A few years ago we sailed out into Bass Strait on a friend's 50' catamaran. There were 3-4m swells rolling through and not a breath of wind. When in the trough all we could see was green, and at the top we could see the swells marching in from the horizon and continuing on to Phillip Island.

I was thinking at the time that if you could get on one of these with a foil you could go forever. Has anybody done anything like that?

There's plenty of videos of people on ocean swells with shedloads of wind. What about before or after the wind when there's just swell and no wind?

I think the problem would be getting on foil in those conditions, I can be very challenging to paddle up without the help of wind created chop. But once on foil, on a fast HA foil that would be great conditions.

Efoil makes it partially doable,as you can get up to speed and get in super early on swells. But even with folding prop the motor drag eventually slows you down and lose the swell. Towing in with a high aspect foil, you could probably go a long ways, would feel like powder snowboarding:-)

was pretty light at parts of James Casey's Guinness record run.

the Foildrive is the answer you can see in this video I take a lime bike up the coastline and foil home in no wind ., I've also been doing DW runs the gun Sup crew on the FD and watched them start in basically no wind at all . ?feature=shared

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Gorgo said..
A few years ago we sailed out into Bass Strait on a friend's 50' catamaran. There were 3-4m swells rolling through and not a breath of wind. When in the trough all we could see was green, and at the top we could see the swells marching in from the horizon and continuing on to Phillip Island.

I was thinking at the time that if you could get on one of these with a foil you could go forever. Has anybody done anything like that?

There's plenty of videos of people on ocean swells with shedloads of wind. What about before or after the wind when there's just swell and no wind?

Getting started would be the issue here and then staying with the swell once you're up. I think the new race DW wings could hang with the swell. I have done a few DWers where the wind dropped and the wind bumps kinda disappeared and we were on the swells and was really fun. It was super glassy, but had to work hard to stay with the ground swell and getting up on foil was very difficult.

Sometimes the swell mixed with wind bump. I think with fast enough foil you may be able to hop from the wind swell to the ground swell. But in windy condition using hand wing may be an easier option.

I've done some no down wind run, but you need some kind of left over short period swell, long period swell only even with a foil drive you won't be able to match the speed needed.

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Hdip said..

was pretty light at parts of James Casey's Guinness record run.

Interestingly, he mentions he would like to tackle Bass Strait in this clip(7.20).

yeah getting into somewhere like Bass straight on the right days would be so good. Fully doable in the right conditions and right foils.

Bigger ocean swells can do up to about 50km so I would feel you would need to paddle up a foil that can sit on about 30-40km p/h and you should have a pretty good ride. Right now if i take my 870-SDR wing out i can do average about 26-30km p/h with top speeds right on 40km so it would need to be a little smaller than this if the swells were quite big just so you can keep up with them in the glide phase of the ride.

probably easier just to get a whip in from a boat or ski and just ride the swells for ever but it does sound like fun.

Reading this thread again, and thinking about it more -- I think the question is actually more focused on long interval swells. Short interval local wind swells are closer together and move slower, and I believe are the main focus for DW. Longer interval swells are wider and flatter, and move faster ... harder to catch and stay on, it's more difficult to tap into their energy.

Or they can be combined ... underlying "ground swell" mixed with wind swell on top. You're mainly riding the wind swell, but ground swells gives a little extra oomph when you can connect it, but fleeting, lose it and try to find another. But the wing gives hope for riding those big marching swells....I remember back to kitesurf days, being out in those swells was cool, but wasn't really able to make use of them at all.

[NB: I have done lots of DWs with wing (and kite before that) but I am still a DW virgin when it comes to paddling. A big part of my reluctance for paddle DW is the inconsistency of swells locally...seems like we'll have awesome patches (current related) then flat in between. I figure you dw pros could link them ... but for kooky newbs, a lot of paddling or e-assist would be needed...and for now, wing and efoil is just too easy :-) ]