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Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

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Dontsink
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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby Dontsink » Tue Oct 19, 2021 6:41 pm

Wish i had a way to tow!.
Jetski rentals are super pricey here plus towing is prohibido unless you own the jetski...duh.
I am cooking up a launch platform to see if i can get some practice that way.Will post if i get decent results.

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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby Cefirmeza » Tue Oct 19, 2021 8:58 pm

Dontsink wrote:
Sat Oct 16, 2021 1:22 pm
This vid shows what i mean in the previous post, or at least what i "think" i see :) .Watch how the back foot accelerates down ending in a pretty fast flick and then comes up at a more sedate pace.

After watching this video I decided to add the arm swing to my pumping during winging downwind and unlocked my technique.

I had no idea it could make such a difference. Even with just one arm swing it kinda propels the foil and also setting the pace and rhythm to the movement.

The biggest challenge now is to keep the wing out of the way while pumping and connecting the bumps. I feel a small improvement every session and beside being towed a downwind run winging is also a good way to improve.

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bragnouff
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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby bragnouff » Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 pm

Dontsink wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 6:41 pm
Wish i had a way to tow!.
Jetski rentals are super pricey here plus towing is prohibido unless you own the jetski...duh.
I am cooking up a launch platform to see if i can get some practice that way.Will post if i get decent results.
Dock starts are tricky because they also require you to land on the board in the perfect spot, with sufficient speed /forward momentum. What is significantly easier is to do some tow from a pontoon. 3-5m of rope, 10-15m of runable pontoon, and a ratio of 2 towers per towee, ( or a single adult towing a teenager ). Advantage is that you can ensure the right foot position on the board while keeping some of your weight off the board due to holding onto the pontoon till the pull comes in, and the runner(s) will give you enough initial speed to achieve a good liftoff before letting go of the rope and getting into the pumping action. That makes it a carbon-neutral fun social activity with a couple of friends.

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juandesooka
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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby juandesooka » Wed Oct 20, 2021 1:53 am

bragnouff wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 pm
Dock starts are tricky because they also require you to land on the board in the perfect spot, with sufficient speed /forward momentum. What is significantly easier is to do some tow from a pontoon. 3-5m of rope, 10-15m of runable pontoon, and a ratio of 2 towers per towee, ( or a single adult towing a teenager ). Advantage is that you can ensure the right foot position on the board while keeping some of your weight off the board due to holding onto the pontoon till the pull comes in, and the runner(s) will give you enough initial speed to achieve a good liftoff before letting go of the rope and getting into the pumping action. That makes it a carbon-neutral fun social activity with a couple of friends.
Agreed. Actual dock starts mystify me ... I cannot get my head around running with the board and jumping onto it. Using a static board holder removes that variable and makes it a lot more doable. I tried briefly this summer on a lake trip and I am confident that with a little more time and effort, it would have worked.

Your tow option sounds good, but the logistics would make it impossible in my world. The bungee option allows for same effect but solo. Here's the plans ... we priced it out around $200 in materials, though never got around to pursuing it.

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bragnouff
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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby bragnouff » Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:40 am

juandesooka wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 1:53 am

Agreed. Actual dock starts mystify me ... I cannot get my head around running with the board and jumping onto it. Using a static board holder removes that variable and makes it a lot more doable. I tried briefly this summer on a lake trip and I am confident that with a little more time and effort, it would have worked.

Your tow option sounds good, but the logistics would make it impossible in my world. The bungee option allows for same effect but solo. Here's the plans ... we priced it out around $200 in materials, though never got around to pursuing it.
We did try the bungee thing, although maybe didn't use exactly the right one and the right setup, and found that it was much easier to find a couple of friends than to refine the perfect bungee setup. I used 3x10m of 8mm bungee cord, braided together and using a Wichard QR to release the tensioner. That feels quite intimidating to tension the whole thing, and the initial pull once the bungee was released was very sharp, brutal but also quite short lived, which seems quite different from what's described in that WakeThief video. There's room for improvement, but this needs a few experiments, maybe different locations, and because we don't own that public pontoon, we can't really attach a winch to it. Also pulling alongside the pontoon instead of away from it brings plenty of fear factor. In the end, human powered tow-in was the easy successful option. That was just before winter, and kept it at that. But now with the full season ahead, we should be able to refine that further and come up with something usable and cheap.
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Dontsink
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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby Dontsink » Wed Oct 20, 2021 6:31 am

The pontoons i have tried here are off limits, i have been kicked out with the usual liabilities,insurance and other boats getting damaged speech.Will keep searching.

The human tow sounds great but i have exactly 1 foilsurfing bud , with a little kid and little time available.Winging is just starting to catch on but prone ,sup and DW are pretty nonexistent yet.

So it is back to a semisubmerged launch platform for me.

First try a few weeks ago was a total and resounding...failure :)

Too short ,too low because it sunk in the sand ,and i used the Kujira 1210 which requires some speed to wake up.I managed to land on it many times correctly but could not get more than one pump before stalling.
I am lenghtening the platform,putting wider leg tips and next try i will use a big,fat,curvy LOL 1900.

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juandesooka
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Re: Pumping a wingfoil board - difficult for you or is it just me?

Postby juandesooka » Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:13 pm

A friend learned by placing a step ladder in chest deep water and jumping onto foil. I have no idea how many 100s or 1000s of attempts it took but it worked. He has a busy schedule and can't afford the hour drive each way to get to the surf...but he could manage an hour daily for ladder time. So, while we were surf foiling and having epic fun, he was grinding it out in learning to pump. His focus and dedication is impressive, honesty not sure I could do it, as the repeated failures are intensely frustrating. However taking the fun route is much slower. Learning pumping while surf foiling requires giving up wave rides, kicking out with speed to practice pumping ... that's also frustrating, because you lose half your riding time in exchange for immediate frustration and potential future wins. So, you may tend to just keep surfing, leave the practice for "next session", with that next session never quite arriving. [which now sounds like me attempting to learn kite foiling tacks and countless other future projects never tackled]

Back to OP, lots of options to chase this, but none are easy. Except for the very rare natural athlete types who try it once and get it. :angryfire: :oops: :cool2:
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