So we got the old original Wally windsurfer out for its annual jaunt today and found that the sail has finally succumbed to the ravages of time, well it is about 25 years old, anyway I am looking for an original windsurfer sail if anyone has one in the shed, even a 3/4 sail would be good...

There must be some out there somewhere, of if anyone can recommend a sailmaker in Melbourne who could make one? Unfortunately these boards just don't work too well with any of my current modern sails.

Where's Pierre? he sails one and I am sure he said somebody was doing good re-pro stuff for them now?

Hey smith, yeah the old boards are OK in light stuff...
Anyways, Severne makes a Dacron for SUPs, sold via Starboard.
Weighs absolute nothing, and requires little down-back haul. No pulleys no nothing.

Starboard gave me one to try, took me a while to figure out how to rig it, but in the end was able to sail it up to 18 knots no prob. I know someone who uses it in waves in England and it sails fine.

I don't see why you can't use a modern rig on an old board. Feel is different, but otherwise sails well.

Another possibility is to buy an old Mistral or Wayler. If the board takes water you'll get it for next to nothing, and will thusly have a working Dacron rig.

'luck.

Or you could just buy a new wally sail from Windgenuity. $475 (off the top of my head) including freight.
That way you can restore the wally to its full glory.

Thanks guys.
The old windsurfer is is only ever dragged out a couple of times every summer when we have less than 10 knots, usually to have a laugh with the kids or friends, otherwise it's out on the slalom or wave gear or the kite. so we don't want to spend any real cash on it

Modern sails dont work well because the boom length is about half that of the original sail and the centre of effort is much further forward and wrong in relation to the centre board.

Hey Smithy,

I picked up a Wally from the tip for $5. I screwed a Euro pin into the slot box mast foot. I usually sail it with a 5.3m wave sail (2010). Works fine. I have an original sail and mast but need my Formula boom to rig it so don't bother.

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paddymac said...
Hey Smithy,

I picked up a Wally from the tip for $5. I screwed a Euro pin into the slot box mast foot. I usually sail it with a 5.3m wave sail (2010). Works fine. I have an original sail and mast but need my Formula boom to rig it so don't bother.

Im with you on this one. I used to run my old Wayler with a 4m2 wave sail in strong winds and loved it, I found it easier as its a lot less weight to deal with. and easier if you have kids as well.

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Smithy said...
Modern sails dont work well because the boom length is about half that of the original sail

Huh, me meant with a shorter boom, of course....

Next time I'm in Melbourne, which is not soon, I'll bring the 6.5m Severne.
Quite an amazing thing. It weight nothing with the bag. When you take the sail out, you realise all of the weight... was the bag !

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pierrec45 said...

Smithy said...
Modern sails dont work well because the boom length is about half that of the original sail

Huh, me meant with a shorter boom, of course....

Next time I'm in Melbourne, which is not soon, I'll bring the 6.5m Severne.
Quite an amazing thing. It weight nothing with the bag. When you take the sail out, you realise all of the weight... was the bag !

Lol, yep I realise that, been windsurfing for about 30 years I think I figured that out in the first few months... No the point I was making was the difference in the centre of effort...

wow, this has got to be a Photoshop job...
Why would they bother ?

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A Bomber said...
Or you could just buy a new wally sail from Windgenuity. $475 (off the top of my head) including freight.
That way you can restore the wally to its full glory.

Sorry guys, $499 rrp for shiny new Wally sails from Windgenuity. They are in stock now.
while it might seem like a bit to spend, presumably that last sail was the original, i.e about 20 years old, that works out at less than a cheap case per year, so any more than two good sessions per year on the water rather than the beers and your in front!

Just had a session on the old Wally board with my North Datona 6.6m I don't think th old girl has ever sailed so well... The wind had died off so I thought what the heck and dragged out the Wally.

The cambered sail was really good but I don't think it would be the best for teaching..

Smithy,
I've got an old Tyronsea RAF sail that work ok with the wally... It's yours if you want it..

Wow, I can't believe any of you seriously want to sail those horrible old Wallys or their dreadful triangle sails.

So big and heavy and laterally unstable and knee and shin bruising and those ridiculously long booms...

The day we got rid of our last Wally and One Design boards, not to mention the big Tyronsea and Falcon boards and replaced them all with JP NewSchool 160 and 180 Funster boards was a glorious day indeed for our volunteer windsurfing camp.

Those horrible aircraft carriers were responsible for more people being turned off the sport than anything else as I've opined in the past. I remember cracking the front windshield of my family's Tarago trying to fit one inside the people mover.

The number of friends and family who are now inspired to take up the sport by learning on our modern lightweight wide, fast, soft-deck boards is so much more encouraging.

The best use I've found for all the old huge triangle sails is cutting a few down to make tiny little kiddie rigs for my 4 year old.

