Hi
I've read that a big sail is disturbing for pumping. It's more efficient to pump an smaller sail in light wind. However the 7m sails are very common on the beaches not always for very tall guys. Is there a way to pump sails much bigger than your height without touching water? or the users of the 7m sails don't pump and only get flying with the power of the sail. Is there an intermediate way as well?
Thks
It's a matter of technique, and what your body can handle. I cannot pump my 6.5 very well, but my wife, who is 20 cm shorter than I am, has no problems. She's a way better winger than I am (and rarely needs anything bigger than a 4.2).
I usually go big not just because of poor technique, but also because bigger wings make standing up and getting on the foil a lot easier. Quite often, my knees hurt when I have to get up and when I pump, and by going one size bigger than necessary, I can use the power in the wing to pull me up. Of course that means that I am often overpowered while foiling, but that's easy to get used to. I'll revisit the issue once I foil through my jibes, and maybe get a DW board.
Strong preference for bigger foils/boards than wings. This year the biggest I pumped was a 4.2m Cloud IX with an 83l Kalama e3 board and the Cloud IX fs1150 foil in 8-9 knots. I'm 85kg. I feel like the bigger wings are too much hassle when on foil. I dedicated a lot of time/effort to technique development in order to just stick to small wings 99% of the time.
