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PhilUK said..
I think most brand's wave sails go up in approx 0.3/0.4m increments. Its up to the buyer to decide on what sails they buy. My smaller sails are 4.5, 5.2, 6m. I used to have 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.7.
For larger sails, I now have 6.5, 7.5 & 8.5. Ezzy do have 7.0 & 8.0 but I dont need them.
Some brands have kept the 0.7/0.8m increments, but I think the range from each has gone up so you dont need to change up or down so often. I generally sail for 1.5 hours on average and its rare to change sails during a session.
So as a typical keen sailor you have six sails. That doesn't seem to indicate any significant change over the decades. Back many years ago, it was common among people doing pro events here to have probably six sails to cover the wind range across waves and course racing, often using the same big course racing sails to sail in course events with no bottom wind limit on 12'9" boards. We'd have fewer sails at the world champs for slalom and course racing - two to three sails per discipline was common, IIRC.
So it was quite common to have two to three sails per discipline to cover the entire wind range for that discipline - and that was a racing setup for chasing around Robby and Bjorn. If the wind range had increased substantially over the decades people would now be doing PWA events with far fewer than three sails per discipline, and yet that's not happening. PWA sailors these days are allowed seven sails, which is actually more than pros used 40 years ago. That cannot be happening if sail ranges are increasing.
In the other types of craft I sail, from a Laser to a fast Formula 18 cat to a 36' yacht, we go from zero to 25 knots or so with no sail changes, apart from changing to a heavier spinnaker if racing the yacht. In Mistrals, Div 2 boards and Windsurfers we never changed sails, or did so about once a year.
As I tried to make clear, I completely understand why people choose to have lots of sails and as you said it's up to the buyer, but the point is that the claim "modern sails have wider wind ranges" has been made for decades on end and yet there seems to be no evidence that it's really happening, or that modern windsurf sails have a wide range compared to other sails.