Anyway, m2c

mrrt can't agree with you mate. Took an old Wally down south and had a great sail of Dunsborough in cross-off conditions two weekends ago. Great fun just cruising, trying a few tricks and having some old school fun using a modern 5.3m wave sail.

Last weekend I got Sat and Sun sails on an Elvstrom that SomePunk donate to me and my tin-lid. No one was out but me and I had fun both times, thanks Steve!

I picked up an original sail with the Wally and have tried it with the old fibreglass mast. Had to use a formula boom but geez it was light and grunty.

Looking back they managed to get a lot of things right. Maybe we need to occasionally ask ourselves what made them so bloody popular and why, with all our technical advancement, is windsurfing now a niche sport? I'm not saying we should go back to the eighties, just try and learn what made it such a magic period.

yep....

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mrrt said...
Wow, I can't believe any of you seriously want to sail those horrible old Wallys or their dreadful triangle sails.

I think you have missed the point, I am not looking to buy a new board, I live by the beach and one of our many boards includes a complete original windsurfer minus a usable sail. These boards are still fun to sail in sub 10 knot winds, they work better with a sail that resembles the original shape ( although it did work well with my north Daytona).

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mrrt said...
Wow, I can't believe any of you seriously want to sail those horrible old Wallys or their dreadful triangle sails.

So big and heavy and laterally unstable and knee and shin bruising and those ridiculously long booms...

The day we got rid of our last Wally and One Design boards, not to mention the big Tyronsea and Falcon boards and replaced them all with JP NewSchool 160 and 180 Funster boards was a glorious day indeed for our volunteer windsurfing camp.

Those horrible aircraft carriers were responsible for more people being turned off the sport than anything else as I've opined in the past. I remember cracking the front windshield of my family's Tarago trying to fit one inside the people mover.

The number of friends and family who are now inspired to take up the sport by learning on our modern lightweight wide, fast, soft-deck boards is so much more encouraging.

The best use I've found for all the old huge triangle sails is cutting a few down to make tiny little kiddie rigs for my 4 year old.

Anyway, m2c

I can't believe that you can't see that a bunch of pretty knowledgeable sailors (including national and world wavesailing champs and Olympians) would be sailing the old boards if they didn't work well.

The Wally 6m sail weighs just under 2k - compare that to a "light" modern sail and you see that any claim that they are heavy is simply not justified. Yes, the CoE does wander around but that's what the muscles in your back hand are for! Yes, in WA conditions such sails can become difficult, but over here in the east we regularly sail in under 8-12 knots and in those conditions, many of us find longboards to be faster, more sensitive, and more fun.

Your opinion that they turned people off the sport is not logical, since the sport was about 12 times as big when people sailed stuff like Wallies as it is today. Yes, other sports have sagged in popularity but nothing like as much as windsurfing so it's obvious that we are doing something wrong. Guys like Svein Rasmussen have accepted that now.

The plain and simple facts are that most people in most areas normally face light winds. Unless the wind is steady and 8-12 knots or more, a modern short and wide board is much slower than an old longboard*. Why spend more on a new board just to go much slower and drag around a heavier rig designed for heavier winds?

A couple of years back, for example, a Wally and Raceboard turned up at the North Sails race in Victoria in about 8 knots of wind. In a 10 lap race over a reaching course, the Wally won, about 2 laps ahead of the first wide board, which was carrying a much bigger, heavier and more expensive rig.

Either all the Victorian shortboard sailers are bad sailors - which they are definitely NOT - or the longboard was simply faster as well as having a lighter, simpler rig and a tougher and cheaper hull. That's just one example of what happens in a typical summer's day outside WA.

Please stop being so arrogant about this. We accept that you choose the board that works for your conditions, so please accept that we know what works for us in the conditions in which we sail these boards. Stop insulting people like Jessica Crisp (Aloha Classic winner and women's world cup wavesailing champ) and other national wavesailing champs (Warren Holder, Rohan Cudmore) by saying that they don't know what to sail for fun.

PS - sorry, but I really cannot believe that anyone can blame the board for the fact that a Tarago was damaged when a Wally was shoved into it. What next, blame a Funster for the fact that you can't use it as a ramp when loading barrows of bricks?


* top end FW or slalom gear will bring the wind limit down, but they still have significant limitations as well as great plus points.

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paddymac said...
mrrt can't agree with you mate. Took an old Wally down south and had a great sail of Dunsborough in cross-off conditions two weekends ago. Great fun just cruising, trying a few tricks and having some old school fun using a modern 5.3m wave sail.

Last weekend I got Sat and Sun sails on an Elvstrom that SomePunk donate to me and my tin-lid. No one was out but me and I had fun both times, thanks Steve!

I picked up an original sail with the Wally and have tried it with the old fibreglass mast. Had to use a formula boom but geez it was light and grunty.

