Hope your Holiday went well Karl.

Atleast you got a sail in today. No wind up here.

Great stuff Adrian! It feels great to finally break the 30 knot barrier!

It sure does... Mission accomplished for this season!! :)

It is funny how I previously felt I was maxed out at 29 knots, and now at nearly 31 knots I feel there is more in it. I think the chop was the biggest difference. Previously I was doing my 29 knot runs bouncing around alot in chop and struggled to control the fin. I think the setup also gave me much better control. I think I had the base too far forward and was pushing the rocker into the chops with alot of mastbase pressure which bounced it back off up and caused me to do alot of bouncing and air. Less mast base pressure allowed the board to ride alot better. I did however get tired quite quickly with the mastbase back from hanging forward off the rig to go upwind. Now I know how much of an advantage a speed course is!!

I look forward to another stronger day going to the same area and maybe fitting my speed fin and might be able to add another knot or two to that!!

I think my next goal is 33 knots... 40 knots is a bit hard to achieve!! :)

Cheers,

Adrian

Well done on the PBs Adrian and also experimenting with your setup to get such good results. Here is hoping for more windy weekends.

Thanks Karl... definately learned something. Sometimes it is worth persisting with something that does not necessarily feel right. I found that my "speed" setup felt totally wrong for most normal sailing, but when fully powered up and going deep downwind, it felt great. It allowed me to hang right off the back of the board and keep the rig still quite upright by getting it further away from me. When reaching and going upwind I struggled to get enough weight onto the mast base to keep the board flat, and avoid spinout.

I think I have worked out a bit about modern boards also. It seems that the wave oreinted boards like mine have narrower pointy tails which works well for manouverability, but you need to be well powered up before you can really stand on the back foot. Wider tailed boards more oriented at speed/slalom can support more of a speed type setup in lesser powered conditions. But once fully powered up, most boards will get up and go fast is setup right with the right find, as very little of the board is in the water anyway. With the starboad go, I have the straps in the most rearward position and can still stay in the straps even without planing without any problems, as it has loads of area in the tail.

On Seabreeze, Roo put up a recipe for setting up equipment including footstrap positions. I am going to try this next time I get the board out.

-- Adrian

well done adrian but im not m to sure about the wide tailed boards, my custom  board is low volume and narrow ,and it will plane earlyer than most if theres a gust, id be looking at rockers and fins for early planeing

Great stuff Adrian!!!!!!!!