First (tail assisted) foil jibe!

I'm getting to like north wind days. The gusts are enough for some good foiling sessions. The lulls give me a nice occasional break and a lack of wind fetch means that there aren't really any waves so practising jibing is smooth.

We were starting to clean out the old work room at the Launch Pad when the rain ended and the north wind picked up. It wasn't really predicted to be that windy, but it was averaging 10 knots, with gusts to 18 and lulls to 4.

I headed out on the Stingray 140 board and Slingshot foil with the 76 cm wing. I took the 5.6 Idol which is my favourite sail by far since it is so light and flat.

After slowly heading downwind I caught my first rides with some serious pumping. Later rides were easier as the gusts kept coming down from the north shore.

The most exciting part was that I got a complete jibe on the foil! To be fair, the last part once I was fully turned 180 degrees had the tail of the board touch down and skim the water for a few seconds, as I pumped but kept pressure on the foil. But I definitely was on the foil the whole time around and then rose right back up as I switched and sheeted in the sail. So I'm gonna call it my first* foil jibe! The key seems to be jibing in a gust, which makes sense as that also helps planing shortboard jibes. My other half dozen or so jibe attempts were all dry too. But on all those I touched down, the board lost speed and the foil wasn't lifting - I then had to wait for a gust to get going again. So that is a pretty exciting development after 4 years.

So nice being in shorts - warm wind - warm water!

I tried the APProSail app again and figured out the little green icon. So I actually have data from the session!

Unusually warm wind was from the north

Several 1 km long runs

I hit a very comfortable 29.6 km/h and did 12.9 km in the hour I was out. Just a perfect little session, then back to work putting in a free stove from a neighbour and putting more rubbish on the barge as we clean up the island.