How to Ride Surface Piercing – Tip Breaching a Hydrofoil Without Crashing
This video series shows how to ride a hydrofoil and breach a foil tip without crashing. When turning while surf foiling or wing foiling the outer foil tip comes up and can pierce the water surface. Often this causes ventilation where the whole foil wing looses lift and we fall with a painful faceplant. This video series shows the 3 ways that I know of to breach a foil tip and keep riding, to successfully pierce the surface. Video 1=6:25, Video 2=2:39, Video 3=2:38, Video 4=2:09, Video 5=2:14, Video 6=4:23, Video 7=6:04, Video 8=4:21, Video 9=3:07
Here are the main beginner wing foil spots that I go to, the reasons I go are smooth water and enclosed safe area. Easy parking and launching, and also other wing or wind sport enthusiasts to ask for help. These spots were crucial for me to learn the fundamentals and basic skills, and I go back here when wanting to learn a new move or testing new gear.
Once I progressed and moved down to a smaller wing foil board I needed to learn how to knee start. In this video series I show and explain how to go from kneeling to flying, on both low aspect foil wings and high aspect foil wings. The windier it is usually the rougher the water is and the harder it is to stand up. The first four videos are with a high aspect wing at different locations around the San Francisco Bay in 12 to 40mph winds. The fifth video shows my beginner setup: giant board, foil, and wing and how I bypassed the knee start on such stable and easy to fly gear. The sixth video shows how I moved down to a smaller low aspect foil, boards, and wing and explains how I did both standing and knee starts. Both heel side and toe side starts are shown and explained in close up detail so you can see what my feet, hands, and body are doing to stay balanced and get flying.
The first summer of winging, in a year of deep sorrow, brought me great joy. Uncertainty, chaos, fear, AND super super stoked! Riding the wind has been around forever, and yet this is the first year I really dedicated myself to learning how, or winging is so appealing the only choice for me, was YES! Seeing all my friends either join me in wing foiling or show a palpable curiosity in this new winging adventure, is proof for me that this is special. Who says "no thanks" to endless waves?
This series has many videos showing how to handle the wing for foil winging. Starting with the basics, on land and then in the water, of picking up the wing and turning it right side up and finishing at the point of ready to get up on the foil. I show and explain various ways of holding the wing, flipping the wing over, and moving forward and turning around without catching the wingtips. I show a few knee starts of getting up on the foil, focusing mainly on the wing handling (I will make a more in depth series on knee starts and getting up on the foil).
A simple and cheap tether to allow anyone to stay upwind while learning to handle the wing. 