I'm stuck on a flukey, gusty, lightwind lake for most of the summer and have time to fool around with tuning. For pumping up onto a foil a tighter leech is definitely helpful, but on my Sailworks sails if I just underdownhaul to tighten the leech I get a very knuckly, hard-rotating entry, and if I just use outhaul to tighten the leech and ease the entry the result is often twitchy and very backhanded.
What I've experimented with recently is mismatched top and bottom mast sections. In very light wind I use a Flyer FR 8.5 on the correct Lightstick 490 mast. However, when it's really gusty, and hereabouts 6-25 isn't at all unusual, I'll use either an old (kinda-stretched out after 100+ sessions) Flyer 7.0 or a Revolution 5.7. Both are designed around the Nolimitz Sumo 430, which I have. I also have a Nolimitz 460. In marginal conditions for either sail, they rig really well on the 460 top and the 430 base. I get a tighter leech but because the base is relatively soft, the entry doesn't knuckle out down low, and the draft is more smoothly distributed along the luff.
I wonder if this wouldn't work on a lot of other slalom or free ride sails - moving the CoE up without moving it back, and tightening up the leech compared with normal fin-oriented rigging.
Well I have only used Aerotech Freespeed and Phantom sails for foiling with around the minimal down haul and maximum out haul, starting at 8-9 knots and they work great with a CC mast. Pumping up in light wind and/or minimally powered conditions (sail wise) requires getting your body weight out over the water and off the board, something I learned at Andy Brandt's foil camp. Of course you need enough wind pressure on the sail to lean out, but once you learn to lean out while pumping can drop a sail size or two depending how efficient you are currently. I have gusty conditions too, this time of year lulls are 2-6 with gusts from 8-9 or 10-12, and those gusts can be short interval, what I have learned is I need to get up on the foil right away in the gust, then head hard upwind to stay in the gust for long runs until I run out of water, and that works great!
My AFS W95 foil with F1080 cm2 wing is fast enough to stay within the gust, larger slower foils/wings may allow gust to pass by while you are up on the foil making for a short run.
Gusts are like waves in surfing, they break left to right, or right to left, so by heading up wind (to the left) on a right to left breaking gust I stay in the gust.
It's the exact reason why I use the older Maui sails hard too masts (with Naish sails). Hard tops react so well to pumping and keep the draft locked in instead of moving all over the place.
I even used a 460 hard top in a 1997 sailworks revo and it worked perfect (sailworks traditionally like constant curve)
Select to expand quoteSandman1221 said..
Well I have only used Aerotech Freespeed and Phantom sails for foiling with around the minimal down haul and maximum out haul, starting at 8-9 knots and they work great with a CC mast. Pumping up in light wind and/or minimally powered conditions (sail wise) requires getting your body weight out over the water and off the board, something I learned at Andy Brandt's foil camp. Of course you need enough wind pressure on the sail to lean out, but once you learn to lean out while pumping can drop a sail size or two depending how efficient you are currently. I have gusty conditions too, this time of year lulls are 2-6 with gusts from 8-9 or 10-12, and those gusts can be short interval, what I have learned is I need to get up on the foil right away in the gust, then head hard upwind to stay in the gust for long runs until I run out of water, and that works great!
My AFS W95 foil with F1080 cm2 wing is fast enough to stay within the gust, larger slower foils/wings may allow gust to pass by while you are up on the foil making for a short run.
Gusts are like waves in surfing, they break left to right, or right to left, so by heading up wind (to the left) on a right to left breaking gust I stay in the gust.
Yeah, but I've found Florida summer near the Gulf and New England lakes are drastically different in terms of strategy. The thing about these lakes is you can see the gust (which is often accompanied by a shift), and you can see that it covers maybe a quarter of an acre at most and is usually just moving in the direction it's blowing. So if you harden up and point in the gust you sail right out of it almost immediately. Instead, you bear off and stay in the gust as long as you can, and then hope for a shift to bring you back upwind eventually. Makes for some weird moments because I can be going 22-23 (my max on a 1250 foil) and sail straight into glassy water with nothing but apparent wind when the gust disappears
CoreAS - I found something similar using a Mauisails 520 on that Flyer 8.5 - didn't look quite right and was in general too stout but pumped like nobody's business.
I have found softer masts pump better. I wanted to make a 7.0 2015 Simmer race sail more pumpable and detuned it by removing the 4th top camber and switched camber sizes so I could rig it on a skinny mast.
It now works great in 8-18 range for foiling where with the proper mast it could be used up to 25 for slalom sailing on a fin and felt very stiff.
