me on the beach with the obvious intent of offloading the burden of sail choice onto my creaking shoulders, so they have someone to blame for a miserable session, which goes on to involve a dozen rig changes. Worse still, they sometimes ask the question in the secure knowledge that there is NO right answer – how sneaky is that? I write this from Kerry where this morning the wind at Kilcummin was gusting offshore from about 5 to 30 knots. We were all going to be under and over-powered at various times no matter the sail choice, so much was obvious. Some
just wanted a scapegoat.
Death by anemometer
I fear what you’re expecting is a neat chart with suggested sail sizes for wind strength and weight and standard of sailor. I have seen such things. They are a starting point but take vagueness to a new level. Just the other day I was sailing off West Wittering on the south coast in about 18 knots of wind and I saw: > free-riders of various abilities using sails between 5.5 and 7.5. > an RS:X (R.I.P.) racer launching off Hayling with a 9.5. > someone slaloming in the channel with an 8.5, > a freestyler popping around in the lagoon with a 4.7 > and someone on wave kit with a 5.2 jumping the small waves on the bar.
DESIGN and SIZE
Choosing the size has to be appropriate to what you want to do and depends on the design of the sail. In this pic I’m have a mess-about session on a 5.7 in 18 knots and the guy in the background is competing in a round on the Irish slalom with an 8.0. We’re doing different things and the sails are working very differently. For him it’s all about acceleration and top speed. Check how much his sail is twisting off. For me it’s about comfort during the tricks and turns. My 5.7 is much flatter and has a tighter leech. It’s easier to pump and lighter in the moves. There’s more than 2 sq m difference but both are doing the job.
For a start your arms detached from your body. The pressure build up in pre-twist sails was titanic. If you weren’t hauled off your feet, the sail turned itself inside out, broke into a thousand furrows and shot you into wind. Remedy? Rig your storm sail or get the scissors out. It was a simple battle of tug o’ war which you lost. You were indeed over-powered. Today the issue is far more complex. Rigs can handle infinitely more wind before they break up. We’re operating at much higher speeds. The rig may feel too much but is that just a sail area issue? There are many factors that can make a sail feel too big. The trick lies in working out what they are.
Too slow (a competence issue)
The slower you go relative to the wind speed, the more raw power there is in the rig. So what makes you slow? Lets start by blaming the conditions. Choppy water. Chop slows you down. It also makes you tentative, sheeting in and out to cope with the surges of power as you bounce and slam into the faces. On flat water that variable is eliminated. The board slips and glides and will go 30% faster without you doing anything different. With that extra speed, the power softens, the apparent wind moves forward allowing you to sheet in more and take up a less scary outboard stance. Hence you can carry a lot more sail on flat water. Gusty winds. If you’re not tuned into them and can’t spot them, gusty winds put you on the defensive. It only takes one catapult to stop you committing to the harness. As you move inboard and use your arms, you slow right down and the control problems begin. You feel over-powered
2. Photo by Annete Hart. A 5.7 wave sail in the foreground and an 8.0 slalom sail in the background both right for the occasion. That’s 5 sq m difference between the biggest and smallest yet everyone, all averagely weighted adults, had the right power for what they were doing. And when you throw a few more variables into the mix like age of sail and board and the ‘gusty factor,’ well if you are going to devise a chart, it’s going to cover a couple hectares. Whether it’s harness line settings or sail size I urge you to be wary of formulas. OK, it’s fine to walk to the water’s edge with an anemometer, register 25 knots and know that’s the wind you need to get your 4.5 going. However, if the mechanical device is your only point of reference, you’ll be missing out.
Power awareness
What makes up the good windsurfer, is a pie of many slices. But the greatest slice, far far bigger than agility, youth, fearlessness, wealth and a seaside property portfolio, is the ability to understand, regulate and control power.
In the following couple of pages, I hope to show that by being slightly more imaginative with your sail choice you can: > shape the sailing session. > introduce a new skill (e.g. early planing techniques, over-sheeted gybes etc) > force yourself out of your comfort zone. > perhaps learn to re-evaluate those nebulous terms ‘over’ and ‘under-powered.’ The sport is so diverse and our aspirations so much higher, that the choice of sail size can now be the difference between success and stagnation. I offer some real case scenarios drawn from recent experiences on clinics. Hopefully one of them will shed some light in your situation. But first …
Over powered? When to change down. What to change?
