Was an interesting watch but early adopters generally end up "paying the price" as the industry develops. I have many pieces of equipment to prove this lol...

My foiling has settled on the "foilstyle" equipment end which sadly the manufacturers don't seem to wish to push very hard, perhaps like fin freestyle it's seen as too difficult or niche? But the small foilstyle kit is easy to handle, light, not super quick, highly manoeuvrable and carves like wavesailing bottom turns (feels like that anyway even tho looks far more tame when viewed by a 3rd party!). We all know a foil makes a wave feel 3x larger than it really is so unlocks sessions that are poor for the fin.

If I wanted to race then I'm aware that it's an endless arms-race of equipment. In the meantime I'm happy to enjoy the fact foiling makes me feel about 25 years younger

jstone1 said..
Was an interesting watch but early adopters generally end up "paying the price" as the industry develops. I have many pieces of equipment to prove this lol...

My foiling has settled on the "foilstyle" equipment end which sadly the manufacturers don't seem to wish to push very hard, perhaps like fin freestyle it's seen as too difficult or niche? But the small foilstyle kit is easy to handle, light, not super quick, highly manoeuvrable and carves like wavesailing bottom turns (feels like that anyway even tho looks far more tame when viewed by a 3rd party!). We all know a foil makes a wave feel 3x larger than it really is so unlocks sessions that are poor for the fin.

If I wanted to race then I'm aware that it's an endless arms-race of equipment. In the meantime I'm happy to enjoy the fact foiling makes me feel about 25 years younger

Couldn't agree more. I have settled on the freeride/foilstyle setup and use a Severne Predator with a Redwing foil. I know it's not quick but it's easy to use, manoeuvrable and is just plain good fun and no setup hassle, no need for shims or anything complicated. I believe this is the best form of windfoiling unless of course you want to race or do long distance cruising. I have tried a few foils and boards but the nice thing about my setup is I just use wave sails which is also all I use with the fin boards although I have only been on my wave kit a couple of times this year. I'm always on the foil unless it's fully blowing.

Yup, in the begging we had no clue, a lot of experimentations, mistakes and we did mainly chase the race side of windfoil. On freewave/freeride side Slingshot i76 and reef warrior board designs with small sail usage were break throughs but never went mainstream. Instead wing foil with simpler/more user-friendly designs became the new kid on the block and cool.
After few initial years I walked away from race biased gear, and started looking for freeride, free wave, analyzing wingers and their boards/ foils. Major
pieces of the puzzle for me were that wing fuselage works just fine on my board with tracks, and fringe,cypher and now foil freek sails allow for better and better power /de-power = fun/freedom on the water. Of course, foils still improving every six months. So now with 2 sails 3.1&4.4 and 2 foils I comfortably cover wind range from 7-30 Kn. Unfortunately selecting the right board/foil/sail is still very hard for a newby.

P.S. signed up for a slalom race in Miami, 23-27 Oct., just to see how my freeride gear and a tiny sail works against windfoil race gear around the course, should be amusing

Paducah said..

miamiwindsurfe said..
... P.S. signed up for a slalom race in Miami, 23-27 Oct., just to see how my freeride gear and a tiny sail works against windfoil race gear around the course, should be amusing

I'd love to see the Vegas line on that. You already know this but those IQ kids are fast around the buoys. The challenge isn't so much finishing the race but getting upwind in time for the next one. Ask me how I know...

Just doing it for fun and to support a local event, but if the course is short and wind is gusty, I might beat a few 10 year olds and some newbies in open class

miamiwindsurfe said..
Just doing it for fun and to support a local event...

Worthy objective. Well done! That's one of my principal motivations, too.

I think the developments in winging foils now means that there could and should be awesome windfoil freeride gear now. The higher cambered wings mean that you can use a smaller foil with lots of bottom end and glide while super manouverable. There is just a lack of companies offering these wings with windfoil suitable geometry, thats now the issue. Guess I just need to do it myself

thedoor said..
The swellstyle/foilstyle windfoiling market would be pretty big right now if winging never happened... Windsurfing companies have made a crap tonne selling winging gear, so we wouldn't expect them to not jump on that wagon just because it would directly compete with another section of their business.

Even if a lot of windfoilers would have eventually switched to "swellstyle/foilstyle", that would not be a "pretty big" market. There are plenty of windsurfers out there who have no interest in any kind of foiling, for various reasons. And the windsurfing market is small and shrinking.

Winging pulls in a lot more people than windfoiling ever did. Just looking at kiters alone that start winging, that's already a bigger group than active windsurfers. But there are plenty of people getting into winging without any windsurf or kite experience, and quite a few without any water sport experience.

