When chasing light wind, what matters?

[Peter_Frank]

I've noticed whilst looking at the Moses website that the difference in thickness between the T40 at 4cm thick and the Comet Race at 9cm thick is quite drastic.
Surely the extra thickness and volume is advantageous.
Are all light wind Race boards quite thick and voluminous ?

They are quite thick, simply for being able to make them extremely light and still super stiff - and give some volume too, without being too wide (cathes chop wave on heeled upwind legs, even with the 110 cm masts used often nowadays).

As I see it, in "racing" you often dont race (around here, as if most can not ride, it does not make much sense) unless its a bit more windy, meaning 5-7 knots or more where huge volume and area is not that important, using 18 m2 kites.
Not small boards, but not big either - around here I have never seen anyone using big marginal raceboards.
Could also be out of ease - better to get used to ONE board, and live with the rare days when marginal, I dont know...

Muscle memory and control means a lot by the best racers too - they are just WAY better than the rest of us, doing and adapting this

PF

[Flag53]

Cheers Peter , thanks for the reply !

[Kamikuza]

Thanks all. Now that just begs the question, what is a big board? How much bigger does it have to be to be significantly better?

[Kamikuza]

I would say board is almost irrelevant with the right foil and kite.

Hard to compare wind speeds because everyone measures differently, but in my experience the floatation from a big board does help quite a bit.

My low end limit is usually reached (on 15m sonic1 and spotz2) where I'm constantly looping the kite dozens of times in a row and just can't get any speed on the board. I'm just standing on the board and using the buoyancy to hold me up because I can't get enough power to get up to speed. Sometimes I get a gust and make it back on foil, sometimes it drops even more and the kite just refuses to climb back up to the top of the window for another loop and I swim in.

Admittedly I have no experience with bigger wings, but I don't think I could go straight up on foil in that situation even with a big wing.

If I'm at that stage, the odds of getting on the foil are slim and if I do, I'm heading straight back to the beach because I'd probably be right back in the soup if I tried to transition at all...basically, if I can't get the board moving, I'm not foiling.