My first wind foiling session

The wind started on our Victoria Day holiday Monday as predicted. It was rainy and gusty so I started out on my 6.2 North Duke Sail and 108 Skate to get a sense of the conditions. It was "pump onto a plane in a gust" type wind (around 15-20 knots) and I had fun ripping back and forth and feeling more competent in my transitions than I had in Morocco in the competition just over a week ago. Flat water helps vs. rolling ocean swells!

The GPS trail of my traditional windsurfing session and foil session.

I windsurfed back into shore and swapped the freestyle windsurf board for my BIC Techno 148 windsurf board with the Slingshot Hoverglide Foil. As per the advice I'd been given at Silent Sports, I also left my harness on shore.

Launching the foilboard even with the "medium" 24 inch flight school mast meant really watching out for the rocks and walking far out into the water. It was easy to beach start though in the deeper water.

Foil speeds are lower than fully planing runs on the regular board!

At slow sub planing speeds, the board behaves fairly normally. When I tried pinching upwind, I could feel the long blade below me - it is longer than the fin I normally use on the Techno. And then when I sheeted in the sail to get going I could really feel the lift of the foil!

It was actually fairly easy to get the board out of the water - and easier to control than when I was being pulled behind the boat. I did get the nice sensation of the board becoming quiet as it hovers over the whitecaps. But since it was quite gusty wind, I couldn't get any extended distance up on the foil. Most of the time I'd just drop back onto the water. And several times I crash landed in the water that had just been ice 6 weeks ago! Brrr...

I quickly realized that it will be good to have inboard footstraps (and no booties) as controlling the board is crucial to keeping the foil steady. And a smaller sail would have been good too. Waterstarting was easy, but I kept my kicks to a minimum to avoid hitting my shins on the foil wings.

The highlight had to be the last part where I was running almost downwind on a broad reach. All of a sudden things got super quiet. Unlike the upwind foil moments I had, going downwind there wasn't even wind in my ears. Just silence.

My next session won't be until 3 weeks from now - hopefully the water will be warmer then. Based on my first few runs, I think I'm looking forward to nice warm light wind days to get this new kind of windsurfing dialed in.

No pictures of my kit from today - check out my first foil session behind the boat for more details about the foil gear.