High wind foiling with big sails is not for the faint hearted. The 2019 Catalunya Costa Brava PWA World Cup saw some of the wildest professional wind foil racing to date as sailors battled raging Tramontana winds. On the flip side, the opening day of the event saw some of the lightest winds yet encountered for professional foil racing and then, later on in the event period, for the first time in the PWA, the sailors competed in slalom foiling. The event put the sailors on the edge of foil performance in a variety of conditions; John Carter asked the pros their opinion of the limits for foil racing being explored to such extremes?
The positive about the range of conditions we faced was that it is actually really difficult to tune your gear without this huge wind range. Then you have to find the extremes, which is new to all of us. I only received my sails the day before Japan, so I am still getting used to tuning them. Nobody ever tried to go out with an 8.0m in 40 knots before. Prior to the high wind race we were all just trying to figure out what we could do to cope. I think it was super awesome that we raced in those conditions. It was very good to find the limits and I think we even went a touch over. I went on a 7.8m and it was just ‘man up’ and go. We learned so much from the first race to the last race. It was already a big difference in our sailing. Next season when we know we need to compete in those conditions we will be trained up for it and looking much better. I used a smaller front wing and raked the back wing to give as little power as possible. It was definitely scary. I was one of the few guys who didn’t crash and that was basically because I saw them all going down and decided to take it super easy and not injure myself. I lost some places doing that, but I wanted to survive and knew it was not the time to push hard. The light wind conditions were also tough, I am 90 kilos so it is hard to get up on the foil and beat the RS:X guys who are pumping all the way up. That is the other extreme, you need to get on the foil as quick as possible in such light conditions.
ANTOINE ALBEAU
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