You are right Juri, the yachting world still thinks windsurfers are all 12
feet long and have retractable center boards with smallish sails like 7.4
and 6 m2. I like both sailing worlds and sail in both. Until the 70 cm
fins and formula boards came along, beating any performance yacht around a
course was almost impossible. Now for almost any sailboat to beat a Formula
board around a course would require the winds to be under about 9 knots,
provided the board is sailed by a top racer of course.

On another point, for all out fun and feel for speed, the now old Flying
Dutchman was a fun boat and plenty lively, but perhaps not in today's league
of high performance boats. Still, the FD in high winds was quite a thrill.
And as to the reference to sailboats pulling water skiers, there are more
than a few that can do that including a venerable old Mallory and Adams Cup
boat called the Flying Scot. I mention the Scot because these were raced
against M20's from time to time and I remember one collision. It seems the
Scot is like a flying tank (planes easily but is a big hull) and the M20 is
more like a china plate. These two boats came to together on a plane and
the Scot T-boned the M20, crushing it like an egg. That may be the only way
a Formula board (when powered up) would lose to a sailboat. No doubt our
Formula boards are the king of egg shells.

CI

"Juri Munkki" wrote in message
...
In article Andy Champ
writes:
WINDSURFER CLASSES CLASS D-PN WIND HC FOR BEAUFORT RANGE
CODE 0-1 2-3 4 5-9

Div II (SA = 6m2) SB-2 92.6 98.4 94.6 88.4 (85.1)
Div IIB (SA = 6-7m2) SB-2B 89.7 96.3 92.6 83.8 (82.0)
Div IIC (SA = 7m2) SB-2C 86.7 84.4 87.3

That puts the fastest boards about the same as a 470. faster than I
thought, but still not exactly world shattering.

Div II sailboards are from the early 1980s. Formula Windsurfing boards
can run circles around those, as long as there's enough wind, which
means about 8 knots minimum.

I'm not saying that they're the fastest thing out there of all
sailing vessels for a course...I'm just stating that the table
you have quoted is antiquated.

Formula boards go upwind pretty well. Not the best in terms of angle,
but very good speed, so the VMG is probably respectable. Local racers
seem to think that 49ers would be better in light winds, but formula
boards could win in medium to high winds. Even in medium to light
winds, it's very close and skill plays a huge part.

It's nice to see that a widely crossposted thread like this hasn't
ended up as a flame war - yet.

--
Juri Munkki What you see isn't all you get.
http://www.iki.fi/jmunkki Windsurfing: Faster than the wind.