Flat water v Open ocean

Just a high level question:
I'm competent gybing in both directions in flat water. Recently I've gone to the open sea with significant swell and chop. I really struggle to make my turns and also find I'm moving around a lot with the turbulance.... As if the foil is being thrown around underwater.

It's probably just a new experience I'll have to adjust to but my question is:
Can any of this be explained by the foil and could I improve through equipment change? I'm on a 1300 high aspect front foil.
I want to keep this brand free so won't mention names.
Thanks for any thoughts.

Better equipment handles turbulence better but all equipment feels something.

What you've experienced is normal. It takes time to get used to it. If you spend time in the open ocean, it will improve your skills and make flat water seem super easy.
Open ocean foiling is awesome, but much harder than flat water.

Any turbulence makes jibes harder. I just had a session today where I had lots of decent jibes in flat water behind a sea wall, but a lot more crashes in chop away from the wall. I've had the same experience many times before. Going to a smaller foil helps; my Axis HPS1050 (~1500 cm2) reacts much more than the HPS880 (~1100 cm2). I had the same general experience with lower aspect foils (SB 2000, 1700, 1300 cm2 wave foils).

Besides area, I believe foil width contributes to making it more sensitive to turbulence (etc.), but that's more based on what others have reported than on personal experience. If the 1300 you mention for your front foil is width, not area, then that's a very wide foil for winging in the ocean.

Thanks everyone. Very helpful comments. I'm going to take opportunities to try other foils - sizes and brands. I suspect the foil is part of it as the contrast in success is huge. My 1300 is indeed wide. I do appreciate I also have to spend more time in that environment. It was always my intention to get into the surf . That's why I'm winging.

Reach, you may be able to 'tweak' some of the unwanted movement out by using a 0.5* mast shim and moving the mast further back in the tracks. As another poster said being a wide lifty foil is likely part of the issue. I have gotten used to the 'bounce' of a GF M200 in the chop but a thinner smaller foil 'cuts' through more smoothly. I think if you tried the GF RSX range it would be night and day.

Wide super ha foil is going to react more to that kind of water turbulence than a lower AR smaller foil. Also need to learn how to use the water energy to your advantage in maneuvers. You will get a lot more glide through your gybes if you read the water energy and ride that energy through your gybe.
the foil helps to some degree in separating you from the surface conditions but your foil will ride up and down through chop and wave energy too so you need to use your bent legs and body as an elstomer to go up and down through the waves.

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Reach said..
Can any of this be explained by the foil and could I improve through equipment change? I'm on a 1300 high aspect front foil.

Everything is more difficult in confused seas, but if riding out there is means you cannot relax and look around and enjoy, then your equipment could be better. Probably a lot better. I guess that riders who think it all about the rider have either: A. not experienced the vast differences in equipment - with ease of use in the ocean. B. Limited imagination/belief in what they are capable of doing.

The front foil is just one important piece of the puzzle. But 1300mm wide is obviously too wide to allow any rider to adjust carve turns freely. Stiffness is crucial, in the mast (sideways and twist) and also the middle/root of your foils must be stiff. The more the front foil plan shape sweeps aft, then the smoother it'll be through turbulence at the price of some lift and glide. Very HA foils might be ok, if stiff enough, but in the larger area sizes, they're not common in waves because of slow turning and flex issues. Pitch stability is more critical in waves. Stab foil design matching the front foil is key to pitch stability. Adjustments to mast position and rear stab foil angle can make a huge difference. Lastly, if the cruising speed range of the foil is slower than the waves you are trying to gybe on then you'll load up and have problems.

I remember the AFS designer Richard once said that his goal is produce a hydroplane+mast which riders can enjoy on waves blind folded. A slight exaggeration but not as far fetched as you might think.

Hi Reach,
This is about a foil that is fit for purpose. If it is the Axis 1300, it's an awesome foil for getting up and going early. It does lots of things really well, but charging down waves and foiling in choppy seas is not it's niche. As others have said, it gets waaay too much feedback and will be trying to throw you off.
I think it's not so much about the aspect ratio, but more about the frontal thickness of the foil. That is what generates the lift, and if you have heaps of it, it will be too much when going down waves. I find that at the top of a wave, there's a lot of lift generated, and as you drop down the face, it reduces. And totally drops out when you hit the trough. So get a foil that doesn't generate as much lift overall, and it will be easier to control on a wave.
If you are keen on waves and chop, a good foil to utilise this would be one of the PNG's, HPS or spitfires (generally black fuse compatible). And they're pretty user friendly. They have a much thinner front profile, meaning that the lift the foil generates is far less brutal. I've gone back to those thicker (red fuse compatible) foils and used them in the waves as a bit of an experiment. It's a real challenge. I've ridden the BSC in waves and it's hard going, but as you go to the HPS and Spitties, you will find you can charge down a wave face with reckless abandon and not get pitched off.
You might not have to go a different brand, maybe just a different front foil.

The challenging /fun thing about choppy seas is that what we ride on is the foil, which is some distance below the surface. And what we see happening on the surface is not a reliable indicator of what's going on beneath (where the foil is) if you're anywhere near a beach or other obstruction. bits of current can be travelling in quite different directions, giving vastly different amounts of lift within a short distance (eg: wingtip to wingtip). This would explain the tendency for wide, HA foils to be more unstable in these conditions.

Just get really good at the foil you are using. If its the PNG1300 people you can rip with it but when you move to another foil like the 1180 it is all a lot easier. We swap equipment around at our beach which makes it easier to guage but the best riders can do it all on any of the foils they experiment with. I would disregard a couple of the answers above (Emmett) as they most obviously don't know.