The Word from the Worlds

Photo curtesy - www.mundial-potrerillos.com.ar

Martin Berardo, ARG 5, missed out on second place because of a crash in Race 1, but still finished 5th overall. He was sailing an old Mistral Equipe, with a 48cm fin; he feels that if he could have found a 51cm fin it may have been even faster.
After many days’ training against Starboard’s Mariano (who apparently had to do a fair bit of work on his fin and centerboard to get his board up to winning speed) Martin had a great viewpoint on the way the boards compared.
“With light winds, between 7 to 9 or 10 knots, the Exocet was faster than Starboard or Equipe if we imagine that the boards are sailed by the same sailor. With less winds, like 5 knots, the difference is in the pumping, so we don’t have substantial differences” says Martin.

“With 10 to 15 knots, the three boards were very similar in speed. I think that maybe the Equipe was a little bit faster than the others, because of the weight (4 kg less than the others) and the larger daggerboards on the Exocet and Starboard. I think you don’t need 85 cm of daggerboard, I prefer a shorter board with a bigger area.”
“With more wind, 20 to 25 knots, the Exocet was slow against the Equipe and Starboard. The problem with the Equipe is that it starts to “fly” and roll over upwind. The Starboard goes very very well, and it doesn’t “fly”.”

The old IMCO with 7.4 did surprisingly well in previous events, but in South America they were well off the pace. “The only chance the Mistral IMCO with 7.4 sail has to win is with very light winds, because the sail is very good for hard pumping, but with other conditions I dont think the IMCO could go better than Raceboards.”
Martin says that the RSX lived up to its reputation, being competitive in planing conditions but lacking the all-round performance of the longboards.
“The RSX goes faster than the longboard between 15 to 20 knots. With more wind the RSX starts to “fly” on the upwind and spins out, while the longboards go really well. The one RSX that won with planing conditions was Paulon from Brazil, but the RSX went really badly in light winds. I think that a normal person in an RSX only has a chance from 15 to 20 knots.”

Martin also gave us a summary of longboarding in his region.
“In Argentina we used to have one of the best fleets in South America, and we also had one of the best fleets of Mistral in the world between 1996 and 2001/2, with Camau Espinola, Eduardo Garcia Velazco, Gonzala Costa Hoevel, Marcos Galvan and many more people. Since then my country has many problems with the economy and all the windsurfing has been down. Now it’s starting to improve.”
So, many thanks to Martin for taking the time to email LBWS. We’re currently trying to get responses from Starboard and Exocet, to get their side of the story.

For the official World’s website go to www.mundial-potrerillos.com.ar

For extended discussion check out the forum post