Looking back they managed to get a lot of things right. Maybe we need to occasionally ask ourselves what made them so bloody popular and why, with all our technical advancement, is windsurfing now a niche sport? I'm not saying we should go back to the eighties, just try and learn what made it such a magic period.

Well said.

Expecting everyone to just sail shortboards is a bit like expecting everyone to ride downhill MTB bikes and dissing them for riding road bikes or hybrids. They are fantastic lots of the time, but just don't work for everyone at every place.

A bunch of us had a great race yesterday in winds that varied from about 1 knot to about 6 knots. It was interesting and challenging, and one hell of a lot more fun than sitting on shore or schlogging a shortboard. Sure, some people say that if the wind is light then you should just go bike riding or sail boats, but most of us had those options (the pack included people who have done both to national and world title level) but we sailed longboards in light winds because we like it!

Windsurfing is a fantastic sport but some people are attacking many of its wonderful facets rather than enjoying them - or at least letting others enjoy them.

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Chris 249 said...
Expecting everyone to just sail shortboards .

Who said anything about short boards?

I'm talking about modern learner and light-wind boards like the JP Funster 160 and 180 etc.

Hey, people can have fun putting a sail on a door and sailing around, but my point is that given the choice between the old Wally and windsurfer one boards that I recently put out for rubbish collection and these modern wide light boards that shock, horror can actually get up and planing in much lighter conditions and are so much easier to learn on, I'll go for the modern ones any day.

I've had too many people give up on those old aircraft carriers in disgust to want to inflict them on anyone else. Sure old salts who know their idiosynchrosies and can put up with the weight and length will have fun on anything, I just feel sorry for anyone who tries to learn on one.

:-)

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mrrt said...

Chris 249 said...
Expecting everyone to just sail shortboards .

just feel sorry for anyone who tries to learn on one.

:-)

I learnt on an old Wayler in September of last year. I made a choice and now I love the sport, I have a great group of friends that sail old boards from OD's to old BIC boards like mine.

I graduated to a BIC Metal Rock and love it. But still miss the old Wally as a light wind board. I know of about 10-15 people now since I have started that have learnt to love the sport using old boards. Yeah they may have upgraded now, but it didn't put them off. the fact that they are still in the sport is proof that the old boards are still just as good as new ones to learn on.

look out one the water in less than 10knts and see who is out...... Take an old board out in the same conditions and have a ball all day. Try it some day.

I agree MRRT the new style learner boards are a lot better for teaching what windsurfing, for most, has become. Going out and back over and over again in stable winds. I don't think they will teach the learner to actually “sail” like the old boards will. Back in the day everybody could sail a board around a triangle course in almost any wind. Thousands where doing it so I don't think it was the old learner boards that are responsible for killing windsurfing. I think it probably has more to do with the need for more wind to keep the out and back thing interesting for most people.

I don't care what people have fun on, for me its one designs and raceboards up to about 12, then kites do the out and back thing better for me. You have to look harder to explain windsurfings death then just blame the poor old luggers.
nev

New gear is not cheap

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deejay8204 said...

mrrt said...
just feel sorry for anyone who tries to learn on one.
:-)

I learnt on an old Wayler in September of last year. I made a choice and now I love the sport, I have a great group of friends that sail old boards from OD's to old BIC boards like mine.

Well done. That's great to hear and it's certainly true that it is possible to learn on such gear - heck, I did almost 30 years ago.

In my case though I'm basing my opinion on almost 2 decades running a windsurfing summer camp for high school kids and seeing them all fall away year after year until finally in the last 5 years or so since we upgraded to modern learner boards, we're having these kids learn far faster and get over the hump that then leads to enormous enthusiasm and an ongoing love of the sport.

The number of ex-campers who are now coming back as accomplished leaders with a truck-load of boards and rigs in the space of a year is frankly astonishing.

Yes, new gear is not cheap, but its amazing what decent gear these campers are picking up cheap that is only a few years old but still vastly superior to those 30 year old Wallys.

Did you know that all Australian Windsurf Olympians learnt on those old Wallys !!!!!

How cheap are the old wallys you pick them up from the tip !!!

The number of ex-campers who are now coming back as accomplished leaders with a truck-load of boards and rigs in the space of a year is frankly astonishing.
the minning boom IN WA must be good

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windsufering said...
Did you know that all Australian Windsurf Olympians learnt on those old Wallys !!!!!

So what! They probably learnt to drive in an EH Holden and they ALL come from a boat sailing background. The wally is the board of choice when launching from a yacht club but thats not what 99.9% windsurfers do.

How did this thread turn into a Wally bashing thread. Yes i am a idoit discussing this with cashed up bogans !

Apparently the old long boards are still good for something

There's a few wallies on Gumtree. They got the sail pretty much spot on.






Think I'd just cruise round in da choppa