Moses 873 Review

[joekitetime]

Moses 873 review:

Housekeeping: I positioned the Moses 873/450 foil exactly how I ride my 633 and 683/450 on my dwarfcraft 3'6" - all the way back in the mast track. Rear strap in #3 back position and center strap in #2 back position, scanted. Wind was ave 12-13 on the pager. Flew a 7m 2011 Wainman Hawaii kite. Sherman Island, 1' river swell, slack current.

What a dream the 873 is! It took about 2 attempts to get the nose down on the water, but after that it was 5' of powder riding! I'm used to riding my 633 and 683 so primarily I'll compare it to those. The foil is slow. So slow that I was only able to stall it once. I tried to stall it. I couldn't. With the kite hovered overhead you just can't make the thing stop foiling.

On the swell the carving is similar to a long board, or to all the surf/sup foil videos you see where folks try to carve but you can see they are fighting the tendency for the foil to want to stay flat (roll stability). So carving wasn't as lively as the 633. But the yaw stability (turn right or left) was loose so it was easy to point/carve the board in the direction I wanted to go. The ride feels like standing on top of a picnic table in terms of stability. I could carve though and pretend I was riding a 20' wave at jaws, but it will take a little time to fully commit the rail and see how hard over I can get it.

What I really liked about the foil was that normally when I'm surfing swell I need to pay attention to not luffing the kite when I cut off the top. Usually the bottom turn that follows is what puts tension back in the kite lines. Not so with the 873. The thing is so slow that the lines in the kite don't go slack when you carve off the top of the swell. And, since the thing has so much glide you don't even need the kite at all anyway. So I was able to park the kite at 10 and hold the bar line a baton, and keep a tiny bit of tension in one of the steering lines, so the kite just disappeared and lay parked in the sky while I carved the board on the swell like surfing. It was a joy. The downside is that it is harding to carve than the 633. The upside is that I've never experienced kite drift and kite thoughtlessness like this.

I should have tried it with my 5m and hoping to go even smaller on the kite.

Great foil!

[elguapo]

i see a soon to be tiny peak4 rider here...

[joekitetime]

Nice.

I better google that.

[elguapo]

no need.

the best content you'll find on the internets about the peak4 is right here..
viewtopic.php?f=197&t=2401224

[Whattheflock]

Lol, awesome. I love the slow foils as much as the quick ones.

[WH Lithuania]

I tried 873/483 on 111cm mast and T22. Very strange thing was that I needed to move my feet backward comparing to 633/683S on the same setup. Do I need to shim stabilizer?

[NYKiter]

7m wainman tube on 12-13knots is phenom....

[joekitetime]

7m wainman tube on 12-13knots is phenom....

Technologically, yes, crazy about those kites. But I got a good arse kicking yesterday riding the 590/330 for the first time, and now I understand why "most" foilers are always flying a bigger kite than me - on the 590 you need quite a bit of kite power to keep you foiling, so that makes sense to me now.

But kudos to the 683, and bigger 633, and even bigger 790, and total hats off to the biggest (I think) 873! That 873 snubs its nose at any kite, cuz it don't need it! The slightest bump in the water keeps the 873 on foil, where as yesterday I was flying my kite like crazy to keep the 590 on foil. Not saying that one is any better than the other, just different. But the differences are pretty exciting. Some days you wanna just go out an fly and other days just cruise, and these wings seem to really push the limits of what you can do.