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...
I think it is a very tough ask and i take my hat off to anyone who is successful through this path.
The rider weight will complicate things massively as you need the board to be as efficient as possible which means narrow and hard to balance. If he can learn in a pond where conditions are smooth it will allow him to learn without developing the extreme balance at the same time as the pump up. It might be a good idea also to take a really small kite and a really big parawing size foil to get use to big wing span foils first.
Make sure he learns on one of the top few brands as this will also help alot.
I've heard that for those wishing to skip the Wing stage, F-One Plume is good first step.
Haha not that hard local dude who has not winged but is an excellent prone foiler got up straight away on his prone board. Next day did an 11 k downwind 
He has a few skills and is young and light.
Select to expand quotehilly said..
Haha not that hard local dude who has not winged but is an excellent prone foiler got up straight away on his prone board. Next day did an 11 k downwind
He has a few skills and is young and light.
Nah, not that dude.
Select to expand quotehilly said..
Haha not that hard local dude who has not winged but is an excellent prone foiler got up straight away on his prone board. Next day did an 11 k downwind
He has a few skills and is young and light.
Yes dw and prone skills make it very easy. this guy is described as a kite foiler. So simple if you have sup dw paddle up skills.
Why do people think learning to wing would be easier than pw? IMO the pw is a lot easier to fly than a wing, it's just that we're all so used to wings.
For a kite foiler, I think the main challenge is just balancing on the board, I agree that learning in a flat pond and with a high quality board would make the biggest difference.
Of course also, a 120-130kg rider will have a hard time getting enough power to learn in. He'll need a larger pw (4-5m+) in like 20 kts+.
For the first few sessions he might want to use a high volume, WIDE, wing board that he can taxi on. He almost definitely isn't going to get onto foil with that kind of board, but it will help him learn how to build power in the sail (after playing with it on the beach), how to angle the board, and how to use the rails and foil to keep an angle and stay upwind (kind of). I think the biggest struggle going from kiting (where you have a lot of power on tap) is dealing with balancing on a board without a lot of power in the sail, so starting on this kind of board could eliminate that complication for the first couple of sessions.
Fighting the urge to let go of the bar is also something that takes a lot of getting used to.
