That's my finding, too. "Speed is your friend." Always has been, even for fin jibes. Rhonda used to say that a lot.

At least if you fall you land in 75-80F water, rather than the 48F water up here in the Columbia right now this time of year. Don't let go of the boom, especially if you are foiling with a cambered sail.

boardsurfr said..


It's a bit amusing to read this thread. You guys are foiling on different gear and at different levels, but nevertheless give the impression that only your technique can be right, and anything else must be wrong.

Glad there's some entertainment value, and honestly I'm stepping out because clearly there's a lot I still don't understand about what's going on here.

If I've confused anyone, my apologies.

So I got out today to again practice the foiling gybe, but my kit just did not feel right (same problem as yesterday). I have a memory of what winds Andy got me up in on the same kit, and I was not getting up as easily and could feel I was loosing too much speed turning into the gybe. Finally checked the alignment of the wing and stabilizer, sure enough the stab. was a little crooked with one stab. tip about 1/4" lower than the other (left to right). I had lost the plastic side shim recently during disassembly, so decided to use Gorilla clear tape, 4 layers were perfect for aligning stab. with wing and the tape would not get lost like the hard plastic side shim. Problem is the glue was slowly getting squeezed out of the tape. So there I am with no hard plastic, thought of just packing up, then decided to check out the garbage containers along the bay, found a Super Big Gulp cup and plastic worked perfect as a stab. side shim (had a razor blade). Got back out and foil lifted up like I knew it should!, but wind sucked was so gusty, short gusts with pressure variations in the gust that I left after a couple of runs. Just need some clean wind for a day to practice the foiling gybe.

segler said..
... But I won't post any videos for fear of causing excessive mirth and laughter and derision.

I feel your social anxiety. Took me years on here to even post a pic. Mad respect for those who post crash reels. Video of me exists but every touch down I see makes me cringe.

Asking for a friend: how much mirth, laughter and derision is deemed excessive?

aeroegnr said..

Maybe I won't disappear from this thread, I'll just post pics of what I know is cringe things I did for everyone to throw darts at, take one for the team so to say .

Maybe not the hero we want but the hero we need.

Paducah said..

segler said..
... But I won't post any videos for fear of causing excessive mirth and laughter and derision.

I feel your social anxiety. Took me years on here to even post a pic. Mad respect for those who post crash reels. Video of me exists but every touch down I see makes me cringe.

Asking for a friend: how much mirth, laughter and derision is deemed excessive?

Segler: we want videos! I think this crowd is much nicer when commenting about videos/pictures than written posts. One caveat: the crowd becomes a ruthless gang when they see your backyard lawn is not well taken care of.

segler said..
Above it says: "give the impression that only your technique can be right, and anything else must be wrong."

I can confirm that my technique is NOT right. LOL Anybody else's technique is more right than mine. And thus I enjoy reading these posts and trying to learn from them.

I plan to start video recording myself to see if I can figure some things out. I have a Clew-View mount that works pretty well. But I won't post any videos for fear of causing excessive mirth and laughter and derision.

have been thinking about video recording myself too when I am practicing gybes, but was thinking a camera on shore would give a better perspective, based on a few videos I seen here that did that.

Paducah said..

jksmurf said..

Paducah said..

jksmurf said..
@Paducah I weight 78kg. For sure where I was tring this was messy, swell one direction wave fetch from the other, wasn't easy conditions and I over-estimated my capabilities, I love gybing a windsurfing board, any size, technically a joy, but this one bit me. Flat water is definitely where I will try next.I use around 85cm mast yep, on a 125L JP SUP Foil with Twin Tracks, no straps.

Speed; yes my big foil isn't made for speed, but I haven't got to a point where I am carving the foil around, I was sort of waiting for it to "surf" around I guess.

Cheers

k.

That's the drawback of big, thick wings is they just don't glide as far. If you have access to an L or even one of the Mediums, you might want to give that a go. They will still have a lot of lift at your size but will glide much further giving you more time to deal with things. A cool part of windfoiling, for me, is that even a big, wide board with a long race fuse carves like a much smaller finned board. You don't have to carve hard (especially at first because they can really whip around hard) but do put a bit of pressure on that back foot as you enter.

If you aren't already doing it, start off with some S turns until you get a feel of the different radii as you change pressure. That's a fun thing to do in swell.

Will give the smaller ones a try and work on the S turns. Been windless here for a while which is annoying, Cheers Paducah. I do have an L, M and a S as well as the XL, the smaller two were primarily for SWMBO but I'd be willing to give them all a try. I kind of like the small board, small sail, big foil concept, hence the big foil.

sorry Typo above; weigh not weight.

You aren't that gravitationally challenged - give the L and maybe M a shot. They still have a good bit of area and a pretty thick profile so you'll still have plenty of lift at hand. I'd be curious as to your feedback.

