Windfoil jibe

Hi guys!
i recently got my new Slingshot Wizard 114 and now i am having a hard time training foiling jibes in light winds; my weight is 76 kgs, my biggest sail is 5,8m2.
popping up in the foil and riding back and forth is a delight with this board, but jibing.....
Is this board broad and big enough for me or should i check out an additional Wizard 125/130?

Thanks for your advice
Juergen

Board size doesn't matter until you go way down.
You are talking about foil jibes, so foil size and stability DOES matter.
But skill is easily 95% of the equation.

I forgot to mention, I also have both the 114 and 130 V3 Wizards. I am 90 kgs and find the 130 much easier to complete jibes. It just offers a bigger dance floor.

yes the additional width of a larger board definitely makes a big difference. Also, the i76 is significantly easier to jibe than the 84. I had both.

if you want to stay on the board, and foiling jibes not mastered, try riding lower, but on foil as you enter. Lower allows touchdowns without upsetting balance.
Flat water a a gusts helps too.

If you wear grippy booties when foiling, it can make it hard to have your foot slip around to face forward when doing the sail flip. This is a nuance of foot position that took me forever to figure out (and kept me crashing on jibes because my body couldn't rotate correctly during sail flip because my foot was stuck to the board pointed the wrong direction). Old windsurfing habits had me placing my rear foot almost perpendicular to the length of the board when initiating the turn (and I never wear booties when windsurfing).

Finally the light bulb went on and I started putting my rear foot on the leeward rail facing more towards the front of the board when initiating the jibe It has made the difference from rarely making a flying jibe to usually making them now on flat water.

My feet slip around pretty easily on the Slingshot decks when barefoot, they are pretty much stuck to the board with the booties (which are great foot protection where I launch).

OK I can't resist as this is my favourite topic. First of all we are discussing foiling through a learners first jibes, as I jibe differently now than I did when I learnt.

1. Equipment will make it easier, generally a bigger board is more forgiving and a bigger foil >1500cm2, longer fuselage, shorter mast all make the foil less sensitive. The nice thing about a bigger foil is it lets you use a smaller sail as well. As others have noted going without footstraps just makes for less thing to deal with. It made it much easier for me.

2. Steady wind and flat water also made it easier for me. A broad reach to broad reach arch also helped in the beginning.

3. My first jibes were "detuned" by placing my back foot just across the centre line and a bit forward of the level riding location. If its directly across from the level riding location the back foot pressure required for turning will bring the rider up on the foil. I found practicing the start of the turn and then carving back on heel side helped me get a feel for where to put my foot and the amount of pressure I needed to apply. And its fun.

4. During my first jibes I found my important reminders to be:
a. Steady Rear Foot pressure.
b. If getting back winded lean the mast more to the outside of the jibe.
c. Flip the sail first and stabilize your flight
d. Then when switching my feet I found my heels naturally came together near the centreline of the board in between the level riding foot positions. And when I finished switching my feet I sometimes took a few baby steps to find my balance point. As I learnt strapless.

I find now my the timing of when I flip the sail and move my feet varies a bit depending on conditions and what type of equipment I am riding. The bottom line is It will take you a fraction of the time to come out of a foiling jibe with speed (touch downs are ok) than it did learning to plan through a "fin" jibe.

Hope this helps.

It should be noted that flying jibes are really hard especially in light wind. I ride a Wizard 125 with the 84 wing and a 7.3 sail, I am 85kg. It took me like three seasons to get them somewhat consistently, though I don't get out much and wind is crap where I live.. Going from a 114 to a 125 won't help you at all, and why would it? After all you are flying the jibe, volume is moot. I started wingfoiling last year and in only a few sessions I was flying jibes because flipping the wing is so much less disruptive than a sail, and it actually helped my windfoiling jibes. Keeping weight forward to prevent wing stalling as well as keeping my c of g over the center of the board are the two things I needed to be most aware of when windfoil jibing to stay flying.

ccflyer, thanks again for posting the foot position picture. I was getting frustrated with my jibes again. After foiling through on a somewhat regular basis (albeit with very brief water contact) after the Andy Brandt lesson in Corpus Christi, I had reverted back to crashing most of the time. When I remembered your post today and pointed the toes more forward, things immediately got better again, with most jibes dry and a few (almost) foiled through. Looking at GoPro footage afterwards, I discovered that my feet were not nearly as forward oriented as I thought - closer to a 45 degree angle, similar to 2keen's picture above. That already helped, but I'll have to try pointing the foot even more forward to see what that does.

Like someone else said the lightbulb went on this week for me. I am in my second season. I only foil in ocean swell and chop so was having lots of problems with hitting the chop. This week I worked on entering the jibes higher, going less than 180 degrees, and maintaining speed. Amazingly it all came together on both port and starboard tacks. If feels so cool to finish a jibe dry and planing.