Wing Board Tail Rocker - Thoughts

[deja vu]

Here's a wind foil video about recommended amounts of rake for the mast.  Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that by increasing "rake" the added "rake" is having a similar effect on foiling as if you added "rocker" to the board without actually adding rocker (and avoiding any downsides, if there are any). 

 

[PonoBill]

Here's a wind foil video about recommended amounts of rake for the mast.  Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that by increasing "rake" the added "rake" is having a similar effect on foiling as if you added "rocker" to the board without actually adding rocker (and avoiding any downsides, if there are any). 

As you mentioned this is a wind foil video, not wing, and the two sports have substantial differences. Most importantly, the sail is pushing down on the nose, and the boards are generally fairly long. Raking the foil will help a lot with balancing the sail pressure, and riding nose up is beneficial with long boards so that you don't pearl the nose if you touch down.

If the tail of your board sinks more than the nose then some rake makes sense there too. Without it, the foil is angled up, which is as draggy as the foil angled down but without the downward pressure on the nose that an excessive down angle causes.

I winged yesterday using a 3D-printed mast shim to counter the amount of tail rocker on my 5'11" flying Dutchman board. Normally I use two fairly thin Wizard Hat shims but I printed these to be roughly the same thickness as the doubled-up shim. Apparently, I forgot to carry the two or something because they came out too thick. No big deal, I thought, and then struggled mightily with the board. It was trimming nose down a little, so whenever I touched down the board turned into a submarine. removing the shim left the nose a bit high in my normal foot and mast position, but it beat the shit out of doing a face plant when I touched down.

I was using my D-Lab 4.5, which would have been a bit too much wing for the gusts anyway, but with the Alulla strut and leading edge the wing hardly flexes in gusts. A little taco-ing in gusts is a nice thing. I wound up pulling some muscles in my right arm. Still a little tender today. I beat feet to HiTech and bought a F-one Strike V2 in 4.0. I'd been hoping that the D-lab could fill the gap between my 3.5 F-one and the 5.0. Wrong.