Windsurfing sailing guide: Everything you need to know about freeracing sails

While camberless freeride sails are primarily optimised for planing performance and easy manoeuvring, pure race slalom sails are traditionally reserved for regatta and speed specialists. However, because there is also a demand for high-performance and fast sails among hobby surfers, manufacturers have included freerace sails in their programme, which are positioned between the two types of sail, freeride and race slalom, in terms of their range of use.

Freerace sails should combine the characteristics of freeride sails (early planing, good manoeuvre handling) with those of race slalom sails (speed potential, control in strong winds).

Freerace sails are mainly available in sizes from 6.5 to 9.5 square metres and have the following characteristics.

Compared to freeride sails, freerace sails offer more control and centre of pressure stability in strong winds. This means you can ride longer with large sail sizes in strong winds and achieve a speed advantage over freeride sails. The prerequisite for realising this theoretical performance advantage is a suitable board and correspondingly higher sailing ability. Freeride sails only make sense in combination with boards that can be set to a far-out loop position (e.g. slalom, freerace, freeride boards). For example, if you put a camber sail on a board with a 3-loop setup, you will not be able to realise the theoretical performance advantage, as if you were to install a Porsche engine in a Golf without adjusting the chassis.

So if you still have problems jibing safely, don't get on well with outboard footstrap positions and sometimes need a little longer at the water start, you should steer clear of camber sails and prefer a normal freeride sail without camber instead. Why? Simply because freeride sails have noticeably poorer handling due to the camber and the wide mast pocket (which absorbs a lot of water and therefore weight) and the theoretical performance advantage can usually not be realised at all.

Ideal board type for this sailing group:Freerace boards, slalom boards, freeride boards

You can find the complete windsurfing sailing guide here