Beginner Equipment Guide 🪁
🏄 Getting started with Wingfoil
Starting Wingfoil is challenging, but with the right gear you can really save time before your first flight! ✨
You may see very talented people online who manage to get their first flight after just a few hours. Don’t worry: if you haven’t taken off after your 5th attempt, that’s completely normal and you are like most people who start Wingfoiling. 😊
Main challenges
- Progressing safely
- Staying stable on the board
- Generating enough power to reach take-off speed
1. Safety gear 🛡️
You will fall a lot as a beginner. If you plan to recover your gear after a crash, do not forget the leashes for both the board and the wing.
Protect your body with an impact vest, ideally one that also provides buoyancy. Also protect your head with a helmet. You will remember this advice the first time you get hit by the board on the head, or even by the foil after a bad wipeout!
2. A stable board 🏄
Balance will be tricky at the beginning and you will often have to climb back on the board after falling. A high-volume board will help you a lot. You often hear “your weight + 20 liters”, but do not hesitate to go even bigger.
This will be your beginner board, which you will fairly quickly replace with something closer to your body weight. The good thing when there are many beginners around is that you can get a real beginner board and then resell it to another beginner (often when you start working on your jibes). Avoid midlength-type boards: they are great only once your balance is already well developed.
3. Generating power ⚡
Two elements generate power: the wing and the foil. To start, I recommend going big on both. It makes take-off much easier and you can keep this gear for a long time because you will still use it once you are comfortable in winds under 12 knots.
Disadvantages of a big wing:
- The larger wingspan makes it touch the water easily (splash!).
- The larger wingspan makes it harder to flip the wing over.
- The larger wingspan requires more precise maneuvers.
The advantage of a big wing
The main advantage of a big wing is power. Generally, a 6 m² is much more powerful than a 5 m². If you are tall, a big wing is not very demanding but very effective.
Disadvantages of a big foil:
- Less playful.
- Creates more drag in the water and therefore pulls more on your arms when the wind picks up.
The advantage of a big front wing
The advantage of a big front wing is that it allows you to take off very early.
We often recommend:
- For someone 1.80 m and 80 kg: a 6 m² wing and a foil with more than 1800 cm² front wing surface.
- For someone 1.60 m and 60 kg: a 5 m² wing and a foil with a 1500 cm² front wing.
This depends a lot on the brand, so do not hesitate to ask your local shop or dealer for advice! 👍