Kombat 107

[Jean-Marc]

GEM wrote:
You've gotten terrible advice here. The K97 was the right call to match the C133 (and you did good). Jumping down to a K87 from a C133 is too big a jump (from ~72 down to ~58 cm width is too big, an 8 cm gap is better).

GEM,

From a 65 kg rider experience to somebody my weight, I have no problem to toggle back and forth between a Kombat 86 (59 cm wide) with 6.9 sail/30 cm fin combo and a HS105 (77 cm wide) with 8.2 sail/32 cm fin combo during the last 15 months of practice. I would appreciate to learn why you think a 8 cm wide gap would be better than 18 cm ? I'm also curious to know your weight.

Cheers !

JM

[GEM]

I thought I posted a reply.

I'm about 73 kg.

I've no doubt you can make the switch, but the difference in planing width is huge and I suspect you're a skilled sailor that can accomodate to big gaps (in your case, about 25% in width). I can do it too, and have. But the original post was from a relative beginner - bad scenario to advise big gaps. It's much better to let newcomers have smaller less challenging gaps, because the real determinant of how long they're windsurfers is how easy or difficult it is to progress.

As per the extensive discussion with Ola, there's a lot of factors and width is only one. But this person needed advice for their sailing level, and I personally think they will be a LOT happier on more closely sized boards than on what you are using (because a much higher percentage of jibes will be dry). On the other hand, an advanced sailor such as yourself will often ride a board to it's limit, even past the builder's rating, and by then be well within the range of a much smaller and different board. That works too.

So for the former, I'd recommend about a 12-15% difference in width (so that the sensations during the jibe have some semblance to the larger board), and the latter can do whatever they want to as they are doing something totally different.