Wingfoil tack - hitting the wall

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cornwallis said..
Having just got stuck on this, this video at 0.25 speed was really useful. I have a foil that won't allow me to just "kick turn" pivot once through the tack as I just stall, so I ended up oversheeting and trying to crank upwind to initiate the turn with speed. Clearly all wrong.

You begin the tack by tacking the wing, then tacking the board..?

Here's a very methodical approach to learning to tack by a guy I know. Make sure to follow his dry land exercises ( Alan Cadiz likes teaching with dry land practice the same way). It's not really "tack wing then tack board" like they are two consecutive separate functions, you still do both simultaneously. Sunsetsailboards is just saying that bringing the wing around overhead slightly ahead of the board carving through the wind helps with carving and completing the move on foil. Maybe confusing to think about. Again watch this video and see if it helps.

Sheeting in hard for max upwind speed is a pretty standard mistake when first learning, even more so for your first heal side and handle pass tacks.

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Dspace said..

cornwallis said..
Having just got stuck on this, this video at 0.25 speed was really useful. I have a foil that won't allow me to just "kick turn" pivot once through the tack as I just stall, so I ended up oversheeting and trying to crank upwind to initiate the turn with speed. Clearly all wrong.

You begin the tack by tacking the wing, then tacking the board..?

Here's a very methodical approach to learning to tack by a guy I know. Make sure to follow his dry land exercises ( Alan Cadiz likes teaching with dry land practice the same way). It's not really "tack wing then tack board" like they are two consecutive separate functions, you still do both simultaneously. Sunsetsailboards is just saying that bringing the wing around overhead slightly ahead of the board carving through the wind helps with carving and completing the move on foil. Maybe confusing to think about. Again watch this video and see if it helps.

Sheeting in hard for max upwind speed is a pretty standard mistake when first learning, even more so for your first heal side and handle pass tacks.

Thanks, that video is excellent

Some points to that, as I think because it's unintuitive it would benefit from a "short hand tip", maybe better would be "initiate the tack entirely with the wing, then worry about the board":

In the video the first steps are all wing: "bring the wing overhead, shift your hands, bring the wing to the new side" and at 4:53 the wing is effectively tacked across to the other side before he has done any board manoeuvring.

You are correct in that they are closer to simultaneously, but you definitely initiate the tack with the wing first, which is not at all obvious.

I had the same problem as the opening post and as soon as I got a smaller board (same liters than my weight in kilos) I started getting a virtually 100% success rate.

With a smaller board I can get make the board turn as I will. Then the trick is just to make it turn downwind and to be sure to neutralize the wing properly which for me means bending the front arm and giving it a little twist in the tacking direction with the back arm as I release it in order to have the wing flat (parallel to the ground).

The timing to switch hands is purely a matter of how fast you want to power the wing on the new side, but to learn the tack is better to always point downwind on the new side, which gives you plenty of time to switch hands, so my advice is to focus first on making the board turn with your feet all the way to going downwind, then you'll be able to switch hands whenever once you can do the turn automatically.

Managed to get the toe to heel after a couple of goes with the above suggestions, leading to the sequence of issues:

first attempts, put wing overhead while a broad reach, then leant into carve with wing overhead and then nearly completed but missed the handle on new tack and slowed down as had gone too long into the wind

second approach, flipped wing above on broad reach, then leant into it, switched handles, too much back hand caused too tight a pivot and stalled the foil (progression 140 + marlin14")

third approach, flipped wing while carving into the tack a bit more, managed to keep the curve continuous and get the wing powered before slowing down too much to ride away

I don't think I would have managed doing the correct technique on the first go as too much happens, but building up to it like the above meant each attempt was more comfortable to add something. I can see that simultaneous approach is the best way to do it smoothly and without stalling

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kersh said..
2. Rotating my upper body and shoulders to face where I wanted to go.

This is probably the hardest thing to do while also managing the wing, and probably what I found the least intuitive coming from prone where turning and gliding isn't particularly hard in most cases.

Get a skateboard - eliminate the foil, practice with no need to worry.

Then once you've got this down pat, do skiff style drills. 40 minutes of nonstop tacking, hit just above stall and tack.