Anyone think this is possible without pumping, to gain ground against the direction of wind and
bumps?
Based on the conversation around racing, I wondered. I wouldn’t have given much credit to this given last years foils, but as the AR of the foils increase, it becomes more conceivable that foiling could use the same dynamic soaring technique used by birds and RC planes.
(based on a loose understanding of how it works)
I definitely saw a ripper at the Hatch doing a similar pattern the other day. He was power carving over the back of the wave he was on and looping back to the one behind, continually. He was still moving downwind but I suspect it was a choice, there were times he just stayed basically in place going in circles. It was seriously super inspiring, it looked so fun.
You can ride down the back of a bump and trade gravitational potential for speed, but to keep the energy and make up for drag losses you need to get to the top of the next upwind bump without trading your speed to get there. Maybe gliding mostly down the line of the trough, slightly upwind so you get lifted by the water more than you climb the hill?
I think it probably hinges on having some kind of fast and slow moving bumps, which I suppose we do. If you can grab a lot of energy from a set of bumps, and then turn hard upwind to carry that energy across a flat section to another set of bumps further upwind, then maybe you can use a similar effect to the birds.
Here is a nice explanation of dynamic soaring planes, which not quite the same, but interesting
I’m no ripper, but I’ve often been surprised by how easily I can traverse when downwinding once up to speed. I wonder if you made a contest of it, what you’d discover in terms of how much ground you could cover
James Casey has posted tracks that look like winging tracks. Doubling downwind distance on runs. 6k straight line DW run turned into 12k zig zags.
He’s also done some crazy shore runners upwind, circles foiling the reef at the top for 20 minutes, DW past his start, pump run back upwind to the start that’s impressive. 30+ minute on foil runs.
If the foils become really efficient and mast maybe a bit longer, it might become more and more possible to do what’s called dolphin flying in the glider/paragliders world. In lifting air (under a cloud or on a ridge) you slow down to your min sinking rate to load up on altitude, in neutral air you fly at max glide ratio, in sinking air you speed up to minimize time spent in that zone. This way you can fly straight towards your goal while keeping altitude, it’s a racing/time efficient strategy.
So in the bumps, spending most of the time on the front of bumps loading up height and gliding on their backs upwind, overall going somewhat upwind. Would be really interesting to see ppl try with the lastest high ha dw foils…
We actually already do this! One of my biggest tips for intermediate downwinders is to wait as high as possible, both on the mast and bump until you have a line to the next one. This way you’re basically storing energy when it’s plentiful and spending it as speed when there’s none.
In some ways this gives long masts a huge energy advantage but having to be low on the mast to use that energy kills the advantage.
If the mast could slide up the board somehow, or retract, the wetted area would remain the same and long masts could have a really big advantage.
Have you tried going upwind on a downwinder?
Maybe on optimal conditions like hood river?
