Can you body drag upwind?

[Flyboy]

I always assumed I could body drag upwind ... until I snagged my foil on a fishing net, flew off the board & then quickly realized no matter how hard to tried to drag back to it, I was gradually losing ground to my stationary board. As I was foiling with a 6m kite in about 12-14 knots I didn't, in any case, have much power available. In the end I had to body drag to shore, land my kite & then swim back out to disentangle the foil. However, it made me realize for the first time that you don't actually "body drag upwind", but only body drag downwind less quickly than your board drifts downwind ...

[grigorib]

I did bodydrag upwind to my foil stuck in a fishing net

[foilholio]

You can body drag and or swim upwind.

[Peter_Frank]

You can bodydrag quite some upwind indeed

Your error, without having seen it, I am quite certain though, is you point too high with your arm/body, thus you are getting nowhere upwind...

A common mistake by almost everyone, even quite experienced kitesurfers are seen doing it somewhat wrong, only helped by the fact the wind pushes their board down to them most often...

You should make your "superman" with your body and arm perpendicular to the wind, instead of trying to partly point up to your board.

Sound counterintuitive yes, but try it, and you will see how much better you go upwind, eventhough you at first feel like you must go sideways

Made this many years ago, a test where I ditched the board on purpose and then bodydragged with my 10 m2 kite to see the result on my GPS after the session, quite amazing angle I would think:



Peter

[Toby]

A 6 in 12 knots is very small.
You need power. With power you easily bodydrag upwind.
With too much power it is also not possible, like with an 18 in 30 knots.

[foilholio]

But with lack of power it is easy to swim.

a 6m is perfect for 12knots with waves on a big foil.

[Flyboy]

With a foil board I spend more time body dragging downwind after my board! In swell, it's impressive how fast the board travels downwind. In general, with my SB, I am out with considerably more power in the kite & I have no problem body dragging back to the board, even if it's a fair way upwind.

In this case, I didn't seem to have enough power in my kite to make any upwind progress. I guess I could have luffed the kite as much as possible & swum towards the board, which was about 50m upwind.

As it turned out, the line was wrapped quite perfectly in an S-shape around the stabilizer, mast & front wing. Diving below the water I was able to release it but I needed both hands to do it - I don't think I would have been able to do it while flying the kite & dropping the kite next to the fishing line could have created other problems...

[Kitetwin-1]

It’s winter, try body dragging to a foil in current while wearing a bag dry suit.

[Flyboy]

It’s winter, try body dragging to a foil in current while wearing a bag dry suit.

Actually ... it was about 30C air temp & 27 C water. So the whole process was relatively pleasant!

However, normally speaking isn't body dragging to a foil really easy except for unusual circumstances? It did make me realize how a foil is subject to a bunch of potential hazards that are not likely to be relevant on a SB or TT.

[Kitetwin-1]

Some foils are very light and sit up sideways, they don’t come to you. Combine the buoyancy of a bag suit and current like the gorge. I almost saw $3000 float away two weeks ago.