Foiling behind a boat

[skideeppow]

I have a LF Galaxy board with a slingy GW and moses 590.

I also have this older NF2 wind and fuselage set up with a 24 inch mast. was going to attach this to my Galaxy and get behind a boat. I thing the GW 101cm is going to be too long to foil behind the boat.

The boat is a mastercraft x35. Any suggestion for speed the boat should be at?

[jkrug]

i went about 13 mph, but believe that was too fast. depends on what you're doing...riding wake or just cruising. overall, i found it to be about as much fun as watching paint dry.

[BWD]

Speed definitely a little more than for wakesurf, for me and some friends last year it worked about 14-18mph. Depends on rider weight etc.

[grtlakes]

I have recently used a 10’ zodiac with a very tired 9.9 outboard. I am riding the lf galaxy board and the foilfish on a 24” mast. I’m about 200#. We tried it out not expecting any success. Well, it has been fantastic. To answer your question. Very very slow. We have been able to get up on the foil before the boat is able to plane. Once up the zodiac accelerates and tops out less than 15mph. At that speed we are able to foil effortlessly and zigzag back and forth.
Have fun and Caution the boat driver not to slow down unexpectedly. That has been the cause of some scary crashes. You can fall sideways into a rising foil.

[Foil]

At least one foil school uses a boat to get newbies up and riding for their first attempts at foiling, one is in St Marlo in France.
Steve from St Helens, Merseyside, uses a boat on Carr Mill Dam to have some foil and speed boat fun.
not sure if steve uses this forum.

[SENDIT!]

I was able to get a friend up behind our waverunner, going only about 6-7 mph. He was on a Slingshot Hoverglide, with the standard Wing (H2) that's been the stock set up for a while. It was interesting, b/c at 6 mph I couldn't quite get the waverunner on plane, but he was riding just fine, maybe a tad slow. At 7-8 (hard to control that small of an increase in throttle) the waverunner would start to plane out, but it would get to be too fast for him. And I had to be careful not to back off the throttle too quickly or the rope would slack and he'd start to slow down. Which would result in a pretty good yank when it would tension again. On a side note, when it came my turn, I couldn't get up on the board at all. It would just pull so hard that eventually I'd have to let go. After a few shots, we shifted over to a Mako King and I was an instant hero on that. lol Never having wakeboarded or waterskied before, I found this to be pretty fun, though much more quickly fatiguing to the arms/legs than kiting. I can kitefoil, so not really sure what I'm doing wrong to try and get up behind the waverunner. Pull is coming from too low, maybe?

Anyway, getting this back on topic...I can't imagine doing 14-15 mph behind the boat, not when 6-8 was our sweet spot. Good luck!

SENDIT!

[BWD]

interesting to see such a difference.
Wonder about the riders weight
And he was actually staying on foil with control so slow?
I thought the foil wouldn’t even lift until 6-8mph. That’s how it is with me at 80kg at least.
Stable flying usually needs more speed on top of that.
I suspect my speed reading could have been off, and the jetski off in the other direction. Wake/ski boats usually have somewhat accurate speedometers though. Do jet skis?

[grtlakes]

True, slow speed is best. With the little zodiac there is no way to gauge speed. I just know we were pleasantly surprised how slow we were able to foil. The trick we found to start was maintain pressure on the rope and as soon as forward movement was felt stay low “roll up”and aim board directly at the boat. Pumping worked but wasn’t totally necessary. As sendit noted the boat can move at displacement speed and still work.

Off to Hatteras tomorrow. Time to see if my new found boat foiling skills will help under the kite.

[Laughingman]

Anyway, getting this back on topic...I can't imagine doing 14-15 mph behind the boat, not when 6-8 was our sweet spot. Good luck!

SENDIT!

That is really interesting considering even with my LF Impulse foil which is a surf type foil my average speed is in the 10 knots range and max speed is around 15 knots according to my GPS tracker... seems odd that you would so easily get over powered behind a boat.

[jkrug]

behind the boat you don't have the type of control you have while kiting. it takes time to signal 'slow down' or 'speed up' and for it to actually happen behind a boat, whereas it's all fairly instant kiting. i personally didn't like it much, but i can see how it could be used as a beginner tool. i also find wakeboarding a bit dull, so maybe i just don't like getting towed anymore behind something powered.