Taavi forum posts in last 60 days

powersloshin said..
If you sail in deep enough water for a straight fin, get a carbon fin. Yes you need a 3-4 cammed sail with low foot for speed.

Nothing wrong with g10 fins for recreational use. I have a 32 cm g10 fin here, and a no cam sail. Would have wanted a smaller ca 95 litres board (instead of the 116 L):

A 70 litres KT Drifter 5 Pro Carbon is pretty close to what you are describing. Give it a try and see if you can find anything that you don't like.

ktfoiling.com/boards/drifter-5-pro-carbon/

Great footage, and nice calm and smooth and careful riding. I would suggest to practice more active riding, doing lots of silly turns and what not, and perhaps to add some speed as well. Making rapid turns and deliberately breaching the wing tips teaches you a lot about how the foil behaves in different conditions. Riding high on mast in such chaotic water conditions (like you have there) involves having a quick reaction time and being ready to make super quick adjustments every now and then. Easier to learn on flat water and in spots where there are clean ground swell lines instead of irregular wind chop.

By making turns I did not necessarily mean making manoeuvres or turning around, just don't settle on riding in a straight line too often, practice some silly wiggles whenever you can. Something like:

It's likely to allow the people who ride with foot straps to use more offset stance, to have more leverage over the foil. How big is your board BTW?

Driks said..
Jo!
How is it with the Halo? Description sounds very good.

I have only used it on days when the sea was too flat. 670/121 here in this clip. Super comfortable feeling right away, from the first meters of riding.

kookfoil4 said..
i found that intentionally keeping my leading hand over my head during gybes and tacks made a big improvement on my balance, leading to a much higher rate of gybe success.

I am teaching the exact opposite to the beginners - don't bring the wing above you in the jibes, keep it more forward. For the beginners a common problem through the turns seems to be the weight being too far back, which results the foil to stall and the speed to decrease to a point where it's not possible to fly through the turn,

Here's a clip showing how to keep the wing in front of you, even exaggeratedly so.



And the very same in the tacks as well. Bring the wing more forward with your front hand. Keeping the wing over your head (meaning the weight further back) may very well work with some more experienced riders who are already riding fast with foils that glide super well. But for the beginners, with bigger foils that are more prone to stalling, flying through the turns seems to be a key problem.

A clip showing how to bring the wing more forward with your front hand during the tacks:

S3 2.7 in the beginning, then switched to a S3 3.4, and very soon even that was not enough. I was with a 830 cm2 front wing and 60 L board (10 L below my weight in kg). Quite frustrating, but still super fun to find out the low end range of different parawings in our super unreliable winds.

Then switched to a 2.5 m2 wing and 570 cm2 front foil and had an amazing session. Later the wind picked up a bit and the S3 3.4 would have definitely worked. That just shows how picky the parawings are about the wind quality. Envy the people having more reliable winds.

Velocicraptor said..
Not as vintage as some of whats in this thread, but my 115L KT wing drifter bathtub of a board...

I am riding that 115 L Quatro Drifter (same shape as the KT Wing Drifter) here. Such a sweet and lively and amazing well balanced board.