Game Changers

Great subject.

I have to agree with the barracuda experience and now the gator also.

Watching my 57 year old wife, who was already a long term very good winger rinding natural and switch with foot transitions and gybe down for years, totally change her wing size down one when switching to a small Armstrong mid length board. I couldn't believe how much easier it was for her to get off the water compared to a typical wing board. Game changed in her words.

The downwind experience with a parawing and midlength board. After successfully going through the learing to sup dw with a paddle journey I thought I would get a parawing to ride upwind and use my paddle to get up and foil back. Third parawing session and first in proper wind, I ambitiously pulled myself into a bump section, collapsed the wing in a very sloppy way, then rode for 1.5k with 6'1 board after years on 8 foot plus. Mind blown and total game changer. I don't think I will ever sup dw with a paddle again. For my age and location sup dw stopped making sense in that instant. Game well and truly changed with sups now for sale.

I learnt prone foil in 2017 on the original Kai from Gofoil and for many years each new generation of foil felt like a game changer but now for sure most foils and wings feel pretty good. The quantum leaps in performance are long behind us I think and it just comes down to choosing what suits you ability, location and application best.

Stiff and thin masts for sure.

Sorry. But I don't see anything that significantly changed the sport to warrant the term game changing. You are right, we are all sick and tired of the term.

The only game changer was for me in 2019 when I got my first foil (light wind sailing). After that it was improvements and a lot of marketing.

Foil Drive is a game changer. Especially for people that don't have access to wind, but have lakes around.

I hate this term so much as well as the general over saturation of influencers and marketing that has bombarded foiling.

Having said that I'll play but in bigger picture items as I don't think there's really much of anything that truly changed the game beyond the actual inception of foiling as a whole.

#1 The Kai Lenny moment. Yes air chairs and guys sending Jaws in boots had previously dabbled in foiling but I think a lot of us can credit Kai pumping around, linking waves and essentially down-winding as kickstarting the foiling movement. I actually don't think Kai gets enough credit for this or his influence in a variety of water sports.

#2 Foil Assists. This one pains me to add as I think they continue to do a lot of harm and be a general annoyance especially in lineups where they don't belong.

But in it's infancy it made those initial difficult steps of learning to foil and building that muscle memory a whole lot easier than getting a tow behind a boat or small doses of foil time learning prone/sup/wing.

Every "upgrade" since such as more power, trench boards, integrated masts etc are akin to pimping your training wheels and a terrible waste of money and foiling time/progression IMO but as a learning tool to get you quickly on foil with the intentional goal/practice to move on to the many other non assisted disciplines I think they remain the easiest way to get the basics down.

#3 Wings/Parawings As a surfer in a past life who detested any wind that wasn't offshore, these two have opened up a whole new set of conditions I look forward to. For clocking up foil time in a variety of ways (mowing the lawn, surfing, downwinding, freestyle) they are hard to beat.

Newer high aspect foils that have glide and turn. Removes the need to pick one over the other.
Parawing for upwind/downwind removes the need for long boards and the logistics of the car shuffle.
Tow Boogie which removes the assist weight from the board you ride and the requirement for a jetski and partner. Limited to use aware from other water users can make it a lonely experience.
Longer narrower boards making it so easy to get up on foil.


Agree with the Kai Lenny comments, that was the aha moment for me. As well as watching Jake Jako ripping waves on GoFoil gear a decade ago.

Great hearing different perspectives on this. For some it was large gear revolutions, others feel like there's never been a game changer, the Kai Lenny comments surprised me. He does so much. Such an all-rounder dominating in the have fun realm which never seems to get the same credit as someone who's heavy in the comp scene.

The motorized stuff has never been for me. I'd expect that is some kind of a philosophical difference as I have leave no trace wilderness principles deeply ingrained in my ideas around recreation. I'm an earn your turns kind of guy, I'd rather not foil if a motor is involved.

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AnyBoard said..

The weirdest thing of all for me is that each of the above game changing revolutions was fully resisted by most and none of them gained acceptance or were seen as ground breaking by the masses initially. In fact the resistance was really solid for all these sports that history will see the inventors as true pioneers.

Even resisted by the shops in the gorge which blows my mind. I'll never forget when I tried to order the 5'3"x22" wide Kalama E3. I was told that was a terrible decision and the board would be impossible to use because it was unrealistically narrow. Instead I was pushed onto the 4'8"x26" E3 which ended up being the worst board I ever owned. That lesson/experience and the years that followed where the DW boards and Midlengths faced so much resistance was very eye opening to me about how the foil industry and shops moved and marketed products.

I've said it many times before. The biggest game changer is knowing yourself, your style, and how to identify gear that can serve you. Once you've got those things sorted out you can trust your intuition on a lot of purchases and are a lot less likely to be sucked in to the marketing hype train.

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BWalnut said..
the Kai Lenny comments surprised me. He does so much. Such an all-rounder dominating in the have fun realm which never seems to get the same credit as someone who's heavy in the comp scene.

The motorized stuff has never been for me. I'd expect that is some kind of a philosophical difference as I have leave no trace wilderness principles deeply ingrained in my ideas around recreation. I'm an earn your turns kind of guy, I'd rather not foil if a motor is involved.

