Story about how sails development works.
NP probbaly has strongest team riders and development strategy,maybe a reason why last decade they are so strong on race sails.
What do you think?

sportmondo-sportsportal.blogspot.com/2015/02/neil-pryde-sails-interview-designing.html

"There is probably more work behind top performance sails than most people think. This is especially true for NeilPryde where it is an evolution that goes on all year round, unlike many other brands where it happens over a period of a few weeks. The NeilPryde Design Center is located on Maui and working on improvements all year round. Robert Stroj is collecting feedback from Team Pryde pro riders like Antoine Albeau, Arnon Dagan, Julien Quentel, Enrico Marotti, Matteus Isaac, and of course also from me, and based on that, he makes the first prototypes. From that stage, we make several 'recuts' before we have what we call our fundamental sizes."

That alone reeks of a bit of dick pulling

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choco said..
"There is probably more work behind top performance sails than most people think. This is especially true for NeilPryde where it is an evolution that goes on all year round, unlike many other brands where it happens over a period of a few weeks. The NeilPryde Design Center is located on Maui and working on improvements all year round. Robert Stroj is collecting feedback from Team Pryde pro riders like Antoine Albeau, Arnon Dagan, Julien Quentel, Enrico Marotti, Matteus Isaac, and of course also from me, and based on that, he makes the first prototypes. From that stage, we make several 'recuts' before we have what we call our fundamental sizes."

That alone reeks of a bit of dick pulling

Must be, to better promotion or maybe it is true...

So you think they have so much success only because AA ride for them?

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TurnBackTime said..

choco said..
"There is probably more work behind top performance sails than most people think. This is especially true for NeilPryde where it is an evolution that goes on all year round, unlike many other brands where it happens over a period of a few weeks. The NeilPryde Design Center is located on Maui and working on improvements all year round. Robert Stroj is collecting feedback from Team Pryde pro riders like Antoine Albeau, Arnon Dagan, Julien Quentel, Enrico Marotti, Matteus Isaac, and of course also from me, and based on that, he makes the first prototypes. From that stage, we make several 'recuts' before we have what we call our fundamental sizes."

That alone reeks of a bit of dick pulling

Must be, to better promotion or maybe it is true...

So you think they have so much success only because AA ride for them?

In one word YES, I'm not knocking the sails the designs are great but that quote that other designs spend only weeks developing their race sails is way over the top.
Dunky proved how good he was in the twilight of his career when he won the championships on North sail then Severne, AA is a beast of a sailor.

But dunki won with severne only one year-2011..

What year he won slalom for northsails?

It makes no difference whatsoever - all in the mind.

My Maui 2012 TR8 6.6 is every bit as fast as any of the current race sails. I have sailed various other current models and I see no difference short of lighter weight and sometimes better cam rotation. Speed is no different.

AA on any other sail brand - he'd still be number one.

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TurnBackTime said..
But dunki won with severne only one year-2011..

What year he won slalom for northsails?

Dunky won because he trained hard & lost a bit of weight. The bigger change to his performance was going to isonics which were better suited to racing than the Thommens.

Even A2 suffers from changes, way back with evo 3 I think the story went he didn't want to change likely because he hadn't trained with new ones, pryde team went in & swapped his sails over the night before the event.

You can think these guys can sail anything which they can but the competition is that close they have to be 100% & the guy that wins puts in the most effort pre-season.

As said nothing new with raked battens, I think battens tripping the flow is negligible but angling does seem to soften the feel of sail a bit, you don't have rigid battens crossing the natural flex areas stopping the sail from breathing & cam pressures change. All wins imo but the downside is battens get alot longer.

I've always been a fan of pryde & liked most pryde race sails i've had/tried with only a few exceptions, unfortunately they are too rich for me & my local doesn't sell them. I think a bigger testament to them is whenever a pwa guy hasn't had a sponsorship or has had poor form immediately improves when they get a set of prydes.

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mkseven said..

I've always been a fan of pryde & liked most pryde race sails i've had/tried with only a few exceptions, unfortunately they are too rich for me & my local doesn't sell them. I think a bigger testament to them is whenever a pwa guy hasn't had a sponsorship or has had poor form immediately improves when they get a set of prydes.

You think that sail has bigger importance then board ,in top speed and overall results?
AA change boards "like girl change clothes" but he stick to NP all the time,is it because of performance or contract-money?

I've been on Prydes most my life now, have to say you get used to their feel which is fairly consistent and forgiving. I'm not sure if it's the softer top masts or what. I notice when I rent sails on trips it's hard to find that feel you get used to. Interestingly when I was using Tushingham sails I felt at home and they also use the softer top masts. Still would be cool to try the Gaastra or Severne sails, but being invested in probably $10+ in masts the Prydes are probably for life now!

The other day we dragged out a 6.2m RS-1 and V8 to use which were in the 17 - 18 year old range. The RS-1 was rigged on my FX100 mast and was way too floppy at the tip, so next tip will find the X7 it is meant to be used on. Still jamming with a mate on his 2018 V8 was no real difference in speed, though to be fair the boards, fin and sail sizes differed. I did notice that the stability and ability to eat gusts compared to my RS from 2009 wasn't in the same league. It felt softer and the draft less locked in. The later sail feels like it's made of sheet metal!

