PIERRE MORTEFON
When the wind picked up it was one of the scariest races of my life! It was super dangerous because we were all on too big equipment relative to the wind strength. Before the final it was fine, but the wind picked up another 10 knots which made a huge difference. The racecourse was quite small and everybody was close together. It is only the beginning of foil racing for a lot of the guys. For me it was dangerous. I checked the footage after the race and on the video it looks like it was 12 knots but on the course it was 25 knot gusts and I was scared and over my limit.
I raced on the same foil as I would use in 6 knots and I did not have time to change to my 7.7m. I was way overpowered. We just received a new big foil sail for light winds but when the wind picks up we go back to the normal slalom sails. If we want to race in lighter winds you need a softer sail and something easier to pump. Now we have a Fanatic board we developed this winter which is 91cm wide and almost square in the back. The main objective is to plane early and point upwind. That was the goal when we developed it. I think for reaching you don’t need such a big foil board. It is important to have the width in the tail to give you comfort. I did not enjoy the race! For me we clearly overlapped into slalom racing conditions and we should have switched to slalom before that race. In my opinion foiling should be for 6-12 knots, any more you need to switch to slalom. When I jumped back on my slalom gear I got my smile back!