lightest winds - floaters vs sinkers

[plummet]

keh?

Ever want for a more buoyant foil board to improve light wind performance? An SUP with a foil on it?

No not really. My TT style construction 125cm pocket board gets me going around 7 knots. below that i go mountain biking... Well to be honest below 15 knots i go mountain biking, But sometimes i feel like a desparation session.

But learning to surface jybe would be better on a more bouyant board. Once foiling who the hell cares.

[Regis-de-giens]

My money is on the foiler with an ultralight foil kite and a board that can sink to resist the kite.

Real good question. Being a ultra-light wind lover (rather than integrist ), I can report that with my light 60kg-weight on the balance, a thin low/medium volume board ( ketos skimm-142x50-20) is beneficial. Actually in extreme marginal winds I need to sink the board the deeper i can in the water to make a kind of fix anchor to gain line tentions, otherwise the little kite pull during the waterstart loop will induce a little downwind speed that prevent the kite from taking enough speed (when I still have the ass in the water). I even sometime have to use one free hand to swim-backward while the kite is initiating the loop to try to accelerate it a bit more at this starting loop.

But I must say it may be rider-weight dependant because here I speak of winds were most foil kite will not hang in the air, while I am using a very powerfull (and over-sized) 15m or 18 m for my 60 kg on the balance, so very "specific". Sinking the board was even harder on a more volume board (so less efficient "anchor", and even harder when I was riding strapless ...) . Indeed I had no such issues on this with the 12m (or previous speed2 15m SA) in 1-2 more knot wind (say 6 knots).