deniska wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2019 10:31 pm
UKSurf wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2019 7:12 pm
Foil wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:33 am
immaculate condition on your working surfaces, mast and wings, run clean tap water over the surfaces making sure the water clings to all parts, this gives a much smoother less jittery ride, = more confidence to push hard.
Could you explain this in more detail pls? I am not sure how running tap water over the foil will help
Clean your mast and wings with soap water or windex to get rid of grease stains and other stuff that may cause ventilation at high speeds. Running water over your surfaces just pinpoints possible issues. Something that may require cleaning or sanding with 1000-2000 grit paper.
after many disappointing hard and fast runs it always frustrated me how the quality of ride could be so different, in the first year I rarely cleaned my wings and mast and did not really understand what was going on, always blaming myself being a newbie.
but as I got better I was more likely to blame my kit, and then eventually pinned it down to lack of care on my working surfaces, I bought a brand new wing set and used this as the benchmark,but only after fine finishing the surfaces, as even when new there were minor imperfections to be found even many pinholes and minor edge imperfections,
Then checking the water sheen created from running tap water over the surfaces, this really shows up any contaminated patches on the surfaces, getting to the point of looking for a 100% mirror finish sheen created by the water clinging to every part of the surface translates to the smoothest ride you could dream of,
the difference is amazing,
sometimes a finger print implanted by unknown "foil admirers" have had to be removed by using super fine wet/dry paper, nothing else would remove these marks where the water refused to stick.
If the sea is littered with seaweed and you keep hitting it, you even notice when the sticky sap from the seaweed sticks to the mast and wings, it will be noticeable at maximum speed, especially if you have started from the perfect finished wing or mast surface.
daily maintenance can be done by using damp soapy cloths and drying to a shine with a very clean microfiber dry cloth. or use spray window cleaner as this works a treat as well.
never ever touch the surfaces with you hands and fingers, wash wing and mast covers every so often.
if all this sounds like a chore then just slow down to under 20mph, as it makes no big difference at that speed