duzzi said..
By the way: the claim of using a 5.8 sail in 18 to 42 knots is utterly ridiculous.
Sorry, but it's your comment that is ridiculous. This is a less than 3-fold range.
I have no problems planing on a 5.8 in 18 knots (and I am not a lightweight) . At Luderitz and other speed venues, 5.6 is a standard sail size in 40+ knots. At the PWA slalom events in Fuerteventura, that's a
typical size for
racing in 30-40 knot winds.
Or look at air plane wings. Landing speeds around 110 knots are not unusual; typical travel speeds are around 440 knots, that's a factor of 4. Airplane wings are perfectly well behaved at both ends of this 4-fold speed range.
The problem with current windsurf sails is that it needs extreme skills to use one sail in 18-42 knots. The hope for a wing sail would be to have a significantly wider wind range than current sails for
less skilled windsurfers. For very skilled windsurfers, it might mean that a given sail size can be sailed
more comfortably over a wide wind range. To what extend the current wing sails accomplish this is the question.
It is typical that a radically new invention will be met with overwhelming skepticism on the market place. We are too likely to think that what has not been done cannot be done. I recall a scientific paper in my field that made the statement "we cannot do X", and went on to prove it. The paper was peer-reviewed and published in a respected journal. Almost everyone believed them, but they were proven wrong a year or two later. What was "scientifically proven to be impossible" became what everyone did routinely.
Designing and manufacturing a "better sail" is challenging enough, but success at selling it is a
bigger challenge. Perhaps the Omer wing sail is indeed a better sail, but it pretty much failed on the market place, joining hundreds of patented better mousetraps.
The first essential step to overcome the typical skepticism towards a new invention will be to get open-minded, widely trusted windsurfers to try the wing sail, and report about it. Here are a few possible ways to make this happen:
- Send a sail to NelsonFoils in Australia, so he can get it to "trust sources" like sailquik, decrepit, GPSTC team captains, etc. Have them report the experiences here.
- Bring the sail to the OBX wind week next April, and make it available for testing. Use it at the long distance race and place well (or have someone else do so). Try to get the event organizers (Mike Burns, Makani's JR, and Ocean Air) interested. Ideally, have someone less abrasive and with some marketing/sales/PR experience contact them.
- Get the German windsurf magazine "Surf" to test the sail. It regularly reports on new technology and has a few ten-thousand subscribers. While generally very open to new ideas, it's a bit more trustworthy than the UK and US magazines since it does not shy away from pointing out negative aspects.
Three different ideas for three different markets. The US market is smallest, but perhaps easiest to get a foot hold in without a local distributor.
interlude subtopic to pass the time while Stan's trusted mates are getting GPS and comparison data)