I don't fanboy on any of the "social media foilers" as I think most are just the best of the initial early adopters, But Kai is a true waterman who's not afraid to dabble in sports that aren't considered cool by the shortboard crew (which he also happens to rip at) As someone who just loves being in the ocean no matter what craft I'm on I admire that.

Haha don't get me wrong, if someone could click their fingers and make the foil assists/efoils disappear overnight I'd be all for it. They are currently our biggest risk of having foiling as a whole banned which would be devastating for the community. Just to keep my knowledge somewhat up to date I jumped on the "latest and greatest" efoil setup the other week, a appletree trench, gen2 HP, armstrong fancy integrated mast and took it out for a quick surf. It felt completely souless. Sure it was easy to just pull a trigger and be up on foil but the buzzing around didn't even feel like foiling, it's was noisy and artificial with very little reward/satisfaction and then when I could turn the thing off and surf a wave, sure I was kind of foiling but it felt like a completely compromised experience doing it on a "prone board" that weight 10kg+

So again brilliant device to "learn to foil" but you're selling yourself short if you don't quickly move on and experience all the other disciplines foiling has to offer (even if you have to revert to learner every now and then)

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I've said it many times before. The biggest game changer is knowing yourself, your style, and how to identify gear that can serve you. Once you've got those things sorted out you can trust your intuition on a lot of purchases and are a lot less likely to be sucked in to the marketing hype train.

This sounds like a quote straight out of my playbook! Demoing different gear I feel I learn something each time whether I like it or not it opens up a new feel/awareness. For me the big "gamechanger" is simply putting in the time in the water, being willing to be a kook but eventually reap all the rewards and ahah moments once it clicks.

I started winging on a prototype F-One Swing V1 before any wings were released to the general market, and I have to say, the first F-One Phantom foil I got was a real gamechanger. Before that the only available stuff (from F-One) were low aspect (4 AR) and thick surf and kitefoils and they dont work for winging at all. I was already a proficient foiler at the time, and upon switching to the Phantom 1480 I was instantly able to go from 10% jibes to 95+% jibes, unlocking just that little bit of glide that was needed.

For the rest, nothing really. Sure the Strike V1 was 3 times as good as the original Swing, and a real wingboard instead of a foil sup without strap inserts was an upgrade as it allowed me to start jumping, but its all marginal and that foilsup would probably be considered a hype 'midlength' now.

The Parawing was the latest game changer for me. After learning to prone in 17' and then spending years on the wing and learning the ways of the winds and tides to the point where 90% of my sessions were targeted at wind against tide conditions with steep bumps. When I finally stowed the PW and surfed the bumps without a wing in the way and successfully relaunched for a lap upwind, it was a feeling I'd been subconsciously dreaming of for years. Prone roots meets wind, surf, sailing, and shredding.
Riding swells downwind without the immediate power supply of a wing opens up foil scrutiny. After 7 or 8 years riding Armstrong exclusively, I took a gamble on the F4 Orca with 11.6mm thick mast after some serious hype by non sponsored riders. Don't get me wrong, the Armstrong gear is great, but I keep finding myself after an Orca session just perplexed.thinking 'I don't know if I could make a better foil if I had magic powers'. So I guess the Orca is actually my latest and most stoke inducing gear. Game changer for me. Maybe not for others.

For me the game changer was seeing this video of Alan Cadiz winging on July 4th, 2019. Back then the vast majority of talk was about the potential for flagging out and riding swell/waves. Pretty much the same dominance of discussion as today. Even though he was just jibing and tacking both ways (crude by today's standards but pretty high level back then), you could just tell the potential for doing all kinds of fun stuff riding strapless in flattish water beyond plowing the field. I know a lot of wingers consider strapless freestyle riding style pretty lame but I love it, despite my limited old guy repertoire.

All the gear stuff, yep fast changing but incremental to me. My kit back in Oct 2019. I think Duotone just had the 4 and 5m wing then and I think the only boom wing out there from what I vaguely recall. I had zero interest in pursuing this sport with soft handles or even split handles. I wanted what Alan was riding! So a boom wing was a "game enabler" for me

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drc13 said..
Demoing different gear I feel I learn something each time whether I like it or not it opens up a new feel/awareness.

I'm wrapping up my thoughts on AFS Silk vs Code X vs KT Nomad right now and while the latter 2 brands aren't inspiring me to change, I actually learned a lot about my AFS kit from doing the comparison. Knowledge is power!

The game-changer for me is my savings account, just no need for it anymore, kiss goodbye to interest and those quarterly fee's!

Game changers for me, Foildrive and Parawing, haven't winged in over a year, probably should sell the gear.

ML boards, built one before the hype and spent my time conveying the advantages of them for average Joe.

I just realised a harness was a game changer for going upwind, using bigger wings and saving my hands.

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BWalnut said..

Faff said..
I just realised a harness was a game changer for going upwind, using bigger wings and saving my hands.

Agree. Follow up question: Why has the harness been resisted each step of the way? I remember it being resisted with winging and then now with the parawing there's been pushback. It seems like we're getting over the hump quickly this time but I've been confused by this.

Most wingers came from windsurfing and kiting and really enjoyed the simplicity of it after years of lugging all the associated paraphernalia around.