Early morning session at strand Horst. A much better feeling after yesterdays mismatch between board and fin. The S10 pushed the nose of the board down too much to get up to high speeds. Crosswind was perfect and so was upwind speed but downwind the board felt as if it was glued to the water.. It made me realize the Monster and Godzilla serie is made to glide, not to fight. Big sails are working perfectly underneath the boards for cross and upwind sailing, but for pure speed sailing you need to let the board hoover on the triple and deep concaves. In order to reach that goal you can take a failry wide board and small sail and trust the gliding sensation the board offers or you can take a fin that helps to lift the nose of the board to create air underneath the steps.
The wind was clearly less than yesterday and I scaled dwon two sizes to test if the board would work better that way. My speeds went up substantially compared to yesterday and the feeling was incomparable. Last week I had a discussion with Ron on the need to make a pure PWA board (our projected Gryphon). I thought we wouldn't need such a board but Ron said: PWA riders want to have hard to handle boards, the Monster is too easy, too relaxed for them.
Today I realized he is right. I tried to sail the board as if it's meant for slalom, but it isn't, at least not for heavier riders like me. It is meant for cruizing and enjoyable days on the water. But when you stick to the board once it gets a little windier and others need to scale down in boardsize you'll meet the beasts inside of them. The boards perform great with bigger sails, but really come to life when overpowered on the boardsize. The choppier it gets, the easier they ride and the faster they get compared to conventional boards. Pure PWA boards need the added sailsize to keep the nose down. With the Monster you don't need to do that and even more so, they really come to life as soon as the board starts hoovering over the chop.
Because of this I feel we both are right. the Gryphon series will be a slalom series for the heavier riders, the Monster/Godzilla series is for sure suitable as a slalomseries for lighter riders and for riders of all weights they are perfect as real life GPS speedboards.
The Venom worked nicely under the board and added to the relaxed feel the board gave. I am keen to give it a go when a little windier and having enough power for the 7.0 to really push it to find out how it performs against 60-65 wide boards.
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