How long to learn to foil.

If you are still learning, you want to be able to uphaul. The instructors in the Gorge all say that if you can waterstart, the sail is too big for beginning windfoiling.

I am using a formula board. Strong deep tuttle finbox, floaty, lightweight, lots of deck for moving your feet. With a fin, formula boards are famously difficult to get planing due to the massive nose rocker that requires you get it up over its own bow wave. However, with a foil the board gets planing very easily, and the nose rocker keeps the board from perling when you inevitably slap it down.

Windfoilers in San Francisco and all over Europe use mostly formula boards, especially for racing.

If you find that the footstraps are too outboard for windfoil learning, keep the front straps in place, but remove the back straps altogether and put your back foot more in the middle. If you have a single chicken strap, it is perfect for this. This stance lets you exercise excellent control over both roll and pitch.

Fuselage length is indeed important. One huge factor that needs to be emphasized is that the Starboard 115 cm fuselage places the front wing a good 4 inches further foward than does the 75 cm fusy.

Again, and I emphasize this all the time, you MUST get the front wing at the mid point between your feet for balance. Too far aft, it won't lift. To far forward, you can't avoid foiling out.

The footstrap positions on the Starboard 147 offer enough flexibility to move your feet forward and aft for balance with different foils.

Many other boards--somebody mentioned the JP 135--offer limited footstrap positions. For those boards you have to get the right foil such that the front wing is between both feet.

For my old formula board the front wing was too far aft, and I had only one footstrap position. I had to practically step off the stern to get it to lift. I had the finbox moved forward (and reinforced while they were at it) to get everything in balance. Now it is a balanced joy.

Hey CAN17, my main foil is an AFS-2, which is just a fixed deep tuttle top in one monocoque with the mast. Just like Starboard and LP. For that foil I had my formula board finbox moved 3 inches forward to get the balance. Now it is perfect.

I have that same formula board, with an unmodified finbox, in Florida. For it I use a Slingshot hybrid with a Power Plate to both move the foil forward as well spreading the load since the finbox is not reinforced.

I want to emphasize what segler says about fuselage lengths. The overall dimensions are not whats important, its the position of the front wing relative to the mast, and the position of the stab relative to the mast. I have lately been testing 2 fuselages for F-One, one which has only been extended in the front, and one which has been extended to the front and back equally. The difference in power between the 2 is minimal (would dare to say not existing, might be due to a 84m difference in the back not being that much, but as seen below difference in stability is really noticable) However, the difference in stability is really well felt. The fuselage which has also been extended to the back feels a lot more locked. Have to say however that I only like this more locked feeling together with a longer mast (95cm or more), for when riding in chop with the long one and an 85 mast I sometimes just couldnt react to the chop fast enough. With the short one I never have a problem of "overshooting" a wave or piece of chop with the 85 mast and pretty much never touch, not even in 3-3.5m waves at sea. However with the longer fuse and shorter mast I touch the water more regularly due to some sort of delay in reactiveness.

so to be clear, here I'm talking about 2 fuselages, equal in mast-frontwing dimension, but a 4cm difference in stab-mast dimensions.

I still do not believe in having the front wing at 50% between the footstraps, since the position of power (fore-aft) from the foil also depends on the ratio frontwing surface/stab surface, wing shapes and a lot of other factors, meaning this position is far from clear cut. It may very well be accidentally teue for the AFS / Seglers board setup, but can in my opinion not be generalized to the bigger spectrum of possible setups. These differences are really large, to illustrate: keeping all settings the same but switching to my 850 wing from my 1000wing, which in chord and position are equal, shifts the power forwards loads, because relative to the stab the smaller frontwing has less power. As a measurement I always take my "comfortable" (I trim for more frontfoot preassure on purpose, so comfortable isnt the right word, but I hope you get my drift, talking about 50/50 load over the legs I think) backfoot position during a reach, which with the 1000 is about 15-20cm in front of the backstrap, but when switching to the 850 is about 5cm behind the frontstrap to entirely against it.

hope I'm not getting too technical. Simply said, if you get a matching set you are going to fly in a few sessions, and it helps loads if you let an experienced foiler (meaning one who at least sometimes does his jibes in the air, because that is the #1 sign of good trim) setup your kit for you to make it all easier and prohibit you from learning faulty technique to compensate for bad trim.

