Tech-tip

Are you ready to add a bit more windsurfing experience to your windfoiling sessions? You know, powered up, hiked out, and going fast - just like you do fin windsurfing. Here are some tips from one of the fastest foilers on the river, Bruce Peterson:

 Anticipate the shift in balance:

A fast foiling stance is similar to a fast windsurfing stance, sheeted in, hiked out, and leaning back. Except for foiling you have to anticipate this aft stance and tune your foil balance accordingly. That means you need to start with your balance point biased slightly towards the front foot (i.e a pre-disposition to down trim), so that you can achieve a neutral foil balance when you're powered up and weighting your back foot more.

There are several advantages to setting up a front foot bias to your foil balance. First, foiling low and fast is safer, as foiling out at high speed can be a big crash. If I'm foiling fast I'd rather touch down ten times vs. foil out once. With a forward bias, when you back off the power (or panic) and shift your weight to your front foot, the board always comes down.This forward set up forces you to lean back to achieve level foiling, and that puts you into your familiar windsurfing stance, with all that windsurfing muscle memory. In terms of finding foil balance as you strive to increase your foil speed, its far better to work to get up rather than having to work to keep the foil down.

There is a hierarchy and priority to what to tune first to achieve faster foil balance:

1. Footstrap position: Stand further forward with a wider stance by moving your front footstrap forward. This is the biggie to get right first, as the following tuning tips are not effective enough to overcome standing too far back.

2. Stabilizer trim: Adjusting the angle of your stabilizer to power up or lean out the lift of your foil. A positive shim adds angle of attack to the stabilizer (tipping the leading edge down) which increases the lift of the front wing and moves the foil balance forward. A negative shim reduces the stabilizer angle of attack (tipping the leading edge up) which decreases the lift of the front wing and moves the foil balance back.

3. Mast track position: Move your mast track forward to use the mast base pressure from the rig to assist keeping the foil down. If you are looking for more lift or earlier take-off, move the mast track position back.

4. Sail tuning: Drop the pitching point of your sail by adding more downhaul so you can stay sheeted-in even when the going gets tough.Conversely, less downhaul will raise the power in the sail, aiding to foil sooner and foil higher upwind angles.

Try out these tips and you'll be foiling faster than ever!