How important are smooth foils

The thing you have to remember with the foils and the hull is the more perfect the finish the more effective the foils will be. A boat builder once tried explaining this to me by saying a chip or bit of damage will have a similar effect to weed in that it will disturb the flow of the water over the foils which will create more drag and slow you down (obviously not to the same extent as weed but every little counts), so anything you can do to improve this will be beneficial.

I agree with that. You need to get everything up to the best standard possible weather it may be your boat or sailing skills, however don’t make the mistake of thinking “I don’t need to do that its only a small thing” because all the little things add up to a big thing, bringing you foils up to a good standard may gain you a few boat lengths and in a close race could make all the difference.

Yeah sailing skills are definitely the thing to worry about first but once you get your sailing up to scratch, good boat preparation will win you races.

By being very careful! Actually, it probably makes more difference with our laminar-flow sections because there's a tangible benefit to keeping everything laminar, whereas with a turbulent-flow section (which I assume the production boats have) there's much less downside. But a good 14 crew is super-careful with the foils, and is willing to get very wet in order to avoid pranging them. If you sail in with the board half-way up and jump out when the water's still 4 feet deep you should be absolutely fine. At an unfamiliar venue, use other crews who have already jumped out to gauge the depth.

We do also do a fair bit of sailing in Chichester Harbour, where running aground is much more likely and can happen at considerable speed. Options here are to take less risks when travelling at speed or where you believe the bottom may be hard, and to pay close attention to other boats! It is often better to be twin wiring when you hit the bottom because the board only has to absorb the momentum of a relatively light boat (helm and crew go round the forestay). But 14 boards are pretty well-built so even a big crash just tends to wipe out the bottom couple of inches, which are relatively easy to reconstruct (an hour or two's work).

As an aside, the Ovi 1 14 was (some time ago) sold with a stock 49er board, which was pretty useless. Just about everyone threw it in the attic and had a decent one built, and it made a massive difference!

Cheers,

Dave