Stiff masts are best... until they aren't? What gives?

I don’t think we will… Guys that get free gear or are paid won’t drop the dirt on their sponsors. It will be similar to manufacturers. One wrong comment and they might lose sales.

Yeah I’m pretty straightforward. I won’t sugarcoat things which does sometimes upset the sensitive viewers… Maybe I should add an age restriction to my profile pic? I wasn’t firing any shots at Foiling NY, I still watch all his reviews…
I think an electric wake winch with scale would be better than a bungy though. That would give you the required force and speed needed to take off on different foils.
I’ve got plans to build a winch, but haven’t had the time!

I think mister Bennet’s is pretty small. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s somewhere around 70kg going by pics on Instagram.

Yeah Jezza, I appreciate it. It took me a minute to get your vibe but I like it. And of course you’re right, we won’t get sponsored guys likely. But a lot of good foilers aren’t sponsored though few have ridden as much gear as Hdip. He’s still our go to review guy and also must be the king of Craigslist to move all that gear.

I can still hope for honesty and back and forth discussion, right?

Three years ago when I started Project Cedrus my goal was to make a lighter/stiffer/stronger mast for guys who wanted an upgrade from aluminum. At the time, the solid carbon masts were even softer (because they were so thin). Turns out now my primary market is guys wanting to upgrade their expensive carbon masts with something stiffer for wing foiling. In something like foiling where your control input is critical to the response of the system, stiffer is ALWAYS better for both directional control and even pumping. I don’t know what more scientific data one would need. It’s the same reason high performance bikes, skis, cars, airplanes, etc. are stiff. It is the most efficient and quickest way to transfer control input to the system. In the case of beginners, who may not have the skills to “pilot” or “steer” complex systems, adding damping to the system can help. A soft mast would be the equivalent of damping. Damping is a complex topic, and you can loop up under-damped, over-damped, and critically-damped systems to better understand it. But in the case of foiling, your body is the best damper, so a stiff mast will ultimately give you the best performance. If you’d like to compare a stiff mast with your current wingset, try http://www.projectcedrus.com or simply read the feedback. Everyone agrees that a stiffer mast on the same wings yields better performance.

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ProjectCedrus, thank you. Great to have your input.

This thread has brought up a lot of good info and exposed a lot of surfer hype and bunk that we all know comes with the sport.

Your stuff is awesome by the way.

I’d love to hear from more manufacturers too.

Except none of the top riders are actually riding the ProjectCedrus masts…
I know some of the manufacturers have sent super stiff masts to their riders and the riders hated them and went back to less stiff masts… So if that’s happening it tells you something…

got any links on that? would like to see what was said and what’s super stiff in comparison. 19mm axis mast?

@Jezza your statement is flat out ignorant. No “top” riders are actually riding Project Cedrus because 1) they probably don’t know about it and 2) I can’t afford to give them away to professional riders who are absolutely deserving of free equipment given their ability to influence people like you. That being said, it’s really unfortunate that this sport is so marketing heavy, and the “top” brands spend their money on fancy marketing shoots and giving away product to “top” riders while investing very little money in real technology development. The poor average joe is stuck in this cycle of feeling like they need to upgrade to the new color every time they go to the beach, instead of just being stoked on a nice piece of equipment that will last them a few years. Don’t get me wrong, wing design is super challenging and half art/half science, which is why I don’t make wings. But masts should be stiff, strong, light, and relatively hydrodynamic. That’s it. If you’re forced to buy a new mast every season, you are wasting your money.

I’m with @Larsb and would love to see your evidence of “top” riders going away from stiff masts. Feel free to post it here. And if you would like unbiased feedback from people who actually pay for my product, please check out https://projectcedrus.com/feedback/ for lots of happy customers. Full disclosure, I did in fact send my first marketing mast to Gunna Biniasch (kitechino) for reviews because he rides so many different wings and also surf foils, SUP foils, wing foils, and kite foils… the perfect candidate customer who would otherwise have to buy so many different masts. Below is what he had to say, and stay tuned to his youtube channel for a full review.

"I have now tested the Mast with Moses, North and Indiana Foils
Works amazingly well with all of them
It is stiffer than the Moses Carbon Masts and less prone to ventilation. I can trust it more
It is a big improvement to the North and Indiana Alu Masts and makes the Foils ride a lot nicer”

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#triggered

  1. Maybe they do know about your product, maybe they don’t, but that’s an assumption at best! But based on how the top guys ride and the abuse they throw at their gear, if they were really looking for much stiffer masts, then it stands to good reason their sponsors and manufacturers would give them stiffer masts so that they can perform to the best of their abilities. Making a stiffer carbon mast is not rocket science… Especially for companies like Axis (carbon), Unifoil, Lift etc
  2. Influence to me is nothing, I ride completely customised gear. I have a Masters in engineering and multiple milling machines at my disposal. I use combinations of Axis, Unifoil, Gong and Slingshot depending on what I want and when.

