wicka said..eppo said..
Well had plenty of wind today so could use a 3.8 on my 34 litre board. And up straight away. So its wind dependant for sure. That being said buggering around in marginal conditions has honed my technique.
ran into nathan today and he runs two boards - a tiny 28 litre thing for strong winds and a 50L ish prone for less wind. Thats all he needs at about 75kg with say a 5m. Harder to sink but the beauty being it rises much more easily in lighter winds. Of course hes more proficient than the average bear as well. Uses the usual squat method. Also ran into shannon larry foiler and he also has a 5 foot - 40-45 litre thingy to do the same thing and for the same reason
so i would say as long as you can just sink and hold it - it can work.
That's interesting eppo, what's Nathan's lower wind range in getting up on a 50L board?
I've spoken to Shannon before and he said his lower range is about 12knots on his 5m but he is super light and feel it would be the same for us to be using a 7m wing at 80kgs to get up in about 12 knots! Haha
This is very interesting indeed.
So could it be we have three categories of sinker boards, instead of just two?
(1) True sinkers, let's say <50% body weight in volume (<40L for 80kg person), what would be your prone board
(2) Sinker+, boards that can still be easily sunk, but are not yet "corky", and slightly more than what you'd use for a prone (40-45L for someone 80kg)
(3) Corks, let's say 50-70L which as discussed don't offer much advantage over a slightly volume negative board
Then outside the sinker category, you would have your "normal" lightwind board which would be somewhere 0-10% less than bodyweight, so 70-80L for an 80kg person.
So perhaps as discussed earlier, category 3 offers not a lot of advantage vs a slightly volume negative board, but perhaps a category 2 does offer advantage over a category 1? I guess the problem there is (at least with me) I wouldn't want to increase the L of my prone board, so it would mean getting another board :P
