2011 KA Koyote 7.4

Yes I was involved in the design of this sail so my report is totally biased. However I will attempt to keep it as objective as possible.

I had an unexpected sail on Port Phillip Bay yesterday, 15-20 knot SW and typical lumpy bay chop. I chucked the Love mus 106 Slalom board in the car and a couple of Koyotes, 6.6 and 7.4. It was forecast to drop out so opted for the 7.4 even though it appeared to be a good solid 20.
I rigged it on a Skinny, wanted to see how it looked. The mast was actually a bit of a Frankenstein effort , a 460 top and 430 bottom, both sample masts we had made with 16-17% bend curves. I must measure it in this configeration but bottom line was that it set just spot on. Its easy to rig on a skinny, getting an SDM up the sleeve is a bit slow.
I rigged with max downhaul and a bit of possitive outhaul with the boom in the bottom clew eyelet. The sail still had plenty of shape down low with a really nice progressive twist. Looked really good.
On the water the sail felt great. Not quite as locked in as a Koncept and with it on a skinny it had a softer feel with a bit of spring in the foil. This was actually very good in the chop and the sail felt really forgiving. It locked down nicely in the gusts, did not get back handed and really accelerated off like a race sail. I could settle into a nice solid stance really comfortably, the draft moving a touch but not enough for me to need to adjust my stance.
I had a really fun sail for about an hour and then the wind as predicted went a bit soft. I came in and swapped the boom to the top hole and let off maybe 1.5 cm of outhaul so it was touching the boom halfway up to the harness lines, Did not touch the downhaul, still on max.
Wow, amazing, now I had power to burn. It pulled me straight onto the plane and powered away. An hour later I was still flying around while everybody else was grovelling.

This is a really good sail, easy ,stable,fast, heaps of range. I think it would best suit a fast freeride board, something like the Rocket or Futura would be made for it.

Could it be better, well yes of course. I would add a loop on the head to make unrigging easier by being able to attach it to something to extract the mast. Getting the skinny out was easy but on a SDM it is a bit of a chore due to the amount of luff curve.
The sails also have a pretty bullet proof construction, being all 5mil x ply. On the big sizes I reckon we could back it off to 4mil and get the weight down a touch, not that it felt hevy on the water.

Second time on this sail for me and I am really impressed, to the point where I think my 7.5 Koncept will only come out at Sandy Point or for races, freesailing I am going to be on the Koyote for sure it was just easy and fun.

Reckon it,s going to get a lot of use this Summer!

Hi Mick, 6.6 really, must have been more wind down there.

The sail is cut more like a race sail with it's drive down low and the top of the sail fairly flat and slippery. As such it is generating alot of power in the lower section of the sail. If you flatten it off too much yes you will kill the power.
As it has seven battens , 6 being tubes and the longer ones carbon the draft is really stable. You can sail it "fat" down low as the draft doesn't shift back much at all and cause lot's of backhand pressure.

I see there is a "first to 40 " comp at the inlet, thats sounds like fun!!!!

Wouldn't worry too much about the printed figures. Set the outhaul so it is just touching the boom when fully powered. Pull it in a little if the sail gets too backhanded, but don't flatten too much. If you are overpowered you are better pulling on more downhaul and still keeping the bottom reasonably full.

Pretty much. I use the downhaul as the main depower tool and have the sail just touching to boom most of the time. You can crank a lot of downhaul on with a Koyote and really twist it off. If it is super windy I will pull the outhaul in but not super tight as to make the sail very flat down low. That just kills the power and makes the sail really twitchy.

Hi Gazman, Good point, yes booms obviously do come with varied widths so my reference was probably a bit silly. If you are using a wide tail boom then no you wouldn't set it up touching the boom.
I guess my main point is don't flatten the bottom of the sail too much. I do use outhaul to flatten the bottom out but I am careful not to over do it .
If overpowered my first call is useing the downhaul to twist the sail off more. I find that if you pull the outhaul on too tight the sail will lose all it,s drive and feels a bit "twitchy"
.If you are sailing with the downhaul maxed out and you are still having to really crank the outhaul on hard to control the power then you should probably be on a smaller sail.

Regarding sailor weight, well yes bigger guy,s can set the sails up more powerfully but will also likely be on a bigger sail. I really think you are much better off to be on a smaller sail set up correctly with lots of low down drive than having to go to extremes to depower a larger sail.
Obviously there are exceptions to this , Formula racing where you rig big so you can do extreme down wind angles and use outhaul to flatten the sail upwind and also speed sailing where you set up for deep downwind angles, but for "freesailing" I much prefer to be on a smaller sail set up with a nice amount of draft down low.

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Hey Martin, if any of the KA team has a spare 5.9 Koyote laying around anywhere (s/hand) then please send it my way! Don't want to lash out on a new one at present as budget won't permit but very keen to fill the gap between my 5.3 & 6.6 Koyotes (and offload my monofilm 6.0).

Re improvements to Koyotes, I've had a lot of difficulty getting an rdm mast out of my 2008 6.6. I had webbing loops fitted to all of my sails a few years ago (just got the 6.6 last year) so I could put a long screwdriver through the loop and into the ground to make withdrawing the mast easier. Also, I had a sailmaker increase the boom cutout at the top on my 2008 5.3 Koyote as I was setting the boom right at the top of the cutout and wanted to rig the boom higher on the mast (I usually rig my boom halfway between chest and shoulder height and I'm 178cms tall).

I'm stoked with the KAs....my favourite koyote used to be the 7.4...just great all round- reasonably light with heaps of grunt. over the last few weeks I've been using the 8.2 and now its my favourite. It just doesn't feel like an 8+ metre sail!- really controllable when it gets a bit more blow but heaps of grunt where you want it. I'm still using SDM's tho', and even tho' I have the correct mast bend curve,would I find any difference in going to RDM's

Hey Martin, do you often use maximum downhaul when rigging your Koyotes? I tried max downhaul on both my 5.3 and 6.6 Koyotes lately and the upper leech went very loose looking like I may have overdone it! Both sails definitely performed better with less downhaul, particularly as I wasn't really powered up when using either sail (mast used in both sails - Ezzy Hookipa 430 RDM).

Are there any visual rigging indicators for setting what you would consider 'maximum' downhaul (i.e. loose leech down to X batten) as well as when the downhaul has been overdone, or is it just a matter of sail it and see?