Utah Windriders Association

JimSouthwick wrote:Sticking the tail of the board under the booms is a time-honored method of raising the rig, but is sometimes not possible unless the booms are rigged very low and/or the base is all the way forward.

For most of the modern boards, this is pretty much impossible because the tail cut out is a lot wider and shorter. Unless you set the boom really low, which gives you less control and a lot more power than you might want. PFD is the way to go!

yes, it's been a long time since you could expect to lift your boom on the tail of your board. the mast tracks are now positioned much closer to the fin and tail. unless you are spending a session practicing just getting pulled up, rig your boom for sailing not for waterstarting.

furthermore, addressing your original question, 13 plus m2 sails have been unsuccessful. i haven't heard of any for years now. maybe they are out there but for now, at least, they exceed the realistic top size for your quiver. to prevent an arms war, they are not approved in formula. the masts and booms required would be prohibitively expensive.

Since we`ve heard from most of the early planers/speed demons I`d like to add one other thought about bigger sails. Cambered vs non cambered sails. My personal preference is cams on biggger sails 7.5 on up. I use a 7.7 Sailworks NX 7.7 (course racing sail) and a Sailworks XT (race sail) 8.5 for those light wind Deer Creek days. Both feel like they go tru the lulls better and plane earlier than my older non cam sails of equal size. Whats your experience/thoughts on this?

I too find cam sails more stable but am a bit intimidated by the thought of trying to uphaul/waterstart something with as big a luff sleeve as Grant's race sails. Fortunately for me there are sails available (e.g. the Ezzy Infinity line) that combine cams with a relatively narrow sleeve.