RS500??

wot?

Sense of humour is such a great test of character...

Probably why this site comes up lacking so much more than proper
adrenaline sport sites

But you would have thought folk who wear yellow wellies, sew beer mats
to their backside and/or sail in a boat called cherub, might at least be
able to spot the funny side of a given remark or post.

Whatever, back to RS500's

Yes is the answer to the question from the cove who wanted to know if
the new block made us faster- absolutely, without question, particularly
when we're riding fakie.. (Er that means on the tack when it doesn't feel
right to those who dont ride boards). In fact come to think about it its
actually on the regular tack, sailing to me is back to front, probably
because of the left handedness.

It's really wiered thinking still further whilst I'm typing, when I was trying
to helm and wire on that Musto, the regular, i.e left foot forward tack was
strongest, but sitting down and just hiking, its the opposite..

Damn that's another conundrum to think about, although I did have one
of those harken auot ratchet block thingies on the Musto, so that might
have made the difference..

So ignoring all that, yes, the RS500 is very crew weight sensitive
particularly in force 2-3, above and below that it doesn't matter as much
except for the obvious need for more weight when its breezy or to
possibly dump down to a smaller main, which we've yet to prove or
disprove.

We have found having a lot of slack on the lower wire shroud things gives
us a bit more depower and doesn't seem to bugger up the light wind
performance, but then how would we know until we can try it against
another identical boat.

A damn shame we couldn't get to the Nationals.

Well I'm not sure, I did wonder.

I dont even know how it came to pass that there were two sizes of sail.

I put it down to the fact the boat probably wasn't high enough
performance with the standard set, and/or it was aimed at the youth,
parent child market but when commercial reality struck they had to throw
the biggest rags they could on it to take on the likes of 29ers or whatever
else they percieved they were marketing against.

Either way it had nothing to do with my decision, I was just looking for a
modern board with one man sits the other wires and the centreboard
went up inside the hull like the 470 & 505 and it was the only choice.

I certainly didn't consider sailing a heavy washing up bowl around even
though it might on paper have seemed a better choice given the way our
beach trashes hulls.

I also knew, that most folk don't believe or even consider my views on
localised weather patterns, so I'd be able to do a bit of giant killing in it
eventually, once we'd worked out how to keep it from falling over..

Many a National Championship is lost by folk who think they dont
understand the weather

You can bear further away and oversheet downwind to depower a
windsurfer, and its the same kitesurfing, or it was before the advent of
sheetable kites with bridled leading edges.

But I guess with an assymmetric dinghy with the kite up, luffing or sheeting
out like a windsurfer is not an option, so there is only one choice.

Cool, so just to sound even more clueless, whats the difference between the feva and feva XL? is this where i've got the racing with the smaller set from.  Could always be just me for sure but wanted to check.