You guys might be overestimating my overall ability. 20/30 years ago I would have agreed. Today, I'm 60YO. I've had broken back, neck, both knees, left knee twice, ACL and MCL in both knees, most ribs and shoulder...and none of it from kiteboarding/foiling. I find kiteboarding and now foiling fairly low impact as long I don't push myself too far past my abilities. I mow the lawn on my kiteboard and would do the same on the efoil. The only thing I would like to try on the efoil is possibly depowered foiling on boat wakes or lazy ocean swells.FLandOBX wrote: ↑Sat Aug 13, 2022 7:50 pm+1. Agree 100%.Knowone wrote: ↑Sat Aug 13, 2022 5:11 amYou will definitely learn faster on a bigger board...it's easier to get up...conversely, you will reach the point where it limits your process sooner. Several of my friends have started with bigger boards and then moved on. They have kept the larger boards and wings for there friends to try, or sold them...
If I'm spending that kind of money, I'd plan for the longer term. Once you're consistently up on foil, you're probably not going to want the large board.
I've tried towing into swells on my Slingshot foil, but I find the efoil MUCH easier to deal with than water starting on the wake foil, which I can't do consistently. I think riding out on the efoil under power then riding swells and wakes sounds like a blast. Run out of waves just power back up and find another.
I've been reading a lot about battery life and general battery problems. My concern is that the advertised 100 minute run time is based on best case scenario, like 90lb rider, smallest board, slippery HA wing and a tail wind. Then a big guy like me buys a 5'4 or 5'9 board with a Surf 250/48 wing set and I'm burning through a battery in 30-45 minutes. I have talked to people who said that losing the prop guard makes a noticeable difference, but can't get a straight answer on how the different wing combos and rider weight affect battery life.
For instance, When I demoed the 5'4 with Surf 250 wing, I couldn't really foil on power setting 6. I could get the board off the water, but without more power it wanted to just slow down and settle back down on the water. Seemed like setting 8 was pretty much my lower limit. So I was thinking if I could foil at a slower speed with less power with the Surf 300 I would use less power, but the 300 has more drag than the 250 and they both have a lot more drag than the HA wings. Having a time finding definitive answers to things like that.
I don't have a problem starting out with larger boards and wings as long as battery life doesn't suffer too dramatically. I'd be pretty pissed after spending 13k just to find out the best ride time I can get is 30 minutes. Lift and their reps seem to want to dance around the battery life issue without providing any real answers other than ways to improve it, like by removing the prop guard. They need to test with different riders (weights) and different wings.
