Are people finding that a baseplate shim (fat part facing back) helps them with a flatwater paddle-up? Does the increased foil engagement help, or does the induced drag more than offset the benefit? Im only a few sessions in, but getting getting very close on my paddle ups (getting lift and bouncing off the surface, but can’t quite fully release and pump out of it clean) and need all the help I can get. Going to give it a shot, but curious what others have found.
It might depend on the foil setup.
I can’t even get a consistent answer about what “fat part facing back” means. Some say “positive”, some say “negative”.
My understanding of baseplate shimming is that if you need more lift to take off, then shim w the fat part facing backwards. But some people/setups have the opposite problem. Too much lift and too low a speed. So they shim the other way (fat part facing forwards) to allow themselves to build more board speed before trying to lift.
I haven’t actually tried baseplate shimming.
Here’s the best video I’ve seen on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trpzDnNUtLQ
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maybe comes as no surprise but yes I tune it a fair bit, and I think it is worth considering but only minimally compared to technique and endurance.
As an example of it working, on a DIY board we couldn’t figure out the paddle up on an otherwise very fast board, it really felt like it was lifting too much. Turns out there was a very slight angle in the tracks, and putting a 0.5 deg shim fat side forward reduced the lift and made it much easier. paddled up on first go after that and got some consistency
Shows that you can have too much shim and it will lift up prematurely. So I would go easy on the shim.
The most useful thing I’ve been corrected on and continue to be corrected on is to bend from the waist, and keep bent while paddling well onto the foil rather than the natural inclination to lean back once you start engaging foil to try pump.
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