Hey sorry I've missed the discussion as I'm a windsurfer who's done a fair bit of slalom and course racing. Steve that's cool to hear that Formula gear is that fast at all points of sail as I've held off getting such gear as after trying one once it was just such hard work sailing with an 11 meter sail!
I remember when the tornado worlds were here in Bermuda, though before the spinikars were allowed we could quite easily beat them on slalom gear on reaches, probably not upwind though.
The problem with windsurfers are that weight and size give a huge advantage, so the speeds Finian Maynard gets are way off what an average sailor gets. Skill and gear also are really important so that a smaller sailor can go fairly fast but, then they need a custom board with a flatter rocker as most smaller slalom boards are built as super high wind boards for bigger sailors! But in the end size is what counts, so you'll never see a world record being set by a 5'6" 140lb guy!
The average speed of general windsurf gear has dropped these days as freeride easy to sail boards and no cam sails become the fashion these days. The race boards from the early to mid nineties were the stuff, but it made learning to gybe so difficult for the average weekend windsufer that many people were put off the sport!
But it's great to see speed is back on the agenda, I'm hoping to dust off my old custom Van en Berg 8.8 and try out a new 6.2 Neil pryde race sail to see what I can get on the GPS. Also for reference in 12-14 knts of wind I'm getting about 23mph on the reaches. I'm on a 7.5 meter sail which is pretty small for that stuff, should be on a 9.0 for the board I was using. But looking at that Fanatic link, those guys were going between 28 and 29kts in 12-14 kts of wind which is amazing and shows the increased efficiency of the newer windsurfing gear. Here is a link to a windsurfing speed website for GPS users.
http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/gps.aspAnyway I've yet to get a go on the tornado, I'll have to get around to it, but I'm looking forward to seeing what it is like.
Scott
