Help with breaching problem

I've been dabbling with wind foiling for about 2 years and, as my 73rd birthday approached and with deteriorating balance, I thought I'd better make a concerted effort or give it away. (I've been W/S for about 30yrs less 7yrs kiting.) So, I've been making steady progress with help from Sam and others at Boggy Lake but have started to breach more often than before and would like people's comments on how to fix the problem. I'm 73 kg and am using a Fanatic 140 lt Stingray with Axis 90cm mast, 910PNG (1250cm2) & 1150PNG (1750cm2) front wings, 899 fuse (no, actually 880 fuse), 500 anhedral rear wing (350cm2), and 3m to 6m sails. Sailing in 12-22knot, quite gusty winds. I find that, when a puff hits, it takes a very big move forward to tilt the board down. Part of the problem is that I am slow to adjust my fore & aft balance, but I think that is partly because, at the top end of the wind range, I am using too big front and rear foils. I suspect that I should use my 400 RW (280) with the 910 FW and possibly change down from 910 to my older 900 HA FW, which seems to have a bit less lift. I've only come up with that since I've been out of action with a knee twist (that is repairing well) (otherwise I'd have tried that already). The next step might be to buy an 830HPS FW (1,014) or perhaps the 810BSC (1,070) or 850PNG (1,100) for the stronger winds. I've also considered a lower aspect FW and have tried a friend's 1040SES (similar area to my 1150) but didn't find much difference from my 1150 (in lighter winds). I would really appreciate any comments & suggestions!

Thanks JKSmurf. I'll try the 60/40 stance for sure. I haven't seen that suggestion before. All commentary seems to recommend neutral stance, which I've always adopted. I'm using the twin US box tracks and have the mast base fully back in them, so I'll try moving both feet forward a bit. I haven't used foot loops because I have broken my left foot/ankle twice and can't afford more such mistakes. I use an old foot hook at the back (mounted using the tuttle box holes), but nothing up front. All the videos suggest front loops, so I'll try a pair of Slingshot half hooks, as the general advice that you need something to help locate your front feet in exactly the right spot is probably correct. As it's summer, I'll be able to survive without booties and that will help letting my feet slide out if/when I crash!
Re the windsurfing habits, I do move my front foot outboard then lean out in the puffs as I find it helps - and in the lulls I come inboard and sometimes have to move my front foot in also. I haven't found that it plays around with geometry or balance. (I can't understand how people in the videos can stay out in footstraps on the rail in apparently light winds, but then they always seem to have bigger sails than I'd be using.) Speaking of which, I have been influenced by Greg Glazier to use big foils and small sails. Possibly I need to reverse that as a relative beginner?? (Certainly, it would help with water-starting!)

Big foil and small sail with a floaty board to uphaul at the beginning. Keeps things slower. If you're breaching often then you may want to downsize the sail first to keep that from overwhelming things.

A smaller foil will just speed everything up, including takeoff speed, crashes, etc. which you probably don't want.

jksmurf made great points about not hooking in at the beginning and staying over the board and not out over the rail.

There is no shame in strapless and without a harness on a big front wing. Good freeriders here stay on their ~1500cm2 front wings and are making almost all their jibes, they just downsize to 4.0 plus or minus some area when it gets to around 20kts or more to keep it manageable.

Hi taveray, as others have said, kudos for embracing the challenge whether at 23 or 73. I have a friend who started windfoiling a couple of years ago at about your age (he just turned 74) and he's loving it.

A bit of a different take from the above advice which is all good stuff. When I learned, I was about your size and am a bit lighter now. Also, having seen a number of friends go through the process,here's what I've observed.

First, your big wing is big for guys our size. It's great on those light days but as someone here once sagely put it: once you get out of the water, you have all the lift you need. After that as you speed up, it's about controlling and limiting the lift it's generating. So, if you are popping out of the water at about 7-8 kts of board speed, you are dealing with a lot more lift at 14-15. Smaller wings will end up having, imho, a bit of a wider wind range. For your size, I think you'll end up enjoying your 1250 more. It will get up relatively quickly but not overpower you as easily. Big wings also tend to have more drag so when you are powered up, they hit a drag wall and that tends to increase the sail pressure in your arms - just something to keep in mind. Several of my buddies got really big wings (2100cm2) to start on (low wind flying and all) and they work great for getting you out of the water but they'd get quickly overwhelmed in gusts. They've moved to smaller wings in the 1300-1500 range for most of their riding and are much happier. They still break out the big stuff on light days but certainly as the sails get smaller, the wings do a bit. At my weight, I like to freeride on an 1100 cm2 wing. Don't go too far down the wing rabbit hole - Axis seems prone to having a thousand variations on a theme - you already have a couple good options to sort out the technique bit until you have a better idea of what kind of riding you'll want to do.

Second, as others have mentioned is body position. It's so important to remain vertical and over the board. If you aren't already, aim to bend the knees or as Sam Ross puts it in his excellent youtube series, hinge at the waist as you get overpowerd. I do see beginning foilers stand very erect and stiff ; and that inhibits the ability to hang down on the boom and depower. Newer windfoilers also tend to have the boom too low and harness lines short so in gusts hits harder to get the rig away from you and put down pressure on the mast base by putting more weight on the boom (rather than just trying to shift your weight alone).

I think I read correctly that you are moving your back foot in and forward when overpowered. That's good and a big reason why a lot of beginners and freeriders go without a back strap.

Last, when you get hit by a gust, learn to feather out the power rather than pulling hard on the back hand and leaning back against the sail. Pulling hard on the back hand tends to put pressure on the back foot (action - reaction) and back foot pressure is what you don't want in a gust. Rather concentrate on pulling in with the front hand to gently release some of the power but still keeping downward pressure on the boom.

Take a look at this similar thread if you haven't already: www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Foiling/hooking-

Edit: one last thought. Some of us when we began, spent way too much time staring at the nose of our board which makes it much harder to ride level. Again, if you aren't doing this already, look at some point at a distance in front of your board or even the horizon. It makes things so much easier and your peripheral vision will be enough to monitor your height. btw, there's no shame in occasionally skipping along the surface so don't feel like you have to have a meter of foil mast showing to be legit.

A bit of front foot bias is good. If you are getting that a low to medium speed but then foiling out once you go faster then what you need to do is shim the stabilizer.

Wait, the rake of the foil mast in the video seems opposite of what's recommended. I was going to recommend a 2-3 degree rake in the opposite direction to help with the breaching and control issue. Also sheet out the sail until muscle memory takes over.

Learning to control a lifting wing is part of the learning curve of foiling. So I would try the stance suggestions mentioned above first and avoid racking the sail back and if you need to sheer out avoid losing mast foot pressure.

If you are doing all that and you cannot ride across the wind for 50-100ft I would move mast foot fwd or foil back or adjust stabilizer shim.

Once you get past the stable flights across the wind for 50-100 ft stage you need to learn how to handle increase lift with speed or gusts. The main way to do that is to head up wind

Hey phoilingphil, the rake on the AFS-2 is the natural mast rake they built into the structure. If you mount the DT box to a perfect fit, the mast is raked forward as shown in the video. The board rides just right this way with this foil: nose angle in the goldilocks zone. Most foils are ~90 deg normal with no rake. You rake those by adjusting the fit into the DT box (I don't recommend this for structural reasons--point loads inside the box).

I don't know why AFS did this. On their later foils they went back to 90 deg. What I do know is the the AFS-2 foil is, by far, the stiffest foil I own (and that includes SAB).