Select to expand quoteZeeGerman said..
Well, it's not easy to say exactly, and I'm certainly no expert. I just found that I can pump the board on the foil with comparatively little effort using my 6.4 as
a) I seem to pump the sail more effectively, while the bigger sail is a lot more inert and I feel that pumping is rather exhausting, but doesn't accelerate the board as much as I would expect.
b) The board feels a lot stickier with the 8.0 as if the sheer weight of the rig on the mastbase was pushing it down. I don't get anywhere porpoising it, while with smaller sails I can pump, press the nose down, then press hard on the tail and off I go.
c) With the big sail the board has a higher lift-off speed (probably related to the aforementioned stickiness). So I've got more power, but need more power as well. I feel as if had an engine with 20 percent more grunt and a car with twenty percent more resistance from weight, tyres etc.
What I might not have made clear enough is that I might have to work on my big sail pumping skills. It might be just me.
Ok thank you, I *think* I understand what you mean now.
At some phases, when pumping the 9.0, I basically use it as a balance bar to force my legs forward. There is some sail movement but it's from levering against it to use my legs, not so much flapping the sail. I'll try to get some better video soon...
Here is an example. Notice there it's mostly hips and using the sail as balance. This was actually pretty difficult swell that was still remaining after the wind died. Not super fun. I normally don't have to put quite this much into it but the swell was screwing me up.
