I know a skilled kite foiler who wants to learn parawinging. He has never wing foiled but is determined to make the jump from kite foiling to parawing without learning to foil with a standard hand wing. Not sure it's relevant but he's a very large man (1.95 M, 120-130kg)
Is this a thing people do successfully? If not, should I bide my time to eventually relieve him of his three new F-one PW at a discount?
100% doable as long as he understands he needs new gear for everything. Kite boards and foils are not the same as parawing boards and foils. If he tries to just dip a toe in by buying parawings it will go poorly. If he buys a downwind board and a large foil he'll figure it out.
We have a guy here doing that, but it's a struggle even with the DW board. A previous winger will pick para up in a couple of runs but it's a steep learning curve for a kiter.
Definitely easier to pick up a cheap wing to start with.
Yep. He's got them. Guess I shouldn't hope for almost new second hand PWs in the near future.
I went from being an experienced kite foiler directly to parawinging and it was a real struggle, but I've learned at last. Both the board balance (and not having to learn on such an efficient/narrow board), pumping and wave riding with nothing to balance against would probably have been easier to learn with the wing. However I was never motivated to have that big wing thing in my face and having to pump it, whereas I was extremely motivated to learn parawinging, which I think is more important. I'm only 72 kgs though...
