I see Tushy have gone back several decades on their 2009 speed sails with the long foot. Time will tell if it offers any speed advantage. I think they may have won the prize for the ugliest sail but in speed it is only the numbers that count.

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that'll sort out the duckgybing speed sailors!

You think that's ugly:





That's a Neil Pryde 1988 RAF Speed. I think the outline of the Tushingham actually looks a lot like Fred Haywood's prototype camber induced speed sails of that time, but I'm sure the resemblance ends there and the people at Tushingham have a much better sail on offer here. The sailor's stance is actually more interesting I think. Look how upright the sail has forced him to stand.

Thanks to Stable Road for the image.

close the gap for the end plate efffect

If it works, it don't matter how ugly I look

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...so the saying goes. I actually think the Pryde is a much better looking sail. Performance? I wonder how it would go on a CA with Slowie at SP with one of his new fins. That is the only way to evaluate the sail performance. You cannot ignore the gains in board/rocker, fins and technique when you look at the speeds achieved decades ago with those achieved now.

i wonder how easy they are to trim with the foot constantly rubbing and flicking from 1 side of the leeward foot strap to the other?
i know when i am using weedys i have this issue from time to time with the mast base being further aft in the track than usual the foot is closer to the straps.

As a former owner of an '88 RAF Speed, I remember you could rig the sail so that the foot was practically on the board because it had a very deep tack strap of sorts. This was good and bad as you can imagine. It was really a very good speed sail for it's day - kilos lighter than the Gaastra Speedfoil Pro (the only real competition) and far more user friendly. You could be rigged in the time it took to put the mast up a Speedfoil. The power was very low and it even had some leech twist. The downsides were pretty in-your-face. Gybing was tough because of that foot. It did touch the water and front foot straps, and it had no bottom end power.

But as to how it would perform on today's board/fin combo is not even relevant. If Slowie sailed it with modern boards, masts, booms and fins, I've got no doubt he would go faster than Mal Wright ever did on his purple RAF's. I wasn't thinking of performance just about the funny side of sail aesthetics.

I agree with elmo too, if it's quick, not so interested in how it looks.