I agree there has to be an easy starting point, and I suppose yours is good as good as any ;).


I think that for growing the settings you propose are too conservative, maybe not for the first 4 sessions, but with those settings your technique cannot evolve into the techniue required for more advanced foiling likethe early planing why we all buy a foil in the first place, foiling jibes, foiling 360's or even foiling tacks (which require a ****load of frontfoot preassure to keep it flying with such little speed). I'd always recommend the at least the mastfoot further back, for a racing foil between 105 and 111, for a freeridefoil 105 or further back, very much depending on the model of the foil and type of sail and size used. You seem to forget that not necessarily the front foot, but the mastfoot is the forward point your balance hinges on. (sails with the preassurepoint further back or higher up require a more forward position, sails with preassurepoint lower down or further forward require a more aft position, and it is a matter of as much as 5cm sometimes)

I believe these settings work for your setup, and that they work for others who just began as well, but it is definately not what I'd recommend to anyone trying to improve their technique after the first few sessions. Instead I'd recommend more frontfoot preassure and to go out in more marginal winds, gradually building up the windspeed instead of down.

look at the setup below: the frontwing is about 3/4 between the straps, straps quite close together, I'd say less than 40cm, and my mastfoot quite far aft. (I ride my frontstraps and mastfoot another 4cm further aft now than in the picture). Because the wing is at 3/4 it allows me to comfortably sail with my backfoot out of the strap at 1/2 between the straps, meaning I have plenty of power to foil through jibes and 360's, I've even made 2 fully foiling tacks already with this setup.


Sailing with a setup like this (maybe not as radical, but close) will learn you the correct technique faster. Ofcourse the setup is way more powerful with the straps and mastfoot further aft, so it'd be better to begin in less wind to keep control and learn the proper stance (being overpowered might feel way too much in the beginning with frontfoot preassure if you are not a freestyler). In the end progression will be way faster. I have been giving foilclinics for over a year now and get my students up and flying in 8-10 knots with a 7.0 their first session, and sailing quite stably after 2-3 3-4hour sessions. One of my students now regularly comes sail with me and is starting to steadily fly through his jibes after only half a year.

Do with it what you want, I still believe settings are way more gear dependend than you make believe, and therefore would not dare just say "wing at 1/2 between straps and mastfoot at 44inches", I'd recommend letting an advanced foiler trim your gear and if that's not possible look closely at the production video's on youtube and try to copy their settings to begin.

Hi White,

I agree that your setup is great for advanced foiling where you ride with front foot pressure. Tony Logosz talks about this as well in his online foiling academy.

However, if beginners go out on your gear with the wing that far forward and the mast base that far back, they will do nothing but foil out as soon as they get any speed. They will wonder how anybody can possibly foil this way.

If, however, they start with midpoint, 44 inches, and equal foot pressure, they will at least get a few short rides and start to get the idea of how this all works, and they will start getting their muscle memory developed for this sport. Then, at that point, they can fine-tune their gear by moving footstraps and mast base. The rides will get longer and better.

Eventually they will blasting around in total control and high speed with a forward front wing and aft mast base.

(By the way, the aft mast base enables the use of large sails due to large mbp. A friend of mine in Seattle runs the Starboard Race 115 cm fuse that puts his front wing forward, far aft mast base, and 11.0 m2 sail.)

I'm new but moved the rear straps well back so I could out my foot in front or in strap.

I believe the Foil Works base plate may actually be slightly thinner than the Slingy plate. If i can find my old calipers i can take a measurement. The Infinity slid on perfectly easily on the Foil Works fuse. Once i slid it on i had to back out the fuselage a bit less than a centimeter to align the bolts if that makes sense.