Wednesday night race foiling

Wednesday night racing started a few weeks ago in Toronto. This was the first night this year that I was able to get down there.

Some moderate wind was predicted, so I decided to take along my foil!

I’ve never foiled off Cherry Beach. Man, there are a lot of weeds there. Sometimes I had to stop and sail backwards to clean off the weeds. Which only worked sometimes and then cost time in the race. I also ran into some sticks and debris and past a very large dead fish. The biggest piece of debris was a 2 metre bamboo rod that I hit. I figured it would snap in half when I hit it. Instead, it broke a bit and then remained stuck to the foil mast under my board. When I got up on the foil it would just lightly drag in the water and I’d get up to speed. And if I foiled a bit lower it would get submerged and really slow me down. I finally got rid of it by sailing backwards at the upwind mark.

First time foiling at Toronto Windsurf Club

More than a few weeds

Some decent upwind foiling
but my strategy at the upwind mark was lacking

I didn’t keep up with either the race boards or the good foilers. Most people were doing two laps of the course and I only did one lap in each of the three races. Max our local teacher and wingfoiler extraordinaire was doing nicely racing on his wing foil.

I was using my Kona 9.0 rig which isn’t really suited for foiling. I’d do it with more draft next time. Andree got a fun video of me crossing the finish line with my unorthodox setup.

It was great fun to be out again with all the regulars at TWC on a diverse range of equipment!