For Sale: Deboichet Formula Fins - $215 each
Please send me an email to get more info or to purchase.
R17 M 70cm +8 - SOLD
Very fast yet powerful fin. The R17 gives way better lift once up to
speed than the R13 (the old mainstay/all purpose fin for formula
sailors), yet is also quite a bit faster and more slippery. That's
because it's got a thinner foil and more area towards the tip. Because
of the thinner foil, the fin is not quite as grunty at very low speeds
as the R13 used to be, so don't just stand on it. Instead, light it up
by bearing off a wee bit, and then crank it upwind as it's generating
tons of lift to get equal to better pointing at considerably higher
speeds. Off the wind, it's way faster than the R13 (again due to the
thinner foil).
On very wide-tailed board, such as the 07 Starboards and F2's, this is
a great all-around fin for conditions up to 16 knots or so. On slightly
narrower-tailed boards (like 06 and 05 Starboards and F2's, as well as
Roberts and Mike's Lab boards), this would be a powerful light air fin
for up to 12-14 knots. I've used this very successfully with my
Roberts, both with really big sails, and as a tuning option to take my
9.9 into surprisingly light air and still get great power.
R16 M 70cm +8 - SOLD
The R16 is similar to the R17, but a wee bit thinner in the foil, and
with a very slightly smaller outline. The 70 has been my mainstay fin
on the Roberts in anything up to 18-20 (I'm 205#; for a lighter rider,
the cutoff would be a few knots lower). When you're happy on a 9.9,
this is the fin. Performance is one step towards the slippery/fast from
the R17 (see above). That means it should be sailed the same way - give
it a bit of juice, then be amazed by how much lift you can get out of
it. Since it's so slippery, you get great speed both upwind and
downwind. For wide-tailed boards (07 F2's and Starboards), this is a
medium-to-high wind fin (up to 20 knots or so; probably not quite
enough juice) for anything under 12-14 knots unless you're really
light). For narrower-tailed boards, this would be the main fin in the
quiver, covering 80% of your conditions with great effectiveness if
you're about 200 pounds or so.
R16 M 68cm +7 - SOLD
Like the 70cm above, but a size smaller, and a little less upright in
its rake. That makes it a great fin for windier conditions and bumpier
water, as it adds a bit of control. Still remarkably powerful though,
once you get it up to speed a bit, and with good glide through the
holes. If you're about 180 pounds or less, this would be your main fin
on narrower-tailed boards, and your higher-wind fin for the big 07 F2's
and Starboards.
R16 M 66cm +6 - SOLD
The standard for high-wind formula fins. A little less upright than the
68 above, so more control in breeze and bumpy water. When you're this
powered, you're going fast, so it's creating tons of lift to go upwind,
and is super-slippery off the breeze. It's a great fin for very lit-up
9.9 all the way to out-of-control 9.0.
These two pics show the fins in order from smallest (R16 66cm) to
largest (R17 70cm). Note that the three larger fins started out as
+6's. I modified the rake to +7 on the 68 and +8 on the two 70's after
testing them with different angles using shims in the box for a while
before changing the bases to make the changes permanent (see this blog post
for raking fins and how the mods to the base work - the short version
is that for such a small change in rake, there's no need to repot as
long as you're then fitting them well to sit snugly in the box. The
small differences in rake do, however, become noticeable on the water.
Moving the 70 from +6 to +8 gave it more lift upwind; the tradeoff is a
slightly more nose-down ride downwind. That's why, as you get to
smaller fins like the 68 and 66, I didn't go for that much forward
rake, as you're dealing with rougher water and want the nose to ride
more freely off the breeze since you're trying to clear rougher water).
This picture of the fins laid on top of each other shows the difference
in rake and foil. The R17 is at the very bottom, with the 70cm R16
above it. As you can barely make out in the pic, the outline for the
R17 is very marginally larger. Above that is the 68 - you can see that
it's rake is about 1cm less upright (Deboichet measures rake in cm
forward from the 'standard' rake of their original R13's, which was
about 9 degrees back from vertical, at a point 68cm from the base and
at the deepest point of the foil). Above that the 66, which is yet one
more cm less upright. Small differences, but they have noticeable
impact on performance.