I know with my experience both in and out the water that for different foil disciplines you want slightly different characteristics from your gear. Wing, kite, surf, wake, pump and efoil all have their own nuances that come into play

You body is a good damper to an extent. Then your gear can be designed to take it further! So if manufacturers look at different disciplines and design accordingly, then gear can be much better and won’t all be the identical stiffness. Instead there will be dedicated damping. Love it or hate it, it’s true for every single sport there is!

I saw your project ages ago and I find it interesting. But for the cost of one of your masts I bought 4 which serve dedicated purposes and work well in those areas, and I can also then interchange them if I want to. Plus if 1 breaks or bends I have 3 backups…

If you really want to prove which mast is really king and how stiffness plays a role, do something similar to what Stab mag does with their surfboard tests. Gather 3 of the top riders, get a bunch of different masts (with flex sensors installed) and the same set of wingsets. Then send the riders out, test them in different disciplines and see which is preferred when. Then you’ll have solid data.
Until that is actually done, this thread will loop around with speculation, opinion and lots of typing…

My opinion:
Super stiff mast - Wing, kiting and pumping
Damped mast - Wake, surf and E-foil (for E-foil thinner mast = less drag at high speeds)

@Jezza you think Project Cedrus is too expensive and would prefer to have 4 masts instead 1, that’s a different topic entirely and irrelevant to this discussion regarding stiffness. Most of my customers are trying to reduce their gear and lower their weight for traveling. I never argue with people about their budget, it’s a personal decision that I respect. But Project Cedrus is hand made in the USA and therefore has a higher manufacturing cost than those solid carbon masts produced in China or Taiwan (Axis, Unifoil, Cloud IX, SPG, etc). I don’t even try to recover the non-recurring engineering investment in the mast (which is at this point thousands of my hours). I sell the mast for a little more than the cheaply made Chinese product so this comment is a bit of #trigger for me.

My assumption that top riders don’t know about Project Cedrus is an assumption, yes. But it is based on lots of data from people who reach out to me and did not know about Project Cedrus despite it being around for 3 years now. I don’t spend money on marketing and I don’t live in Hawaii so it is actually hard to get through all the noise in this industry. And as I stated, many of these “top riders” are not going to buy a mast from me because of the price or due to their contractual obligations. I hope to get more masts out there to these riders, but it’s important to me that I treat my customers fairly and so I don’t make deals and I don’t give the away.

You’re right that making a stiffer mast is not rocket science, but the data out there suggests that these companies don’t actually know how to make a stiffer mast. These companies don’t have engineers on staff, and use contract manufacturing for their product. In fact most of them are even using the same contract manufacturer! I know because I have talked to the guy making all the masts for unifoil, SPG, Cloud IX, etc. They’re all making the same thing, and if they want to make it stiffer, it gets really heavy and really expensive because it’s solid carbon fiber. Once again you make statements with no evidence. Show me another lightweight hollow stiff carbon mast from one of these top brands that was tested at one point but then abandoned in favor of soft, solid carbon masts by their top riders.

Your statement regarding damping is actually proving my point that stiffness is critical. Yes, for one rider in certain conditions an element of damping may be beneficial. But change the weight of the rider, and especially the speed (wings) and the mast could end up hitting its eigenvalue in these new conditions. So if you are making a mast for a variety of wings and a variety of riders, as these brands do, it is best to make it as stiff as possible to avoid the potential resonant frequencies being too low.

I’m not interested in proving which mast is king. I am simply providing engineering principles and lots of data to suggest that stiffness is critical to the performance of a mast, which is what this thread is about. I don’t need to mount strain gauges to the mast to determine that it’s stiffer. I have simulated bending and torsional stiffness for a number of masts using finite element analysis, and many people have twisted and bent it first-hand the mast on the beach and said the same thing. I have 75+ data points from customers of different weights, different disciplines, coming from different masts, who all say the stiffness of Project Cedrus has resulted in better performance. Getting “3 of the top riders” would be a waste of time and actually a smaller and less diverse data set than I currently have. You are the only one providing opinions and speculations here.

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Why don’t companies make stiff masts for their pros?

Money. If you bought molds, you can switch til you pay those off. Engineering loses to dollars in many cases, right?

I think Piros has talked quite a bit about using stiffer masts - I think he said the aluminum Takuma mast is better than their carbon in that respect.

I have personal experience with 3 different GoFoil masts, and I can say with complete confidence that I personally prefer the most recent and stiffest version. Less stiff mast is immediately noticeable in a few scenarios.

