Site is up on Wingsails

Is he also MW sails?

Is he also Nelson Foils?

I thought it was funny that he was bagging experts, like Professor Mark Drela who I'd quoted earlier, and then ranting on about how a computer programme would show why a wingsail was better. The irony is that the very computer programme he was talking about was initially developed by the same Prof Drela that Stepan was insulting, but Stupan obviously didn't realise it.

There's something very strange about a lot of wingsail creators. They insist that just about every other sailor and rig designer is a moron for not realising that wingsails are the way to go and they use very superficial knowledge about rig design. They tend to be pretty poor at sailing, which seems to be related to their insistence that some sort of supposed aerodynamic "perfection" is more important than real-world factors. I guess the fact that they don't learn from experts is also part of the reason they are bad sailors.

Whatever they do, the wingsail weirdos tend to fall into the same pattern - they do a website insulting lots of people and ignoring the lessons of a century of earlier wingsails, they make lots of big claims, and then they adamantly refuse to do anything as simple as turning up to a race to show how fast their rig is. They must surely know, deep down, that their rigs don't work as they claim but somehow they turn that into anger directed at everyone else.

The guys who design wingsails that work (and in some situations obviously they work beautifully) are very different - much more open and practical and much more interested in praising conventional rigs and earlier wingsails than in abusing them.

I like the idea that rocket science is easy which belies the adage! Its rocket engineering that is tough and I would imagine that any system that has to deal with turbulence is incredibly difficult... including sail design.

The Russians have hacked our Democracy Windsurfing!

Well boys n girls theres something for everyone!!! The sayers the nayers n even the players. Check the vid n watch this debate rage again....

IMO the MW sail would rock as a hydrofoil sail. good locked in shape and a luff tube which doesn't fill with god knows how many kilo's of water.

Thank you for commenting on 100% MWSails customer satisfaction. We have received 8 comments and all 8 of the comments are negative. Please understand that you need to be the one who actually used MWSails in order to be considered as a valid comment on MW performance. If you know some people in the States with negative experience on MW Sails you would have already told them about this discussion and they would have commented already. Because nobody is commenting I form an opinion that all the negative comments here are not result of MW Sails use. Sometimes, you asked for a free sail to test in exchange for a positive review and you did not get a free sail. You feel ignored because you think you should be getting free sails for review but the manufacturers are ignoring you. I have seen comments here with demands to MW Sails to ship free sail for testing. Considering the cost of sail as low as $800 I do not think it is the money that makes you permanently negative towards to MWSails. I think you do not like MW Sails because MW Sails does not know how good you are in windsurfing. My suggestion is instead of talking how good you are just post a video showing that you can windsurf.

hey XYZ: this is not about how much i suck at windsurfing - which i do
this is more about the "newspeak" coming from you and MW sails
personally i do not need to see a professional sailor on your sail(s) to be convinced
some of those dudes can sail ANYTHING
how about a respected sail designer like Barry Spanier, Bruce Peterson, David Ezzy, Monty Spindler, Ben Severne (too many to list) ??
if one of those designers confirmed this design had merit and why
you get my vote
up to now - you are losing us ALL - ONCE AGAIN
bonne chance mon ami !!

The IWS yacht has all the usual production wingsail trademarks - it generates publicity, it involves what appear to be bogus trials*, it makes big claims, and the backers stay about a million miles away from actually turning up to an event to prove the claims.

The IWS guy has done OK in some boats (and poorly in others) and lives in an area with lots of other boats. The sail has been around for years now. Why not just get out onto the racetrack and prove the claims? The vid shows the sort of overblown hype that is endemic with these rigs, like the bit where the guy sits on the stern and the caption is "user friendly". C'mon, it's light winds and flat water - you could do that with any rig. The clip shows nothing, so why pretend it does?

Why keep on assuming that conventional sails are ** devices created by idiots? Why not respect conventional rigs enough to assume that they do their job damn well and that they are designed the way they are because that's the best way to do them?

The point is not to be critical about the wingsail, but to be positive about the conventional sails. The conventional sails are not bad designs and if people are going to imply they are inferior, they should simply prove it rather than trying to win the Talk It Up Cup.


* They reckon they trialled it against a Laser. The pic on the website shows the 8m2 wingsail alongside a standard Laser with 7m sail that is being sailed very poorly - not enough vang, not enough cunno, not enough mainsheet, way too much heel, and an ageing sail. So the Laser they used as a yardstick would have been several minutes slower than a well-sailed Laser. The wingsail was newer and bigger and the boat was being sailed flatter, which is critical in a Laser. In short, the available information shows that the test was completely unfair.