Flying the fin??

yep i know what your talking about paddymac, i think what flying on the fin is, is perfect board trim.

so really important things here are mast base position and boom height
the idea is that the board should be trimmed with minimal wetted area and as low as possible angle of attack relative to the surface of the water

mast base forward = nose down ( this is one of the things you should do if you are sheeted in but still tail walking or the nose is flying extremely high)

mast base back = nose up ( this is what you should do if the board feels like its stuck to the water)

well at least this is the theory i've been going on
would sure like to hear what some of the pro's thoughts are

Best way to increase board lift so you can surf higher over the chop is use a smaller,lighter sail.

Use a bigger sail and you will notice the fin/board will fly less.

Medium to lots of downhaul with very little outhaul [sail touching otherside of boom in lighter winds]

Rail board up,meaning lift windward rail up, lets wind lift board--this is flying the fin.

It's a great feeling because it suddenly seems like the water is completely flat. The board is not in the water at all so it's not influenced by the water surface.
It's partly in the board design. Some boards will do it and others won't. Slowy says flying off the fin is the ultimate experience, so he designs all his boards to do it. My Futura does it but my Sonic doesn't.
You need to unweight the board by getting your feet right on the rail with your weight acting sideways, and by letting the sail carry your weight.
Slowy is the expert so hopefully he'll reply with his pearls of wisdom.

I thought the water moving over the shape of the foil provided lift?

its about finding a balance point where you minimise the weight through your legs onto the board. Use the rig to support you, not the board. The less weight you need on the board to keep it stable, the faster it will be, the more it will fly, and the less effort you need to put in to keep it flying.

Basically you are trying to minimise the amount of lift you need from the water- which puts you at the mercy of the chop. The harder you push the board onto the water, the harder it pushes back in chop (uncomfortable and less stable) and the slower it will be...

Ultimately you want to be using the board just to keep the fin wet. Then you are really flying on a cushion of air over the water. Thats the holy grail

Thanks all for the responses, some really good stuff

I find getting this feeling easier on the bigger gear for some reason - maybe cause it's usually sailed in flatter water conditions. Sometimes it almost feels like I'm weighting the harness enough to lift the board through the top of the straps and everything seems to smooth out. It sounds like I need to keep trying to replicate that.

I am certainly no expert on this, so this is more of a question than answer....

I use freeride gear (free race sail and FSW board), and I find that if I have my sail rigged badly, or the mast base to far forward, or the boom or harness lines, the board tends to stick to water. It feels slow, not very lively, and makes the board difficult to jump on small chop. So back to the beach and more tuning. Normally more down haul (and/or outhaul), and adjust mast base and boom height to get my weight onto the rig, and nicely balanced to front/rear feet. When I get it right, the board livens right up. It feels light and free from the water. Much faster (sometimed a little too lively in choppy conditions), and now doing a jump off small chop takes next to no effort... just unweight your feet and by taking your weight on the rig as you go over a chop and you get air easily.

Could this change in the way my board rides be like the "flying the fin" people describe. Could it be concluded that to go above a certain speed, you must be doing this to some extent? As in, if I have gotten my FSW to 33 knots in medium chop bay conditions would that have required this technique?

yep thats a pretty good starting point. Moving the track back reduces the effect of rig pressure on the board, which means the board trim is more at the mercy of nose aero lift, foot pressure, and chop impacts. Moving the boom up takes your weight off the board and reduces rig pressure through the mast foot.

For downwind sailing, where you are hanging more off the back of the board, I run the mast track further back until I cant sheet in without the board tail walking, adjusting the boom down to keep things under control.

For back and forth sailing where you are hanging more off the side of the board and your apparent wind is stronger, I sometimes move the track forward to help keep the board stable using rig pressure through the mast foot, and raise the boom to keep my weight off the board.

In light wind I tend to move the track back and the boom up. This compensates for the lighter wind generating less nose lift in the board, and suits the more upright stance from being underpowered most of the time. Shortening the harness lines also helps in this case.

Don't think there's any concern about that happening with slowy, I'm sure that's how he got where he is in the first place.

Now in my case you may have a point.

how about his for an example.....

The Holy Grail is a myth!

Unless you're the man of steel, or you live within a special force field impervious to the Law Of Physics, you cannot use the board just to keep the fin wet.

To stop the sinking, you need vertical lift. If you want to get that lift from a sail, you need a very large, and very vertically orientated rig.

Something like this.



Now I'd explain further but I'm busy glueing tennis ball fur to the underside of my Sputnik..

(On slalom boards...) If your mast track is in the right place it should work perfectly on any point of sail.

If it is too far forward, upwind performance will be harmed. You know it's too far forward if you keep hitting the deck with the foot of the sail when you try to point upwind. This is because the centre of effort (in the sail) is forward of the centre of lateral resistance (the fin), and so the board will keep trying to turn away from the wind.

I just thought of another experiment, if we all agree that a windsurfing sail can support our body weight, then let's make a flying machine with two sails aligned in a semi realistic sailing position. This should give us TWICE THE LIFT. I think we should make the angle of the sail, 45, just to be on the safe side..

I know only one guy brave enough to try this.

He he he he,,

Good fun to read Barn,,,,

Forward motion is important! and does affect the lift the sail can generate. Your first expirement would not be valid! The faster you go the more lift the sail can generate.

A good example is a helicopter that is gliding (or more correctly autorotating).
A helicopter can glide quite well, as long as the rotary wing is rotating, if the blades stop it will drop like a stone!