When did you get hooked on foiling?

[dirk8037]

Not completely hooked now but...
that is really put spot on.
>>Foiling has delivered short board lines in less than longboard conditions and I’m eternally grateful.<<

I have been yesterday on the lake.
As allways, due to the narrow wind windows we have, the Wind was slowing down but still had an almost knee high swell going out side an on a little point.
There were some Locals that really got it wired. They were zig zaging down the tiny lines with basically parked kite (no Peak!).
From land you would wonder what they had been going on. You see it from the near you are baffled.
Its looks definitally worth the training effort.

Later on I pulled the 13m just to splash around and naturally was kind of unsatisfied by the constant hustle upwind.
Though I still dont want to miss it in a way.

I had the discussion just the other day with a friend not foiling yet, who thought, that the lawn mowers on their foils, he mostly saw, where the most dull and uninspiring thing he could imagine.
Its all about the splashing. The falling in, being draged through the water, the spray, the bump and jump. That was always an important component also during windsurfing times and naturaly while surfing (geting tumpled, the duckdiving while getting cought by a set). I had in during vacation in Egmond/NL during a full on 8m day. Heavy duty rinse program. You cant beat that.
With the foil you do not really have and want that. Its surreal way removed from all that.

Its a bit like skiers and snowboarder. My wife (skier) never could understand why I wouldn´t mind all the falling (goofin arround, loosing edge in turnes, fall head first in powder).
She was proud that she never falls.

So the TT will stay, the 13m most likely not.

PS: When I started Kiting, and gave a away all the sails masts booms, I had this vision of being happy with one TT and 2 Kites - silly me.

[grigorib]

Hooked immediately back in 2015. It took me a while to learn though.

Sensation of flight, feeling somewhere between flying Aladdin’s Magic Carpet and McFly’s hoverboard got me

5m UFO is my regular size now, 7m feels slow, 9m looks huge. Still keeping my TTs but rarely ride them. Sold my 15m Turbine, kept the 170x50 FlydoorXL (will sell it later to some huge dude who can cough up $1200 for that nearly new beauty which is not manufactured anymore)

[Peter_Frank]

I got hooked before I started, somewhere in 2012.

When I started shortly after, on a difficult high aspect French wing, my first thought was: "This CANT be right?" - as it seemed impossible and very instable in every way

I took it out in loads of wind and big waves now and then, and in calmer conditions too - NOONE else was hydrofoiling, so I had noone to ask and tried everything....

But suddenly it clicked, I started having controlled rides and later I could relax, and shortly after it was a new world, and have been ever since, windfoiling-kitefoiling-wingfoiling

Of course it took some time back then, with noone else to ask - but today it goes quite fast with many social medias to learn from, and friends.

Which might have led you to think: THIS should be quite easy ! And feeling how difficult it was, you got "scared" - so too much "it is easy and how to" now ha haa!

My point is, keep on, it is NOT easy for most riders, but you will get it sooner or later and enter a new world of freedom and joy

Peter

[vakiter]

I love this thread .
I built one of Clearwater hydrofoils out of va beach, which was a wood kit you glassed, and bolted to a wakeboard , because I was cheap .

As soon as I foiled , and heard the silence , I was hooked . Then when I realized the pointing ability , I was double Hooked . Then when I learned to surf the swell , …. And so on

Still like boost surfboard .but conditions have to be good now for me to get off the foil .

[OzBungy]

Three things.

One was the first carving foiling gybe onto a wave face. I'd been dicking around in light wind and could foil, more or less, but I went out in stronger winds with a small kite and slashed this turn and never looked back.

Second was landing a solid boost as my friends on kite surfboards chugged past. I'm sure my balls got bigger then.

Third was swooshing around on big wind blown chop with a tiny kite. A 45 knot blast came through and I barely noticed but all the other riders got slammed.

Absolutely a surfboard in quality surf is huge fun and my mental cinema has a scene of me blasting under a lip of a pitching wave. In all the imperfect conditions I get to ride in every day a foil wins hands down.

[BraCuru]

I was hooked before I ever tried it.

The same with me.
Contacted a small Italian company called Moses. Does anybody remember it?
Ordered the cult Silente in 2012. Went to Thailand without any other board and with only one goal to master foilboarding.
Mission has accomplished so well that today I refuse to ride wings to save all time for kitefoiling

[richieski]

This vid made me curious



So went for a week in Tarifa and did not take my boards and borrowed a friends foil.
Was up and planing both directions and that was that.

Love my SB sessions TT gets a dusting maybe once a year

I like the freestyle aspect.... trying duck tacks, 360's its a tough learning process that makes me want to go out every day.
Also having fun flying the small kites, looping etc.
Love riding parallel with other kiters then shooting off in a tangent that makes their minds boggle.
Seems SB and TT focus fun on the board but with foiling you can really play with the kite too.

9m is biggest kite i own and thats for the SB
7m for foil (largest size)
5.5m main kite for foil.
Need a 3.5 really now

[tegirinenashi]

btw, I'd like to ask some tips to go faster on hydrofoil. I've already changed my learning wing from 1250 to 850 but it's not that easy to go beyong 35 km/h. It sounds physically weird as we can easily reach 40-45km/h on twin tips. What am I doing wrong? Should a go less upwind to have less resistance? I've already tried to "tune" the angle but I'm still struggling to reach higher speed.

I'm also after going fast rather than carving. My understanding is that going fast is a sum of many factors, skillset being the most important. At each skill level there is a sweet spot of the optimal equipment. For example, depending where you are in your progression, you may want to go down from 850 cm^2. But in my case, the jump 850->550 didn't work for quite some time, so that 650 cm^2 wing was delivering the most consistent performance.

A similar story is about the kite. 5 strut LEI is theoretically faster than lower AR kite 3 strut kite, but on my skill level the later drifts downwind better, and therefore is less prone to stalling and falling to the water.

Mast length is another contributing factor. Certainly, 110 cm mast is better suited to racing than 95 cm one... When you are comfortable riding it, as the center of the lift shifts awkwardly 15 cm down.

Therefore, to answer your question, if my current skillset is slightly above 20 knots max speed and sustained 15 knots per nautical mile, and I notice that other riders at http://regepe.com/ have much more impressive numbers, I'm sure it is the practice and water time rather than one magic trick and equipment.

Comparing HF speeds to the others I don't expect the number on the beam reach to be that different. XSports media has a video of one race where a windsurfer barged in into the final beam reach leg immediately after the leader. He was able to keep up the same pace!

[Peter_Frank]

These are magic famous words, that says it all:

Foiling has delivered short board lines in less than longboard conditions and I’m eternally grateful.

Peter

[sonny2727]

To glide over the water only with the help of the wind is simply an indescribable feeling and a dream