The Next day took out the 7.4 V8 and and jammed with a 7.8m RS slalom sail and not anything in it really. Wasn't fully powered up and later realised the downhaul slipped an inch on the newer sail so the V8 was quicker but wasn't a fair comparision with the newer sail not downhauled correctly.

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TurnBackTime said..

mkseven said..

I've always been a fan of pryde & liked most pryde race sails i've had/tried with only a few exceptions, unfortunately they are too rich for me & my local doesn't sell them. I think a bigger testament to them is whenever a pwa guy hasn't had a sponsorship or has had poor form immediately improves when they get a set of prydes.

You think that sail has bigger importance then board ,in top speed and overall results?
AA change boards "like girl change clothes" but he stick to NP all the time,is it because of performance or contract-money?

I think they are both similar importance & effect, have sailed with great sailors who've gone backwards from both board & sail changes (as have I at various times), if you've yardsticked them long enough you spot it straight away.

Even in the top guys it seems to be what suits them for particular purpose, dunky was looking for gains on a2, tried Isonic & immediately improved. Not taking away from thommen as designer at all just at the time isonics were arguably the most capable board on the pwa slalom course. But this is all at face value plus their gear is not what we buy off shop shelf.

Antoine has only been on 5 board brands & 2 sails that I can recall, not bad for 24 years of competition. I'm sure pryde do their part to keep him there, they are quick to drop sailors if they don't meet their expected potential.

I don't think pryde performance can be questioned at moment, but I don't think jump from severne to north to pryde for example give you much over the competition provided the sail suits your style/ability/board/fins.

Personally I havn't changed sails in a few years now, I use severne & my spare sails are lofts, im better with the lofts than the severnes so i focus on improving with the severnes, despite the severnes being easier to tune the lofts just suit my style better & that is a bigger difference in speed than any marketing such as batten angle, both brands are immensely capable & have proven performance- sometimes it's just the muppet holding the boom. The severnes & lofts are both quite different in downforce, though none of my boards at the moment are very picky to that.

Further re batten angle-
Those early angled battens the vx ltd's & F1ow's instead of keeping on cranking downhaul to handle wind because the sails had better dynamic twist they could keep fullness & downforce (nothing compared to todays sails though). I don't think their top end was better mk iv/vx/slalom pro/f1 were bloody quick in right conditions but the angled stuff improved handling & range, it was a fairly substantial step.

That early stuff was very different because battens were pretty much perpendicular to mast prior, the next equivalent leap was shorter masts, somewhere in between they figured don't need cams on every batten, then wide luffs, boom length they still havn't decided, everything since just refinement- i can't see a great improvement from angling the battens further unless it alters twist or depth further to suit the very rear placement of mast foot now (in which case market that?). If it was about flow trip why havnt they gone to smoother laminated sails with internal moulded pockets & looked further at a return to rounded I/H-beam battens etc.

Put the same sail on ice it'll go twice as fast, really... sail drag is the problem??? Bah just take the blue pill & believe the marketing.

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mkseven said...
The severnes & lofts are both quite different in downforce, though none of my boards at the moment are very picky to that.
Put the same sail on ice it'll go twice as fast, really... sail drag is the problem??? Bah just take the blue pill & believe the marketing.

Can you explain physics behind wsurfers say "sail downforce".Lets clear it

Lift is vector force,it has magnitude and direction.
Every sail/airfoil produce lift,sail stands approx vertical so 95% of lift direction is in horizontal plane(prependicular to sail surface).When planning every sail is slighlty lean to windward,so direction of lift moves a little bit up,resulting small component of vertical lift.Sail itself never ever produce downward component which can result downforce.

When talking about downforce,it is how sailor is able to hold nose down"adjusting board trim/pitch".
In my opinion you can hold nose down on two ways:

1)changing c.g.
shifting sailor weight more forward(footstraps or mast base more forward,or less downhaul pull sailor more up and forward so again you move your weight slightly forward)

2)changing position and magnitude of COP
(less downhaul=move COP up= increase pitching lever arm + gives sail more belly/more sail force,both increase pitching moment




Ice reduce drag maybe 10 times compare to water,normally you go faster,above 3wind speed...

Do you care to pay me? But i'm not the guy to ask, I walked away from my science career 15 years ago & sorry I don't get a kick out theorising in my spare time. If you don't believe sails provide down force, no worries, good luck with your windsurfing journey (if you actually windsurf at all?).

Re. Ice... exactly, sail drag is not the problem.

The sail isn't always canted to windward. Downforce isn't necessarily a desireable trait, in an ideal world it would all be transferred into thrust component but in that world we also wouldn't have a plank generating lift up to 2m forward of our centre of mass either.

It isn't a large component but it is still present, i don't have a load cell to test, talk to Roo maybe they tested it. You are thinking far more in to the physics than any current sail designer does, why? They don't have to due to 50 years of sailboard sail evolution.

