Intermediate

Once you are getting on foil easily and making gybes and tacks you are ready to progress to a smaller front wing.

A smaller wing will have less drag through the water, allowing you to go faster and prevent breaching (when the foil aerates and loses lift – usually resulting in a
stall).

Now it’s time to think about which disciplines you want to focus on.

Freeride: You just want to have fun and enjoy the freedom of riding in a range of conditions. A balance of glide and turning ability are what you want in your foil. Mid-aspect/ High Aspect.

Waves: You want a foil that is easy to control, predictable and stable. You are going to be focussed 100% on riding the wave; you don’t have time to think about what your foil is doing. Mid-aspect.

Freestyle: This is all about getting your foil out of the water: jumps, loops, rotations. A foil that gets going quickly, recovers from jumps easily, and has a narrower span for control and safety. The wider spans on high-aspect foils and their pointed tips make them unforgiving for this discipline.

A note on high aspect (HA) foil wings: While their wider span makes them more difficult to turn, the massive lift they create and their speed through the water makes them a popular choice for a lot of riders, even in conditions to which they are not obviously well-suited. Why is this?

Smaller HA foils, that is those under 1,000 cm. Sq. can be incredibly efficient, offering much faster speeds than mid-aspect wings, but with the added benefit of being more agile than their larger counterparts.

However, to get going on these wings requires more skill and often a larger hand-wing size.

Downwind: Here you want a front wing with the maximum glide. You will be looking for bumps to ride and focusing on riding the foil.