McGyvering the broken windsurf foil

I had a challenge to remove the two sheared off bolt ends from the foil mast. I had broken the Slingshot hover glide FWIND2 foil on a shoal during my last session. The first titanium bolt shaft was protruding out a thread length and was easy to unscrew by hand. The second one broke off a thread length inside the mast and couldn't be reached with any finger or tool. So I started drilling into the broken bolt shaft with a small drill bit. It cut fairly well into the bolt and I was making progress. I then tried pounding a nail into the hole and tried to unscrew the bolt but that wouldn't stick or make it rotate. I made a left hand rotation larger drill bit (that I created by grinding down a regular right hand drill bit) drilled out the hole in reverse. It cut surprisingly well but now I had a larger hole above a small hole with no way to jam something in to unscrew it. I tried drilling again with the small bit and the bolt started turning into the hole. I reversed the drill and it came back out a bit when I caught the side of the hole with the bit. But then the small drill bit broke off in the bolt. Grrr. I put in the larger bit back in and drilled in reverse and when it suddenly caught the drill bit in the bolt it unscrewed it easily. Yeah! My foil was ready to use again - this time with stainless bolts. I felt like a real McGyver!

The next day foil session was just 8-10 knots and so I barely got planing and only by pumping like crazy. Still fun to get it going again.

Short foil session - lots of pumping to get going those few times