Carl76 a écrit:
En vagues en plus certains coureurs utilisent vraiment des planches très spécifiques. Vollenweider disait qu'il ne pourrait pas sortir les planches de Traversa en série car le navigateur moyen serait incapable de partir au planing avec tellement elles sont bananées
C'est évident (sans parler de son gabarit et sa technique)
J'ai bien aimé le post de Witchcraft qui prêche évidemment pour sa paroisse mais avec des arguments que j'apprécie beaucoup
https://www.facebook.com/Witchcraft.Win ... 6XsUKYsrTl"Some thoughts on the PWA. Witchcraft does not join the PWA for various reasons. First of all, it is very expensive, especially for small innovative brands. Secondly I think the way it is done actually harms innovation and sustainability. If brands were pushed to increase the range of their gear more by limiting the amount of boards that can be used during a season, would push to develop gear with a bigger range. Also if a rider was punished by losing points for needing more gear due to equipment failure during a season (including free sailing), would push to develop more durable and sustainable gear. Similar to F1 for example. But as end users actually can buy the exact same gear as the pros, it should be even more strict. This would really help those brands producing higher quality equipment. For a start, they could simply publish a statistic for how much gear a rider would have used during a season (or 2 or 3 seasons for that matter). That would help customers deciding which brand to choose. But they don´t publish these things, everything is kept a secret.
It is easy to make a board just for one special type of conditions. But normal end users usually come across a much wider range of conditions they need to cover with the least amount of gear possible. Also with sails, already in development, PWA riders focus everything on sailing full power for 10-20 minutes and have a whole range of sails rigged on the beach. No normal sailor does this. Normal sailors will sail for various hours on end and rather change the rigging of their sail than to rig a different size. Even some PWA riders swap gear in a heat to first score jumps and then waves. That is even worse for the development of gear.After 15 years now working with trifins with 3 similar sized trifins and using toe in and pre twist, there are no brands who seem to even have been looking into this. Let alone pre twisted side fins to reduce drag and improve turning even more. But a well set up trifin has by far the biggest range and the best performance. You can choose between a trailer fin type of set up to be really lose to a bigger center fin for more directional stability. Read more about it here:
https://witchcraft.nu/boards/trifin/ and here:
https://witchcraft.nu/windsurfing-scien ... crafts.../Also on the construction side there seems to be no developments. If anything there are more un-novations with materials like Carbon-Innegra than in-novations. Read more here:
https://witchcraft.nu/those-small-but-significant.../And windsurfing needs progress, innovation and more sustainability. Not a status quo between the cartel brands who seem to want to keep the main market shared between them and try to keep small innovative brands out so they do not have to innovate themselves.
I think for the PWA to play an important role in the future of windsurfing, the PWA should install some rules to force brands to become more durable and increase the range of use of wave sailing gear by allowing riders to just use 2 boards and 4 sails for the whole competition season (or 2 or 3 seasons for me), including training/freesailing and for all the spots they compete at? Anytime a rider wanted or needed to change gear, it would cost some serious amount of points. Outside of the competition season they would be allowed to use different gear for testing/development.
End users suffer big consequences when gear breaks as well or when it does not cover all their needs. Maybe it is not what the PWA brands want and it is the reason why there are no such rules. But maybe it is time we should let them know? Let us know if you agree by giving a thumbs up or an angry face if you think this is not a good idea. Also, if you have any more thoughts on this, please let us know in the comments."