EFFICIENT DIRECT LIGHTER
With the 2016 Vapor we had our most succesful season in the PWA slalom in recent years. Ross Williams did his first podium in the final Slalom ranking and archived the best result of his carrier, the same did Taty Frans finishing 6th, placing two Ga Vapors in the top 10 of the most hard fought windsurfing competition series in the world.
Also the rest of the team placed great, with Cedric, Sebastian, Ben and Antoine all in the top 20 and Ethan Westera becoming Youth World Champion. For the 2017 model we focused on improving this race-winning design even more. We improved the low end performance to create a more powerfull Vapor. We divided the range in 3 size groups: the two bigger sizes 9,3 and 9,6, most light wind oriented, the central sizes 8,6 to 7,1 more allround oriented, and the 6,4 and smaller sails more high wind oriented. We found that the new foot geometry and the outline with no cross batten concept worked best for the 2 biggest slalomsizes (9.3 and 9.6), while for all the other sizes (5.4 to 8.6 and 10.0 to 12.0) the Cross batten still had an edge.
Gaastra greatly increased the width of the mastsleeve and the volume in the front part of the sail by increasing the shape in the triple internal luff panels, both in the bottom and also higher up with . With that they drastically incredted the drag of the sail. The sleeve width proportionally reduces as the sail size decreases. We worked on having a more connected leech twist so to not loose any little piece of wind energy. The rotation of the cambers is also much smoother and the acceleration out of the jibe is amazing.We opted for a small camber at the foot batten to help for this, while the two central big ones and the top small one remain the same, sizes 6.4 and below are exclusively equipped with the smaller camber. The top 4 batten pockets are integrated inside the panel overlap for a more simmetric, efficient, direct and lighter construction. A simplifiedpanel layout with less panels and seams drastically reduces the overall weight.
Key Features
- All new constant curve luff curve New high-aspect-outline Improved
- POSI-LEECH with new dynamic cut-out for more power and agility.
- Inset clew geometry for reduced boom length
- New Integrated-Batten-Technology improves efficiency, response and rig weight
- New Lightweight performance panel-layout for a maximum strength to weight ratio
