Relationships between the design and performances of sailboards

Abstract

The shapes and performances of the 175 most recently designed sailboards recorded by testers in different sailboard magazines are statistically correlated to establish whether shapes are in fact responsible for performances as claimed by designers and manufacturers. Different shapes are correlated with different aspects of performance, namely up-wind, reach, broad reach, light- wind performance, medium-wind performance, strong-wind performance and jibes. Statistical analysis by means of different stages of multiple regression showed that different shapes of board collectively contributed in some cases to explaining up to 59% of the variance between certain types of performance.