There was a time when ‘over-powered’ was easy to define. There were obvious physical symptoms.
Wrong match. This is the commonest ‘overpowering’ situation. Take a 150 litre board with 45cm fin and a 5.5 sail in a force 5 onto choppy water. As you get up to full planing speed, the fin lifts and over-powers the rig, which lacks the area and down force to keep it on the water. It’s a simple mismatch. In that situation, changing to an even smaller sail would just increase the ‘mismatchery.’ A smaller fin might help but if it’s too small, the board wont release at all. There’s no easy answer. The remedy is to seek out more friendly conditions where you can learn to control a smaller board. Here’s a recent case, which sums up most of the above.
Case study 1 - William in the waves
Will is a 105 kg competent free-rider. His favourite combo would be a 140 and an 8.5, which he can hold down in winds up to 20 knots at which point he might change down to a 7.5. He has ‘committed blaster’ tattooed on his massive forehead. He presented himself for a wave course and on day one had to confront shoulder high waves and a gusty 25 knot breeze. www.windsurf.co.uk
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POWERED UP to CARVE pt 1
People fail to plane out of carves for many reasons, the most basic of which is that they’re not carrying enough sail. One test is to see if you can get planing hooked in with the front hand off the boom. If you can it’s usually a sign that there’s enough power to pull you through a gybe. It’s also a good drill to make you commit to the harness.
Hook in close to the wind and with the feet forward of the straps, release the front hand.
Then bear away gradually, drop the hips back, drive off the front foot, and if there’s enough drive to pop you onto the plane, you’re in good shape to gybe.
POWERED to PLANE pt 2
One of the great advantages of new kit under the feet of a newcomer is that it planes at slow speeds, thereby introducing them to straps and the sensation of gliding, at low intensity. However, it can also trick them into believing that because they’re in the straps, they should be able to perform a planing carve gybe. The true power test for carving manoeuvres is that as you veer from beam to broad reach, you accelerate, NOT drop off the plane. To gybe well, you should be happy planing fast on a broad reach. But if you’ve never planed on a broad reach, well now you know the problem – rig bigger!
His chosen combo was his 140 free-ride and a 6.0. His rationale was that although he could waterstart, the slightly offshore wind was spooking him, so he wanted the option of uphauling. He was a mile or two out of his comfort zone. First run out he gets worked, says he can’t hang on and changes to a 5.5. For the next 30 minutes he wobbles out and back, manages to get through the waves but never gets going, can’t really do anything and ends up a long way downwind. Back in for a rest. After a huge pork pie and a rub down, we confer and I indicate that his problem is not skill but one of confidence and power choice. He tries again but this time on his ‘small’ board (110 ltr) and the 6.0. With the strict advice to go 50 metres beyond the break and no further, he had a ball. > The 6.0, let alone the 5.5, didn’t deliver the right sort of power to make the 140 release, hence both felt too big. > The 110 (with just a 30cm fin) and 6.0 matched each other. The 6.0 was slightly too much in the gusts but he had no problem waterstarting. When it came to the gusts, I reminded him just to head up to dump power, hence he had no problem staying upwind. > The 140 got scary as it began to plane. The 110 felt more and more comfortable and stable the faster he went. That was all the encouragement he needed. It’s one of many cases where changing down to somehow increase control is NOT the answer. Here’s another.
Freeriding and the planing percentage
Assuming you’re not in the waves (where the rules regarding planing are a little obscure), and assuming there is enough wind to plane (force 4 +) and assuming you do want to plane and are in a general free-ride situation, then you can gauge your progress and competence by the percentage of time you actually spend on the plane. The better you get, the higher the percentage. And, joy upon joy, the more you plane, the better you get at it. Photo by Peter Hart. Happy in the straps but the board is still displacing water and only semi planing. It’s perfect for first attempt carves but not scary/speedy enough for a full planing one.
