Here are some new sails worthy of comment.
What strikes me about these new race sails is the impression that they have all been pared down compared to previous years. They all seem flatter and lighter - a fantastic development in my opinion.
The exception to this is the new Severne Reflex shown below. Nine battens! I'm sure that this is going to be an awesome weapon in the hands of Bjorn but never for me I'm afraid.
Avanti have created a light, technora based version of their Poweride model (the Poweride ME). Excellent news for those of us looking for the ultimate, light, camless performance sail. Nice work guys - please send me some to test!
This is the new Gaastra Cross. Great colors and probably improved performance in the larger sizes. What concerns me a bit, is the fact that they have reduced the number of battens in the smaller sizes. All Crosses used to have 6 battens but now they have reduced this number to 5 in all sizes under 6.4m. Our 6m Crosses are used for serious speed here and I'm not sure that the new 5 batten sails will be up to scratch for this application. We shall see.
I thought that Vandal Sails as a company had come to an end when Dan joined Avanti. Well, the brand has announced a new batch of sails for 2014. Here are the Addict and the Stitch. I'm not sure whether these are new designs or just the 2013 sails in different colors. If they are new then presumably they will incorporate the advances being made with the Avanti sails (?). These are awesome sails which usually fly under the radar so if you are looking for an accomplished sail and you come across one of these for a good price, give it serious consideration.
I will end this post now. I want to discuss the Vandal Addict in a bit of depth in a future post and compare it to the Sailworks Hucker (a towering bump-n-jump icon). I will write a bit about the new boards first and probably do the Addict/Hucker article after that.
Good winds
We should be back on the water in about 3 weeks time - Happy!
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