Advice on HSM Liquid and Smack

[Speedy_G]

I'm procuring sails for our windsurfing club use to replace aging Ezzy Freerides in the 6M-7.5M size range. Mostly they will be sailed in flatwater at Jericho and on occasion at Nitinat b&j for the bigger guys. Wondering if those who have sailed the Liquid or Smack can comment on the suitability of these models for this type of sailing (or any other in the HSM line up Bolt?). Any direct comparisons to Ezzy, Naish or Sailworks would be useful as we have experience with those brands.

Our main concerns are durability and reasonable weight/performance. HSM has offered to make the Liquid with x-ply panels to address durability. I am familiar with Superfreaks and I'm a fan of them up to 5.5M. Any larger and they seem hard to sail due to weight and 12 knot+ needed to fill the sail.

[duckbill]

Isailed a 6.5 smack in maui for a couple of days, it seemed light and powerful enough. This sail was a well used rental and still seemed in reasonable shape.

[downwind dave]

ive sailed a rental smack and liked it a lot. it was a 4.2 though. sounds like the Liquid might be more appropriate for where you guys are sailing. Hots are pretty tough, i still sail a '03 superfreak. I'd skip the Bolt, you only get 4 battens plus the freestyle sails are built pretty light.

[nanmoo]

Echoing Dave.. the smack and the fire are overkill for what you are going to use them for and probably have a bit less power than the liquid (but are both build super well). Get those liquid suckers in x-ply and they will be killer bomber awesome! HSM Army!

[downwind dave]

HSM Army!

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[GregK]

Not the kind of ad I would expect Jeff Henderson to allow published

[blackdogvan]

Not the kind of ad I would expect Jeff Henderson to allow published

Not even for Zee Jermans?

[Wingnut]

That would be a cover shot in Germany

[more force 4]

More like an 'uncover' shot. I wonder what they thought at Kanaha (isn't that same stump in half the beach shots ever made in Maui??)

[downwind dave]

ok, in order to find the story behind the pic, i googled up the following combination of key words: "hot" "man thong" "harness" "freak" .. I DO NOT recommend anybody do this. butt here is the scoop.


Posted by: Jeff | January 19, 2011 at 01:19 PM

there is a story behind it:
Last year on Maui we thought about a good Hot Sails ad. After a while we had the Idea of the attached ad. We had so much fun at the shooting and were kidding around. So I jumped into the Bikini as well and made the same pose as the girl.

We build the ad and send it to Windsurf Journal. They loved it so much, they put the original image on the cover and also on the poster of that issue.
http://windsurfing-journal.de/2010/10/2 ... ournal-14/
Now I didn´t have an ad anymore. To prevent people saying I am a sexist, I decided to take my own shot as the ad. So we had the cover, the poster and a full page ad. All the same image, but twice with a nice girl and one with me.

btw.: The girl is my fiancee.

Everybody understood the humor in that campain, we only had positive feedback. Yes, it is funny and since we do business in a fun sport segment, it´s all about fun. Right?!

Aloha,

Torben

--
Torben Sonntag
(Dipl. Geograph)
Hot Sails Maui
Rendsburger Landstr. 224
24113 Kiel

Tel: 0431-5916390
Fax: +49 (0)721 151 467 040

[more force 4]

That was a coffee-through-the-nose moment Dave! Thanks for daring to go there.

[Sandy Beach]

Thanks for the research, DWD, that's hilarious!!
Seriously though, I fully agree that we are involved in these wind/watersports for the fun lifestyle aspect of them, and I would like us all to continue to strive to keep them that way.
Great post and humourous morning break