Wing foiling is a new water sport that is drawing in countless windsurfers, kiters, and foilers looking for something different. There are plenty of videos on social media of people doing incredible maneuvers on wings, but there are very few videos that go over the fundamentals. With this short video series, we hope to explain the integral parts of winging. By the end of this series, we hope our viewers will know what it takes to learn how to wing foil.

Your First Water Session
So you know the basics... but how can you go from the land to the sea? A great way to start is taking out your wing with a stand-up paddleboard. You can focus on your wing with a sturdy high volume board. All of the drills we talked about in the last blog/video can be applied to your first water session, except it will be slightly different as you are dealing with water. The main focus will be to keep the wing off of the water while still practicing sheeting in, flipping, and pumping the wing.

Recommended Conditions/Locations
We recommend going out in 8-20 knots of wind, this will be enough to get you moving but not enough wind to become overpowered. You can perform your first water session in a lake, ocean, river, etc. Almost any body of water will work but it is crucial that you have the ability to get back upwind without using your wing. A beach is optimal so you can walk, but a tender boat or paddle will work just fine to get back upwind.

Gear
Obviously a wing is needed. But what else? We recommend a SUP with a leash, it’s hard to swim with a wing, which makes a leash essential to prevent losing your board. We also recommend a flotation device and a helmet to minimize the risk of injury.

Carrying Your Setup
When carrying your SUP and wing it is easiest to hold the leash of the wing about six inches away from the leading edge and to place it over your shoulder. With the wing downwind of you it should float and cause little fatigue on your shoulder. If walking in a crosswind, hold the sup on the upwind side of your body and hold the wing by the depower handle with your free hand.

Flipping the Wing
The first thing to master is the wing flip. Relearning this motion in the water is crucial. Knowing how to flip the wing quickly is the difference between drifting 10 feet or 100 feet downwind. There are two ways to go about this: grab the depower handle and rotate the wing with your free hand or you can work your way to the wing tip and flip the wing from the tip. Both methods get the job done but using the depower handle tends to be quicker, however, the wingtip may get stuck in the water. If you are struggling to flip the wing then use the wingtip method, which makes the wing easier to flip as the chord length is much shorter than the wingspan. Again, you can do this by holding the wing by the wingtip and using both hands to flip the wing.

Depowered Wing Handling
One thing that is overlooked by many beginner riders is figuring out how to keep the wing in a depowered state. This skill may seem quite easy yet many people struggle with it if they haven’t had any practice. Before you even think about powering up the wing either kneel or sit on the board with the wing above your head. All you have to practice is switching your hands from handle to handle and switch your front hand and back hand without powering up the wing. By mastering this skill you will be able to learn how to transition faster.

Hand Positioning
On land, you may have found that certain handles allowed you to control the wing better. This applies to the water as well, try to find the best hand positioning for powering up and depowering in a controlled manner. It takes some trial and error to figure out what handles feel most comfortable to you. Tacking cross/downwind allows the board to start moving, traveling slightly crosswind allows power to build up in the wing. This power will allow you to feel how the wing pulls in different positions.

Swimming to Riding
When you inevitably fall off of your board you will have to get from the water back to a riding position. Start in the water swimming with your board and wing downwind. First, pull your board back towards yourself and hop on. Kneel on your board if you can balance, or sit for more stability; then you will reel in your wing via the leash. If sitting, grab the depower handle and get to your knees. Now you will power up the wing just like on land and begin to tack downwind on your knees. When you feel your speed increase, pull up on the wing, the wing should support some of your weight, and stand up. We like to plant our front foot first then place our back foot. Try to pull slightly against the wing but if you pull to hard you will fall backward. You want to be in about a shoulder-width stance

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