Hi Mahanumah,

Ha ha, been there before...

Check this video out at about 3.05. With a foil you got plenty of stability and will pick up it soon.

Thanks Anders

Have been trying to use the J-Stroke when paddling my Surf SUP and Race Board but I don't seem to get it 100%.

The Hover is 33" wide which makes getting my top hand over the bottom one problematic.

Will persevere and see how I go.

To get your top hand closer to the rail without twisting your body it is easier to stand in a staggered stance, one foot further forward instead of side by side.
It will also make it easier to dip the blade at an angle for the J-stroke.
Plenty of Youtube vids on J , brace and sprint stroke, they have saved me from lots of fumbling and falling and they are essential for wave SUP.
Don't be discouraged by a bad day, you will get it !

I posted some tips here: www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=15897.0

That's exactly the same thing, with the "nail effect" even more present, as the center of rotation of the board is definitively the mast, whereas on a normal SUP it is a mix of the fins and the rails.

I included the paddling in this video so you can see how it is done. See how my rear knee nearly touches the deck for having my whole body pulls on the paddle, not only the arms

2 small stabilisers help too??

bolgo said..
2 small stabilisers help too??

Yes, a lot:

- because it is a surf shape, so it has more row effect than a pure foil SUP board with their bevels and parallel rails. Saves a lot of energy for paddling out. Even Dave Kalama uses also a fin on his pure SUP foil shape (but in the front as he has no room in the tail).

- it allows me to put all my focus and strength into the forward pull on takeoffs. This extra bit of push makes me take waves that others miss, especially the people that got short dedicated SUP foil boards because every cool kid have them, but don't have yet the paddling technique to master a very short SUP... It helps me even though I have 10 years of paddling experience in 6'x" SUPs...

- and the most important effect: it keeps the board go straight when the (surf) tail touches the water. Otherwise I found out that it wlll skip on the water like a stone and go sideways, inducing yaw, and even a small amount of yaw kills a foil speed, much more than the water friction itself. In a way it acts like a nubster to maintain drive on a too-loose quad surfboard.

A good hull design alleviate the need for fins... but any hull feature tend to add quickly a lot of drag, a fin is still the most efficient way to provide lateral resistance for the less drag, and mandatory in my opinion on hybrid (SUP + foil) boards.

emmafoils said..
I wonder why you don't see them on more of the shorter foil SUPs? Kalama uses a single one in the front and Ride Engine seems to have borrowed that idea but I don't see them on other production boards.

Because a lot of people in surfing (a bit less in foiling) are awfully conservative and are afraid of trying things they do not see pros using.

In this case however, it is because if you have a "whistle tail" (bevel on the tail), you have no room to put a fin, and also sub-6' boards have the foil mast too close to the tail for a fin to have significant leverage anyways. Plus most dedicated SUP foil boards seem to have enough yaw-countering properties nowadays?

Also, if you have enough dihedral in your stabilizer (or up/downturned tips), it can acts as small rudders.
I added a small fin on a flat stabilizer, and it worked well, except that the force on it was building like the square of the speed, so it was stiffening too much the foil at speed. Which is not an issue for fins as they are out of the water at speed.

I didnt try a fin in front, I would be wary of veering away the nose hard on touchdowns, but I didnt try it yet.

On a quad setup I would just use the 2 rear ones for maximum leverage. I have seen pics of Kahei kite foiling with the quads still on, he told me that he was just being lazy and did not bother to remove them for a foil session :-)

After a while this won't be a problem. That's really why the fins don't take off. By the time you get around to installing the fin, you figure this out and don't need it.

By the time we finish replying all this you will post that you got it.

I still have to curve around a bit to set myself in the right place, no more turn and go, but that seems pretty common and now that's a small curve and not a giant arc like at the start.

As colas suggested to me 2 years ago, I put two little side fins on my refitted hypernut to help stay a bit straighter....I angle grinded two old plastic FCS fins down. I think it definitely helped. I don't use them now but now I've had enough practice.

Crikey....the hypernut feels like a lifetime ago. Persevere and you'll get it....and you won't regret it