Avanti Windsurfing Sails

Rolling table masts show huge variances in consistency from one mast to the next. As panels of prepreg are hand fitted to a mandrel one after another by human hands, with little or no true up marks to align the panels. Both fiber direction and placement show large variations in consistancy. This sloppiness in construction can be considered the Achilles Heel of the rolling table process. Additionally, using the rolling table process, it becomes unavoidable to have big transitions in the layup schedule due to the overlaps and joins of carbon prepreg sheets.

Filament winding techniques have long shown great promise, but were limited by a few key hurdles as well. One was the necessity of using a wet resin system. This immediately suggests difficulties in getting fiber to resin ratios perfectly consistent throughout the layup. The other hurdle was a technical one hinging on creating machines and software capable of winding masts to a given bend curve.

To beat these methods, Avanti essentially combined them. Drawing on the ground-breaking technique of computer winding a single ribbon, or tow, of pre-preg carbon on a mandrel, Avanti succeeded in making a full robot-built tow-preg mast in cooperation with CST in Australia. Each mast is wound according to an unbelievably advanced computer design suite which runs FEA and predicts bends before manufacture to degrees of accuracy never seen before. In areas that need increased stiffness, more material is laid on the mandrel, one wrap at a time. In this way, the Avanti prototyping process was extremely efficient, and the resulting production run, impeccable. With high-end carbon tow, pre-impregnated with a super advanced toughened epoxy, the resulting mast tube is incredible.

The weight and sailing characteristics are unmatched, but perhaps more impressive is the strength, which registers at a solid 20% higher then anything else out there. This is not marketing. Driven by hard data, Avanti broke countless masts using a load-cell to define targets and validate the results.

Simply holding an Avanti mast in one's hands, it is impossible not to be impressed. Dead straight, with a captivating carbon weave, the feather-weight lightness is immediately apparent. Give the mast a gental tap and listen to it hum in perfect resonance. Now slide in a sail and hit the water. You will never want to let go.

Avanti is proud to introduce the Tow Pro C-100... the mast beyond compare.