  1. riding through the foamy water after a set-wave - you can feel the turbulence in the water and it vibrates/resonates in the mast
  2. paddling on a SUP you can feel the wing wiggle under you with the less stiff masts (this doesn’t really matter, but its annoying)
  3. high speed takeoffs - the less stiff mast can get a kind of speed-wobble when going straight.

I will say, I didn’t notice it while turning

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@jondrums that’s super interesting feedback. I had always wondered if foils have the equivalent of the “speed wobble” which can happen when you ride an inadequately stiff road bikes at high speed. The resonant frequency of a system is sqrt(k/m) with k being stiffness, and m being the mass. So big riders will drive the resonant frequency of a foil system down, potentially to a value that is excitable under the conditions (speed, turning frequency, pumping frequency, etc). Look up the “galloping gertie” tacoma narrows bridge to see what happens when a structural resonant frequency is too low… :slight_smile:

Hi.

I don’t mind mast flex. I ride the 90cm slingshot aluminum mast and it flexes a lot.

But, I don’t have a stiffer mast to compare it to.

I imagine that with enough time on a board setup you just learn to ride it, predict it.

:call_me_hand:

yeah, could be a resonant frequency thing. I’m on the bigger side at #210 without a wetsuit on, so I’d need a stiffer mast for the same resonant frequency as compared to a lighter person.

In case anyone was still interested in this topic, Gunnar did a live review yesterday on youtube. He has some interesting points, some of which I had never thought about to be honest. Specifically, a stiffer mast is less prone to ventilation because it’s twisting less. Also some interesting thoughts related to increased wing stability again due to mast stiffness and control. Another misconception is that thicker masts are slower, but he actually said he was able to ride it faster because he felt more in control and stable due to the stiffness.

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I do not know what mast ventilation is.Can somebody explain?

I have had breaches with full ventilation when the foil is not banked and you bring it too high and partial ventilation on tip breaches in turns or going upwind with lots of lean.

I am not sure i agree with how he dismisses the thicker section mast drag.Top speed might be limited by a big foil hitting a “wall” of drag but mast drag is still there.In low energy situations like small wave surfing,light conditions downwinding, winging jibes&tacks it is going to be a negative factor.

If you have lots of horsepower (kiting,big waves etc… and you are riding a +80cm mast then the stiffnes is probably worth it.But otherwise?.
I like winging for its playfulness, this trend towards bigger masts and higher speeds is a dead end IMHO.Wind waves are short and slow, i want gear that lets me carve them,not blast through.

I have tried a 85cm mast for a few weeks and it felt boring and “disconnected”,not surfy at all (i am 73kg,176cm).
And the launching and landing become such a royal PITA…not worth it for me.Maybe for bigger guys.

My Takuma carbon mast (75cm) is a lot flexier than my Armstrong 72cm, but it feels a lot glidier and carves way better.
Cannot say if the carving and general playfulness are due to the mast flex or the different foil designs though.

What i mean is,horses for courses.Every dimension in foil design is a compromise with upsides and downsides.Nothing’s free.

I do like the soft edge concept a lot, hope it becomes the norm.

I was just catching up on my progression podcast, and there is a bit about stiffness/compliance on the one with Cole Kawana. Eric thinks that a bit of flex low down might be good for rail to rail turning - not so much a definitive statement by him, but I’ve heard the same from others that the right flex in the system low down by the fuselage is a good thing

Bump! got any more info or links on that? would like to see what was said and what’s considered super stiff. What about 19mm axis mast? Thinking of trying this to get a comparison but i’d skip it if it’s likely to be too stiff.

I don’t have links on it. I’m good mates with Cliff from Unifoils and have had long chats to him and looked at gear he’s sent out to sponsored riders. They made a series of masts with various thickness and stiffness which were all rider tested before they eventually settled on the ones they produce. The stiffest masts were less favoured in the surf. For pumping sure the stiffer would perform better, but one has to look at where most are being used and that would be surf or wing and then also consider rider weight etc.
I have Gong masts, Axis 16mm and 19mm and Slingshot masts (although the slingshot will go soon).
For pump I used either 19mm or 16mm (depending on what wing I’m using) and then on Efoil I use the Gong. When I eventually get back to South Africa again after COVID settles down I’ll test the new Unifoil gear and get some more wings.
Depending on what you weigh and what the use case is, the axis 19mm could be a decent addition…

I think rider weight comes into play here. I weight 185# and am on the edge of where flex bothers me. I can ride a lift mast. I can ride an AXIS 16mm. Guys who are 200# though HATE flex in masts. If you’re over 190# I’d say the AXIS 19mm is a great addition.