54 -
I had a couple of hours on it yesterday. It was chilly and quite squally - most riders were on 10-12, I opted for an 8m and had lulls which brought everyone off, as well as squally which had everyone fighting, so I did get a good chance to try it in pretty much it's entire windrange. That said, I did not get to the position where I couldn't march upwind, so not entirely sure the super low end - for this you need under 10 knots and a bigger kite...
I did have quite a few runs at full power and speed, and I have to say that the board did exceptionally well, a vast improvement here...
Certainly under power and aggressive rail bite this is by far the smallest feeling sector so far - feels much smaller and smoother than the V2 52, and a lot slippier through the water on the 3 fin setup. From the vid you get a feeling of how the carving has changed. I have complete impunity of rail to rail which is something you had to proactive with on the 4 fin V2's, now I can just turn my brain off and concentrate on what I'm doing not how I'm doing it.
It made for a board that is much easier for messing around under power; jumping, turning on waves, general impulsive and flowing riding was much easier. It's also lightning quick on a reach.. the cross wind speed and control is way higher and in this it feels almost like a mutant (for those for you that ever spent any time on these in the early days..). I like the critical load and stability you can get on it just before takeoff and in this it's the first sector that I would consider jumping full power.
If it has an Achilles heel compared to the sectors we now it would be upwind and early planing, but in all honest, though I felt that it would easily be outpointed by a 60, and would not have the initial float to power away from a standstill in super light winds I think that the efficiency of it is excellent, and so with a bit of work it will go a lot earlier that the average super wide twin tip, in this it's still a sector. You can ride it flat and point it, but the fins and tail are smaller, so they need a critical boardspeed before they come online, and this is higher than the bigger boards, so in that you do have a compromise. This will be less of an issue for lighter riders though, and aside people who, like me who enjoy winding these things up to full speed, the smaller fins and tail will be a real asset.
The last 20 mins of the session I stuck a set of quad (non swept) fins in from an older sector. The fins had a LOT of cant, similar to the V1's and the effect they had on the board was startling.. Upwind ability and slow speed drive went up massively, but so did the drag, and the board lost some of it's off wind efficiency. Carving ability fell off a cliff, which I thought was surprising, that said they are older style fins...
For me it's tri fin for now (just as they come as stock). Looking forward to trying the 60 and the 66; a big difference between the V3 and the V1/V2 which were marginal improvements..
Vid of the session;
http://vimeo.com/39572731