So far this year my top speeds have all been on my ultrasonic and 9.4overdrive. You would think I'd be faster on my falcon slalom or fox with the 8.6 to 7.8overdrive, the time on the smaller kit certainly felt faster. Am I just good at sailing big kit or really bad with the small stuff.

Yeah, it's cos of the lack of wind I'm fat and I'm fastest overpowered on 6.5m
Still ,very much enjoy cruising at 22ish kts in 14kts on big gear. There are worse things you could be doing, like digging stump holes.

True there has been a lot of 10 to 15knot days here this year but I've also had a couple of sails very well powered up on the small kit.

Big gear in light winds is faster as you are able to get powered up more.

Try sailing it in 20 to 25 knots and you will be slow for two reasons

Inability to handle the power of the sail - that is turn the power into forward motion and the drag of a bigger sail, fin and board is more.

I'm not talking about using the smaller kit in the same wind as the big kit, I've had some very well powered up days on the small kit but still can't get it to go as fast as the big kit

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Imax1 said..
Yeah, it's cos of the lack of wind I'm fat and I'm fastest overpowered on 6.5m
Still ,very much enjoy cruising at 22ish kts in 14kts on big gear. There are worse things you could be doing, like digging stump holes.

That's my favourite type of sailing, 12 to 15knots big kit and just blasting around. Fast enough to be fun but also relaxing

Up to low 40 knots, you can reach the same speeds with large or small sails by matching sail size to wind - what matters most is water state, not sail size. Unless you have water that's flattened by heavy weed (Lake George, Albany), very shallow (Point Grey), or protected by sand bars (Sandy Point) or sea walls (West Kirby), flatter water is faster, so big gear in light wind will often be faster than smaller gear in more wind. On Lake George, doing 35 knots in conditions where a 7.0 is barely big enough to get planing is no big deal; at our choppy home spot in Kalmus, Cape Cod, even very fast sailors (50-knotters and PWA slalom sailors) don't reach 35 knots in twice as much wind, unless they sail over to the flats behind a sand bar.

Yeah , I think we are more efficient at lower speeds on big gear. I can go 30 % faster than the wind in 15 kts. I seem to go slower per kt ratio the faster I go. My fastest times seem to match kt for kt. When the super fast guys do the super fast stuff , it is also kinda kt for kt. So I'm presuming the faster you go the less efficient you are.???

Curious about this as I'm not fast. A lot of my speed issues seem to come with selecting the right angle to the wind.

In light winds on a 9.0 and racefoil I can feel how touchy the downwind angle is as the apparent wind changes a lot with small changes. It's much more difficult to feel when powered up on smaller gear.

In light winds and 9.5 and fin I can squeak out 21/22 kts or so but I've got a touch faster on 8.0, 6.3, and 5.6 on fin. But not much faster. A lot of the time I am really dealing with a lot of chop and my boards for that size are more wave than speed oriented.

What is your top speed on the 9.4 sail?

My max speed has been with a 6.7 sail and 5kg of extra lead in the west, doing around 35 knots in about 24-28 knots of wind. As said earlier, most of our regular sailing spots simply get too rough waters at stronger winds, and one cannot take advantage of a faster kit in stronger winds. Smooth is fast and the fastest runs on flat water are nowhere near as scary as slower runs in rough open waters.

It gets rough around here. My best speeds are almost the same between a free race and FSW, within 2kts using the same fairly slippery no cam sail.
I think being on a cammed 7m in lighter conditions would be significantly faster. I'm hoping to crack 30 kts this year.

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Grantmac said..
It gets rough around here. My best speeds are almost the same between a free race and FSW, within 2kts using the same fairly slippery no cam sail.
I think being on a cammed 7m in lighter conditions would be significantly faster. I'm hoping to crack 30 kts this year.

Very rough around here, but my best speeds were on slalom gear. Back in the 2010-20, with 6.6 and 6.0 Hot sails Maui GPS and Carbon Art 58 and 52 wide, I was in the 30-32 knots 2", 28-31 10". Bigger than 6.6 I never done more than 28 knots. Mostly, I think, because with the local gusty conditions the sails get too big for my 156 pounds to control. With a FSW I drop into the 23-25 range, maybe an occasional 2" 26 knots.

Nowadays on slalom gear (AV modena + Point-7) I do not seem able to cross 28 2" ... I think old age.

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Ben1973 said..
True there has been a lot of 10 to 15knot days here this year but I've also had a couple of sails very well powered up on the small kit.

Probably flatter when you're sailing the big kit ?
The choppier and messier it gets, the harder to get good speeds .

Yep, for me the most efficient is light wind too.
I am 65kg. In 15kts i'm doing 22-24kts on 165ltr 92cm SLW board with 8.5 or 7.5 Ezzy. Fun sailing, feeling super powered. Flying the board on the fin and stacks are fun as it's not very fast.

If the wind gets stronger, i'm usually slower on the same kit as it gets less efficient, and the water gets rougher.
My home spot Jimmy's Beach is flatwater.
Holes in the wind as it comes over dunes so the big stuff goes well through the lull's, not spinning out.
If i go on my *small kit here, 120ltr patrik free race with 6.5, i'll be lucky to go much faster, spinout lots, and often not as fast as big kit.

When i went to Lake George and windy Burrum, my *small kit was almost always too much and i could hardly sail it, so, i wasn't fast there either.

To me it doesn't matter at this early stage in my progress, a good percentage faster than the wind is efficient sailing, no matter what speed that is. 30kts some day soon would be nice though