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:
Hmmm, even in manual mode if I change the wind angle, sometimes it just changes it back by itself Think I got the hang of it now, takes some massaging.
Regardless, pretty happy with my Ensis 3M compared to a V4 Strike;
@Bonifacio thanks for persisting, it’s a POC that I asked to share here for extra feedback and refinement. There are lots of parameters and configs that occasionally need tweaking.
Your Ensis upwind is really good!! That 13knots is VMG of 24 km/hour? Does that seem at all likely?
The idea being to figure out how many km of straight downwind you get for each hour of upwind riding you do
Your Ensis upwind is really good!! That 13knots is VMG of 24 km/hour? Does that seem at all likely?
That’s right if the 27.8 degrees is measured from the direction of the wind, but that would be an insane upwind angle. I think you’re taking a cos somewhere where you should be taking a sin to get the upwind velocity component.
If he’s traveling at 27.8 degrees upwind of a beam reach at 15.4 kts, his upwind velocity component (VMG) is 7.2kts, his Cross-Wind velocity component is 13.6kts.
This would be cool to figure out though I can’t see myself parawinging upwind for a straight hour without a couple of breaks, definitely a bit more tiring than winging
Sorry, should have been more specific… The 27° data is the V4 Strike, 40ish° data is the Ensis 3M. What it’s really going to take to improve the PW upwind angle is steadier wind across the entire reach (and we don’t generally get it). Inflatable wings will maintain angle through holes so much better, at least modern wings. The V1 3.5 Strike I use for deflate DW doesn’t go upwind any better than the Ensis.
For my purposes though, the Ensis angles are already good enough to make upwind/DW worthwhile.
Actually looking at the polars, the data does just show that his maximum upwind angle is crazy good. That could be because of wind shifts over the session, or including a leg that’s too short .e.g. turning further upwind than he can steadily sail for a moment.
that’s true, tbh I don’t know how the VMG works, but the polars paint a pretty good picture of each segment, and they look pretty good, and balanced across both tacks
I think wind shifts is likely to cause some issues
Yeah, I was just playing with it a bit and the VMG is shown as best starboard vs best port segment according to the filters. So any wind shifts across the session will show unrealistic VMG’s. You can filter for longer segments and wider angle tolerances to get more realistic numbers but I don’t see a way to average across a session
“very rough open ocean conditions, 25 knots and 3-5ft bumps”
Davenport
I was a Waddell regular (just upwind) back in kitesurfing days so can concur i.e. rough conditions.
Never got do the DW all the way to Santa Cruz though… someday.
Think I got the hang of it now, takes some massaging.
