Hi all,
I don't think the techniques of saving somebody's hydrofoil, while yourself being on a hydrofoil, was discussed at any recent time. Can you share your techniques on this thread please?
Last week a foiler had chicken loop break and was trying to deal with his kite, while his foil floated away. I attempted to help only to discover how hard it is. I never before tried to rescue someone's foil and was trying to improvise on the spot.
First I tried to keep my foil on my feet , fly the kite with one hand and hold the other foil with another hand and try pull myself towards the beach. This was very uncomfortable and really did not work well.
What I eventually figured out to do was to push the other foil towards the beach with one hand, while my board on my feet in straps. As foil sailed towards the beach I was dragging myself with a kite to follow it..
The other foil kept turning left with the current.. So I only had like 5-7 m run every time before I had to push the other foil towards the beach again. This worked, but took a lot of time.
Then I thought how else could I do it? And I really can't come up with really effective way to bring it to the beach. Twintip, I can pick up and ride with holding it on my hands behind the bar, but foil board???
My second foil-board rescue story amazingly happened on the same day, but unlike the first story, the kite of the rider was in the water, but not broken. He just could not relaunch the kite because of marginal wind and strong current without his foil-board which floated away. The solution here was to give him my foil-board so the the could use it against the current to re-launch the kite, while I myself body-drag downwind to get his board which floated away.. once he re-launched he caught up with me and we switched boards back.
Share your technique and stories of rescuing foil-boards.
-D.