Being under-powered, this whole gybe was a decelerating arc …
There’s a very tricky stage of a free-rider’s career where the rig board balance is hard to achieve. Until waterstarting is fully nailed, volume is required to uphaul. Take an average 75 kg adult. They need their 130 to uphaul for which the ideal size is 7-8 sq m. The wind is 15 knots. But they take out a 6.0 because they don’t feel they have the strength and skill to sail it, let alone heave it out of the water.
which traditionally ends stationary.
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But if you carry enough power, the gybe will quicken all the way round. The test is to be able to plane broad.
On the 6, they kind of get going a couple of times, almost. When they do, it doesn’t feel quite right and they never get their back foot in the strap. The answer is simple but scary.
WAVE SAILING - as small as you can get away with
In one way wave-sailing is easy to rig for. You begin by taking the size of sail (and board) needed to get out there. As you improve your trimming, bogging and early planing, you scale down and down in the knowledge that the less you have under your feet and in your hands, the easier it is to cut loose in jumps and on the wave. The issue is that of NOT getting too used to the comfort of big kit.
The Kerry wave champs, where riders are marked on the strength of their rail to rail riding. Hence it’s a marginal 14-17 knots but they’re still out on 78 ltr boards and 5.0 sails.
A 6.5 and a 120ltr on the same day down the road. It’s doing the job but the lines you can draw and the places you can visit on the waves are severely limited. Plus sails over 6.0 offer too much area to destructive white water.
GOING go the ‘GO TO …’
A great day in Kerry with clean head high waves. However, what a pic never shows is the strength and gustiness of the wind. On this day it was 5-35 knots. This is when you need you ‘go to …’ size. For me it’s 4.7 - small enough to cope with the biggest gusts but big enough with a long enough boom to work through (some of) the lulls.
By happy chance I had a prototype Tushy 6.0 ‘Storm’ with me devoid of numbers, which I gave her saying it was a 5.4 super light new ladies wave sail we were working on. You’ve guessed it, she planed up and down for hours and waterstarted like a leaping salmon. She was initially quite angry when I told her the truth saying I could have drowned her – but she then got over it and now uses a 7.5 in local club racing.
Power and the gybe
Once you’ve got comfortable in the straps, the next milestone is traditionally the good old carve gybe. I’ve got an EEC directive on this and apparently under European law it’s admissible to say you’ve done a carve gybe, if you planed into it, even though the rig change took place stationary with you 6 inches under water. But the leap from that to a full planing one is a chasm on the scale of the Grand Canyon and much of the issue is understanding the meaning of powered up. Side-off winds are invariably gusty, especially right at the top of the wave where the wind squeezes up the face. To control the top turn you have to go small, but not too small. The author on his trusty 4.7. Make sure a few safety measures are in place, like a lee shore or a rescue boat or some vigilant caring mates; then bite the bullet, hoist the big sail and just bloody go for it. Yes there may be the odd spill but when you do get planing, the kit will be balanced, you’ll have the power to drive you up to full speed and keep you there (at which point the power will soften). You’ll want to put the back foot in the strap for security. Yes uphauling is harder but necessity being the mother of invention, you’ll get better at it AND will discover that rigging sensibly big is largely a psychological issue. Talking of which …
Case study 2 - Lindsey and the numberless sail A couple of issues back, I told a story of how I tricked a girl into using a smaller board by giving
her one with no markings on it. I did the same recently with a sail. I find that ladies often buy into all that nonsense about them being weak and delicate and rig too small. Lindsey was a classic case. It was almost as if she’d clock the wind and then chose the size which guaranteed to make she would plane for no more than one minute out of an hour session – especially frustrating since her aim was to carve gybe. It was less to do with the power itself than a paranoid fear of sails bigger than 5.5. Any bigger and she’d never be able to release it to waterstart, so she thought. She was on a 115 and the wind was 12-17 knots.
Modern kit is a blessing and a curse in this respect – a blessing in that it planes at very slow speeds, which makes it so much easier to learn; and yet a curse in that you may believe that just because you’re in the straps, you should be able to perform a planing gybe and are miserable when you can’t. Being powered to do a planing gybe means that you accelerate as you bear away from tight to broad reach. If you have to stay hard to the wind to keep planing, you have no chance. What so often separates the pro gybe from that of the amateur is that the former accelerates around the gybe; the latter starts at full speed and then gradually sinks to a halt.
www.windsurf.co.uk
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Case Study 3 - Thanos and the planing exit
RACING – go big or go home
Drag racing with your mates or slaloming for glory, you have to work out what is going to win you the race. Is it top speed, acceleration or being fastest around the corners? It’s always a compromise. In this heat of the Irish champs where the legs were short, the water flat and the wind offshore and moderate, you had to get away in the lead and plane through the lulls. (So much racing is won in the lulls). In the early rounds where the wind was less stable, going big was the answer. As it kicked in later, control became a bigger issue and those who rigged slightly smaller came through.
