These freeride sails are included in the test:
Freeride: The golf class of windsurfing. Glide off easily and cruise carefree over flat water - some faster, others more leisurely. A sleek jibe to turn round - one freerider has already mastered it, the other is still honing the right technique. Every now and then you'll see a little chop hop. Is that freeride? Whichever way you look at it. In any case, freeride is the most popular and broadly diversified discipline in windsurfing.
Sail Guide freeride sail 6.9 - 7.3
And this is also reflected in this test group: here you will find everything from slightly toned-down race sails to more powerful freemoving sails. Perhaps that's the best way to describe it: Even after the first day, our testers with a freestyle background blindly reached for different candidates during the lunch break than those who used to race slalom. One of them put on the GPS watch and the other carved through a few 360s for fun or even started doing air jibs.
Two-tier society
It was obvious to divide this group into two classes to make the purchase decision easier for you. After all, the seller doesn't offer a Golf R with 320 hp and sports suspension in the same breath as the silver, comfortable 1.6 with a diesel engine. This split group also came about because the original plan was to test performance-orientated freeride sails with seven bats. However, we soon realised that not all manufacturers offer this type or two types of freeride sails. Ezzy, for example, limits the camberless freeride range to a six-batten sail. And Severne only offers the NCX seven-batten sail and the Gator, which belongs to the freemove class. In addition to the tested E_Pace SLS, Duotone also offers a standard E_Pace which, despite having an identical cut, should also have different riding characteristics due to the different material equipment.
So not all brands - like Neilpryde or Naish - have two freeride sails in their programme. However, if you find the Speedster or the No Cam Freerace too sporty, for example, the Neilpryde Ryde or Naish Sprint are alternatives from the freeride class with six batten, which would probably fit well in the blue group. In the end, we had very different concepts in the test. It was all the more exciting on the water.
Flat vs. profiled, six battens vs. seven battens
But even on land it is clearly visible. Ten different sails. Five of them with minimal to only moderate shape on the battens, i.e. a pre-shaped profile that is always present (even without wind pressure). While Duotone, GA and Loftsails are almost flat in this class and offer a correspondingly first-class off, Ezzy and Sailloft continue with a slightly more pre-shaped profile, but these two six-batten sails do not look nearly as "racy" as the candidates on the other side. The five sails mentioned above, which can be pulled very well to acceptably flat, are therefore more manoeuvre-friendly and are more on the soft, dampened side, have been marked in blue as classic freeriders in the score overview.
The five race-tuned models, which have a lot of shape on the battens, are stabilised by seven battens without exception and are launched with a more rigid profile due to a lot of looseness in the leech, are marked in orange. Point-7 sets the standard in this class with a focus on speed and performance with a sail that looks like a real racer, where the camber has simply been forgotten. Gunsails, Naish, Neilpryde and Severne line up somewhere behind with a highly visible and, above all, rigid profile. This orange class is also the one that provides an overall harder, more direct ride on the water.
Concept-dependent trim
A fundamental conspicuous feature of this test was that the sails stabilised by seven battens, which are generally more tightly tuned, are significantly less sensitive to trim than the candidates with six battens. While most of the classic freeride sails labelled blue are often trimmed back depending on the wind range (especially on the outhaul), the racy sails from the orange class are often only hooked in at the back and thus cover a fairly large wind range. The fact that this is largely due to the number of battens and that it is not possible to clearly distinguish between our two groups is confirmed by the border crosser from GA, which is the only seven-batten sail in the classic group (blue) that stands out with a large range in one trim.
Masts: RDM vs. SDM and carbon content
Due to a parallel mast test (80 vs. 100), we decided to compare this group on the ideal masts requested from the manufacturers and to dispense with the 80 per cent restriction. Only Ezzy, Sailloft and Severne used reduced diameters in sizes 6.9 to 7.3. All other candidates were mounted on SDM masts.
From their beginnings in wave sails - considered very robust due to their greater wall thickness - the RDMs are slowly creeping into sails of around seven square metres, even in lengths of 460. The test shows that this works perfectly well and makes the sail particularly easy to handle. Read in surf 7/2024 how much and whether there are any losses with an 80 per cent mast!
Equipment, features and details
The fact that freeride sails largely dispense with additional reinforcement and mesh materials for weight reasons cannot be said across the board in this group. Ezzy and Loftsails even go to the start with full lattice, while Sailloft also reinforces with thick fabric, a long protector and lots of X-Ply. Gunsails uses the "Re" in its name to signalise that recycled PET bottles have been used. The materials are not at all conspicuous - apart from the fact that the top area is shiny on one side and not on the other - but at 5.28 kilograms it is the heaviest sail in the test. Duotone and GA-Sails stand out with large areas of white laminated mono film, while Neilpryde and Point-7 also rely on little grid and a lot of mono film, but colour it darker. On the Severne NCX, which is also less reinforced, the wide, three-part luff track catches the eye and contributes to the racy overall impression. On the Naish, the strongly flared outhaul with a solid cut-out is striking, which in combination with the already narrow cut sail ensures a boom length of only 190 centimetres.
The test grades of the freeride sails
Type recommendation freeride sail No Cam
Just as diverse as the sails in this group are the types of surfers targeted, for whom freeride sails are a good fit. From beginners to dedicated hobby racers, there is a suitable sail for almost everyone. The descriptions will tell you whether the sail is exactly right for you, but you can find a preselection here.
Look into the blue groupif you are an intermediate rider or simply looking for a manoeuvre-friendly, classic freeride sail. You are probably surfing on an all-round freeride board and you are not particularly interested in top speed with maximum overpowered surfing anyway, but rather in easy handling. Nevertheless, you can also find sails that are also really fast.
Take the orange group if you want to speed in a performance-orientated manner and are on the edge of becoming a freeracer. In other words, the power jibes are right and you want to accelerate with a large sail even in strong winds. However, you can confidently do without heavy, unwieldy camber sails and extreme slalom boards. The scores alone show that these sails show their strengths when fully powered up (top speed potential). They usually offer a very wide wind range in one trim, without having to tighten anywhere. But even in this discipline, there are six-batten sails that can do the same.
The freeride sails in the individual evaluation
Click to go to the individual ratings
