YellowHelmet forum posts in last 60 days

It is a difficult balance between warm and loosing grip and strength / good grip and strength, so thin but cold.

I also realize it is a personal thing, but I guess a minority (10 %) of my friends just use 1 or 2 mm full gloves without any problem, regardless of the size of the hands, although smaller hands and fingers may make it more difficult.

Most windsurfers I know have problems with the gloves.

I also think wingfoiling is easier with closed mittens or lobster mittens just pulling a bar or ropes down, than windsurfing of windfoiling holding a horizontal boom that requires more feeling, dexterity what they describe in German as Fingerspitzengefühl, which is exactly the thing I don’t feel anymore when my fingers get cold and are painful.

Sometimes I get cold, my hands start to hurt a lot but when I go on the pain suddenly disappears and I can go on, but sometimes the pain stays.

Last winter I really experimented a lot :

- Latex, nitril and vinyl chirurgical gloves. Not warm enough. Then trying double layers, mixing all kinds.

- Adding too big oversized open mittens to keep the wind away.

- Playing piano on the boom for blood circulation.

- Shaking hands down to get the blood to the fingers.

- Alternating palm up and palm down.

- Blowing on the finger tops during pause or during windsufing.

- Using 2 tubes to blow warm air in the gloves. I found a good way of connection the 2 tubes to the gloves. Not too bad, but not perfect.

- Pouring hot water from thermos during pause.

- Chemical warmers in a zip sack don’t work because they need air.

- The reusable warmers are too bulky and big.

- Rooster Hot Hands with titanium 0,5 mm liner : to slippery inside.

- I’m sure I forgot some.

- Off the shelf ION Hybrid Gloves 1+2,5 where the “best” in my opinion grip/warm. The water enters immediately because these are like thicker leather summer gloves but they keep relatively “warm” if it is not too cold about 8 °C.

- My personal favorite : GripGrap Merino liners, the smallest possible, with the smallest black nitrile gloves (like for working on a bicycle) over it, then the wetsuit, and to close the opening between wetsuit and gloves : an extra large super strong condom, cut the top of and peel over the opening. Sometimes at the end of the day the nitrile glove is open without realizing it. I guess it good for grip because the merino between the fingers let it squeeze the fingers close to each other (cf the hammer grip).

What I have not tried yet :

- The fully closed mittens or the lobster style mittens.

- Claw gloves or mittens.

- Grease on my hands inside the gloves. I think it will slip. Like the ocean swimmers that grease their body.

- The heating cream for muscles.

- Electrical heated gloves.

- Zippo hand heater.

So this winter I was thinking experimenting with super slim booms and/or booms without cork or grip.

Would the long periods of cold be on the long run bad for our health and arthrosis ?

Determined to solve this enigma.

jn1 said..
Hi YH. I know what you mean. I have the same issue with gloves. I have Carpal tunnel syndrome, I find the skinny booms work for me too. The problem with booms is they are built for 85 kg guys, and thin booms flex too much for them. So there is only so much thin'ness they can get while still being functional. Good luck finding something. I measured my thin booms. My 2017 Chinook RDG is 27mm, and Philn complained that this model was a wet pool noodle some years back. So, I got his recommendation (I needed a backup wave boom anyway), and that was a 2021? Goya Carbon Skinny, which is 28.5mm (I'm measuring using my verniers BTW), and I am not a fan of it, because it is slightly thicker, and my Chinook is so nice. But with me, after a dozen summer seabreeze sessions on wave gear, my arm muscles tone up, then I'm golden for big speed gear. But, during winter, I should do what a lot of guys do here - go to the gym. Sails in winter here are few and far between. Work gets in the way of that most of the time. Had two golden sessions this month at a sweet speed strip, but got wasted due to fitness.

There is a chemical you can use to remove the cork from booms. But, I can't think of it. I don't want to say acetone. That strips everything.

28,5 mm is quite thick, or let's say not slim.

Nearly all slim wave booms are 26,5 mm including the grip and the tailend is most of the time 20 mm (by the way I exchanged the tailends from Gaastra, Duotone EPX and (some) Severne).

However Chinook has about 19 mm tailend.

This summer I measured all the booms I could find.

I’m using a Slingshot Wizard 114 liter with W103 mast and PTM926 (about 1200 cm2) and the 400 stabilizer, which I like.

This summer on holiday I rented a windfoilboard with a smaller frontwing a Duotone Aero Free 1000 cm², aspect ratio 6,8 which I liked for going a bit faster.

Changing frontfoil and/or stabilizer is much faster than rigging a new smaller sail when the wind picks up and also boosts the speed.

Although I like the PTM926 I was thinking going smaller to Sabfoil 909 (about 1000 cm²) or even Sabfoil 808 (around 800 cm).

On the other hand I have the 3 smaller stabilizers of Slingshot I have not really used.

I was asking myself would the 360, 340 and/or 325 stabilizer have about the same effect on a 1250 cm2 frontfoil as a 1000 cm2 of 800 cm2, or is this quite different.

I was told much experimenting is possible with stabilizers.

I guess I’m a bit lazy for changing gear, especially on sea where it takes me a half an hour to get through the shore break.

Any thoughts ?