Messing around in very messy onshore bumps, I tried a deflate. I’m goofy and don’t ride switch (17" dw board is impossible for me in the ocean). I was surprised that relative to my downwind run angle (which approximates the bumps, not necessarily the wind), my distance/VMG/bumpward gain was much better on my weaker side riding switch, and I was barely gaining on the stronger side. The wind was between WNW and NW, and I think the plotted downwind angle is a good approximation.
What am I doing wrong? Is there anyone consistently sharing deflate tracks that they can share or know of?
Edit: I hadn’t considered, but there is a strong tidal current of about 2km/h flowing roughly North to South, and this was at peak flow, perhaps that was pushing the angles around.
Another question, when i removed the fiddling with harness lines, I see that it took 20min to do 1.6km, so 4.8km/60min = ~5km/h in the direction I want to go, Has anyone calculated this? This was underpowered on an old 5m Strike v2.
This is a bit of a mystery - I took a look at one of my most recent upwind/downwind tracks, and it appears that I have a similar but slightly less extreme pattern of sinking a bit more on my weak side. Part of the issue I run into is that I am usually using front foot straps on my wingfoil board, so when I switch to the dw board I have less leverage, or am not compensating in quite the same way.
This track isn’t a deflate, but its the exact gear I use for deflate runs, 8’0" 125L board 1100 AR 13 foil, 3.5 Gong aramid UPE wing.
Not sure if it’s the handwing, foil or local conditions, but I’m getting much better upwind angles - tacking through 99 degrees at ~11 mph (VMG= ~7.2 mph) (very rough open ocean conditions, 25 knots and 3-5ft bumps:
