Into 20-some sessions winging and having fun, but......

It seems that after 40 years of holding onto a windsurfer boom, my balance without one sucks. I wing in a straight line on foil just fine now but just keep falling during jibe attempts and toe-side. Toe-side is really bad. Even slogging I feel wobbling. Maybe I need some help with foot placement. I've heard a couple of different views on strapless foot placement: both feet over center line vs. more offset (rear foot more onto leeward side, front foot facing more forward, Andy Brandt clinic style).

Thanks for any ideas. I'm riding a 5'-8" 125L Fanatic Sky Wing, usually Duotone 6.5 slick and SS HG i99/short fuse/71 mast. I'm 82kg.

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marc5 said..
Into 20-some sessions winging and having fun, but......

It seems that after 40 years of holding onto a windsurfer boom, my balance without one sucks. I wing in a straight line on foil just fine now but just keep falling during jibe attempts and toe-side. Toe-side is really bad. Even slogging I feel wobbling. Maybe I need some help with foot placement. I've heard a couple of different views on strapless foot placement: both feet over center line vs. more offset (rear foot more onto leeward side, front foot facing more forward, Andy Brandt clinic style).

Thanks for any ideas. I'm riding a 5'-8" 125L Fanatic Sky Wing, usually Duotone 6.5 slick and SS HG i99/short fuse/71 mast. I'm 82kg.

Get a smaller board. +-10l your weight in kgs. Jibing will be so much easier as you will have a much better control over your foil.

I was about 20-30 sessions in when the hope that toe-side riding would just happen was starting to fade away. It was the only thing holding me back gybing away consistently. I would typically ride out of a gybe for about 10-50m before the wobble started followed by a splash. This was when I decided to try a front foot strap. For me, it was game changing and the sudden improvement in toe-side riding became a reality. Maybe it was just TOW but it certainly gave me the confidence to toe-side. BTW I was doing this on a +30L board. Good luck.

Coming from windsurfing it's just hard and takes work.

Getting the foil positioned for some front foot bias really helped me with toeside but I still can't really get upwind like that, but I fly most of my foot switches so it's not a big deal.

It's just time. No gear, nothing. Just work on body position and maybe try to get a friend to video you, you'll see what's going on.

What unlocked it for me was to stand more upright. Like you, I came from a windsurf and kite background, and my tendency was to lean back as though I was still wearing a harness. It took me a while to figure out that it was not optimal (counter-productive) to lean back.

Another insight that helped me was to realise that you are riding the foil and not the board. And the foil is exquisitely sensitive to input from your body. Especially in the early days, you will wobble around and breach and feel out of control until you start managing the input you give the foil - and that in turn, is heavily dependent on your body position.

Another way to visualise is to think about a line from the mast up through your back leg into your hips. If that line is broken somewhere, you will be giving the foil "bad signals", meaning you will not be comfortable and will probably fall off often.

The body position is exaggerated during the gybes and riding toe side. E.g. I was falling off to the back and the side doing them until I started standing more upright. Suddenly then, you have more time and can manage these manoeuvres.

My learning sequence as a non-surfer and no board sports for 30 years (but a reasonable amount of sailing) seemed to be (i) learn foiling gybes, (ii) make the foiling gybe then go about 20-50m and then do an ugly touchdown footswitch (with many shuffle steps) and take back off again (praying there was enough wing to not pump too much), (iii) gybe, riding switch then going into another gybe, and another gybe. That's when i started to feel more comfortable riding switch/toeside.

I would also add that doing S-turns helped a lot for feeling the foil and glide, spending $5 and joining Alan Cadiz on Patreon for a month and watching all his videos multiple times helped a lot, and getting into steady 13+kn winds vs. my shifty inland lake winds was also a revelation for speeding up the learning.

No-one else in my area was doing it last year so had to learn from youtube/Patreon. Guessing it took me about 4 months to stay on foil in a straight line, another month to doing occasional foiling gybes, and then stuff started coming faster the next 2-3 months... keep at it!

I too am not a surfer but had 35 years of windsurfing. Agree with all the comments so far but the thing that
did it for me was the surface condition you're foiling in. I was falling off all over the place until one day that
I had good wind and SMOOTH water. Any chops and wave can really affect the foil and upset your balance
toe side. Try to find smooth water if you can then the magic will happed. Have fun.

