I have been loving the parawing for upwind-downwind in bays and open ocean. As I love to downwind, I am keen to maximize the efficiency of the upwind leg.
What have you found to be improving your vmg? Or your ratio upwind/downwind? It can be the foil setup, parawing model, technique, certain swells/currents.. feel free to share your findings, tracks, etc. Keen to figure this out!
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I have been using the 777 hybrids 4.3 and 5.7 so far, paired with a midlength (6’3 by 18.5", 70L), afs 85cm uhm mast and enduro 800 for the most part. I have been analyzing tracks with https://chiffometre.netlify.app/ (and Foil Run · Foil GPS analysis ). Angle to the wind is usually around 60 degrees, and speed is 13 to 15kts, resulting in a vmg of 6kts.
Small period swells make the downwind part slower, which result in a better ratio upwind/downwind. Current against wind is amazing but often hard to come by!
Conditions:
I think a lot of people might overestimate our current value vs how bad the wind can be in the Gorge. A day with clean wind here radically changes DW vs UW times. (I did back to back orbit upwinds 10 minutes with clean wind then 16 minutes when the wind was trash) Current is strongest in spring and next to the dam, but can be a very minimal impact late season when the flow is low.
Sail:
Properly powered is best IMO.
PPC Orbit so far is the only thing that has impressed me for VMG. Upwind angle PLUS speed is the key here. Tough to use in Gorge wind tho. Hybrid has nice angles and huge range which is awesome but it’s not a speedster.
Edit: larger sails always seem better upwind too.
Foil:
Longer and deeper chorded masts are better upwind.
Sizing up my foil and stabilizer also produced faster upwind times and then slowed downwind times.
Essentially the less fun I make my foil for the DW the better it appeared to go UW. (More stability and easier platform to push against was better upwind).
Open ocean conditions here with no current to speak of.. I’ve found that for easygoing riding standard single skins give around 5 knots vmg and double skins and hybrids do 6 or 7. With good power and driving for speed I get 7-8 knots vmg on singles (PR v2 & Flow V2) or doubles (777 Hybrid & Paia).
The biggest improvement that I’ve seen is technique, putting the harness low on my hips and driving through my legs while focussing on speed made the jump from around 6 knot vmg to 8 knot vmg on my single skins. Think kite racer poo stance. I need to maintain speed around 13-14 knot to do 8 knots vmg. I don’t find much difference between foils although smaller span is easier to drive fast through big bumps. Longer mast helps but I mostly use 80cm. Mostly on smaller 650 - 780 dw oriented foils for open ocean bumps (@95kg)
There seems to be a sweet spot for vmg around 20-25 knots of wind, it seems like when it’s 30 knots the apparent wind drag and sea state starts to limit speed and angles. Under 20 it’s hard to load enough but maybe a bigger PW would help
I can relate to the foil and sail comments, it seems like the more parawing and foil you have pushing against each other in a stable fashion (constant wind also helping that), the better the resulting angle and speed upwind. Will play more with those parameters.
Thanks for the info! It’s great to have some vmg reference points with single and double skins
Lachie White on youtube was recommending something similar with winging vmg. Building speed first on a beam reach and then steering upwind while keeping that speed up. Definitely felt that with harness and kite poo stance. But beyond 15knots of speed it gets really hard to maintain in high seas.. working on it.
Totally agree, I can maintain 13-14 knots up and over large bumps but it would be seriously tiring to maintain 15+. Maybe with a 100cm mast, the racer kids at the Crissy parawing races were very quick on their wing-race foil setups although we never did any upwind racing so I don’t know how that translates to vmg
Very curious once the Frigate V2s, Afterburner, etc. are out in the wild whether they can improve on that 2:1 ratio, or if it’s all marketing / hype. Time will tell…
I wondered if it was. I saw the orange wing dude do some insane tacks and behind the back jibes and was like “that looks like Johnny H” but I wasn’t sure. The way they went upwind was absolutely insane and super inspiring. VMG off the charts.
1:1 ratio: 5 minutes upwind, 5 minutes downwind. Is it possible? YES!
In Tarifa, the tidal current pulls you upwind like a train. Heading back downwind against the flow slows your descent, allowing you to perfectly carve and enjoy the bumps.
