Anthony lent me a Gaastra Savage 6.7 to try and I used it with my Falcon 104/SL7-37. He had the sail rigged on a Fiberspar 7000 mast and carbon boom. The sail is quite heavy to lift and feels very solid on the beach. Once I got it onto the water everything lightened up and it proved to be an awesome piece of kit. It is one of those sails that fades into the background and takes care of business allowing you to concentrate on other stuff. I was able to go fast on all points of sail and found it to be really light in the gybes. Dan really nailed the swing weight on this one. I will try sometime to ride this sail and the Severne NCX 7.0 back to back. They are both great sails but very different. My impression is that the Savage is going to be slightly easier in overpowered conditions. Do you really need a race sail when you can have weapons like these that are so fast and so much fun?
The wind picked up and and I took an NCX 6.0 out. This was rigged on the specified Redline 430 mast with a carbon HPL boom. My board was a Falcon 89/SL7-33. The NCX is really fast as I observed at its last outing with Anthony. It is really difficult to find any fault with such a well engineered product. I sailed it well into overpowered territory and it behaved impeccably. Fast, light and cool in red and white. I would like to try this sail on a Redline RDM mast. I must say that this is not recommended by Severne but you never know - we could just discover something special.
Pit is here from Switzerland and has brought his 2010 Starboard 111 (light construction) with a set of excellent Kovalski footstraps (red ones - very cool)
I took this board for a spin with Pit's Vapor 6.7 and Deboichet SL2 42. What a dynamite combination. The board is quite slim and is just so controllable at speed over rough water. The gybes are phenomenal - you seem to float all the way around and out the other side on the plane. Witchcraft has been employed in the design!
Pit's Vapor on the Gaastra gold mast was too hard and unforgiving for me but for an aggressive, heavy sailor like Pit it puts rocket power onto the board. Very impressive.
The free styler - Steven van Broeckhoven is here impressing all with his skill. We see some pretty hot sailors here from all over the globe but this guy is something else. I watched him do about 4 moves in a row and couldn't understand what I was seeing. The sail is into the wind, spun round three times he does a loop off flat water and sails off with feet pointing the wrong way and then straight into a whole other series of inexplicable moves. How anyone can keep all that information in his head is beyond me. I'm just happy to nail a good gybe!
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