http://www.windsurfermag.com/

PS - Interesting boom design from Point 7 - gimmick or not? Also surprisingly openly honest response from major sail designers regarding testing as many competitor's sails as possible to get ideas for their own designs.

Just in case I may have misconstrued the article here is the extract

What do you test a new concept sail against to get a 'benchmark' to improve from?

Ben Severne Severne Sails
I go and try all the competitor's products and if something seems pretty good I'll sometimes go and buy one as a reference sail. And then the process is to first make a sail that goes better than the reference, and then to keep prototyping to make improvements until I run out of time.

Robert Stroj NeilPryde
This depends on what is the target performance of the new concept. In the case of the Fly, we were using both Fly and Alpha, as well as Combat. The idea was to have a good power (this is why Alpha was used here as a benchmark) combined with very light feel and good depowering on the wave (which ware strong characteristics of the Zone). The Combat is a good benchmark to check against, as it is a very universal wave sail, performing well in all conditions. Of course, we will also look at competitor's sails that did well in magazine tests and use them as benchmark as well.

Barry Spanier MauiSails
The last year's designs do fine, unless the goal is to find a way to make something someone else is selling better than they can.

Nils Rosenblad Naish Sails
We would test it against the other ranges in the line that it would be compared to - to make sure that we were achieving our (new) objectives without giving too much away. While each sail needs its own 'character', there are also basic performance criteria that must be met - testing a Boxer against a Force, for example, gives us a very clear picture of where the Boxer fits in the sphere of wave sailing in real world conditions.

How much will you test competitors' sails in the process?

Robert Stroj NeilPryde
It is usually in the very beginning of development that we will test competitors' sails, mainly to confirm performance of our existing collection against competition. From there we can then go on with confidence and do further development of next year's product.

Ben Severne Severne Sails
I always try every sail from our competitors. There's always something to learn, and it's also good to have first-hand knowledge to evaluate some of the magazine test results.

Art Szpunar MauiSails
In instances such as race sails, where we are directly testing for speed against our competitors then we certainly source other sails and make sure that we are faster. It's always good to try competitors' sails when you have the opportunity as you develop a better performance frame of reference.

Nils Rosenblad Naish Sails
We do a fair amount of comparison testing with the freeride gear to see where we stand - the sails must meet our own criteria for excellence AND do well in the magazine tests, which are not necessarily the same thing. As far as the wave sails go, our guys definitely try other stuff to keep up to date with what is going on in the market, but our focus is on setting the standard rather than following a trend.

R n D

Ripoff new Designs ???

Good to hear they sail each other's gear I reckon.


As to the Point 7 headless boom doo-hicky:
I am undecided on the split head designs - looks good and makes sense structurally, but somebody who has one and is very experienced and gets to try all the funky stuff hates it so I reserve my decision.

I hate the shock absorbtion / adjustable twist / bendy thing they are all going for.
Gimmicky.
The whole idea carbon is better is that it is stiffer - we all love the stiff feeling ( ). As a heavyweight I hate hanging weight on the boom and feeling it 'give' a bit. So why make a flexy boom head? It already moves up and down at the clew with the articulating head designs of the last few years.

I could understand it if pointloading the mast at the clamp was causing mast failure but it is not with conventional designs of the last few years, as evidenced by the fact most masts break elsewhere.

Dumb.

It happens in every industry, car companies do the same thing. They buy their oppositions cars, strip them and look at exactly what the others have done. It's also a factor in what drives innovation, imo, getting widget A, evaluating it and asking "how can we do this better?". Putting any potential patent infringements aside, if a design is a winner you can guarantee someone will copy it and potentially improve it, that's life, that's business. To not evaluate your competitors products and go in with the attitude that "we're always right, there is no other solution" is a quick smart was to ensure commercial suicide.

Regarding this Point7 boom, I can potentially see the benefit for slalom but for waves and freestyle it's about the last thing you'd want, imo. In wave/FS you want 100% connection to your rig to be able to control it as required, boom compliance is the bane of every single wave/FS sailor I have ever met.