@marc5 are you trying to gybe on foil all the time, with a 125 liter board I am sure you can gybe in taxi mode, keeping your feet more centered and sort of fidgeting them into place to maintain maximum balance, yesterday I saw a mature lady riding a board 10liters over her weight and she let the board come down off foil and taxied round then shuffled her feet into the new position, she almost never fell off and was really inspiring to watch

Try to find a foot placement that allows you to have a good control over the foil. Start with a bit wider stance, later you will be able to ride with your feet basically next to each other. And do not stand with your feet too close to the rails of the board, be closer to the centerline instead. How far you would need to be from the centerline (and still having enough control over the foil) depends a lot on the foil you have. Try to think of winging as riding the foil only. The wing just gives you the power, but your feet should be placed as if there is no wing at all.



And while jibing, try not to hang onto the wing with your back hand, and keep the wing in front of you. When going into the jibe try to maintain the same weight distribution you had while riding in a straight line. Avoid leaning more forward with your body than you did while going in a straight line, and do not pull the wing closer to you with your front hand either. Here are a few examples of the jibes where I deliberately do everything super slow to emphasize that even the too rapid movement of your hands would change the weight distribution that would then change how the foil behaves.



Happy practicing!

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Taavi said..
Try to find a foot placement that allows you to have a good control over the foil. Start with a bit wider stance, later you will be able to ride with your feet basically next to each other. And do not stand with your feet too close to the rails of the board, be closer to the centerline instead. How far you would need to be from the centerline (and still having enough control over the foil) depends a lot on the foil you have. Try to think of winging as riding the foil only. The wing just gives you the power, but your feet should be placed as if there is no wing at all.

And while jibing, try not to hang onto the wing with your back hand, and keep the wing in front of you. When going into the jibe try to maintain the same weight distribution you had while riding in a straight line. Avoid leaning more forward with your body than you did while going in a straight line, and do not pull the wing closer to you with your front hand either. Here are a few examples of the jibes where I deliberately do everything super slow to emphasize that even the too rapid movement of your hands would change the weight distribution that would then change how the foil behaves.

Happy practicing!

Good advise.

Plus.... I particularly enjoyed how you used your less skilled friend as a turning buoy ??

It might be a counterpoint but I find a narrow stance waaaaaay more controllable, shoulder width apart. My stance windsurfing is much wider.

Fantastic ideas from you all! Thanks! You give me hope. I hope to work on them with two windy days coming up this week.

The one bit of advice I can't take immediately is to get a smaller board. Maybe later, but for now it's 125L. As surfcowboy says, "It's just time. No gear, nothing."


Keep those ideas coming!
Thanks

look where you're going, not at your wing. You almost have to ignore your wing and just ride the foil looking in the direction you want to go. Make sure you've got speed going into the turn to stay on foil.
don't be afraid to pump the foil if you find yourself coming off foil.

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marc5 said..
Into 20-some sessions winging and having fun, but......

I re-read this... last year, i wish i was where you are at after 20 sessions! I think it took about 50 sessions to get to survival foiling (no foiling gybes, just straight-line and hanging on for survival!). I just looked at an old video and it was bum out, super-wide stance, stalling the foil with too much backfoot weight... ugly! But then stuff got better quickly and the next 30-40 sessions was a crazy fast learning getting toe and heel side gybes, and taxi footswitches. My stance got narrower, wing control much better (shoulders back and arms in closer), hips forward (not bum out).

It sounds like you're almost about to have another break-through where it all clicks with balance, wing control, stance, etc.

My final 2 comments, (i) if you haven't done it yet, get someone to video you so you can see what you look like, and (ii) a lot of what people tell you doesn't make sense until after you're doing it! It's some type of jedi mind-trick :-)

There really are so many good tips out here in the replies, and I think I'll risk it and add that there are a lot of small factors that stack, front and rear foil wing pairings - some pump way better than others, position in the foil box - contrary to what I used to do as a beginner I now put my foil way back in the box and get better pump and control, front foil size and type - the low aspect foils pump real easy the higher aspect ones need more speed and a higher frequency, the wind gusts - if you just get a little gust you never get enough speed but if the gust keeps giving and you don't let off you get that speed so the foil 'kicks in' - I say all this because a few days ago I had a miserable session, wrong foil, wrong stab, wrong wing, wrong settings, then I just calmed down and chilled out and changed the foil the wing and the settings and had the session of my life, sometimes one pump and I was up and blasting - so what I'm saying is there are a lot of factors and I would add with kiwiupower that keeping your hips forward really helps that foil to launch

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kiwiupover said..
I hink it took about 50 sessions to get to survival foiling (no foiling gybes, just straight-line and hanging on for survival!). I just looked at an old video and it was bum out, super-wide stance, stalling the foil with too much backfoot weight... ugly! But then stuff got better quickly and the next 30-40 sessions was a crazy fast learning getting toe and heel side gybes, and taxi footswitches. My stance got narrower, wing control much better (shoulders back and arms in closer), hips forward (not bum out).