Not sure what Marios' (author of the above video) general windsurfing skills and expectations apart of racing were, but looks like somehow he ended up putting a huge cambered race sail on a freeride setup and then blamed a freeride foil ready board!? At least all his examples in the video are with huge sails.

My experience back in the day was totally different. After just a handful of days of learning I was totally comfortable with my setup, which although not competitive in foiling comps, was so much fun to ride. Who cares if it wasn't the most efficient setup, it was still wonderful to learn something new. Only good memories from that period. The fact that I have a slalom board in the video below instead of a freeride board (10 cm length difference) is not really important, the freeride boards that I tried were pretty much on a par.



And yes, it was fun in almost non-existent wind as well - absolutely no need for special and huge and complicated rigs.



And of course, at the end of the first season I was convinced that foiling is indeed complementing windsurfing so much, that I treated myself with a proper foil board. And the fun continued. Don't really understand the reason for such a negative post, I don't see there is anything wrong with wind foiling and/or wind foiling gear as it is.

boardsurfr said..But there are plenty of people getting into winging without any windsurf or kite experience, and quite a few without any water sport experience.

Windfoiling has been advertised as an extention to the very specific slalom/race windsurfing. Only for the the hardcore gear tuning competitor heads.
Winging was seen as a new toy, cheap, no brainer gear that kids play around with.
And it is. Winging equation is way easier to solve than windfoil.

Nevertheless, apart Horue and Slingshot, no brands pushed windfoiling toward more accessible gear, so the few average windsurf riders, if they just took the information available from the mainstream media and brand were soon disapointed for not being able to take any advantage of windfoiling. Even today with more highligth on foilstyle (at Vieste and yesterday at Sylt), when you tell you're windfoiling, even those well informed in the windsurfing world just assume you're a slalom addict.
Today Horue has almost disappeared, and Slingshot seems to cancel any windfoil gear.

Now winGing is on he exact same path as winDsurfing in the '90, and kiting in late 2000 : many occasional riders will give up bored of being stuck to pre jibe level, gear price is skyrocketing...
And this is the result of how the industry runs : Those who are ready to spend huge amount of money every year to get the latest 'game changing' gear are the gear tuning nerds, and they thrive among the 'slalom' riders. They enjoy talking about 1/2 cm of UJ positionning and sanding their stabs and wing to avoid any whistling noise. And brands and shops know well these are those who spend the more, why wouldn't they satisfy their main customers appetite for new expensive gear ?

It is the work of sailing club to provide young riders with opportunities to ride gear they can handle and have fun with, and it will only depend on a few good willing and thinking people. Hopefully there are some.

Subsonic said..

I don't recall the part of the video where he had a race sail on a free ride board? But all the same, much the same as you using a trad slalom board for windfoiling, he has the experience to recognise what effects that will have on the ride.

@Subsonic, I said "freeride setup". Look at the pictures from the video, this very much looks like a freeride setup to me.



And of course you are right, be it an ordinary slalom or free race or freeride board - the foiling experience with a board that's primarily meant for windsurfing is not the greatest, and I doubt it ever will be, or that it should be. A dedicated foil board is much much better for foiling.

That said, I still think that most of his frustration with the early foiling gear was tied to the gear selection they made themselves - having huge boards and huge rigs, with the intention to go fast, and then using the foils that did not live up to the expectations. This is also why I think the suggestion that brands should offer ready made packages is a slippery slope. Foremost, there are too many different foiling disciplines, the ultimate speed seeking people are just one fraction. Secondly, there are foil brands that don't build boards, there are sail brands that don't build foils, there are board brands that don't build booms etc. Telling newcomers that they should only be looking at the gear that's offered by these brands that make a complete package is kind of limiting.

Therefore, I find it's much more sensible to steer beginners to shops and communities who can help with the gear selection. Ultimately these are the places that can put some work in, find out what combinations work the best for serving their clients, create content, offer lessons, take regional nuances like the availability of the gear by certain brands, etc. into account, and provide the best support.

There has been excellent freeride / free wave / foil style foiling gear available for ages now, so it's a bit unclear why such a racing or fast freeride foiling oriented video now.

And again, foiling at the beginner stage, when just introducing newcomers into the foiling world, does not necessarily have to involve huge race sails and huge wide boards. I'd suggest to keep it simple. Well, a plain simple 300 euro beginner dacron cloth sail as in the following clip is more than enough for foiling. Ultra light weight and feel, and performant and fun enough.