Wind Over Water wrote: ↑Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:13 am
For the experienced foilers, how much hours on the water until you became "confident" to foil alone? How many more hours to ride upwind and downwind with consistency? How many more hours until you were able to tack/jibe/transition?
I'm making a follow-up video to talk through some of these things, but here's my exact hours and timeline (I'm about 215lbs / 95kg) .
- July 2019 - First Lesson - 2hours of bucking bronco on a liquid force foil
- Aug 2019 - Wake foil - 30 min of porpoising behind a boat
- Aug 2019 - Jetski Foil - 1hr of getting water boarded by a jetski
- Oct 2019 - Foil session on my own - 1 hour, riding well to the left and ok to the right
- Jan 2020 - 4 foil lessons - 12 hours Got riding in both directions and started working on carving turns - was using some strange unstable small foils
- Feb 2020 - 2 foil session on my own- 2.5 hours Slingshot Hover glide foil with Spake Skate wing - riding confidently in both directions.
- July 2020 - Nov 2020 - did 8 more sessions on my own - 8 hours - still couldn't carve.
- Bought a much bigger wing, got the Infinity 76 / Manta 76
- April 2020 - 4 hours - started carving
So basically it took me around 30 hours to get the point where I can carve heelside to toeside and back, ride confidently in a variety of locations in a lot of different conditions ( chop / swell / gusts / etc). For example yesterday I went out for a few hours, did about 20 miles and really explored the area around me. I really think using strange foils that weren't the right size or good for beginners set me back. Spreading it out also didn't help.
I think it would have taken about half that had i just gone straight for the big wing from the beginning. Also for context, I was riding Core XRs (15m, 12m , 9m, 7m), and they aren't great for foiling. Just moved to a 12m xlite, and a 9m Nexus 2, both make things alot easier, but you can definitely learn on what you have.