Thanks for sharing. I admire your persistence. I had about 10 sessions before I discovered that stalling the foil with too much backfoot weight was my big mistake. Before that, I had a really hard time imagining that winging could be fun, compared to windfoiling and windsurfing. Compared to my wife, I am a rather slow learner - she cleanly foiled through her first jibe in her 12th session. That has its advantages - I can now ask her how to do things . Just like the OP, though, I feel quite unbalanced as soon as I depower the wing. Hopefully, more TOW will cure that.

Update: 3 days on foil in a row this week. Up to session 28. I'm feeling the magic despite a full jibe being a rare event. Downwind runs with a friend were amazing--completely silent, working the knee-high "waves". I'm finding that an offset stance is working for me as it seems more stable on my 125L/27.5" wide board. Getting up on foil is happening more easily, and I am shifting my back foot forward a bit when I start flying, to avoid too much lift. Is this normal on a board of this size or should I adjust my foil or stance somehow?

S-turns seems to be helping my jibe efforts, as I try to go deeper into the turn each time, then back upwind. Still having problems after I complete the full turn and try to switch my feet or go toe-side for a while (fall after fall).

A surprising benefit is that I'm feeling much fitter. All these get-ups are like lunges, making my legs stronger with better balance. Core feeling good too, and I'm not wearing a harness so back, shoulders and arms are feeling ripped. Even lost some weight.

And while I'm not worthy of any photo coverage, a local newspaper photog happened on the beach and published a few pics of me. It's a crazy foil world and I'm having a ball! Thanks for all your support.

www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/photos-wind-surfing-at-cj-brown-reservoir/J6OBVFEFJVCLJGGF2CAL3PQZ2U/

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marc5 said..
Getting up on foil is happening more easily, and I am shifting my back foot forward a bit when I start flying, to avoid too much lift. Is this normal on a board of this size or should I adjust my foil or stance somehow?

According to my wife, who is much a more advanced winger than I am, it is normal. She had to shift her feet on larger boards, but does not have to anymore now on a 60 liter board. I'm on a huge monster board (140 l and long), so I need a wide stance to pop the board up, and then to push the nose down. Once flying, I move both feet closer to each other. Had a great session yesterday where having a pretty narrow stance seemed to be the key to easy winging. With a wide stance, it's easy to have the feet at the wrong places, and end up unbalanced, with too much weight on one foot. Any weight shifts also affect flight height much more if the stance is wider.

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marc5 said..
Still having problems after I complete the full turn and try to switch my feet or go toe-side for a while (fall after fall).

I'm 10 wing sessions behind you, but I found the wing tutorial from Kitesurf College (www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL41dAinz_9ZffUYrzT9c6MiZC0PEX41go) very helpful. I started carving into the jibe, then switching to Andy Brandt-style bladder jibes when the board settled and slowed down. When the splash downs turned into gentle touch downs, I started working on switching hands on the handles directly. Took me a few sessions to figure that out, with lots of falling at first. But eventually, it clicked, and that became easy. If things go well, the board touches down downwind, and I start switching hands while the board keeps turning. I then can power up the wing right away again, which makes turning further (and staying on the board) easy. I hop to switch the feet (after stepping forward with the back foot at the beginning of the carve, so the feet are almost next to each other). Big board on the water means I can correct the foot position if necessary. Yesterday, I had several jibes where the board kept enough speed so the foil kept pushing, and I started flying again right away after the foot switch. That felt great! Overall, my dry rate was just above 50%, but I felt I had made a lot of progress. Besides the tutorial videos, the one thing that helped was to wing at a place that's less choppy than my usual spot. At the start, only my jibes on the inside, where the water was smoother, were dry, but later, I had a bunch of good ones even on the outside, in a foot or so of chop.

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marc5 said..
A surprising benefit is that I'm feeling much fitter. All these get-ups are like lunges, making my legs stronger with better balance. Core feeling good too, and I'm not wearing a harness so back, shoulders and arms are feeling ripped. Even lost some weight.