Was able to sneak in a relatively flat water session earlier this week with a 5.4 and the jibes are so, so much fun. I hope you continue to give it a go because that carving sensation is every bit as fun on foil as it is on fin.

I see you proofread your posts later on, too.

The Medium Slim wing

Nice video, thanks! That NP medium slim wing looks very similar to the AFS F1080 dimension-wise, but you are getting better glide at slower speeds than me, 10 kg difference in body weight (me +10 kg) probably makes a difference.

segler said..
Actually, I really appreciate videos that show both good and bad stuff. The whole point (I hope) is to learn.

I think the best camera perspective is the clew camera. It shows everything about footwork, sail trim and sheet, and harness. One downside is that the swing weight of the camera is quite noticeable when sailing, but you get used to that. Use a light camera. My GoPro 5 Black weighs one-third that of my Contour+ in its case. I have had good luck with the clue-view.com mount. Solid, safe, and light.

This summer I plan to video my jibe learning curve mostly for myself to see what I do wrong or right. If I have any (good or bad) videos that somebody might actually learn from, or constructively criticize from, I will post them. Otherwise, I might post one or two purely for purposes of mirth, laughter, and derision. My videos will still be a while in coming because the water here in the gorge is still 48F, and I fall in a lot working on jibes. Nobody is gonna learn much from my usual practice of coming down off the foil and completing a planing jibe or pivot jibe. See my short youtube below from Florida last month. Proof that a 200 lb guy can fly the i76 at 11 mph boat speed. Just barely.

I request others of us endangered species of windfoilers do this as well. In fact, a thread dedicated to jibe videos would be a good place to collect it all. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Fortunately, that is what we usually see here. Thanks.

The clew view is great, especially with the 360 which gives a large, adjustable field of view. I usually just sail for ~hour then rest and replace the battery and keep going. The downside (of the 360 vs. regular gopro) is it generates huge files that I don't have storage space for, and editing takes time that I sometimes don't have.

I've learned so much from people commenting on what was my bad stance for a bit, improved some with lessons from Andy, but still have ways to go. And, still more to learn all around. It really helps on the biomechanics side when you think you're doing one thing but it's not optimal and you can go further, or you think your stance is one way but it's not. Sometimes people even in real life will comment one thing but not clearly see what your body is doing (it's happened to me, only a couple of people like Andy and Britt have really nailed some stance things..). It seems to take time to recognize how something feels vs. how it really is.

Maybe that's what I likely have wrong about aspects of foiling. If my stance isn't consistent, or if it is consistently wrong enough, then certain things (like harness lines, foot pressure) aren't really valid? I don't know. I just know that my consistency is not quite there. My awareness of what my body is doing is a lot better than it was, but when I look at videos and compare what is going on vs. others I can tell that I'm still not quite there.

Safety warning: I was on a fin yesterday trying to work on stance and jibes (I think my jibes on a foil are more consistent due to the lack of fin wind here with good frequency), and I came off during a crummy jibe entry and smacked my hand really hard on the GoPro/Mount. I keep it mounted so that the tightening knobs and battery door are on the outside to ensure it is clear of the sail, but that also means it's a hard object that sticks out from the boom to potentially hit with your hands/ribs/face. It bruised my hand pretty good and really hurt for a good 30 minutes. And I said I might post something potentially embarrassing

Sandman1221 said..
aeroengr, what has helped me a lot to keep getting into the stance Andy taught me (I know when I am in it, but get out of it by old habit) is to use the exact same setup as I did for the two sessions with Andy, same sail rigged same way, same wing, and similar wind speed so sail feels the same. That is how I realized my stabilizer might be out of alignment with the wing, I could feel something was holding me back a little, but a significant little.

Yeah it's good that you spotted that and then fixed it with a makeshift shim, saved the session. Having the consistent setup helps a ton!

utcminusfour said..

Paducah said..

jksmurf said..

Paducah said..

jksmurf said..
@Paducah I weight 78kg. For sure where I was tring this was messy, swell one direction wave fetch from the other, wasn't easy conditions and I over-estimated my capabilities, I love gybing a windsurfing board, any size, technically a joy, but this one bit me. Flat water is definitely where I will try next.I use around 85cm mast yep, on a 125L JP SUP Foil with Twin Tracks, no straps.

Speed; yes my big foil isn't made for speed, but I haven't got to a point where I am carving the foil around, I was sort of waiting for it to "surf" around I guess.

Cheers

k.

That's the drawback of big, thick wings is they just don't glide as far. If you have access to an L or even one of the Mediums, you might want to give that a go. They will still have a lot of lift at your size but will glide much further giving you more time to deal with things. A cool part of windfoiling, for me, is that even a big, wide board with a long race fuse carves like a much smaller finned board. You don't have to carve hard (especially at first because they can really whip around hard) but do put a bit of pressure on that back foot as you enter.

