North Sails Warp F2009 Unveiled

The latest North Sails offering is introduced to the windsurfing world ahead of its 2009 release.

The Warp F2009 introduces a revolutionary way of putting profile into the sail. We call this the INDEPENDENT.SHAPING.CONCEPT. Instead of having one shape for the whole sail (body and sleeve) Kai now works with 2 separate (independent) shapings for the sail body and the sleeve. Even though this means twice the design time/effort for Kai the advantages of this shaping concept are a break-through in sail design as it enables Kai to also create different tensions of these 2 parts of the sail:

The second thing we have focused on during the development of the new Warp is to reduce the weight as much as possible. The design team has achieved this by reducing the number of battens from 8 to 7 in all sizes up to 7.0. In addition we have replaced the heavy XPly materials in the head and around the boom area with lighter (printed) monofilm. In total we were able to reduce the weight by apprx. 15% compared to the Warp F2008.

To sum up the new Warp was designed to match the new PWA 6-3 rules which require that the sail covers a greater wind range. Through the INDEPENDENT.SHAPING.CONCEPT we could increase the wind range by 25% compared to last year’s Warp. In addition the sail is much less physical to sail due lower sleeve tension and the reduced overall weight.

The North Sails Warp F2009 will be available in March 2009.

PWA / Andrew Buchanan