freestyle windfoil board

Which FREESTYLE Windfoil board is right for you?

The FREESTYLE Windfoil board comes in two sizes, a 87L & a 115L. Each has very unique performance styles for different types of Windfoiling. Wyatt Miller, Slingshot Sports Brand Manager gives you the overview.

 

 

Transcribed from Video:

Hey everybody. I’m Wyatt Miller, brand manager for Slingshot’s windsurfing division and I could not be more fired up to talk about our two new windfoil board offerings for 2020, the FREESTYLE line. We’ve got a 115 liter and we’ve got the 87 liter. Different boards, both exactly what I hoped for. We’ve got the 115, plenty big to float you and get going in really light winds. It’s actually easier to uphaul than the Wizard 105. Not so much, maybe just … About the same as the Wizard 125. Because you’ve got a little more nose in front of the mast track here, it actually is easier to uphaul, because you could have one foot in front and one foot in the back, standard uphaul for a windsurfer.

It also has the mast track coming a lot further back than the Wizard boards and actually even further back than your standard freestyle or wave board. That just allows you a lot more control over the lift and the dip of the board. So you can still set it nice and far forward if that’s the way you like it, but our top freestyle guys, the big back loopers, really want to get this mass track a lot closer to your front foot than you would on even the normal freestyle board. That’s available here in the extra-long mast track.

Next thing to talk about is the three inboard foot straps. Time and time again, I’ve handed these to a team rider or a buddy who’s a fairly proficient foiler, and they just come back and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s exactly how I wanted foiling to feel.” For the last couple of years I’ve been riding with four outboard straps and trying to do moves and trying to get hard carves and something was holding me back. Now that I’ve got full inboard foot straps with a center line back strap, that’s how this was supposed to feel. It’s a complete game changer, let me tell you.

I want to give you guys a little closer view of our new foot straps and the foot strap insert options on this Freestyle board. First, we’ve got, new for 2020, a windsurf specific foot strap. This is just the nice cushy, little bit thin, foot strap that we’re all used to in windsurfing. One of my favorite features is the numbered sizing system. Instead of having to set each one to your foot, you set one and you realize, “Okay, I’m like a five, so I’m going to put it at five.” And then you know all your straps are the same. Really helpful and saves a lot of time. The Freestyle comes with four of these foot straps, so you can actually run two foot straps in front, two foot straps in the back, for a little bit of ease of use and extreme efficiency and better upwind angles. If you want to move the front straps further in to the center, you’re going to have more control over each rail, whether you’re going switch or regular.

So more advanced riders are going to ride really inside and more intermediate sailors are going to move these front straps out to the side. Even some of our team riders who are into big jumps and huge, crazy forwards and backs and jumping, they ride a little further outboard here. Whereas the guys who are doing switch stance tricks are riding more inboard. Same thing with the back foot straps, you can do a four strap option or you can do a single back strap. Depending on whether you have a tuttle box or track mount you may have to straddle the tuttle mounts or offset your strap a bit.

If you want to go true full on center, Slingshot has the surf strap here and it’s got a really wide hole pattern. You can still run a single hole in the middle, but it’s got a nice wide hole pattern that will straddle that tuttle insert and match up really nicely. So it’s going to come with four straps and then you can ride it four straps for a little bit more efficiency, a little more ease of use. And then if you want to be full inboard, you’re going to use the windsurf specific straps in the front and you’re going to use one in the surf straps in the back with a wider whole pattern, that’s going to allow you to straddle that tuttle box.

In the future I believe that all boards will have the track system. I mean, SUP’ers, surfers, wakeboarders, every other sport is just using this sliding track mount system. Windsurfers, we wetted ourselves to the tuttle, which is really like a 1980’s windsurf technology, that just fixes you in one place. And while that does work really well and is probably the most efficient as far as light wind, being able to slide your whole foil forward and back in the track is the future. It is the way everything else is going to go. So you’ve got ultimate compatibility here, you’ve got the tuttle so you can take your tuttle foils and put them in there. But you’ve also got the track which allows you to fine tune that center of lift. Foiling is all about getting that center of lift exactly where you want it.

My favorite setting is like one inch or two inches forward or back. What we’re finding with foilers, as you get better and better … First people have trouble kind of keeping the foil down but as you get better and better you actually want to have that center of lift further forward. So you get more front foot pressure because then when you transfer your weight to your back foot and can really cork it out of the water.

Also when you go to jibe, if you have a little bit extra front foot pressure, when you pull your foot out of the back foot strap and you put it just in front like all of us windsurfers jibe, it feels really comfortable. It stays flying, it doesn’t want to go down towards the water. So we’ve got both the track and the tuttle mount, fully compatible with everything in the market. You’ve got the same chine rails in the front to help you if you do touchdowns, to not fully auger in but kind of bounce back up. You’ve got the cutaway rails for early release. You’ve got the 115 liter version here, which is 188 long by 71 wide. Still really plenty wide and extra thick in the tail. All that volume is in the tail, so as soon as you get moving you can move right into the front foot strap and even the back foot strap and start pumping and trying to get on a plane from there.

You’ve got the 87 liter version, which is one 172 tall, nice and short, by 69 wide. The 87 liter is the perfect size for kind of smaller sailors or if the wind is over 20, if it’s normal 5.0  wind surfing conditions, the 87 is all I would ever use. If I’m really going to use it for a light wind option because it’s just not windy enough to go on my 5.0 and my normal gear, then I’m going to want to go with this 115. Again, the 115, super easy to up haul because you’ve got a longer nose and this mass track is pulled further back. You can uphaul a lot easier than you can on the Wizard 105, about the same as the Wizard 125. The 87, if you’ve got some up haul skills, I know it’s a lost art, but if you’ve got some up haul skills you can still up haul that 87.

Both of these boards, if you’ve already foiled before or you just been hesitant about getting into foiling because you’re like, “I don’t ride four straps. I don’t ride formula and solid boards. I want to have control over both rails because my front feet are inboard, my back foot is center.” These are the boards for you. I feel like a beginner foiler could start on this 115, no problem. That could be your first freestyle board. True, you’re not going to be completely as efficient as a Wizard board, but that feeling of having control over both rails at all time and your back foot right on the center is just unbeatable. It’s seriously a delight to sail.

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