Thanos is a light twinkled-toed Greek of about 65 kg. He’s a good allround sailor and especially into his semi planing freestyle – heli tacks, push tacks, upwind 360s etc. He got planing early and hence he tended to rig small. I rarely saw him on anything bigger than his 5.4. On his wish list he had waveriding and a planing gybe. He could gybe but they were semi planing, tight radius slams.
I explained that first step to cracking the planing version is to be happy sailing full tilt on a broad reach. He had NEVER in his life planed on a broad reach. I persuaded him to go bigger by half a metre. We went off on a few scary speed runs and by the end of the week he had one cracked. Full planing manoeuvres – carves, ducks, 360s etc – all demand that you feel power as you veer downwind and then let that power pull you inboard and forward so there’s a feeling of going with, rather than resisting, the power. People rig small learning to carve for fear of the speed. However, find some flat water and then up the stakes half a square metre above what you think is sensible. It can be a devastating combination.
Too comfortable – Too big Photo Peter Hart. The all important start of a slalom. Needing instant acceleration and having to deal with the dirty wind of others, you rig as much a metre bigger than for regular free-riding.
Photo Peter Hart. The bigger sail wins out here. The simple tactic is to start in the lead and stay there.
NON-PLANING – think small.
I can’t see any point in going out on a non-planing day with a massive sail. It doesn’t make you go much faster and it’s a pig to handle. The combination of big floaty board and small sail, is a happy option and allows for much useful skill training. SUPs have brought this old pastime back into vogue. Taking my 9’ into the waves, I never use more than a a 5.7. The fins are so small that any bigger is counter-productive and hinders your manoeuvrability.
An increase in skill solves a lot of rigging issues – and produces a few more. Good sailors have the confidence to commit fully to the harness and drive the board onto the water with a smooth constant force. Fully locked down, the sail behaves even when it’s creeping out of its wind range. It’s when it’s half sheeted in that it shakes, rattles and lifts and the mayhem occurs. But having found this newfound ability to handle power, people tend to rig too big. Power becomes a comfort blanket. You can waterstart by just lying there, plane without pumping and chog happily upwind. What’s the problem? You can get lazy. The trimming of board and rig doesn’t have to be that fine. Worse still, because you rely on the power and volume to get you going, you have too much for controlled gybes and moves – locking you into a initially fun, but ultimately tedious, up and down routine.
Case study 5 – Dave & his ‘fave 120’ (& 6.5)
Dave is a solid high wind performer, looking to up his performance in the waves. His problem was that he has a combo that he’s in love with. It’s a 120 cross over board and a free-ride 6.5. It’s really good kit and he tunes and sails it well. From 10 knots to 25, he makes it work. The problem in the waves, big or small, was that the only way to stop the rails of the 120 catching was to turn off the back foot. His rides were therefore slow and ‘pivoty’ rather than fast and flowing. Photo by Annette Hart. A plucky 5 year old holding onto a 1.5 sq m on a 9’ SUP in a force 3. The board provides the float, the wee sail provides easy control.
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It’s the same with windsurf SUPping in the waves. Use a small sail to get out there and then rely on the board to do the business on the wave.
He learned an even harder lesson in that sails above 6.0 offer too much area to breaking waves and a fairly innocuous tumble, resulted in a broken mast and a ripped luff.
WHEN SMALL is GOOD
A 6.5 is about 30% bigger than a 4.7 but it’s 300% easier to do trick like a duck tack or a Spock with a flat, flicky 4.7, than a full, ‘grunty’ 6.5. Forget the raw skill and athleticism required, the first step to cracking a modern (or old school) trick is to learn to get going with smaller, flatter sails.
