156

[<Carolyn>]

Hi,
Have a friend who has a 158. At present he sails with the straps both in the furthest back position and the mast foot shows 1cm towards the back of the rail.

He weighs 80kilo and has a 11m Tush Spitfire.
He wants to know if this is good mast foot postition. Also has heard lots of people saying should have the straps towards the front.

What do you all think are the best positions for optimum performance.

Thanks a lot
Carolyn

[sukhdev]

straps back - unwets the board, allows for more sensitive fin feel at the expense of control. moving the straps forward esp the rear strap may allow for a bit more leverage against the fin. sailor preference, skill,strength comes into play here so he should experiment by changing just one strap on one side at a time.

re mast track, 1 cm from back of track sounds a bit far back, i tend to prefer mast track positions that are well forward but looking at most of the 158s sailed here by a variety of sailors (and sizes) most run the track forward, anywhere from 1/3 of the way back from max forward to very close to all the way forward. Again, make changes in small increments and see the effect. its generic advice because without knowing skill level, size etc its best tbe sailor learns to find his own sweet spot.

[<Carolyn>]

Hi,
Really useful reply as usual, thanks a lot for your help.
Carolyn

[<chee_mah_hu@pepper.co]

Mr. Sudev does the so called sweet spots differs from board to board or it is just purely own personal preferences? Do sailors have common / exact sweet spots given that all using on the same type of boards? I’m not too sure here or maybe a little more confused. I started windsurfing at the beginning of last year but every time when I asked any experienced windsurfer for advice, it seems that each and everyone gave me a different school of thoughts. Should I change club so that I could be together with good sailors like you to improve on my technique. BTW, I’m only able to jibe on one tack (stall)and trying to get it good on the other tack. Any good advice to get it going or is it a common thing that we are only good at doing certain action on one tack? Is a BIG problem for me, please help.

[sukhdev]

Re sweet spot: measure the setups of top sailors (say at a race) and you will find alot of similarity. Laws of physics don't change too much. I did this at a world cup event in kuantan many years ago and found most of the top guys had almost exactly the same settings. This applies to mast foot position, boom height, harness line position, harness line length etc.

Re doing it on one side, its very common - even for accomplished sailors eg some can only jump on one tack. no short cut beyond trying it time after time and consciously breaking down the moves you do.