My First Impressions of Windsurf Foiling

To sum up, windsurf foiling is so AWESOME! I only got two sessions of about an hour each while in Florida, but I can say that I'm totally addicted. I know that a lot of you have been thinking about windsurf foiling and have been wondering what the learning curve is like. I had also been wondering what the learning curve would be like. I will give you my perspective on these first two sessions.

Here is the gear that I rented and used for both sessions:
Board - Slingshot Wizard 125
Foil - Slingshot Infinity 76 wing, with 35 inch mast
Sail - Severne Freek 4.4m, 4.8m, and 5.2m

Session 1: This first session was mostly about getting acquainted with everything. It was all much easier than I expected, but there were a lot of basic things to learn like carrying the board, getting into the water, and not hitting your legs on the wing. Uphauling was easy, but I was often able to water start. Most instructors say not to kick with your leg when water starting because you will kick the wing, but I had no problems kicking. If you touch the wing with your foot before you water start then you know exactly where it is and you just don't allow your foot to kick at that depth. If you have a really short mast, however, I can see how it would be a problem. Once the board gets moving, you weight the back foot and the board comes right up out of the water. There was a lot of up, down, up down, up, down this first session. I thought I would crash when the board came down hard as these boards have short noses, but I never crashed this way. It was a little tricky getting into the front foot strap at first, but I got used to it by the end of this first session. There were no back foot straps so I just had to make sure my back foot was over the mast. I could feel the holes in the board with my feet where the mast attaches, so this was a simple way to know my back foot was in the correct spot. I fell off a few times when the board got too high out of the water because the foil seemed to get very unstable that high up. If you hold on to the boom when you fall then you always land far enough away from the wing that you don't have to worry about hitting the wing with your legs or feet. I made sure to always pull my knees up when falling as extra insurance that I would not hit the wing. I did not get one scratch or bump on my shins, feet, or ankles during either session. I started this session without a harness, but about halfway through I went back to the car and got my harness. My hands just got too tired. The harness allowed me to rest my hands in between flights. By the end of the session I was doing better by staying in the harness the whole time. Everything felt more stable in the harness.

Session 2:  The second session was really, really fun! From the first reach I could easily get into the front foot strap, the board came right out of the water, and I was getting nice five second rides with soft touch-downs in between. I felt most comfortable in the harness so I continued to use the harness. After 30 minutes I was consistently getting 10-20 second rides. The most exciting part was that I could pump the foil with my feet and the sail with my hands at the same time, and I was able to get going on a 4.4m sail in gusts of 15mph. Once you're up in the air there is barely any resistance and there is no noise. You just float. As speed increased I felt that I needed more front foot pressure to keep the foil and board down. Several times I over foiled and things got very unstable when the foil got that high. However, I rarely crashed as long as I brought the board back down right away.

Suggestions: I don't have experience beyond these two sessions, so don't take my suggestions too seriously. However, many people want to know what to expect during their first couple windsurf foiling sessions, so I will give a few thoughts. My biggest suggestion is to learn to ride smaller sails and smaller fins on your wave board before learning to foil. This is recommended by advanced windsurf foilers, and I found it to be very important. Learning to ride smaller sails and fins on your wave board trains your body to be in the proper position for foiling. You need to be more upright and over the board rather than outboard like you are on larger freeride gear. In order to ride smaller sails and fins on your wave board you must train yourself to keep leverage off the fin by staying more over the center of the board. Learn to do this first before foiling and it will make it easier to learn to foil. You can read about Riding Smaller Wave Sails here. And you can find 6 videos on Riding Smaller Wave Sails here. You will also want to read this article Two Different Sports: Large Sails vs. Small Sails. In addition, by learning to ride smaller sails and fins on your wave board you learn to be very efficient. I think this efficiency helped me when foiling because I didn't have to work hard to get the board out of the water. It felt very natural to me to pump the sail and foil together to get going, and I believe this is a result of learning to ride smaller sails and fins on my wave board. Make sure to get a foil with a big wing. The wing I used is the smallest wing I would want to learn with. I am actually purchasing an even bigger wing when I get my own gear this spring so that I can use smaller sails in lighter winds as recommended by many advanced foilers. Speed is of no interest to me, but the maneuverability of small sails is of great interest.  I thought that starting with a 35 inch mast would be too scary, but it was fine. Initially, I wanted to start with a very small 18 inch mast, but I'm glad I didn't waste my time. The 35 inch mast was just fine. Also, I thought it would be better to learn on a longer board, but I was wrong. The short Wizard 125 was great. I never got catapulted over the front, and the nose never got stuck in the water even when coming down hard. If I had it to do over again I would get rid of the front foot strap. It is suggested to use the front foot strap so that you know your foot is in the correct spot on the board, but a piece of yellow tape would probably suffice and then you would have one less thing to think about and deal with.

Overall, it was much easier and way more fun than I expected!!! I'm really excited and can't stop thinking about it. I expected it to take 3-5 years to learn to windsurf foil competently, but now I can confidently say that one season should be more than enough time to become an effective windsurf foiler.