Chris 249 said...
I still find the price of sails to be very high. For much less than the cost of a 12m sail, I can get a 17m sail for the cat and (IIRC) a 20m sail for the yacht. Both will be in more expensive cloth, the cat sail will have more and longer battens, both will be designed by a multiple world champ who is an Olympian, and you will be able to ring them up, talk about trim, and almost certainly arrange to meet them and get them on board to show you how to tweak it. It's just a factor of dealing direct rather than through a retailer who brought it from an importer who brought it from a manufacturer who employs a design team and a marketing team.
I don't really see how you can draw these conclusions. Back when I used to race Spiral dinghys a new sail was about $600 and that was in about '97. I then raced Hobie's and a new main for one of those was about $1200 in '99, i'd hate to think what they are now. A Jib was fricken $500. I've always been adamant that compared to almost all other sailing classes windsurfing sails are fantastic value for what you get. A lot of that comes down to the volume of them that they sell and the types of cloth they use; monofilm is much cheaper than technora/mylar etc (not sure what yarn tempered dacron is worth).
What sort of cat are you getting a 17m sail for < $1200? I would of thought all the fast cats these days, Taipans, Tornados, A's etc would have prices waaaay over 2K for a new main. Maybe i'm just way off the mark.
