Do prone foil surfers go faster than their SUP brothers?

[TallDude]

Let's call it horizontal movement vs vertical movement and ignore tangential thinking for the moment. The distance any prone or standup or foiled thing moves forward on a wave, towards the shore will be much greater that the distance that thing drops vertically. It may feel like a free-fall at some point (I know the feeling), but even that distance traveled vertically is only a small fraction of the distance traveled horizontally.
Here shown at Maverick's, this guy has almost no vertical drop (late!) at first. He's already traveling at the speed of the wave because his nose is down and it's grabbed him. In the second picture he has only dropped maybe 3' down the wave, but he's already traveled 40' towards the beach. By the last picture he's just about made it half way down the face of the wave, but he's still falling forward horizontally towards the beach, faster than he is vertically towards a total bummer wipeout.

 

[Califoilia]

Adding more data points improves analysis, that’s what analysis thrives on.....Data. Doesn’t it ?

Oh hang on... I get it...you  guys are trolling me to avoid basic science.
 Well done, I get the joke.  Sorry I didn’t get it sooner !!!

 Sure, surfing is done on a flat 2-D plane and vertical dimension is not measureable in the real world. Ha ha .
 You had me believing you were seriously denying the third dimension.

SF, just so I understand what you're getting at....

Are you trying to say that either "prone foil surfers" or "their SUP brothers" are traveling down the face of a wave on take off faster than the other?

Or is it just that because the drops always feel so much faster than the rest of the ride...that you think the very top speeds of both (during a "freefall" drop) are being miscalculated and understated?

I'm more surprised you're not questioning the validity of the numbers themselves, being that I surf with a guy who's registered speeds on his Rip Curl Search watch that he's shown me of 27, 38, and 46 mph on a Cloud Nine foil on a SUP!!

Now on the 27 mph run, I was on the same wave, and catching him until I turned away so as not to have a collision with him...and I'm pretty dang sure that I wasn't flying in excess of the 27 mph that would have been needed to make that happen. Just saying....

Now the fastest I've ever recorded on my Rip Curl Search watch has been 18.7 mph on an Iwa and 7'3" SUP, and that was just before the Iwa flew out of the water because I had no more lean forward to give it, and couldn't hold it down in the water any longer.

My other curiosity to go along with the board AOA thoughts already shared...is not only board size, but also where the mast is mounted on the board. I ask this because as I've said before, being I have one of the earlier foil specific boards, and my mast is 22" from the tail, which is about 2-3" too far forward according to the Go Foil site for that length of board.

When I look at all of the shorter prone foil boards, their masts are darn nearly on the tail, and I can't help but think these big differences has something to do with the AOA, and thus the flying speed differences of the boards.

I'd also be remise not to state that IMO rider experience has a lot to do with it also...as I've caught, and passed some less experienced prone foilers with no other equipment factors than normal to take into consideration than that. So there is that as another possible thing to take into consideration given Beasho's extensive experience compared to mine (at least in bigger surf if nothing else), and why he's able to find speeds I'm unable to at the moment. 

[SURFFOILS]

SSS, I do agree that the skill of the rider has a great factor in speed so I don’t think prone Vs SUP is possible to choose who’s faster.
The highest speeds are going to be found going down the wave and not up the wave and I think that if you’re only able to measure in horizontal movement then you’re not including the constant of gravity that would be a large component. So the speeds recorded are being miscalculated.
A larger wave travels faster in horizontal movement so the same surfer on a larger wave will go faster according to a GPS.

I’ve been through this on another forum and the speeds themselves are certainly questionable, is the speed momentary or sustained ? And for how long ? Momentary speeds could be attributed to swinging your arm forward so it registers a very high but brief speed,  like throwing a ball out of a moving car. Or the refresh rate of the GPS itself. There’s a lot of variables that could create extraordinary momentary GPS speeds that aren’t correct like the 46 mph you mentioned.

On another forum a guy said he was travelling on a beach wave at a Sustained speed of 60 mph for 30 seconds but ignored that at such a high speed he would have travelled a distance that placed him up the beach and into the car park !
Theres so many variables that a top surf speed is going to be momentary.

 But the winner on that forum was a guys GPS that registered on a weeks surfing in Hawaii a top speed of 980 kph while on the 747 getting there. 😀

 Searching for a sustained top surf speed is something completely different.

[Beasho]

What I love about this topic is that we have at least introduced the concept of A Feedback Loop.

When people say "I was going fast."  There is NO standard metric to compare. 
- Therefore worthless unless you know the person really well, have surfed next to them . . . .

Having used my TRACE now for 3 years I know what it feels like to go 20 mph on the FOIL - AKA fast.  I ride the waves.  Note what felt REALLY, REALLY fast, go home and sure enough it was either slightly greater than 20 mph or it wasn't.  Now I have my iWatch to calibrate against the Trace.  The devices are usually close and NOT off by less <10%.  The challenge with the iWatch (Dawn Patrol, Strava) and RipCurl is that they DON'T record more than 1X per second.  Trace is running at 5 Hz.

NO ONE ELSE HAS THIS FEEDBACK LOOP ON THEIR SURFBOARD.

I would bet there are people that can look out the window of a car and know within a few MPH how fast they are going.  Because they have swiveled their heads from the speedometer out the window 10,000's of times over 1,000's of hours incorporating the standard metric of MPH into their visual interpretation of speed. 

SURFERS DON'T DO THIS.

