Hi fellow wind warriors. I bought a brand new 5.3m northsails hero white/blackberry in colour and i can't seen to be able to tune it right. I tried a new 400 neil pride matrix 65 mast and it wasn't right. Now i'm trying a North sails silver series 400 19cc 55% carbon mast and it's not much better. The leach very quickly goes from not enough, to flapping around and too loose at the top. And it looks no good around the mid section of the mast. This sail isn't anywhere near as good as my older 5.4 alpha and it's rather upsetting. Has anybody got a similar sail that works, and if so, what mast do you recomend?

Newer sails rig with sloppy looking leaches by design, I'm not sure what you are used to, but that might be the root of your concern.
They have wider range because the top twists off releasing the overload, but when not under a load, the leach is loose looking which is normal now.
Older sails rig with smooth leaches, but they couldn't spill off the excess wind load so their range wasn't as good.
Your masts are fine, as is probably your sail.

I had similar problems with my 2012 Northsails Ice. I just couldn't get it to rig right, hated it. Tried a couple of different masts, granted not the recommended ones, but then going back 20 years of windsurfing I've used all kinds of random masts with sails and never had issues like I did with the Ice. I ended up flogging it and got a Blade, first sail after the Ice was bliss. Maybe take a hit & get rid of it, lesson learned....?

Thanks Zed. Sounds about right. Big waste of money though, very upsetting.

Borrow the right mast and try it with that first, the masts you mention are definitely at the lower end of the quality spectrum. Also use an RDM gives a wider acceptable rigging range with the battens.

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canton1 said..
Thanks Zed. Sounds about right. Big waste of money though, very upsetting.

Don't give up yet. We own 3 North Ice from different years, and they are absolutely fantastic sails when rigged on the right mast. A lot of "middle of the road" RDM masts work very well with them, including NoLimitz and Chinook. We have several friends who love their North Ice and Idols, too, so don't go by Zed's answer. The NP mast is definitely the wrong mast. Note that the Hero is "Exclusively designed for RDM masts", it won't work on standard diameter masts.

As Mastbender has pointed out, newer sails are designed with quite floppy leeches by design. At least two tests of the Hero mentions that is has a lot of loose leech at the top. 4 batten sails can be a bit trickier to rig than more traditional sails, and look very different (i.e. pretty bad) on land. I don't know anyone who has the Hero, but the North Idol (also a 4-batten sail) can be rigged so that the battens stick out past the mast by an inch, or so that they barely touch the mast, depending on whether you are at the top or bottom end of the range.

Part of the problem might be that the Hero is very different from your old Alpha. The old Alpha is a power sail that works well for free riding, is not very sensitive to exact rigging, and has a lot of untuned range even if not rigged perfectly. The Hero is a "Worlcup wave sail" and more oriented towards control in powered conditions.

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boardsurfr said..

canton1 said..
Thanks Zed. Sounds about right. Big waste of money though, very upsetting.

Don't give up yet. We own 3 North Ice from different years, and they are absolutely fantastic sails when rigged on the right mast. A lot of "middle of the road" RDM masts work very well with them, including NoLimitz and Chinook. We have several friends who love their North Ice and Idols, too, so don't go by Zed's answer. The NP mast is definitely the wrong mast. Note that the Hero is "Exclusively designed for RDM masts", it won't work on standard diameter masts.

As Mastbender has pointed out, newer sails are designed with quite floppy leeches by design. At least two tests of the Hero mentions that is has a lot of loose leech at the top. 4 batten sails can be a bit trickier to rig than more traditional sails, and look very different (i.e. pretty bad) on land. I don't know anyone who has the Hero, but the North Idol (also a 4-batten sail) can be rigged so that the battens stick out past the mast by an inch, or so that they barely touch the mast, depending on whether you are at the top or bottom end of the range.

Part of the problem might be that the Hero is very different from your old Alpha. The old Alpha is a power sail that works well for free riding, is not very sensitive to exact rigging, and has a lot of untuned range even if not rigged perfectly. The Hero is a "Worlcup wave sail" and more oriented towards control in powered conditions.

I don't think he's using SDMs and he's already tried a North sails silver series mast which a hero is compatible with. And I'm guessing he can feel there's something wrong with the sail, rather than it being a new design feature that he's not used to. I'm sure there are guys out there who are happy with their Norths sail, but I wasn't and the best thing I did was sell it.

Hi , I've got a North Sails Idol 5.3 which at first, I didn't like ( mind you, I am a crap sailor) until I was advised to, and shown how to, adjust the batten tensions....thanks to PaulWA. Wow, what a difference it made...way, way better than before. It was rigged on a North Platinum 430 RDM. On a Challenger 430 RDM it didn't feel nearly as good tho'......I had to reset the battens differently.
All the mast selector charts show that NP masts are not ideally matched to North sails but, as boardsurfr points out, the North Silver mast being used didn't help either.
Perhaps the batten tension could have been an issue? Or maybe that particular sail was just cut on a Friday afternoon, getting close to beer o'clock? When is that, in China?

Use the visual trimming points at the top of the sail when down hauling. I too had troubles with my 5.3 hero using a severne extension. Bought a North xt extension which enable more downhaul or a tighter downhaul and it's been great ever since.

I also had troubles with 2012's after using 2010's for 2yrs. I had a North 100% platinum RDM and found I had to downhaul far more than previously and I still didn't get it to feel as good as 2010 especially in the air. I contacted north if masts spec had changed but apparently not. I also went through most of the battens on my 5.3 & 4.7 in one session. Found out later that there is upgrade battens available apparently from the importer. I ended up selling and switch to RRD four which are so user friendly they improved my sailing so much, less fussy to rig and 3/4 of the price of North sails. I reckon 2012 wasn't as good year for ICE or the Hero as tried them too. Shame as been using North ICe's since 2007.

From my own personal testing.

2015 North hero 4.7 rigs perfect on North gold rdm
2013 idol 4.7 and 5.0 also rig perfect on 400cm gold
2014 hero 4.2 perfect on 370 gold rdm

14 volts and 14 idols also rig perfect on some cheap billows 10-13 bend curve masts.

above Norths also rig well on the ezzy masts.

Neil pryde masts way too flex top

hope this helps,