THE PARADOXICAL NATURE OF THE BEAST
by Sam Moses, Senior Editor
From the day John Chao asked me if I would be interested in structuring and writing this annual board and sail test, back in May, I had some ideas about what needed to be done. I had read and considered the previous board tests, in both U.S. magazines, and found them full of holes, pitfalls and contradictions. No one has more respect than me for the technical knowledge and sailing ability of Ken Winner, who conducted tests for both magazines, but there were too many elements muddying the waters between his brain and yours. I had no illusions that any test, conducted as these are, could produce anything accurate when it came to rating the equipment.
The basic overall design of the test wasn't going to change: Guest testers come to Maui, sail the stuff and critique it. Which meant that even if all my own notions on how to achieve better printed results were good, and all of them were attainable, the part of the test that gets down to the nitty-gritty, the rating of the boards and sails, could never achieve accuracy or objectivity. The variables are infinite, the barriers insurmountable. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either dishonest or self-deceiving or just plain dumb. The best we can hope for is to get close, and not get anything wrong. In fact, I've stopped using the words accuracy and objectivity. Reality and fairness are merely the goals.
Specifically, the variables and barriers could be listed on and on. Generally, there are three of them:
1. Conditions. Unless you sail in the same spot where we're testing, our results won't be particularly applicable to you. We're not testing in the brutal chop of the Gorge, we're not testing in the flat water of Hatteras or Padre Island or Midwest lakes, we're not testing in the waves of Santa Cruz, San Carlos or even Hookipa, which is just up the road from here. If boards were cars, we'd be testing Buicks, Vipers and Miatas on the same track, and you don't drive them on the same roads.
2. Skills. They vary to extremes. The reason we have great sailors like Nevin Sayre as testers is to provide opinions for expert sailors. It's a good element, but it's not perfect-great sailors have likes and dislikes (not to mention body sizes) like anyone else. It might be better if we had a half-dozen pros and a separate ratings table for experts, but there are a lot of such "ifs" that are beyond our reach, for various reasons. As for the skills of the guest testers, we are not selective when we accept their money for the seven-day package. How can a person rate how well a board jibes, when he or she has trouble jibing any board at all? (The answer to that rhetorical question comes below.)
Furthermore, at an intermediate level, with sailors who don't sail regularly, skills grow within a week. Testers have asked if they can change their rating of a board or sail, after using it a second time. Of course they can, and they should be able to, but what does that say about the precision of any rating? Would they change it again, after a third session? Should everyone be required to sail something twice, or for at least an hour? Two hours?
Clem Wang, an Alta Vista software engineer and self-proclaimed Web hacker, put it best. "It's really hard to adjust to all this different equipment we're sailing every day, and it takes time. The second time I sail something, it always feels better than it did the first time."
3. Subjectivity. Already, I've seen how wildly it varies. The RRD 265 TwinTip, a perfectly symmetrical freestyle board, according to its literature ideal for small onshore waves like we have here, was rated by its first five sailors like this: two absolutely loved it, one was generally turned off by it, one despised it, and the final guy found that it made everything easy as claimed, but was unexciting. So how do you attach a numbered rating to that? It would be downright perverse to average the loves and hates and give it a "fair." And what do those opinions say about the board? Not much. They only say something about the sailors. The important thing is what they say to you: Before you consider buying such a board, you should know whether or not you like the characteristics of a freestyle board in general.
I knew these three things were true before I accepted this assignment. Nonetheless, l believed that a great test, full of information you've never gotten in a test before, more useful and with better guidance than you've ever gotten before, could still be conducted and written. Nothing I've seen in the first two weeks here has changed that. In fact, what I've seen-the fantastic access to information-has only reinforced it.
John Chao has privately billed this test as being like a Woodstock for Windsurfing. Forgive his hype, he's just an excitable guy. But if it is a Woodstock, what you're going to get is mostly an analysis of the sheetmusic from the musicians, some of whom are superstars. Don't cover your eyes. After that, you'll hear the music as played by our pick-up garage band of amateurs. Cover your ears.
Our format will deal with all this. Among other meatier things, it will contain separate brief input from our staff, which has the advantage of more time with the equipment, not to mention the consideration of all the other opinions. The ratings themselves will be based on the subjective, imperfect input from our guest testers, who are sailors of real-world ability. Their evaluations of the boards and sails may not be true to the performance capability of that equipment, but they are true to their experience on it. That's the reason their ratings are valid, even if they aren't accurate or objective. It's the paradoxical nature of the beast.
We are not going to back away from rating boards and sails, at least not altogether. We are going to minimize the extent and importance of those ratings, however, while attempting to maximize the quality of them. And we're going to present them with an honest, realistic and healthy disclaimer. In the end, we believe it will be better for you this way.
It's important that you realize this. That you don't walk into your dealership and buy a board or sail just because American Windsurfer rated it a 4.5 out of 5. Our competitor may want that power, because it gives them leverage with the manufacturers. We do not want that power, because it's not good for you, and what's not good for you is not good for the sport. What we want is the power to inform, not so much to judge. Only you can do the judging.
When our test finally appears in the magazine, we hope that's what you'll get out of it.
Photo: Tester Annie Cowherd with a Randy French ride.
More about Sam Moses:
