Hi All,
I'm about 10 sessions in as a newbie to foiling. I'm loving it so far but it hasn't been without its challenges - which is part of the fun I think. Though I'm sure my technique is mostly to blame I've also been starting to wonder whether my gear is properly trimmed.
What I've experimented with so far:
- Moved the sail mast base as far back as possible. This has had noticeable effects on ability to fly.
- Played with the 4 shim settings (-0.5, -0.25, +0.25, +0.5). I started at -0.25, then neutral, and have been sailing with +0.25. Haven't yet tried +0.5.
- I've left the foil mast attached to the board via the tuttle. Board and foil are both Fanatic so figured it's the right spot. But the board also has a mast track so I could conceivably play with this to trim things further if I got the mast track bolts.
- Footstraps - I've moved the back straps a little further back so I have more back foot weight when in the straps. I know people are going to say to remove them but I'm loving getting my foot in there and feeling locked in for departure as the board accelerates.
So my question is how would you recommend trimming all the different variables and what are the tell tale signs that things aren't trimmed correctly? What should I trim first and what should I leave alone? Should I add another shim first or move the foil mast forward? I'm flying a 7m sail so should I move the sail mast forward and compensate with moving the foil mast forward? Does moving the sail mast base lessen board's ability fly but make for more stable flight perhaps.
With family commitments I don't have the luxury of loads of time to experiment so hoping for some advice on how to best go about finding the right trim.
In terms of where I'm at the main things I'm working on are:
- Maintaining steady flight: once I get up on the foil trying to keep her steady flying on the foil without touching down on the water or getting too high and breaching. Unless it's really blowing I often find myself really leaning back hard and getting leg burn just to keep the up on the foil. I'm spending a lot of time porpoising.
- Getting up on the foil in lighter wind: I feel like struggle with this and have just been resorting to the brute force large sail approach. I'm often out on my 7m and 1500 wing while others are out on 5m sails and smaller foils.
Gear I'm using for foiling:
- Fanatic Stingray 140L
- Fanatic Flow Foil 1500
- Sails: FoilGlide2 (6m which I haven't used yet, 7m which is my main weapon these days). Also have a bunch of Gators from 4.5 to 6.5.
You haven't mentioned boom height. Raising the boom adds "lift". That's why you see a lot of foilers with booms shoulder to nose high. Sam Ross in his foiling tutorial videos puts them pretty high if you want to see an idea of what it looks like.
On getting on the foil, bear away on a reach to broad reach. Pumping helps a lot. So does hopping the board if you are in both straps to pop the board clear of the water. Do a search here if you can as there've been good threads with lots of videos on how to do it. The key is getting clear of the water and technique definitely helps. Once you are clear then the foil can work it's magic. Don't do like a lot of people starting out - try to force it high. That takes energy and why you may have gotten out of the water a couple of times and then flopped back down like a fish. You just have to be clear and can even skip a couple of times as you gather speed.
Make sure you are looking at the horizon and not the nose of the board. That reduces porpoising a lot. Also, the more consistently you can keep pressure on the harness, that'll reduce variations caused by wind pressure changes. A lot of people reduce their harness line length to maintain an even pressure. It's not uncommon to start out with your harness lines too far forward. Make sure they are balanced. Having too much back hand pressure pushes the back foot which causes you to go up every gust and back down every lull.
Your back leg burning is one of the signs something is amiss so good that you mentioned it. Most of us like having a fair to a lot of pressure under the front foot which is very different at first from regular windsurf where you can lean back and out and let it motor on. We're more over and on top of the board until we begin to accelerate. The faster you go, the more front foot/harness pressure you'll want to have available.
The Foilglides are good sails. You should be between 1-2 m less than you'd normally sail with just a bit of experience. The really skilled foilers, if they are hitting their jibes, can get by with less because they are touching down rarely. You are likely having to get powered up every time you come down hard or transition with a tack or jibe. But, that'll be you some day. 
make sure you are using a plus one on the rear wing or if you have an adjustable wing move it all the way back.
If it takes more back foot the faster you go then you need to do some stab shimming.
If the back foot pressure is constant then move the whole foil forward.
Ideally you should be able to move your back foot around which requires most of the weight on the front foot and mast base.
Thanks for the comments Paducah.
I'm really curious about this popping the board technique. Spent a bit of time searching the forum and found a couple of threads relating to pumping (nothing came up under "popping" and didn't know what else to search for). Are the comments from WhiteofHeart and IndecentExposur in below thread what you are referring to? If so have to admit I'm still a little puzzled by what I actually need to try.
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Foiling/Pumping-on-the-foil-in-around-10-knots
You mentioned that my back leg burning is a sign that something is amiss and that you like to have lots of front foot pressure available. So are my current trim settings looking to not be providing enough lift (e.g. I need to swap out to a more lifty shim, etc.). I also wonder if I'm going to need more than just the next shim (e.g. moving the foil further up the mast track) if I need to get to a position where I'm standing more on front foot.
Seperate question, how do you gauge the right amount of outhaul for low wind conditions. I'm been rigging my 7m FoilGlide2 such that when I apply only a bit of pressure on the sail it just touches the boom. I read in another thread someone mention that sail should sit with ~3cm lying on the boom without even any hand pressure being applied which sounded a bit extreme to me.
Am going to try to head out this afternoon despite wind looking a little on the light side. Will pop in the next and biggest shim I have(+0.5) and see I how go.
Will also raise the boom and see how that works for me.
Select to expand quotecleverku said..
Thanks for the comments Paducah.
I'm really curious about this popping the board technique. Spent a bit of time searching the forum and found a couple of threads relating to pumping (nothing came up under "popping" and didn't know what else to search for). Are the comments from WhiteofHeart and IndecentExposur in below thread what you are referring to? If so have to admit I'm still a little puzzled by what I actually need to try.
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Foiling/Pumping-on-the-foil-in-around-10-knots
You mentioned that my back leg burning is a sign that something is amiss and that you like to have lots of front foot pressure available. So are my current trim settings looking to not be providing enough lift (e.g. I need to swap out to a more lifty shim, etc.). I also wonder if I'm going to need more than just the next shim (e.g. moving the foil further up the mast track) if I need to get to a position where I'm standing more on front foot.
Seperate question, how do you gauge the right amount of outhaul for low wind conditions. I'm been rigging my 7m FoilGlide2 such that when I apply only a bit of pressure on the sail it just touches the boom. I read in another thread someone mention that sail should sit with ~3cm lying on the boom without even any hand pressure being applied which sounded a bit extreme to me.
Am going to try to head out this afternoon despite wind looking a little on the light side. Will pop in the next and biggest shim I have(+0.5) and see I how go.
Will also raise the boom and see how that works for me.
Pop as in a chop hop (mountain bike bunny hop) A good visual by Rytis beginning around 5:00 or so. He's popping the board off the water by unweighting it as he pumps. The board, free from the water, is able to start to accelerate and gain speed.
I like to set things up so that most of the time 70% of my weight is on my front foot. If OP'd I increase this front foot pressure and then turn up wind. If underpowered I shift weight to back foot to help maintain flight.
If your regular sailing position requires a heavy back foot then you will not be able to shift any weight to your back foot to increase lift.
I have never tried shims but moving your foil forwards in the track will require you to shift your weight forwards, and perhaps you won't get the back leg burn as much
Hello, I learned on a Fanatic Stingray and now have the Flow 1500. I weigh 85 kgs. In the early days of learning I slid the foil to the middle or even slightly ahead of middle. This helps with early take off. Now that my pumping is better I have it full back.
The shims have a very small effect except at speeds faster than I usually want to go. That said I prefer the +0.5 when I use them because it adds a touch more stability.
For the sail position I put my Ftype 5.8 at 130 and anything smaller as far back as I can. About 125 on that board.
Fwiw I keep my boom lower than most for my height as it makes water starting a little easier. I'm no doubt giving something up somewhere else. I have the front foot straps inboard and full forward. No back straps.
My takeoff speed in that set up is about 7 knots board speed measured with my gps.
Finally, I think the Stingrays are really better suited to slalom style foiling as the tracks are far apart. When I try to free ride swell like the WA crew it becomes unwieldy. Great board for lite wind days though.
Thanks all for the advice. I had a great session on Monday combining some of what was suggested (bearing away to get flying, high boom, +0.5 shim, looking at the horizon instead of the board). The wind was very marginal and I really didn't expect to get up on the foil at all but didn't want to waste an opportunity to get out on the water and at least practice my pumping technique. As I was getting in the water a wingdinger friend of mine was just getting out and let me know that he didn't manage to even get on the foil due to the light wind. I then in front of him proceeded to get up on the board, give it a few pumps to get going, bared away as suggested, and got right up on the foil like a pro! It was a really satisfying result after having just been told to not expect much.
Despite the high boom and extra shim setting I still felt very back footed throughout the session. I've ordered some track mounting bolts from SurfFX yesterday and they are due to arrive today so keen to mount the foil on the track and move it forward to see what happens.
I am on a Goya Bolt with DT box, so my only option is to move the sail mast base, so I moved it all the way back to be balanced. Being balanced means you have equal weight on the front and rear foot, imagine you are straddling a seesaw, left foot near one seat right foot near the other seat, seesaw pivot point right under your navel. If you apply foot pressure early while the seesaw is close to level, it is easy to keep the seesaw level, but if you wait too long and one side of the seesaw angles up too high you have to apply a lot more pressure to get it back level and then you overshoot. That is what you are doing when you are porpoising. So first get the sail mast base and foil adjusted so you are perfectly balanced on the "seesaw", then pay attention to your level and make small toe pressure adjustments early on to keep your flight level.
Cleverku, thanks for the report. Glad it's coming together and you are having fun. It will be interesting to see how using the tracks affects things for you. fwiw, you may find that as you generate more speed (and, thus, lift) the backfootedness will not be as pronounced.
Hooray for having a good light wind session.
Centre of lift is approximately 1/3 back from the leading edge of the front foil.You can lay the fuselage on top of your board in its mounting position & mark the COL on either side of the board. Mount the straps so that the centre of each strap is equidistant from the COL (fore & aft). That should give you even foot pressure. Moving straps away from COL should give less pressure on that foot, not more. Think standing on see-saw as others have mentioned.
Adjust sail mast rearward if struggling to get up on foil & forward if porpoising for more control.
Enjoy!
Select to expand quotegregwho said..
Centre of lift is approximately 1/3 back from the leading edge of the front foil.
That's the lift from the front wing. The tail wing also provides lift (check the diagrams at www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Foiling/Where-is-CLR-on-foil-?page=1), which can be adjusted by the tail wings. The hydrodynamic lift from the tail wing points down, which gets levered through the fuse and the mast into upwards lift. With typical setups, this in effect moves the center of lift further forward. That's why some foil-board combos work well even though the front wing is close to the foil mast and rear foot.
Select to expand quotePaducah said..
You haven't mentioned boom height. Raising the boom adds "lift". That's why you see a lot of foilers with booms shoulder to nose high.
I just recently learned a bit about boom height while foiling. I often have the boom just at shoulder height, just about the same as when windsurfing. That works reasonably well when nicely powered, but goes again the advice from foil guru Andy Brandt to put the boom very high (forehead or higher).
In one recent session where the wind was marginal, I had a pretty hard time to get going, and to stay up on the foil. Something felt wrong - I had what felt like enough power, and foil and mast were in the same position as always, but things felt unbalanced. It finally occurred to me to move the boom up maybe 5 cm, and it was a night-and day difference. I suddenly could get going a lot easier, and staying up in lulls was not an issue anymore. I was quite surprised at how much difference it made - definitely more than on the slapper.
As for "popping" the board, I can see the similarity to popping for freestyle moves. But I'd describe it a bit differently: pulling the board up with the front foot. That works quite well even without a rear strap.
For trimming your stance while riding there is a lot of subtle movement to maintain the appearance of standing still on the foil!
A bit of a slow video but it shows how the sheet angle, foot balance, harness pressure and hip position shifts on a single run.
