Hello
I put a thread some time ago about a similar question but it went in another direction. There are so many different designs in freeride foil boards that it's very interesting to know opinions.
A 115 kg friend of mine foils in 12-13 knots and 5,7 sail with a naish crossover 142 and 1800 cm wing foil. This is a multipurpose long board (7,8") with advanced footstraps position and not so thick&big tail as it can be used for sup surfing. It shouldn't be so good for windfoiling in light winds but it does the job. There must be different performances among these multipurpose boards (smik mongrel, hypernut, sroka, etc), it's interesting but too long to analyse all them in sup surfing, windfoiling, wavesailing, etc...
What I wanted is comparing the performance in freeride windfoiling between a long board with advanced footstraps as the crossover (>30 cm from the back footstrap to the tail), and the compact specific ones (pocket rocket, magic carpet, slingshot, JP freefoil, etc.) with back strap on the edge of the tail. There are also sup foil boards with mast base like the JP slate and fanatic sky 6'11" which are quite short and advanced position straps.
I think the first two groups manage to have a good distance between mast base and foil mast while the third ones have smaller distance.
Does the additional length behind the back strap and the central position of the straps help in early flying, stability, etc? or isn't useful for anything? At least, the extra length in the nose helps recovery on breaching and easy uphauling.
Thanks for sharing experiences of any of these boards.
The primary factor with any board is the distance between the mast track and the foil mast. If this distance is too close it makes things very agile, which beginners may lack the control to handle. In my experience, some of these crossover boards tend to have the foil track very far forward, putting them into the "ultra-compact" geometry category. Ultra compact geometry makes it difficult to sail pump vigorously and it makes gybing much harder.
The other issue with crossover boards is that they often have chinned rails all the way down to the tail which seem to increase the difficulty popping up onto the foil when the wind is very light.
A crossover board is a great option if you are going to "crossover" or if you are not sure whether you want to wing or sail foil
www.instagram.com/p/CK9mBrBj_-J/
I have a Fanatic Stingray 125 and a Sky SUP 6'11". The SR is a great windfoil board especially with a larger sail though I regularly use a 4.2 on it. The SUP otoh is a great beginner wing board that has a mast track. Getting it going with the windfoil is a nightmare. It's so squirrelly. Once the boil is on it's fine, but you have your feet so far forward that you can't use the footstraps. Same foil btw. I thought is it might be a good Swiss Army knife but it really wasn't.
Look carefully at the photos of the board being used by the team riders and they aren't using the foot straps. Also, the new Bee has a greater separation between the foil track and sail track.
Horses for courses.
Goya Bolt 135 2018 model year, at 243 cm/7'-11" it is long for a foil board, but perfect imo, great for recovering from a foil out and out of control conditions, or 15+ and 1 to 2-1/2' waves where the nose gets me over the waves as I am just getting up, and the length of the board allows you to pump the sail in light conditions so that the board glides through the chop and then takes off. A short foil specific board would plow into the chop and be difficult to get up imo. I had a JP magic ride 142 that I really liked and the Goya had similar dimensions but was lighter, really happy with it and have no plans on getting a foil specific board, plus the DT foil box is really tough!
I have a Stingray 140 and a couple of crossover boards. The long nose on the Stingray makes breaches easy. On the shorter multi-use boards (7 ft), breaches are much more likely to result in crashes, sometimes catapults (which never happen on the Stringray).
I think the extra length & volume behind the straps on the multi-use boards is for winging - you need it to stand. For windfoiling, I don't see any use in it. But I have not used the crossover boards since getting the Stringray.
Old, mower of lawn windsurfer here.....
Naish 122 has twin tracks with 4" adjustment.
I also have windsurf and surf fuzes, so a total of 8" range of foil adj.
Tried most combos, but being old and stiff, prefer foil mast back with long windsurf fuze, rear straps 1 hole forward, front straps 3 holes forward, mast base 2/3rds forward for a lawn mower easy riding stable setup.