PS: When I hit 30 mph I now know because my hair starts to sizzle.  I go home, download the Trace and boom - There it is 30 mph.   To do this is very hard and often requires a wave that is 18 feet or more and you have to go down the line to take advantage of PONO's Cosine factor.

[Bean]

Adding more data points improves analysis, that’s what analysis thrives on.....Data. Doesn’t it ?

No, more data is not always better.  The right data is the key.

[PonoBill]

Let's call it horizontal movement vs vertical movement and ignore tangential thinking for the moment. The distance any prone or standup or foiled thing moves forward on a wave, towards the shore will be much greater that the distance that thing drops vertically. It may feel like a free-fall at some point (I know the feeling), but even that distance traveled vertically is only a small fraction of the distance traveled horizontally.
Here shown at Maverick's, this guy has almost no vertical drop (late!) at first. He's already traveling at the speed of the wave because his nose is down and it's grabbed him. In the second picture he has only dropped maybe 3' down the wave, but he's already traveled 40' towards the beach. By the last picture he's just about made it half way down the face of the wave, but he's still falling forward horizontally towards the beach, faster than he is vertically towards a total bummer wipeout.

Exactly. The movement from gravity in a typical wave is five feet. Most surfers turn across the face pretty quickly unless they are in a wave that is too big to permit that. The drop down the face yields acceleration both from gravity and from the momentum of the wave. Once you turn across the face it's all wave energy. If you don't turn across the wave and just go straight you outrun the wave a little, because by the time you reach the bottom you've added some velocity from the acceleration of gravity to the wave velocity and the velocity you paddled in with. And then you slow down quickly because there is nothing to overcome the drag, and the wave runs you over.

As far as I can tell from reread everything SF has posted, he believes that few feet of travel is somehow very significant in the overall speed gained. And that just isn't so.

If nothing else, look at the wave machine videos. 2000 foot long rides at 18mph in a pitching wave that's five feet high. The vertical motion of the riders might be two feet.

[Beasho]

Two years ago I posted about board speed.  The thread is here:

https://www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=29071.0

I was convinced that SUP's were faster than surfboards.  I would go out surfing with 4 laydown guys, 1 of which had a RipCurl watch, and I would record speeds 20% faster than they would 100% of the time.   They NEVER came close.    Boom!  SUP is Faster.

Then one of my surf kid mentee's mom asked me what to get her son Morgan for Christmas - A Trace!  He was a good kid and would paddle out into bigger conditions than most of my adult friends.  We once looked back at the cliff at Rockies and there were 15 guys checking out the conditions wringing their hands.  Wave faces were 11 to 16 feet.  Just Morgan and I in the lineup.  I said "Morgan what do you think of all those people on the cliff?"  The 15 year old responded without hesitation "I think they need bigger balls."

A set wave comes I take off wide of Morgan.  We both catch the same 15 ft wave and he has a TRACE.  It was a fast one.  I was on a 10 ft SUP he was on an 8' laydown gun taking off 20 yards deeper than I was "On the Shoulder."

Later that day I download my data and see 28.3 mph.  I call Morgan and say "What did your Trace read, what was your fastest wave?" 

His answer "28.3 MPH"  We check the times - Same wave.  No-Way!  Lightbulb moment.

The wave is moving forward like a train.  It will move at 20 mph and whether you ride a Big Wave Gun or the Hood of a Volkswagon you will go exactly 20 mph if you go straight.

You can wiggle, waggle, put in 'Laser' fins on pintails and without the Wave-Train you are dead in the water.  Once you have the wave train you need to add distance over time and this means - Turn Down the Line.

[Beasho]

Morgan and I probably got lucky with the exact same speed but we at least we were using the same device to measure speed. 

PonoBill and I went back and forth many moons ago on this topic.  In the end we were in violent agreement.  PonoBill is usually right and is somewhat like a big brother if I get dusted up in an argument with a neanderthal or a troll.  He was once wrong about Tail Handles but that's another story   

I do owe him for 1) My Kenalu Paddle 2) The Paddle mount that I use for most of my video 3) The inspiration for my Fat-Tire electric bike 4) He sent me his TRACE when mine died . . . .  - Thank you PonoBill.

At the end of that 'Speed on a Wave' thread I drafted this visual.  Short of Jamie Mitchell dropping on a 60 ft face at Belharra (e.g. adding big vertical component) the speed you travel on a wave is a function of 1) Horizontal Wave Speed  2) The angle you can maintain down the line.

With regards to the topic at hand: Turning down the line is something that Foils are REALLY good at in SMALL waves, the lower drag means higher angle down the line, better riders less Angle of Attack on the foil . . . .  Chances are that FOILS are good at it in BIG Waves too aka Laird Hamilton's tow in Foil.  The rest of the world is just starting to figure all of this out. 

[PonoBill]

Oooh, infographics, what fun! But yeah, that's about it. I'm wrong twenty times a day. My sole advantage is that I'm never married to a viewpoint. Someday, someone might demonstrate conclusively that Pat Robertson talks directly to God, and I'll have a huge problem swallowing it. Other than that I'm always happy to change my mind. As Sam Pa'e will verify. I call that "learning". Seems to be an outdated concept in 2018 USA.

Oh, and you forgot drag. Well, you didn't forget it, but it's what determines what angle you can hold. 50 degrees is about the maximum for any surfboard except while it's being pumped. I did the math on that once and it's almost like the speed of light. If drag reduces your speed while you are trying to hold too tight an angle you will go over the top of the wave.