If you aren't already doing it, start off with some S turns until you get a feel of the different radii as you change pressure. That's a fun thing to do in swell.

Will give the smaller ones a try and work on the S turns. Been windless here for a while which is annoying, Cheers Paducah. I do have an L, M and a S as well as the XL, the smaller two were primarily for SWMBO but I'd be willing to give them all a try. I kind of like the small board, small sail, big foil concept, hence the big foil.

sorry Typo above; weigh not weight.

You aren't that gravitationally challenged - give the L and maybe M a shot. They still have a good bit of area and a pretty thick profile so you'll still have plenty of lift at hand. I'd be curious as to your feedback.

Was able to sneak in a relatively flat water session earlier this week with a 5.4 and the jibes are so, so much fun. I hope you continue to give it a go because that carving sensation is every bit as fun on foil as it is on fin.

I see you proofread your posts later on, too.

The Medium Slim wing

Paducah,
I still go back and reference this video from 2019. In fact this is one that I screen captured and then slowed way down to learn from. I do that with all the videos from Balz too, it's a great way to catch the details that happen so fast. I love that both of these influencers work on the upwind transitions. This video and the others of Tyson riding this gear REALLY caught my interest. One of my favorite moments from this vid from Tyson is when he heads up and rolls the Albacore to windward, I know those boats and they are weatherly. Similarly he rolls a fleet of longboards upwind in what looks like sub 12 knots of wind. That board and the ones Balz rides are all north of 6'. Uphaulable, weatherly and uber maneuverable. For Tyson's size that foil is huge. It makes me scratch my head when people with a fraction of these skills gravitate towards tiny boards and really small high aspect foils. To each their own. When I saw this I knew it was the way I wanted to ride and I am grateful for this video because for whatever reason this style doesn't get much attention and I would have not known what is possible.

That's an incredible video. The foiling 360s and just smoothness is fantastic. Makes me want to do even more sail handling practice so that I'm not a total muppet.

segler said..
Actually, I really appreciate videos that show both good and bad stuff. The whole point (I hope) is to learn.

I think the best camera perspective is the clew camera. It shows everything about footwork, sail trim and sheet, and harness. One downside is that the swing weight of the camera is quite noticeable when sailing, but you get used to that. Use a light camera. My GoPro 5 Black weighs one-third that of my Contour+ in its case. I have had good luck with the clue-view.com mount. Solid, safe, and light.

This summer I plan to video my jibe learning curve mostly for myself to see what I do wrong or right. If I have any (good or bad) videos that somebody might actually learn from, or constructively criticize from, I will post them. Otherwise, I might post one or two purely for purposes of mirth, laughter, and derision. My videos will still be a while in coming because the water here in the gorge is still 48F, and I fall in a lot working on jibes. Nobody is gonna learn much from my usual practice of coming down off the foil and completing a planing jibe or pivot jibe. See my short youtube below from Florida last month. Proof that a 200 lb guy can fly the i76 at 11 mph boat speed. Just barely.

I request others of us endangered species of windfoilers do this as well. In fact, a thread dedicated to jibe videos would be a good place to collect it all. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Fortunately, that is what we usually see here. Thanks.

That set up looks pretty good. Looks like it is gybable if that is something you want to go for.

By the way, I record all videos at 720p and nothing higher than that. This keeps the files relatively small. Rendering and editing is relatively fast. I have found that 1080p and higher is a waste of pixels for most uses such as youtube posting or for me studying my mistakes on a computer screen. (No, VGA 640x480 is too low.)

If you want to watch your creations on a modern TV where you can make out individual peach fuzz on your hairy legs, then yes, 4k and up is great.

The Moses 790 is 4.03 AR
Delta shaped with a very low stall speed it will all most stop before it falls.
It turns easy and glides I can hold speed with guys on higher AP wings.

It's a jibing machine

Paducah said..

You aren't that gravitationally challenged - give the L and maybe M a shot. They still have a good bit of area and a pretty thick profile so you'll still have plenty of lift at hand. I'd be curious as to your feedback.

Was able to sneak in a relatively flat water session earlier this week with a 5.4 and the jibes are so, so much fun. I hope you continue to give it a go because that carving sensation is every bit as fun on foil as it is on fin.

I see you proofread your posts later on, too.

The Medium Slim wing

Tyson Poor... now that's just showing off :-). Bet it sells stuff though! (Typos - yeah I hate messing it up, feels a bit sloppy).
Will feed back when I get out there hopefully this weekend... will be first time back since my Feb 3rd ankle breakage. I never really thought about carving a foil I always thought you lose lift but I guess speed keeps the thing up for long enough.