shmish wrote:I spoke with Pavel, he was good to talk to.
I didn't know about the sail size issue. Do the larger sails put too much downwards pressure on the board to prevent lifting up on the foil? If I was to get a foil for a 115L freeride, I'd hope to use it for light winds. I've read about people foiling in 10 knots, but I don't know what size of sail is needed for this and if it's possible to do with a freeride.
How big a sail are you thinking of going? For reference my big sail is a 7.3 on a Wizard 125L board, I weigh about 185lbs.. I also have a 6.5 and don't notice much of an advantage with the 7.3, there's definitely a law of diminishing returns as the sails get bigger. I seem to need about 12mph to have fun with either. Slingshot listed a 6.5 as the biggest sail size for my board, but the following year upped it to 7.5 or something like that, without changing anything other than the board's graphics. I'd say that probably a 7.0 would be as big as you'd want to go for a 115L board, but there's definitely wiggle room. Big sails are noticeably heavier, and as you allude to, that weight is pretty far forward and needs to be overcome by the foil. It's not that much different than using a sail that's too big on a finned slalom board. Once up on foil in light wind it's nice to have a fat tail on your board so you can get some back foot pressure going on the foil to crank upwind.
Something else I've experienced, and others will likely disagree with me, is that in light winds non-foil-dedicated slalom boards get up a bit earlier on the foil than comparable-volume stubby boards like the Wizard as they don't plough as much through the water. It's the same reason a longboard is way faster than a slalom board in sub-planing conditions. With that said, the stubby board is super fun the moment it's out of the water.
At 66kg I don't think you could do much better for a single board quiver for the Lower Mainland.