We have had a crap spring here but it was epic last weekend 25 - 35 knots and 8-12 foot windswell. the A-team were doing Waddell to SC runs (~20 miles). It can be really good, but tricky with big bumps and sections of big reverb off the cliffs
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Here’s a recent run I did upwind/downwind on a parawing (70 min each way, 30 miles round trip). No falls on the way up, got 9.5 miles upwind in ~70 minutes.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether or not parawings can go upwind… if you can gybe them … what their range is. I expected a track like this to be persuasive (bagging a 10 mile downwinder in approx 2 hrs, getting up on an unremarkable soap-bar shaped board in 12 kts on an 880 size foil), but many remain skeptical.
Pretty cool to look at these polars, thanks Matt and Wren!
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Wow, you’ve got some really nice angles there! Tell me the tide was helping or I’ve got some serious work yet to do 
Was a Chrissy regular for a while also 
Never made it East of Alcatraz though, except for the delta…
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Yes I think so, and possibly makes it hard to usefully compare.
I was thinking the algo should probably be updated as more of an empirical “best 1km split” type thing (to be clear, I don’t know exactly how it works!!)
Maybe something like:
Take your best upwind continuous 1km segment that has 50% (distance? time?) on either tack.
Completely unscientific, maybe illogical diagram of roughly what I was thinking, where 12min for the middle 1km is your best VMG (the port starboard tacks should be equal for each block…)
All Wren, I just shared it !! I thought it was rad. I tried to do something similar for downwind, couldnt’ get it to make much sense
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Ah thanks for clarifying - when I saw you were asking for feedback I thought you guys might have been collaborating. 
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My ride was roughly 2:30 - 4:00pm that day - so slack tide going into a 1.5 kt flood. 12-16 kts while I was out, and picked up later in the day. So a bit tricky!! 
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Been dragging my feet on getting one…as I wouln’t want to be out where JL is. But your Bay run is insane! What PW (brand and size) are you using, please?
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Thanks! Those conditions i was on a 4.2 Flow D Wing, though I am planning to test it back to back soon with an ozone 4.3 on order. My ozone 3.0M was awesome for maui conditions.
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Interested on your opinion of sizing for the SF Bay. Would 1 be enough and if so what size? Was thinking around 3.5-4m for someone around 165 geared up on a DW board. Seemingly Ozone or D-wing style are getting the good reviews for upwind downwind versatility.
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Launching at Berkeley and up to Crissy would typically require 2 sizes. Probably a magic day, very skilled rider, and the Flow D must have a pretty good range. Nice that with pw, you could easily pack a second kite for some really long outings.
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I think for your size you could go with a 3.5 friend! Coyote corridor has better and more consistent wind than my launch, so for that zone and on a dw board, you might even make a 3.0 - 3.3 work.
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Yup, i abandoned one attempt when i launched in 15, but was getting too obliterated at TI when it reached 20+. Would have been more doable on a 3.0, but would have then required a bigger board to start.
Launching in 12, then having mid teens made it just barely feasible. Fun to ride it on a 4-10 x 22” 70L!
I’m thinking to also use it for getting in at redwood City to avoid a long paddle where there are no bumps, it can get fairly light there so a bit bigger may not be terrible.
FYI I’ve re-built my upwind angle estimator here (cc @matt ) - sorry for the bugginess, definitely took some work to repurpose it from proof of concept to more generalizable. I’ve rebuilt most of the algorithms from the ground up, curious what you think! My main motivation has been to understand “general upwind-ability” - I’ve added details on how I’m performing that calculation in the app now. While it’s a side project and I can’t commit to any SLA’s, I’m always happy to get feedback, debug, or look at your tracks to see how I can tune the algos to work better for a range of scenarios (for example, it currently can’t adapt to super long tracks where there are significant wind shifts in the covered geo).
I’m currently chugging away at about 7-8knots of effective upwind VMG here in the gorge, even in gusty winds on a 1.9m and 3m pocket rocket - plenty to spend hours lapping tunnel 4 until my legs are too tired to surf anymore. I’ve definitely seen folks getting even better angles, though - still working on it!
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Wrench
What foils are you riding to achieve 7/8 miles an hour VMG
So far I’ve tested the Mikeslab 825; planning to take out the Armstrong 680 on the next decent wind day to get some comparisons. Being lit up on the parawing helps, but I generally prefer to ride a little underpowered (I switch to the 1.9 as soon as the gusts get into the mid 20’s); the ozone handles the gusts pretty well if you just lean back and convert it into upwind though (feels a little more like kiting - if you put a lot of weight into it and lean back, it adjusts in the window pretty well and stays behaved). But my average upwinding is still fairly tempered by the holes in the wind.
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@wrench this is rad, thanks for jumping in here, I’m really stoked on this, I think it super interesting that we can quantify effective upwind speeds, even for intermediates, eg I’ve really struggled to go upwind at enough of an angle for it to feel worth doing upwind / downwinds, and I think it’s because I don’t switch feet (surfer lol), and trying to see how much of a negative impact that has, and what I should be aiming for.
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is this 7-8kt VMG same for medium and strong wind? 14 and 25?
Yeah @wrench ! Thats a great tool you’ve put together. I ran a recent session and I was averaging 6 knt VMG at a spot with a bit of tide against wind, probably around 1.5 knts helping. It was my first session with the new Kanaha.
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