Sam wins the October long weekend speed challenge at Lake George using his new Hot Sails Maui 6m GPShttp://blog.hotsailsmaui.com/2011/10/sams-speed-win-in-south-australia.html
Me thinks is all down to the skill of the bloke hanging onto the boom.
80% sailor, 10% kit and 10% how its rigged/tuned.
I reckon AA or Dunks would be quicker than most of us on freeride or wave kit
Its more like 30% sailer 20 % gear 50% flat water
You can get good speeds on crap gear in perfect wind / water conditions.
Wow, where do you guys get these figures from?
I reckon its 47.32% sailor, 72% gear, 54.2% flat water, and 20% maths ability.
How would you work this out? I haven't seen too many people at Sandy Point with old/outdated gear. Does that mean they are crap sailors?
I personally did 35 knots on a board I bought off of ebay for a little bit more than $100, with the fin it came with. Was it flat water, sailor ability or great gear? It was at Sandy Point, so you could argue that flat water had just a smidgin to do with it.
Point? I don't really have one...
I think the point is if every thing was the same and you just changed the sail or the board you will see a difference. No matter how good a sailor you are or how flat the water is if you go out on a Div II board with a soft triangle sail in 20 knots any reasonable sailor on reasonable slalom gear will go faster than you.
Perhaps Sam Doeke could say something about it himself? After reading this thread I had a look at his results over the last few years and clearly he is an exceptional windsurfer, cracking 40 knots and windsurfing over 400 kms in a day. Gear has to play an important part of the results too, otherwise all the top windsurfers would be competing on any old gear they found lying around. There seems to be a lot of discussions on this forum about fins, boards, sails etc.
Also it has been described these were the winning results in a competition. If so he must have won against other windsurfers in similar conditions. Perhaps the sail had something to do with Sam's success? Anway its great to see a new sail brand coming into the Australian market.