The development of the Slash freestyle: a result of the continuous evolution from the PWA square!
Not because the freestylers are young and crazy, the development must be young and crazy! It’s wild! Wild in a sense of being crazy professional.
The freestyle discipline is getting very radical. The same PWA judges have decided to have heats with max 2 competitors on the water, and not 4 anymore: they are nowadays not able to judge more than one person at the time.
The speed, the perfection and the different variants on each new move, it’s so technical and important, that they need to stay focus and watch careful, in order not to miss a detail which would cause them a lot of trouble with one of the competitors. Winning a heat, it’s getting close to 0,01 points sometimes, and each detail comes crucial. The same detail the freestyle sail must go through the development.
There is the same amount of detail and millimetric work on a freestyle sail as all other sails, but we could compare to the studying of the project as complicated as a full cambered race sail.
As an example, our testers turn up with videos and photos to show how the sail deforms, or moves, or showing how the profile reacts during the different moves. Explaining what would need to be changed, or be different in those exact moments. The rig sails, the show you the difference between one proto and the other. They are almost fussier than a slalom rider. We love it!
The sail must follow their needs in that exact moment, to make them feel secure to be able to execute the move with the right timing and pressures.
We started the new project from the slash 3 versions ago. For zero18 each size has been taken singularly as each size is being used in very different conditions and the needs are very different. If you are looking for explosive power in light wind and big sails size, you are also looking for controllable power instead, in strong wind and smaller sizes. There was not one aspect that remained unchanged in each size. Small changes, important changes, to improve the balance of the features needed in freestyle: changes to keep developing towards the needs of a discipline, which never stops its evolution.
New size in the range is the 3.6! There is no more space to freestyle on a small wave sail!
Check out all the details on our new Slash by clicking here
