"Would you believe?" - it floats!

Slogging home with my broken foil, I could only think of the TV show Get Smart. Don Adams' standard line was "would you believe?" and Agent 99 was the beautiful straitlaced fellow Control agent.

Pretty happy to rescue the foil! It fit right in the footstraps.

Well I didn't believe that the 99 cm Slingshot foil floats. Which came in handy after the bolts broke on the fuselage and I had to sail back with the foil on top of the board. More on that below...

After a busy but successful day of calls, I headed out in what was supposed to be diminishing winds following a very windy night and morning. I decided to try the 6.2 Duke on the Freewave 116. Rather than slog upwind from the dock, I walked the gear to the point and launched there. It wasn't quite enough wind but I got planing on most runs with a few pumps. I was just barely able to make upwind ground and eventually made it to the waves at Wedge Island. My jibes felt a bit better than on the Ray yesterday, and the Freewave is so much more comfortable to sail, despite one catapult (likely not enough downhaul on the 6.2.)

Slow to make upwind ground on the FreeWave 116

My top speed was fully 20% less than on the Ray yesterday.

I was comfy (even warm for a bit) in my 4/3 backzip wetsuit. The water and air were 14c. After an hour I figured the wind was dying and I slogged back to get the foil.

In the time it took to switch gear, the wind picked up again. So I took the 4.8 Idol on the Stingray 140 with the 99 cm Slingshot foil. When I was carrying it out, the wing felt wobbly so I checked and re-tightened the bolts, which was likely too much?

I headed out from the dock and was having fun going super slow on the foil and going upwind with ease. I got out to the waves and had some nice jibe attempts and downwind runs east and then west of Wedge Island. But then while heading alongside some swells I heard a snap and dropped off the foil. I quickly figured that something broke and cursed the deep water in which I figured I'd never find the now detached foil. But it didn't sink!

The foil was floating out behind me so I swam back and collected it. It fit nicely in the footstraps and I slogged a bit uncomfortably back to the Launch Pad. I figure I'll have to extract the bolts like I did 2 years ago when I hit a rock with the foil. Thinking back, this was the first gear failure I've had in 6 years since I broke the boom on my 9.0.

Foil track in the SW wind

How I got the foil back home

Yes, the 99 cm foil wing floats
even with the weight of the fuselage and rear wing

Really low speeds, but almost got planing
with the foil on top of the board on the way back!

The Slingshot garage

The lull between sessions

So that was session 66. Back to the city now for Thanksgiving. I think I'm going to buy a wetsuit hood for my later October sessions. And some new bolts for the foil.