This is my fourth season on a hydrofoil and it's about all I ride right now. I weigh about 170 lbs. I have a range of foil kites and a couple of months ago added a Sonic 2, 15 m to my quiver. I had a great session a couple of days ago on this kite during which the wind started really light, but then picked up to be fairly strong. In the beginning starting was easy, but I lost a little power on the downloop gybes so was touching down. As the wind picked up, my gybing improved until I was in a sweet spot. Eventually I had to add in some depower. Toward the end I was mostly depowered, probably 4/5ths. I was really impressed with the range of the kite. Had I shown up at the beach around 2:30 or 3:00 when the wind was around 15, I would have put up my 8 meter foil. No way would I have launched the 15 m. The guy who caught my kite said, "You started out in next to nothing and now it's gusting up to 18, impressive." In the end when I was failing to complete my gybes, I was flying through the air, then skittering across the surface of the water for quite a ways.
I attached the wind data from the day. I was out from 1:16 until 3:52. I think about an 18 sometimes, but what I have now works well enough. It would be fun to go faster on the really light wind days. But on my session 2 days ago, the wind picked up to well beyond what was predicted and the 18 would have been way too much kite. It's nice to realize that an 8 m and a 15 m are enough to cover the conditions.
FWIW
- Wind 5_21_2017.jpg (37.76 KiB) Viewed 1019 times