Dang, that is a sweet little handle pass! Will have to incorporate that!
For me prone foiling just isn’t an option for 95% of days in the summer, as @Rad_Duke points out there are a lot of life / geographic factors to consider for each person to achieve their own personal “peak foiling experience”!
Once we start getting waves in the winter I love having my wings in the car because it means I really don’t need to look to carefully at conditions. Head out to the spot and wing if its windy and surf if its calm.
Haha, at least in theory anyway! The days where it is ~13kts its always hard to make the call whether to pump the wing!
60L board is 10x more fun and 10x harder to get going than the DW board. I find it as difficult to stinkbug start as a 44L board, only benefit is I can get it going in lighter winds. On flat water it is easy though, and surprised how little wind I need with a 4m. 15kn initially would have guessed impossible but waiting for a gust and hammering away you can get it up.
Getting a real kite vibe - wind too light, gusty, too this or that, the only difference being that I can wing in a spot that wouldn’t even be at all viable with any other wind sport. Maybe a paradox here is that you’ll always be at the margin of what is viable. Winging has made it possible to get that “marginally viable kite waiting for wind all day” feeling at a spot that otherwise would be suicidal on a kite. Far better though because you can deal with most conditions other than massive breaking waves.
Riding bumps is super fun on the smaller board. I’ve managed a few long sequence of linking bumps just pumping, and it is great DW practice in otherwise useless conditions.
Riding waves is also super fun. I’ve struggled to find the right combination, and waves feel way bigger with the wing. Getting out through shorebreak is a complete pain, and I can see how that quickly leads to trashed wings.
The conditions behind the breakwater in the original post are just terrible, swell, bumps and reverb all coming from 3 different directions. Occasionally a clean bump comes through and you can ride it.
Riding switch is a struggle, but tacks are getting clean and make the whole thing much easier
On the whole I’m pushing ahead. Have bought a used 5m v2 strike to deal with the lighter flukey winds which is really great.
Today had the longest session yet, 3 hours of riding bumps downwind, some cautious wave riding at a beach break that closes out and had flukey wind and then a massive slog back to the start, this at a spot that is ridiculously not at all good wind spot as it sits in the lee of a huge cliff (see point 2 above), but still managed to make it work by waiting for a gust to get going and then on the way back working the wind shifts
One question to the experts: I was with a friend, wind ~25kn.
Their setup: brand new 3m matador, f-one eagle 1090, small tail and alu mast
My setup: 2 season 4m mantis (v2). progression 140, katana mast and marlin 14"
They were able to point a bit higher than me on one of the longer tacks, and this on my strong tack and their weak tack. I’ve been winging about twice as long (not very long) and we both kited sailed and windsurfed so know how to work upwind. I felt pretty overpowered and had to let the power off quite a bit.
It’s not the wing design - it’s the fact that the wing is new. Once a wing is used a lot (particularly pumping, jumping or riding overpowered) the canopy shape changes and the biggest sacrifice is upwind angle. I don’t use one much, but a harness line helps upwind angles and might be worth a try. You don’t need to invest much - just make one out of dyneema, spectra or something similar and try an old kite harness to see if it works for you. Mantis v2 is a very decent wing (probably better design than the Matador).
Yeah that matador is garbage for usability, but the one thing the freshness helps is point. My old mantis has a mega hooked leech but I’m not a racer so IDGAF. Leech looks like shit but the front part of the canopy is tight so it flags nice and is fast when luffing through tacks, etc.
Ok very interesting. Someone suggested the harness line. I had one out for the first time that session but had set it too long and was not quite tuned right so didn’t manage to get much power through it. Also the hook kept on pulling the waist leash off so maybe some refinements.
My mantis’ leech is completely hooked. Interestingly the mantis profile looks much flatter than the matador and strike, but I think because it is old as you say the draft probably moved back, leech hooked and now pulls hard in the wrong direction.
Unfortunately the same session I slashed the leading edge climbing over those rocks and now due a repair (and maybe a sale). Winging is very expensive.
edit: turns out it is a Mantis v1 and I think I got ripped off too the v2 has harness line points, and I also discovered that I had mine attached too far back.
Since you were overpowered on your 4m you weren’t getting the best efficiency with the wing, and it’s pulling you downwind more than you want. Sometimes keeping it higher overhead helps to an extent.
Also, the smaller 3m wing has less drag in stronger winds.
I guess a combination of all factors is considerable.
1 - higher AR / span can usually go better angle upwind (eagle vs uni prog).
2 - older wing is less efficient.
3 - going overpowered doesn’t always means you’ll go faster or with a better angle upwind. 25knts and 4mts sound incompatible to me.
Also, is my understanding that Progression foils are not so fast and more surf oriented, and Katana masts have a thicker profile and (even more cord? Maybe?) That my be another point against you in your friendly racing!
New stoked unlocked on the wing - 2.5m wing is really fun with the 95L downwind board and progression 140, gets up so easily in a gust and then once up it just goes, and handling is so much easier. Really keen to try a faster foil with this setup.
Something that prevents me from many wing sessions - getting smashed by shorebreak…
Does anyone use one of the mini pumps and paddle the wing out and inflate beyond the backline? Today I had a very fun session on the wing, but it was very marginal in terms of making the call to get through some big sets to get into safe water. Not worth the risk of blowing up the wing mis-timing a set and getting destroyed
the v2 has harness line points, and I also discovered that I had mine attached too far back.