Now is no different to when I had to calculate this stuff specifically with windsurfing in high school physics, is it or has it been a consideration in my sailing before or after, barely! Angry... nope, why did I say paid? Because just as with high school physics some pretty big generalisations are made by the theorists & no data is produced.

But here is some anecdotal food for thought- North Shox bases. I messed around with them quite a bit. Pretty quickly found I had to have extra height to stop them bottoming out only from landing jumps but from use with race sails. Yes race sails are heavier & i later altered tension to allow for that. So are they faster on dead flat water when they were doing nothing other than dampen the downforce? Go & buy several of them & find out.

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mkseven said..
It isn't a large component but it is still present, i don't have a load cell to test, talk to Roo maybe they tested it. You are thinking far more in to the physics than any current sail designer does, why? They don't have to due to 50 years of sailboard sail evolution.

We are not talking about rocket science this is fundametals ,elementary school.

If you put sail in wind tunnel ,in windsurf position upright/canted windward,sensors will NEVER EVER display downward component of lift,only side force and a little upforce depeding how much is sail canted to windward.

But if you put sail in sailing boat position,lean sail to leeward, then sensors will display downward lift component.

"Downforce" its a matter of symantecs,but wsurf sail itself don not produce downforce .
Windsurf instructors use this termin "downforce" as mast foot pressure,this is internal force which act on mast base,byproduct when sailor weight is hang on boom/sail.





here is write everything,easy to understand:

joewindsurfer.blogspot.com/2008/04/jim-drakes-windsurf-physics.html


(north shox,all these years to hold down COP as low as possible,even board deck at mast base is lowerd on new slalom/speed boards .And now we move COP 15cm up because of shox system,you can only go slower,because of increase sail force lever arm!!!!
Always sail max down as possible..If you know basics you never buy this sh**it for racing,but for wave it can be good- damper effect)

Why delete your post? Your comment re. Shox & racing...

I've read Jim Drakes work, as I said i've had to sit down & calculate it, have you? Short board sails of today have F@#! all in common with jims scribblings & boat sailing.

There is nothing further constructive to see here, go design your wing sail, sail to victory on the race & speed course & show everyone your supreme intellect & understanding of the basics.

I deleted previus post because my link was wrong,so I sum everything in new post in hope to easier understand.

You can not calculate nothing because you dont understand at all what I am talking about "downforce".
You didn't give even one evidence how sail can produce downward lift.

Dont be angry buddy warm up chair and learn something!

Wingsail??wing in windsurfing,it doesn't work.I repeted this hundred times.Roo also confirmed.

Man there are some weird discussions on this forum lately.

In Soviet Russia, downforce sail you >_>

Without getting too technical and fighting about aeronautical science stuff , any thought on what Avanti are doing here, clearly a very 'rounded' sail shape compared to others

Isn't turnbacktime right here?
Isn't your body the downward (and lateral and backwards) force resisting the sails upward (and sideways and forwards) forces.
If you are planing (note, one fXXking "n") along and your harness lines snap, doesn't the sail fly upwards? Is this what you are arguing? Sorry, oops, I mean discussing.

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JonesySail said..
Without getting too technical and fighting about aeronautical science stuff , any thought on what Avanti are doing here, clearly a very 'rounded' sail shape compared to others

Just cleaning things up a bit I think. I used to shorten the top batten on my older-on their way out sails. Usually it is quite heavy and stiff and in chop the inertia causes it to drag the top panel from side to side acting a bit like an airbrake. You don't loose much area at all but ~25% of weight so what is there sets better. Making it more of an elipse might help sales but probably has minimal aero effect.
The wind below boom is quite disturbed and so taking area from there and adding above boom is beneficial with the added benefit of shorter boom and being cleaner profile for gybes
It actually reminds me a bit of a Demon Sail with the clew between battens. They have used a similar plan shape for years and years.

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ned321 said..
How about this for outline
translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fforum.windsurfing.nl%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D16%26t%3D13899950&edit-text=

In your link is also simmer cyber race sail,pointed head,but problem is when leech goes directly to mast end,it is hard to open head leech.
users.telenet.be/fanaticfanart/Windsurfing/StrangeConcepts/Cyberrace.htm



Bigger sizes of Evo9's have top batten/head-top above top of mast for better aerodynamic efficency.I think Evo10 even more goes up above mast end so head looks even more pointed..Angle is approx 130





Smaller sizes of evo9s have "square" head,angle is smaller,batten/head-top not above mast end.
on picture is 5.6




Today sails have bigger leech roach,this area is easy to open

Love Rene's recycling of old boards.

Yep from memory the Simmer cyber sail was powerful but with the tip of the mast tensioning the leech it quickly overpowered in gusts. I think Anders only used it a couple of times.

Is the foil discipline different to slalom in regards to registered sails seem to be alot of protos out there

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choco said..
Is the foil discipline different to slalom in regards to registered sails seem to be alot of protos out there

registered equipment rules will apply in 2019
men : one board/three sails (registered production)
women : whatever they want as long as production

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Foiling/PWA-Release-guidelines-for-2019-Foiling?page=1