Technology for more relevant testing

[manuel]

Greetings windriders,

Today we are surrounded by technology gimmicks but somehow windsurfing gear test or even manufacturers don't seem to include more concrete numbers. I would love to be able to quantify early planing or top speed.

If the actual speed itself wouldn't matter as a number, the speed between two setups would be of great value to me. Acceleration from one speed to another would show how quickly a board or a sail get us planing, etc.

So when?

[sl55]

When the wind speed and water state become constant, which means never..

[isobars]

I used to get paid to test WSing gear, manage the magazine's test program, and write the published equipment reviews based on anywhere from 6 to 20 testers. We started out trying to test to numbers, but a) they turned out to be meaningless because of all the variables (such as windspeed, as si55 pointed out) and b) readers and manufacturers who actually believed those numbers got FUROUS when somebody's 9.5-rated board planed sooner than somebody else's 9.4-rated board ... at some moment, on some piece of chop, with pumping method D, in some 2-kt gust. And it didn't matter whether the testing was based on stopwatches and radar guns or simply head-to-head testing; it's all just too subjective and too dependent on real-time nuances to warrant the level of testing you'd like to see.

This isn't rocket science. I know that for a fact, because I used to BE a rocket scientist for Boeing. The two worlds are worlds apart.

And even if it WERE, a) the amount of testing required to obtain objective, scientific data would be absolutely impossible to fund or achieve and b) along would come one more sailor who reversed all those data. Just a couple of surprises that came out of ordinary testing include these:
• "Rubber" (flexible polyethylene) boards can be faster than stiff boards (plastic Tiga B&J boards consistently blew away race and slalom boards of the era.) That's why WSMag stopped printing board stiffness.
• Reasonable weight differences are not important in early planing (as determined by adding 5# weights to boards).

As I and many others have said in your threads alone ... what? ... 20 times? 30 times? ... WSing is much more about preferences, skills, luck, a gust here, a piece of chop there, 2 mm of downhaul, which way the mast is oriented that day, etc. than it is about three decimal places. Every single piece of chop you encounter in an entire reach affects performance. Now multiply that by every 1 mph wind speed variation, again by every few-degree wind direction fluctuation, again by that twitch in your calf or forearm, again by the rider's concentration lapses, and you come up with millions of possible scenarios PER REACH. Again ... I knew a guy who weighed EVERY WSing item he bought from hulls to fin screws (not exaggerating) to the nearest gram, wet and dry, and bought everything piecemeal to obtain the lightest assembly. World champ? Local hero? Not exactly: HE COULDN'T EVEN JIBE YET. He was simply obsessed with meaningless minutiae.

[westender]

Turn off computer. Go sailing.

[techno900]

Ditto to all the above comments. Every new board I have ever bought, on the first ride, I questioned my choice. Whatever you jump on, it's different than everything else you have previously sailed (at least for me). Final judgment is after you have several hours on a board to gauge its potential, and its potential is totally dependent on the driver's skills.

[dllee]

Life is not about only science. When art form comes into play, there are no number's, only opinions and ideas.

[PeconicPuffin]

We already see that for similar board and sail designs, that between any two sailors it's the better windsurfer who planes earlier, has a higher top speed, keeps planing through lulls, exits jibes on a plane etc. While there are likely fine differences between, say, when a Fanatic and Starboard 100 liter freeride board will pop onto a plane if they had identical riders and conditions, the technology needed to nail that info is not going to be brought to bear for windsurfing. Nowhere near enough $ in the business to make it worthwhile. It would require wind tunnels, controllable water states, sailors with biometric monitoring to compare techniques and results etc. You'd want to also know the pumpability, the top speeds available per levels of technique. And then what happens if you change a fin or add downhaul or tweak the footstrap position. Ken Winner used to make quite a good effort at discerning these attributes 20 years ago for Windsurfing Magazine (and buyers like myself would dutifully study his charts and stats) but back then there seemed to be a lot more mystery to the gear, particularly in board design. While I'd love to still have Ken Winner testing going on, I still prefer (and recommend) trying boards out first.

[westender]

Still can't find the right gear huh. I found gear that worked almost 20 years ago and still use it every day I'm sailing.

[dllee]

Gearheads are always looking for minute changes in gear that might enhance their performance by the tiniest amounts. They keep the industry moving, spend lots of money, create interest in the sport, and did I say, spend lots of money in the sport? Positives.
However, any one of us would windsurf a whole lot better if we could duplicate Jason Polakow's or Robby Naish's wave sailing skills of 1989. That's using whatever gear, while Jason and Robby are using 1989 wave boards, sails, masts, booms, fins, and harnesses.

[westender]

I worry more about getting a decent day of wind. My gear, not so much.
For most people having the newest gear they can afford is an advantage.