KA Sail VS Pryde - rough treatment test

Hi all!

The wednesday session ended as a live resistance trial for my KA Race VS my pal's Pryde VS a very tricky and hardcore spot!
We went to a very unique place in the North of France that resembles a huge basin filled up by a river and the sea. We depart from a steep slipway and then we cross the open sea, the trickiest part with a very strong current (5knts) and waves (2m this day) to reach a big natural pool protected by sand banks, flat and great for speed. With the good timing we don't have to worry about the shorebreak.

Things went pretty wrong on the way back for loads of reasons, especially the worst tidal timing we could go back on. We screwed up alright! As a result I lost my gear when the little treacherous shorebreak swept me away as I set foot on the slipway. Firstly it got washed towards a calm area by going over an overflooded dyke (outch). Then it got caught by the exiting current (beginning of low tide), went over the dyke again (outch again) and swiftly taken away to the vast ocean with increasing speed. I could but watch, powerless, at my brand new orange sail resurfacing from time to time after being swallowed by the waves. The orange really stands out though.

My pal arrived, missed the slipway (too much whitewater to make it out from far away), went back, fell at the wrong place and got caught by the current! He followed the same path as my gear, waves and all.

The peculiar thing about this place is that the current does not expel you into the vast ocean but rather gets you back upwind on the beach on the right of the slipway. It's a 30 minutes ride (average), the locals know about it and so we did, but with the low temperatures I decided to call the coastguards. You never know. It got us an article on the local newspaper, our friends read it before we arrived home.


So in the end no one got hurt apart from our self-confidence and the rigs, which went through nearly the same testing conditions (things were done thoroughly and equally).

It resulted in 5 broken battens in my KA race (surprisingly all the top battens and not the two longest), little scratches from the going-over-the-dyke, but nothing else! The monofilm didn't get a scratch.
On the other side, my pal's Pryde had a panel completely blown by the waves and 3 broken battens.

See for yourself!!! KA Sails wins the test ;)



in red may pal's journey, in blue my gear's adventures

I agree with you Mark it is not a fair comparison at all.

Except for batten 2 which is 10.5mm glass tube all the battens that broke in the KA Race are 13mm carbon tube. I can't comment on the Pryde don't know the construction. I guess breaking these is not to be unexpected considering the beating it got, being continually trashed by a big shore break is not really what a Race sail is designed to withstand.

I just tried (clumsily) to make fun of our wreckage, I ripped a wave sail in two but never broke battens and I'm not experienced in how stuff break. No racing sail taking the same beating would have gotten away unscathed anyway... I thought that the long carbon battens wouldn't resist but contrary to what I thought for masts they held on much better than the low carbon battens.

I apologise to pryde lovers for the bad sense of humour! Pryde chose lightness (hence fragility) and performance over durability, but that's common knowledge for racing sails. I think the KA have a good balance between light materials and durability, I thought I wouldn't see a piece of monofilm intact after that. Great job by the way for the 4 battens (I've got two Krypto) Mr Love, they look SOLID. My french buddies had an impressed look when they discovered KA wave sails.
Another thing I learnt is how expensive battens are

Cheers!

Good!
The Authie bay has now an international -and deserved- bad reputation... For windsurfing at least! ;-))

Welcome to the forum windalchemist, thanks for the read.

Oh and beware the seabreeze police