A bunch of Fuerteventura thoughts (pending the last elimination)

Not that I'm any kind of an expert, just an enthusiast. First of all - insanely good coverage of the slalom from start to finish. Great camerawork, great commentary from Ben and his guests, fun interviews and to begin with the smooth event organization made that coverage possible.

Goyard still has an edge in both equipment and technique. There's a sixth gear he can find, apparently at will. I was trying to figure out why it looked familiar and I think it reminds me of the time in formula finning where the super-soft-tipped fins came around, and if you weren't on a Kashy, you couldn't catch someone who was. I wonder if his gear has something similar going on - some combination of longitudinal flex and torsional stiffness perhaps, that the other guys don't have yet.

He has an extra half knot board speed advantage over even the fastest other foilers, so he can afford, for the time being, to be tactically less demanding because he knows he can hit the first mark in sixth and still win. He was really favored but the longer course on day 3. He rides more upright, but still with more heel to windward, without locking out the way some of the other guys do. He seems to achieve that heel without having to use his bodyweight or raking the sail over - possibly because he's on such a tiny wing. This seems to mean he can afford to touch down oftener and harder without blowing up, than the Marottis and Iachinos and Rutkowskis can. If they touch down as hard as he does they don't skip off, they just explode. He also can pick his jibe line to take advantage of others' weaknesses.

Neil Pryde sent their guys out with a noncompetitive setup. The sails are really fast but the smallest foil they brought was too lifty so they were blowing up big time at top speed, and struggling with jibes too. Marotti broke three of his four booms and was stuck foiling last day on a 5.1 when he would have preferred to be finning but he had no usable fin gear left.

Nico Prien in particular never seemed really comfortable, especially jibing. He was really reaching with his upper body to maintain mastbase pressure which made me wonder if he didn't have a sufficiently forward position for his front strap. A smaller foil might have helped I suppose but he's usually very elegant - body and shins parallel - just not this week.

Some of the guys - Rutkowski for sure, Martini (an absolute HORSE), kind of hotheaded themselves out of the competition. Bad luck for Soe in the 11th elimination.

Gaastra fin sails were excellent, foil sails noncompetitive. Very disappointing event for Duotone altogether, and really for Severne also. I was hoping someone would be on the new North stuff, but no.

Cedric Bord pointed out that the foils are so small that they actually can't foil in 10 anymore on the gear they've registered. He's worried that the sport will once again become so elite that the entry-level sailors won't grow the sport. He also said that the retail balance is still toward finning, especially with older riders. I don't see that myself, at least not on the west coast of Florida, where older sailors are definitely moving toward foil just because ToW is so much better, and the physicality is less demanding. In Florida, the threat to the sport isn't small windfoil gear, it's Wingdings.

Foils dominated but fins are still competitive at very high wind strengths, and even at lower wind strengths at everything below the absolute elite, heavyweight level. Sarah-Quita was winning against the best foilers, even on full-time fin. For amateur, beer-league racing, I bet the fastest finners are going to be beating the fastest foilers for a while yet, except in like 8-14. But for excitement, the foil races stood out, even compared with the day four high-wind events.

That thirteen-year old is a future star, obviously - skilled and charming and having fun with the sport.

I'll be interested to see what happens after Marseille when all the IQ women can afford to switch to PWA gear. The Israeli and French teams in particular seem to have a LOT of talent.

Great event. Goyard really was on another level compared to the other foilers and fins even in crazy conditions. Lots of huge crashes and broken gear both on the fin and foil.

From what I can tell, it looks like the longest mast they use is 95cm. Class rules ?. Going that fast in swell that huge is crazy sketchy. They were all clipping waves. Seems like a longer mast would give a little more room for error. Either way crazy skills and huge balls. A great watch. Women's had some very close finishes. All very exciting to watch.

I still dont like the mixing of fin and foil. its like racing skiing and snowboarding together.

They can only have two front wings? But six sails? What an odd combo.

I would expect a minimum of three front three wings, eg. light, medium, and strong wind.

Nico only did Fuerte so had the luxury of being able to register based on those conditions, not those on the whole tour. That said, he sailed brilliantly - although not faultlessly (luckily, for the spectator!)

No class rule against registering a mast longer than 95 (in fact F4 is 97) I think, but the thinner and narrower chord masts being used nowadays are much harder to make super stiff the longer they get, hence most of them staying at or around 95.
Hard to say whether one particular brand has an absolute edge just based on the Fuerte results. Yes, Phantom did very well, but so did Enrico in Pozo. And overall the Z riders haven't said their last word yet. There is also still personal progression; check eg one of Nico's vids where he says that he improved his 2sec pb on foil several times as the racing went on.
Still, plenty of rumblings about fil v foil long-term viability. Almost certain that we'll see more changes to the rules next year, in an effort to save both.

Goyard is balancing his time between IQ and PWA but coming to Fuerte with the small gear was a sort of message from Alex Udin and Goyard to the PWA committee. Phantom threatened to boycott the PWA over the front wing number limitation and this event was a sort of show of power.

As much as it was fun watching the event I got a feeling the riders were frustrated, the rules boxed them into this situation. Go on a fin have fun and lose or go on a foil knowing you're in kamikaze mode. Just watch the beach interviews during racing, not many smiles.

Again, funny: IQ foil has such a clever format that they can indeed race with one single setup from 7 to 25-30 knots. Slalom in light wind, course race or marathon above 10 knots steady average, and survival mode over 25 knots :) Level playing field and an easier entry barrier for young surfers.

PWA is fixated on downwind slalom. Fine. But this needs multiple times more gear. The entry barrier is significantly higher, in fact, so high, that one single extra front wing (or two) wouldn't make a massive difference IMHO.

I agree with you on many points, winning a race should be a question of predominatly skill, not gambling with equipment registration.

With PWA and for example Formula Windsurfing association I have to respectfully disagree with them on some equipment choices and directions. Eg. they could start experimenting with hydrofoils more than 10 years ago. We sent them proposals and tech drawings back in 2010 (!), but they weren't open to any of the improvements.

Certain manufacturers were even opposed to the idea of wide foil boards, saying that "The Formula will be too big in the air" and foil will "not work better than a Formula on a Formula race, and is not the target.", and cherry on top, "it will not work on the Formula! WE HAVE TEST on 75cm 140 liters boards, it was just too big and NO CONTROL!"

I'm just waiting for arrival of more performance wings (hard/fixed, whatever), because a few selected fast locals are faster on a wingfoil than guys on a slalom windfoil :)

The PWA represents an interesting mix of pro windsurfers and manufacturers, which creates some conflict when making rules. Most manufacturers would love to see lots of gear choices allowed; many sailors who have to travel with the gear want it limited, especially of they are not in the top 10 and therefore not fully supported by sponsors.

For the manufacturers, adding foiling was certainly done in the hope of developing a significant windfoil market. But is that still realistic? On Cape Cod, almost everyone who started windfoiling has switched mostly or completely to winging. Is it similar at other places?

The few guys who can still be seen windfoiling locally are not interested in racing or chasing top speed. I don't recall a single windfoil race happening anywhere close, but there are regular wing races, both informal and "organized".

From a spectator's perspective, I love the mixed PWA races. I thought many races in Pozo and Fuerte were more interesting that in previous years, when they were mostly or completely fin races. But whether the mixed races still make sense a manufacturer's perspective is a different question.