Does anyone still make a 9 to 10meter race sail? Most seem to be stopping at about 8.5 now.

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Ben1973 said..
Does anyone still make a 9 to 10meter race sail? Most seem to be stopping at about 8.5 now.

I have a 10m for sell

I bought a new 2018 loft sails racing blade 9.0 from the windsurfingshed.com.au
Fantastic sail, absolute powerhouse and looks slick too.

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Ben1973 said..
Does anyone still make a 9 to 10meter race sail? Most seem to be stopping at about 8.5 now.

As in race board style sail , or , a big fully cammed go fast sail ?
I will be corrected , cos of limited smarts , Severne had a 9.2
ish tight leech race board sail. It would be about 10 years old now. NP had big proper fully cammed sails about 6
years ago. Big sails went extinct with formula and raceboards. I'm using a NP 9.4 V8 for maximum light wind conditions. I think that is the biggest sail you can buy now. And that's on 6 month back order at full price. Having said that I also have that sail in 8.7 and gets me going just as easy on large free ride gear. I can't see needing bigger than 8.5 unless you're on a formula or race board.
ps. Fun note, I once had a North Warp 11. something , in the quest of getting my fat ass planing earlier. Trying to waterstart that bastard was something else. When going it pushed too hard down even on a 90 wide board. It needed a formula or race board. Great for a strong 70 kg pilot on a formula , planing in 10 kts. I was 115 kg on a starboard go 170 . It was never going to happen.

They are awful and unless you have a super wide board say minimum 85 cm they do not plane any better.

Their swing weight and static weight takes the fun out of it.

Go max 7.8 with less downhaul and outhaul it will be much more fun.

Overdrive 7.8 is probably the best bet.

A too big fin for your board helps a lot to get your board going earlier.

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Pcdefender said..
They are awful and unless you have a super wide board say minimum 85 cm they do not plane any better.

Their swing weight and static weight takes the fun out of it.

Go max 7.8 with less downhaul and outhaul it will be much more fun.

Overdrive 7.8 is probably the best bet.

A too big fin for your board helps a lot to get your board going earlier.

They are great, the 9.4 Overdrive on my ultrasonic plans much earlier then my 8.6 and goes just as fast when the wind picks up. My 7.8 has been used probably 4times in the last 2 years. so far this year I've used the 9.4 probably 40plus times, the 8.6 once and I've rigged the 7.8 but then used the 8.6

As for boards the ultrasonic gets the most use, think I've been out on the falcon 142 a couple of times and the fox once. I just like sailing big kit

Not much need for a full-race shortboard sail in that size, because for racing a foil will always be faster in that kind of wind. However, there are some very good freeride/freerace sails from Ezzy (the Lion 2-cam and Cheetah), Sailworks (Retro), Aerotech (Freespeed) and HotsailsMaui (Speedfreak 1-cam). There are still plenty of longboard-oriented 9.5 sails around too - Loftsails have kept developing even with the decline in longboarding.

I have the Hotsails Speedfreak 10.0 which weighs about what a 6.5 race sail would, planes very early and tops out very late. I do also have a Point7 AC-1 9.3 which is so heavy and such a pain to rig that to gets almost no use although the top speed is amazing.

Not everyone wants to foil.

Not everyone has the ability to foil myself included.

The new Patrik Aeon foils are supposed to make it much easier but then 4K or so just for the foils is not cheap.

I did try the Ultrasonic a few times and if its the board with massive vee etc i have to say it's absolutely the most fun large board I've ever tried especially in chop.

6.3 is as big as i go these days but i do have a 6.7 Aerotech slalom sail that weighs only 5.2kgs - 900g lighter than my 6.3m Maui sail but definitely not as fast for top speed.

You could look at the Point7 AC-One Pro or last year's Pro-Am which go up to 9.1 or the NP V8 which is still made in 9.4. Both are really, really fast. The NP is a 2-cam but they build a lot of stability in via the seaming and luff curve. Think Goya offers a 9.2 also.

My remark about foiling wasn't to say that people OUGHT to be foiling. I foil most of the time now myself but my favorite thing to do on the water is still to drive a big board, big fin, big sail upwind. It was just to say that the true, big luff, four-cam race sails only offer advantages over narrower-luffed, two and three-cam setups to guys who are at or near PWA levels. Those guys can plane off their big slalom board in 10-12 with a 7.8 but they never have to, because by then they're already running 7.0 over a tiny foil.

I hadn't realised about the ranges stopping at mid-8s till now so thanks for pointing this out! I love sailing with 9+ sails and my 9.4 overdrive is a very heavily used sail. (Where I mostly sail foiling isn't an option due to lots of coral heads).Ezzy and Gun still have 9 and a half sails in their ranges as well as the ones mentioned before, and there are back-catalogue sails around. For me it's time to start looking for one before they disappear! That said I'd like to try a Moto or SPace 8-and-a-bit set loose to see how much of a difference there really is, but I do feel the difference between an OD 8.6 and 9.4 in planing threshold.

Look to non pwa focused brands like loftsails. For 2024 they had 9.0, the others will come back around eventually. & hopefully they'll build fin focused designs rather than the high aspect fin/foil crossover compromises of the last few years. It was promising with patrik doing the 3 designs but the LA only in small sizes & MA stops at 8.6.

No matter which brand you probably have to pre-order & spend alot. & when you find one hold onto it. When I changed sails last you couldn't give away big sails so I held onto my old 9.7 r7 & love using both it & 9.2 loft. I was considering updating this year but no cause biggest sail was 8.5.

Not everyone wants to foil, or has suitable location or wants to spend a fortune on a product that is still sorting out it's development & completely superseeded every 2 years. (& I do occasionally foil, I just prefer fin, I wont miss foiling when I stop doing it).

Still makes me laugh all the guys for many years no i won't use big fin but use 1m foils, wont ride 85w boards but use 91w foil boards etc. & i'd rather carry a 10m sail any day than carry a foil board & foil to the water.