Wingman Foil Club

Wingman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:30 pm Had one more thought @RichieFoiling. Is your foil in the right place? Seems like on a downwind board lots of potential for foil to be in the wrong spot and mess up the balance for turning.

I have noticed that when winging say an 8ft DW skinny board that if the foil is too far back then it creates too much swing weight and it’s better to have the foil centered or even forward.

RichieFoiling wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 8:01 am I feel like it is one part needing to figure out some sort of light wind jibe maneuver on the wing and one part the narrow and long board being a little harder to control in the turn. Anyone have any tips?

@RichieFoiling I really like doing the Heineken jibe in light winds. I never have to worry about being backwinded and can focus on foiling through the turn. That said, my lightwind board is only 6ft long. While it does have a displacement hull which does help me get going in light winds without much effort, because the foil mast is fairly forward, I don't feel the swing weight much.

Wingman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:30 pm Had one more thought @RichieFoiling. Is your foil in the right place? Seems like on a downwind board lots of potential for foil to be in the wrong spot and mess up the balance for turning.

Yeah I think its in the right spot. I'm on the uni hyper2 210 and for me most of my uni foils I need to put really far forward and sometimes add in a little tail shim to help. But I could play around with it more and see.

dat_foil_life wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:59 pm @RichieFoiling What size is your bigger board full dimensions?

My big board is a proper foil 110L, 7-10 x 19.25 if I remember the dims correctly.

To be fair I was going to make a omen type board that was going to be neutrally buoyant for me and figured that would be a great light wind board too but decided on the big board to try SUP and downwind with as well. Ill probably build it later this year.

dcj wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 8:26 pm @RichieFoiling I really like doing the Heineken jibe in light winds. I never have to worry about being backwinded and can focus on foiling through the turn. That said, my lightwind board is only 6ft long. While it does have a displacement hull which does help me get going in light winds without much effort, because the foil mast is fairly forward, I don't feel the swing weight much.

Yeah I think this will help a lot too. Once I get the swing weight figured out.

I am winging in the lightest conditions, much of the time. I am in Austin, TX. So- inconsistent wind, fresh water lake, fighting for take offs. I suspect anybody with better conditions, would just not go out in many of our days. I am 6'7"/240#

Omen Flux is a board for ideal conditions of 15+mph wind or prone surf.

A board that sinks below the water (most), will be draggy. It will take a lot of foot and wing pumping to break the surface, especially, if the wind has no gusts. This is why a DW board or modern longer/narrower wing board (Amos Sultan, Sunova Carver) can potentially be session savers.

Back to the original question, I find there is a small learning curve to foot placement on transitions with a narrow board, but swing weight is NO issue. I find I can really crank it hard to catch a boat wake that appears suddenly. I would suggest a little more TOW adjusting to the new board.

I have been riding the 7'7 110L KT Dragonfly a bit which is especially helpful when the wind starts dying in the late afternoon. I do struggle with the jibe every time I come back to that board, but now its mostly just with the foot switch. I have been focusing on not carving the board as much or maybe only carving the board to straight downwind then using the wing to steer/yaw the board back up wind the rest of the way - keeping the board as flat as possible side-to-side until I'm comfortable on the new line.

Also gotta ad that it was so cool last week when I actually used the swell to pop back up on foil when the wind dropped under 10mph on the inside. Really doesn't take much.