First Time Wing Foiling Vlog #1

Yeah, what's up guys? Rygo here. For this week's video we are going to talk about wing foiling, and I am very clearly a new wing foiler. Last year I thought I was going to learn and arrogantly made my own gear choices, brought all the wrong equipment, had the worst time learning. So I finally humbled myself and had a sit-down with Tucker. I let him pick out all my gear, and that's what this video is going to be about: learning and choosing the right gear for wing foiling. I'm going to kick off another vlog series just sharing my honest progression while learning the sport, and all the troubles that I go through. This is going to be "fun" for me; nice, new, fun learning curve. But hey, it is going to be fun. You've gotta get out of your own box, get out of your own head and try new things, so we're going to try a wing foiling vlog series. Let's get to it!

So I feel pretty ridiculous right now. The wind is definitely too light to go wing foiling. I knew that it was, but one piece of advice that I got was just to get familiar with your gear, go paddle around, pump it up, put it together, just practice. I'm on a pretty high liter board right now so it floats me and I can work on just getting used to the wing. There's just enough wind to keep the wing in the air and turn it and move it, so there's a little action happening, but it's definitely not the session of a lifetime.

I would say it's productive though; I'm starting to feel more familiar. I did try a little bit of wing foiling last spring and it's coming back pretty quick, albeit I didn't make a whole lot of progress, but this is a different year. We're going to get out, we're going to try things, we're going to fail, and we're going to get this figured out.

So I'm back in the RV here. I shut the camera off and just packed everything up. I actually got pretty tired out there today and I didn't have the energy to finish this video on the water. So I had some lunch, and I wanted to talk about some of the challenges that I faced as a beginner learning to wingfoil. Last year I mentioned bringing some of the wrong gear. The board that I brought wasn't bad, but it was massive and it was actually kind of difficult for me to get it out, especially when I'm living in an RV with small space. I had to move stuff just to get to that wing foil board, and that was a barrier in itself. On top of that, I wasn't super familiar with putting my foil gear together. It was kite specific, not wing specific, and it took a while for me to get everything put together.

As for some other challenges, I am in central Florida and last year this was a new location for me, so I didn't really know where the deep water was, and I think all of those factors combined weren't all that conducive to me feeling motivated to get out. When the wind kicked up I just wanted to kite; I was hungry to get out there and go kiteboarding, and there were just enough obstacles in my way for wing foiling that I never made the effort to go through the process to learn.

Tying back in with what Tucker taught me, this morning I did kite and I had an awesome session on my 15. But first thing in the morning I got here before the wind fired, I put all the wing foil gear together, pumped my kite up, had everything ready to go, and when I got done kiting it was just sitting there, ready for me, and I was feeling motivated and stoked from the kite session to get out. The wind had just ticked off a little bit, but I knew there would be value in me just getting out there on the board, getting a feel for it, learning to balance even if it was only maybe 10-12 knots. There were a couple 17 meters kind of going back and forth out there.

I also think it was just a good refresher for me to go through some of the fundamental things that I had learned when I was working with Tucker back in Michigan, so I would say even though today was a failure, it was a success because I feel a lot more dialed into my gear. I'm going to be a lot faster the next time; I know how it all feels. Even though the wind was super light and I couldn't really get moving very fast, I've got a good idea of how the wing handles, at least.

I will check back in for week two or three, see where I'm at with the winging, and I'll share what I've learned. I'll share any insights I have as somebody who's going through the process and being humbled, coming from kiteboarding where it's something I know so well. I've been doing it for so long, and getting into another wind sport where I'm so bad... it's fun, right? So I'll check in with you guys in a week or two here. In the meantime, if you have any questions for me, let me know in the comments and I'll think about that while I'm winging and try to answer those questions. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, give it a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, and I'll catch you later.