Any trick involving a back-winded moment – heli-tacks, spocks, upwind 360s, Chachos etc, are so much easier with a small flat, sail that depowers easily For a bloke of his weight (80kg) a 90 ltr and a 5.7 should have been the right ‘bogging’ set up for ‘float and ride’ wave sailing. I urged him to change down (he had smaller kit). He hated me for 2 days as he floundered around and walked shamefully upwind. But when he did his first proper ‘snap’ of the breaking lip without the board tripping a rail, all was forgiven. He actually learned more in those 2 days of being under-powered than he did from 2 weeks of blasting around.
“For general sailing, to start with you’re judged on how big a sail you can use; then as you improve you’re judged on how small a sail you can get away with”
The ‘GUSTY’ factor
We open up Windguru and note the ‘highest gust column’ and hope and pray it’s not far from the average speed. It’s when the average is say 15 but there are gusts of 30 that we expect a testing sail choice conundrum. It’s also in these conditions that I see the worst decisions. Do you rig for the gusts or the lulls? Were it only that simple. It all depends… To win a race, you rig for the lulls because if the other guy keeps planing and you don’t, he wins, so long as he can hang on. In waves, it’s more complex.
Case Study 5 – Brutal Gusts in Brandon
We’re back to the beginning of the story here on Kilcummin beach where the wind was indeed 5-30 knots side off with shoulder high waves and where I was inundated with ‘what sail?’ type requests. I pointed out considerations and offered advice, most of which, initially, was ignored.
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Trying to crack a trick that involves a lot of clew first sailing, go as small as you can In all school stunts like the carving 360, you need power get away with. In the push tack, to plane, but it’s much easier the leech has to pass through but relatively easy with and more stylish with a smaller the wind. Using a big floppy sail that plays dead when you leeched sail, it’s a gargantuan a flatter, smaller, tighter struggle … leeched 5.7 sheet out.
The result was that people rigged from 3.7 up to 6.0. But to begin with most rigged too small. How you assess the situation depends on your immediate priorities. It’s riding heaven. The pro will therefore select what he needs for total control on the wave. In cross off winds the apparent wind build up is huge so he will go as small as he can and rely on his skill and fitness to get out. The newcomer to waves wants primarily to be able to get out and back. What the team ultimately learned was: > 4.0 was OK for the pro but too small for them. The wind was strongest right by the shore-line. Leaving the beach broad to the wind in a massive gust, every size felt too big. It was that which informed their initial decision to go small. But the gusts didn’t last all the way out and the power softened when they picked up speed. They realised that with a bit of practice it was far less tiring to be momentarily over-powered than to be constantly under-powered with a small twitchy sail. > The right size for average adults was 4.7 but to go about 10 litres more on the volume to help survive the impact zone. That meant for most taking an 85ltr rather than a 75 ltr, which would normally suit the 4.7. > I talked to the team about their ‘go to …’ sail. It’s the size they trust and ‘go to’ when they’re not sure. In windy waves for me it’s a 4.7. I could use it to get home in 45 knots but it’s just big enough to work and pump effectively in the lulls. In more moderate gusty conditions, 5.7 is the size that covers the most options. In manoeuvre oriented sailing, the better you get, the smaller your ‘go to’ sail becomes.
“ In manoeuvre oriented sailing, the better you get, the smaller your ‘go to’ sail becomes.”
Design, size & the trick vs speed factors
Your mindset with regards to sail size (and design) has to change as you go from pure carver to wave sailor and modern trickster. As someone who relishes a planing gybe you can afford to rig big and full and feel that power heaving you around the turns. But as you challenge any trick which involves a back-winded moment or a fast sail transition, being able to de-power is paramount. Balancing in the lip of a wave, doing an old school duck tack, trying a new school ‘flaka’ (aerial upwind 360), all have a moment where you want the sail to play dead for a second. That only happens if it’s small and flat. Not many freestylers use a sail above 5.7 (usually much smaller) and even the chunky ones are up and riding in 15 knots. For them, as well as that bloke trying to get into the straps for the first time, early planing is the skill that determines their future.
More jewels of wisdom from the Uber guru in the next issue. In the meantime check out his website www.peterhart.com for news of his lifeenhancing clinics. Or email him on harty@peter-hart.com for his monthly newsletter.