PhilSWR said...
The board (my only board) is 116 lt, 250 cm long and 65 cm wide, so it's got a bit of volume- and surface area- for a bigger sail. It plans pretty easy, just needs a touch more push in those light days to get it up and skidding. Once up it's sweet.
That's because planning in marginal conditions is a metastable condition with hysteresis
Getting a board to plane is like pushing a barrel up a hill. Once you reach the top of the hill (the board is unstuck and planning), it becomes much easier to go faster and retain the plane. And once you are planing, you can stay in this state even if the wind drops off to levels that would have never pushed you onto a plane in the first place. That's why you often see sailors stuck in slog-mode, while other sailors with smaller kit and possibly less experience plane past them - they were just lucky to have gotten on a plane earlier. Experienced sailors usually bear downwind, pump the sail and push the board forward in marginal conditions, in order to coax it onto a plane.
