Windsurfing 1.01 - Mast #2

Windsurfing Mast Carbon Content:

Masts are available in different percentages of carbon ranging from 15% carbon to 100% carbon. No mast is truly 100% carbon, as it contains fibers (carbon, fiberglass or Kevlar) mixed with resin to bond it all together. As a general rule, the higher the carbon content, the lighter the mast will be and the quicker it will respond to return the sail to its optimum position.

So which one do you choose? Good question. In our opinion, a beginner should generally look into either a 30% or a 50% carbon content mast depending on your sail size, your budget and your long term goals. Let’s look at things a little more into detail as this can be a slightly long winded answer.

Epoxy Masts: Many beginner packages are offered with a fairly cheap epoxy mast. If at all possible you should avoid these. They are heavy and not responsive and not what 99.9% of intermediate windsurfers are using to get the most out of their gear.

10-15% Carbon: Many beginner packages are also offered with these masts. But once again, they are pretty sloppy in terms of performance and not considered a long term investment. Generally as the individual improves they will quickly see the need to upgrade the mast to a more performant mast. They offer little noticeable improvement over an epoxy mast.

Now is the time that you have to think about what your long term goals are:

30-35% Carbon: These masts are good on budget and offer more bang for your buck than the first two options. However, your ultimate decision will be made from there.Let us presume that you have a 6.5m sail.

a) If you plan on eventually purchasing a smaller sail to match up with your 6.5m, then a 30% mast will do you just fine.

b) If you plan on eventually purchasing a bigger sail to match up with your 6.5m, then we would personally recommend a 50-55% carbon mast.

Here is why:

50-55% Carbon: Now is where we start to discuss performance in a mast. A 50-55% carbon mast is still reasonable on your budget, but offers better shape, response time and flexibility and lighter weight. This means that your sail will perform more in the way that it was designed to.

In the previous section, we said that it was important to think about your long term goals. This is because as your sail size increases, the importance of reaction time of the mast increases as well. We consider this carbon content mast a middle of the road type of mast, sort of like all-season tires, if you will.

It does everything in most conditions pretty well for the cost; which brings us to:

75% Carbon: You will notice significant differences in the performance of your rig with this carbon content. It gives your rig a lighter feel and decreases the reaction time to make the rig work more efficiently allowing the sailor to sail longer, and maneuver a little easier (depending on your level of expertise).

But are these differences enough to justify the extra money? In our opinion, it is worth the extra money if the extra few hundred dollars won’t break the bank and if your long term goals justify the expense. The positive aspects of this percentage of carbon are really much more noticeable on bigger sails, so if you are planning on going bigger than 6.5, then this would be the percentage to get.

100% Carbon: We don’t want to go into too much detail about 100% carbon masts as it concerns only a select few sailors who want to eek out that last little bit of performance and weight reduction from their rig. Although they are super-light masts and perform very well, they are pricy and not considered necessary for the beginner to intermediate sailor who is just learning the ropes.

Here is a visual description of what we mean by flexibility and sail shape.