mkseven said...
The only problem is you have to have to put up with the repeated cries of "you wont get going on that" hey Gestalt [}:)]

yes, and you weren't planing until you got further out. the 5.8 on the other hand had me fully powered in close where all of the waves were.


crazyjockey,

i'm thinking you should be planing in much less than 17 knots on your kit. try less outhaul. i usually set the outhaul for the minimum for what i think the wind is and only give it another 1-2cm if the sail is back hand heavy or upwind performance is not as good as i would like.

for me on a 95lt fish and a 6.4 KA kult with 30cm fin i plane in 15 knots consistantly (95+kg). i used to get going in less wind on my previous fin (12+ knots) as it had lots of thickness. the thickness also gave it no top end. the new fin -mfc- doesn't have the bottom end but i'm prepared to sacrifice that for the better top end and broader range it gives me.

formula wise an 8.5m on the formula kit gets me planing in 8 knots with pumping.
the 120 lt slalom board and 8.5m gets me going in about 10+ knots with pumping.

my setup is.

0-20 - 8.5m & formula board 70cm fin
12-18 - knots. 8.5m & 120 lt slalom 42cm fin
12-20 - 6.4m kult & 95lt fish 30cm fin
18-30 - 5.8m Kult & 95lt fish 25cm fin
25-35 - 5.3m kult & 95lt fish 25cm fin

i will eventually find an 80lt wave board for over 25knots as the fish likes a tail walk now and then.

Thanks guys for all this info, it's been good to read through it all.

Gestalt said...
i'm thinking you should be planing in much less than 17 knots on your kit. try less outhaul.

I typically rig my Koyote so that the sail is touching the boom until about 5-10 cm behind the back harness line, unless i'm getting lots of backhand pressure which doesn't happen in 17kts anyway. I've also been using more downhaul for the last few weeks based upon a tip I received, which makes the sail less baggy (but has reduced spinout by 90%, awesome!)

I'm guessing from what people are saying that what I consider to be 17 kts based upon the seabreeze graphs is actually more like 15 or less...

nobody said...Comments by me and others may be classed as subjective anyway as what level of planing is planing? It's not like a light switch on any board I've ridden.

I dunno...I find with my board it kind of is like a switch - there is a certain point where I can hook in, put my feet in the footstraps and take off. If I'm going much slower than that I have to be pumping and standing in the centre of the board or I'll fall back in the hole again.

nebbian said...

crazyjockey said...
I should qualify - when I said I can't get planing in less than 17 knots, that is 17 knots according to seabreeze (whether thats the actual wind speed on the water is another question).

There's the problem.

When we say 17 knots, we mean "17 knots as measured on the shore with a wind meter", not "17 knots as measured by an anemometer at the top of a pole on a big hill".

I think if you borrow a wind meter and recalibrate what 17 knots is, you'll find that you're getting going in around 14 or so.

... or perhaps 2. I've driven down twice in the last 24 hours to find almost dead calm, when both seabreeze and BOM are indicating 15+. I was about 500m from the station, which is on top of a 5m or so tower.

lalalamort said...

7.0m North Natural on an old Bombora board. probably at least 18 knots....anything less than 20 for me is painful

I agree with lalalamort. A lot of people say drop down to the smallest sail size you can plane on, but if I'm just in barely planing winds, I may as well be dragging my ass on the carpet like a dog. It's as boring as hell, and on my waveboard the jumps lack momentum. I want the sail taking all 95kgs of me, hence taking advantage of my higher weight. Those downwind runs on my Formula board with a fully loaded sail and with my fin whistling a merrry tune really get the adreneline pumping. So for me I like to add 4-5knots to my lowests planing wind for a particular sail, and then I'm having some serious fun.

some hand held meters read average but they are costly. my $40 meter reads realtime so i hold it up for a few minutes over a period of 15 minutes or so and just look at lulls and gusts. i also read the trees, water, other sailors, tide etc.

i can't speak for anyone else but i am referring to planing hulls and not displacement hulls. i listed the volumes to help with this. my definition of planing with a planing hull (shortboard) is being hooked in, in the straps and able to sail upwind and down.

WOD said...

How in the world do we truly verify the wind speed on the water? Are we calling gusts, or averages, and what do we call "gusts"? I seem to recall (from Bureau of Meteorology lectures before the Sydney-Hobart) that what they call a "gust" is the highest average speed that is sustained for 30 seconds. Gusts themselves are often 30% higher (or more) than mean average speed. The bottom of the lulls is often 25-30% or less of gust speed, IIRC.

I'm not precise about the figures, but it seems that guys could be calling 7 knots (measuring the bottom of each lull) when it's actually 13 or so in the gusts and 10 average; or guys could be saying they plane in "X" knots when that is the lowest figure reached and the average is a lot higher, the gusts higher than that, and the peak of the gusts higher still.

HTH do you work that out? And then how accurate are the wind meters?

With the big gear on (Lechner A390, ex 1992 Olympics) and tight leach North 9.5, I'm starting to plane before a national champ on Formula gear, but then again some people would (wrongly) say that a Lechner cannot plane!

As skiff designer Julian Bethwaite says, defining "planing" becomes harder, the more you learn about what it actually is.

As suspected then, this topic is just a blow hard, pump yourself up, thread.

I think that WOD has really hit the nail on the head. I have what I believe to be a good Anemometer but it only tells me the wind speed where I am standing. At Kurramine Beach I often do not get planing till I get out about 200 meters because the palms etc on the dune reduce the wind where I measure it. I do know that if I get 14 kns on the beach I will plane with a 6m when I get out a bit. I never declare what the wind is because I know I would only be guessing.
There are locations where someone could stand on a sandbar and record the wind speed and the exact time and later compare it with a passing sailors speed.
This would be of interest to me.

depends who you talk too starboard says they plane in 4 knots on a formula board

I was out yesterday on Lake Connewarre where it was blowing 10 - 12 knots. I had a 8.5M KA Formula sail rigged on my 155L GO and only managed to get up on the plane with a bit of hard work as the 12 knot gusts came through. As I havent worked out a decent pumping technique, I dare say a more experienced sailor may be able to get going a little earlier. Once up on the plane, as long as the wind held at 10 knots, I was able to maintain speed.