After a bunch of days in the city we got back to the Launch Pad just in time for an afternoon session. The wind was 17-20 knots from the south and I’d just brought up the Fanatic Freewave 116 board which I haven’t used since Hatteras.
I took the 5.6 Idol sail and started working my way upwind. I had a few short planing runs and then I was clear of the points and got 2 nice longer runs. But the wind was clearly dropping. I headed back to the dock and decided it was finally time to try setting up my new Fanatic Sky wing board and foil. Technically the new foil is the Fanatic Aero High Aspect 2000 wing with the Aluminum 3.0 Mast and 780 Fuselage.
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| Setting up the new Fanatic 125 l Sky Wing board (In a very cluttered board locker) |
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| Windy at 3:30 when I went out on the Freewave 116 But it dropped off… |
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| GPS trail of my windsurf session |
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| A few planing runs… |
It was fun putting the nicely engineered Fanatic foil pieces together. (It goes together much tighter than my first generation Slingshot foils.) I went out on the 6.0 Duotone Echo wing. Stepping off the dock and onto the 125 l Sky was uneventful and I got upwind a bit. But boy was it hard to tack upwind vs. being on the 140 l Fanatic Stingray. The new board is so much shorter and narrower I had a really tough time getting upwind. I fell a lot and had a difficult time getting going which is evident in the GPS trail below. I wound up swimming upwind a few times. I’d also forgotten my glasses so it was hard to see the shoals making my runs shorter as I couldn’t quite see how close I could get to shore. Finally I got upwind (south) of the points and got some runs. The new foil is very quick to plane - I think my wind minimum may go down?
The foil made a very loud humming noise. (I’ve now investigated and it sounds like some light sanding of the trailing edge of the stabilizer will fix that.) But it didn’t breech when overfoiling. However on my wipeouts the smaller board shoots up like crazy. I think I’m going to wear a helmet in the future…
After I got the hang of it a bit I started doing some downwind Ss which felt very comfortable. Trying to switch my feet mid jibe didn’t work well. So when it was time to head back to the dock I did jibes without switching my feet. SWEET! I did 10 foiling jibes in a row!
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| A lot of struggle getting out of the narrow harbour to start. 10! (count ‘em) foil jibes on my way back downwind (north) to the dock |
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| 10 foil jibes - riding switch when heading east… |
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| Speeds seem comparable to my 99 cm Slingshot foil but the jibes felt a lot smoother on the Fanatic 2000 foil |
I’d like to try the Fanatic Foil under the Stingray 140 to see if I like it on that board for winging and/or for windfoiling. Certainly I loved the way it carved, and suspect it is the new foil I liked more than the new board? I also know if I’m teaching someone to wing - it will be on the Stingray 140 which is a much more stable platform. (I can’t imagine someone trying wing foiling for the first time having any success with such a short and narrow board - and it is still 125 litres.)
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