OK keef, took up your idea of a stainless leading edge for our abrasive weed spots.
Here's a pic of it this morning.




17cm deep, 350cm long.
After my previous stainless leading edges had problems with the glass fracturing off at the interface, I've ground a ledge into the stainless so the cloth is about .5mm thick at the junction, instead of being a fade out into nothing. Hopefully that will wear better.

Got 3 layers of carbon and a sacrificial layer of glass on this side today. Next is to remove some timber from the leading edge under the stainless and from the trailing edge so I can replace with a bead of micro fibres.
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I'm also trying a different foil, this is an even curve over the first 70%, giving a sharper leading edge. According to Yoyo this should work OK with 55deg of rake, we shall see.

Hopefully this will make it worth while going into that dead flat water with very heavy weed growing right up to the surface. The 20cm 45deg went in there, but I could feel the weed dragging on the fin.

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decrepit said..
I'm also trying a different foil, this is an even curve over the first 70%, giving a sharper leading edge. According to Yoyo this should work OK with 55deg of rake, we shall see.

No promises Mike !

Select to expand quote

decrepit said..

OK keef, took up your idea of a stainless leading edge for our abrasive weed spots.
Here's a pic of it this morning.



Hopefully this will make it worth while going into that dead flat water with very heavy weed growing right up to the surface. The 20cm 45deg went in there, but I could feel the weed dragging on the fin.

way to go mike with the stainless wrapped around , what I find with the stainless in the center, the glass wears either side of the tip(in sand) and you have to build it back up , its not a problem but wrapping it it would be better

decrepit this fin is 17cm 50deg on a ca55 and 5.8n/p mk11 , I have used it on a 6.2 n/p rs but it struggles a bit to windward, what I find is the 17cm is for sailing over the weed and the 50deg rake is sailing to windward, I feel the 55 deg is over doing it
you will see on the vid is that the fin is working fine to windward if anything struggling and still powered up off the wind in chop, the problem with the 55 rake is off the wind in chop
KA360 is using a similar fin as your making( wide tip) in his ca50 speed board 18cmx47r, the fin works like a slalom fin in his board and he can still go over heavy weed

Good one keef, great video.
But I still think the weed I'm thinking of in Albany is much thicker than any on your vid.




You can see the weed bank here through the trees, This is a fairly high tide and you can sail this side of the weed and still be in flat water. But as the tide goes out, there is much less water without weed right on the surface.
We'll see what happens.

decrepit I just realized the fin in the vid above is now yours merry xmas

Thanks Keef, I look forward to trying it out.

Finally finished mine today and took it for a test run.


The auto shop has changed paint manufacturers so I'm trying our this pretty spray putty. Does the job better than the old stuff I think, seems to cover better.


Sorry guys plagiarised myself here, copy and pasted from my GTC post.

The testing started off badly, wind was light, so I tried it in the 65cm board with the 7.0, no control at all! Going around in circles, couldn't pull any power on, total disaster! So changed to the good old 31 cm woody weedy, instant control back, managed to trip speed genie a couple of times with mid to low 27s. But still didn't feel comfortable, felt as if I was a bit overpowered, decided to try new fin in the 53 with the 5.8. That felt heaps better, but very underpowered, couldn't trip speed genie. So getting no where decided to pack up, noticed the 7.0 had hardly any downhaul, (I'd pulled as much on as I could and hoped it was enough) With the sail wet I was able to get another couple of cms and that looked a lot better, so plugged it into the 53 with new fin. Took off in the shallows and immediately felt good, got a gust so followed it down through the inside of the rock garden.



Absolutely magic, once this fin is in shallow weedy water it comes alive. The water was almost dead flat for 2km, went straight through weedburgs without feeling them. Hitting the boat channel chop was a rude awakening though, it's amazing how much this fin loves flat shallow weedy water but hates deep choppy water! Goes upwind well, had a great run back through the shallows, but got too cocky, went for one last weedburg, and catapulted in front of the derigging crew. Came up with the blue parts of the new boom head floating off downwind, pleased with my patch of the tail piece though, that stayed together!