. unfortunately 
Neil pryde would have to have the biggest payroll of all sails brands. Something must fuel the salaries of the people who do things like R and D. This cost to the business is quite possibly reflected in their prices and not all other windsurfing brands share such a balance within their business model, which cruels the pitch for competitive pricing.
When making such big, instant changes to a sail layout you're bound to miss the mark on many fronts. Point was they did it, with probably two guys and an email address for the prototype factory in China..
So while the Gen 1 Boxer may not have been amazing, it was still a notable sail, and farking cool.. The later ones before he left were better..
So to compare the 1st Boxer with the current Fly2 is unfair, you'd be best comparing the last Boxer to the first Fly.
But even this wouldn't be fair because the Fly was aimed at a different market, it would have been dumbed down so the the punter could sail it in a straight line..
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Another example then, the Skinny mast, you don't need a massive R&D budget to develop a RDM... Yet, how many years after everybody went to skinnys did it take for Pryde to even build one? And they still don't make Skinny specific sails...
And they don't even put the weights of their sails on the website.
the technology for printing on anything is already tried and tested and its a great idea in theory. The practicality of doing it would be a reduction in the brand (by having a million different printing options there is no standard look and feel to the product). The other issue that may pop up is a weight issue. Would you as a punter want a heavier sail?
Biggest move of the season though might be the fast breaking news that Carantoc will be moving from Mrs Macs to Four N'Twenty for 2012
Most important news for the season.......
in 4hrs I go from work mode to holiday mode
all else is irrelevant
OH GOD I would NEVER want to put sail weights on a website!
I think last year at Point-7 we got the factory to weigh our sails then wrote in a "blog post" only that our new race sails would be 1kg lighter ... turns out the guys in Sri Lanka measured wrong and they ranged from about 250-750g lighter. Literally got FLAMED all over our website for about 3 months with people calling us LIARS... hahaha. It's too complicated to be accurate because you are trusting the guys at the factory to weigh your sails, not you yourself. They might even be using cheap scales that aren't accurate!
The only way to really be accurate is to wait till the first production run gets in to stock at your head office and WEIGH THEM YOURSELF. But everyone wants the weights 3 months before production finishes to make a decision before they pre-order...arggghh.
That being said, we still took the risk and listed weights of our custom race sails - point-7.com/
5% of 3.43Kg is 171.5g not 17g
3430g x 0.05= 171
wieght is not everything! is 1/2 a kilo really worth sacrificing durability, especially when some wave sails from the big name brands are nearly a grand.
give me something that will take a beating! mind you i do eat sh!t a lot.
Weight is DEFINITELY not everything! It's quite possible to make sails that feel a LOT lighter in the hands without actually reducing the weight. The Boxer sails are a good example of this ... generally, more compact mast lengths and wider booms give the sail a much lighter feeling in the hands (obviously lot's more variables in there, but "generally" speaking).
How huch paint do they put on the prydes-
2 coats of undercoat,3 coats of colour then 2 coats of sealer /gloss?
I can't believe you think the printed graphics add significant weight.
Pryde simply uses thicker/heavier materials because they don't want warranty claims.Sails being returned cost them money and their shareholders want profit.
Wasn't JP using black tinted fibreglass which the customers just presumed was carbon?do they still?
Gaastra's new freestyle sail ,the PURE ,has lots of printed graphics. The pink on them fades very quickly and has nearly dissapeared after a couple of months.Does this mean that it gets significantly lighter and performs better with age?