I was amazed how much easier the get-ups are getting with repetition (had 5 wing sessions in the last 6 days ). But shoulders and arms getting ripped could be a sign that further technique improvements even going in a straight line are possible. If the board is flattened out nicely, the foil is riding efficiently at a low angle of attack, and only minimal wing power is needed. One of our local wingers has regularly complained about "being overpowered" and switched wings often, while other wingers remained happy with the same size wing even as the wind increased. In pictures from our beach photographer Eddie, she can often (but not always) be seen riding nose high. The thing she was missing was to put the wing higher to depower it. When I find that I need to much power in the wing to stay flying, I now search for a better foot position to flatten out the board, and often add a few board pumps to pick up a bit more speed (which you need to get enough lift at a lower angle of attack).

marc5, in my experience your board is fine for learning to gybe. Going smaller doesn't make a significant difference when learning, and I'd even say the falling then climbing on the board at the end of each failed attempt will probably be easier on a bigger board by the end of a session.
I too massively struggled with gybes. I couldn't exist a gybe toeside without the old windsurfing habits of switching feet mid gybe coming into play (and me ending up pitched off mid effort). So I decided to try to learn how to enter the gybe toeside and exist heelside - much easier for me to execute but I'm maybe not the norm??
Anyway, the things that MASSIVELY helped me to ride toeside were:
Flat water - choppy crap makes any riding more difficult. Try and find some flattish water and it will help you to control the foil better as you don't have wave action interacting with the foil and disturbing your balance.
When switching feet, I "caterpillar crawl" my feet closer together so that they're about 15cm apart (and should be parked right over the balance point of the foil). Then do the foot switch (back foot to the front and then front foot to the back) so that your weight isn't leaning heavily on one foot which is far away from your foil balance point. You need to be pretty quick and smooth with the foot switch so you don't disturb the foil much. I try to lift the nose of the board a little bit just before I do the foot switch as having height helps for when you momentarily have both feet in the front position (the extra weight on the front of the board will send the nose down). Once switched over, "crawl" your feet back to a wide stance.
I also used a windfoil fuse (88cm) so it's long and pitch stable. Shorter fuses are more reactive and tend to corner better, but I found they were much more sensitive to foot movements and threw me off a lot more.
When riding toeside I also tend to bear off downwind a little more. It helps keep enough power in the wing.
I used my bigger draggier front and rear foils (BSC 1060 with 500 tail) when learning as the resistance they give you sort of helps with control. Fast reactive foils tended to get out of control too quickly for me to be able to control them effectively. The drawback here is that a big foil will tend to be more reactive in choppy conditions where a smaller foil might tend to ride with less influence. Also if you have a short mast, the foil will generally be closer to the surface, meaning it will react with the surface waves a bit more. A longer mast can be beneficial as you can fly the foil lower in the water, away from the influence of waves, and hence get a slightly smoother ride. It also gives a bit more leeway when trying to correct mistakes.
Also, while learning I did a little bit of switching feet while taxiing and sailing along toeside but not up on foil. From that position I was too much of a muppet to get the thing to fly. So I felt I had to get to toeside on the fly.
As others have said, time on water will help the most. But I think the tips above will hopefully accelerate your learning curve - especially flat water.
For me, riding toeside was the biggest breakthrough for my progression. Gybes just fell into place after that.

Good luck.

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marc5 said..
Into 20-some sessions winging and having fun, but......

It seems that after 40 years of holding onto a windsurfer boom, my balance without one sucks. I wing in a straight line on foil just fine now but just keep falling during jibe attempts and toe-side. Toe-side is really bad. Even slogging I feel wobbling. Maybe I need some help with foot placement. I've heard a couple of different views on strapless foot placement: both feet over center line vs. more offset (rear foot more onto leeward side, front foot facing more forward, Andy Brandt clinic style).

Thanks for any ideas. I'm riding a 5'-8" 125L Fanatic Sky Wing, usually Duotone 6.5 slick and SS HG i99/short fuse/71 mast. I'm

Try to prioritise.

Forget about toeside (and footswitch) just focus on the jibe.

If you make a jibe you will be confronted with riding toeside, if your ride toeside you will be confronted with the footswitch etc.

Doing it sequentially will get you focused on one goal and when you nail it you will have the confidence needed for the next step.

My breakthrough on the first step - Jibing - was to give priority to the board not the wing. Maintaining speed is essential and I see many people fiddling with the wing mid curve which inevitably slows them down. Splash! Keep the wing high and neutral, look ahead of the curve and go for a gliding arc as if you were on your snowboard, skis, skate, bicycle or whatever. You will be surprised that the wing will position itself - automatically - right where it should throughout the curve, just needing a final backhand pull at the end of the curve to get things moving again.

The other advantage of focusing on the jibe first is that if you succeed in making that turn it will be thanks to your balanced foot position - not clinging to the wing to compensate - and this will help you for everything else to come.