Wing and E-Foiling in Cancun

Another first for Jen and me. E-foiling! Here’s how it happened…

First time E-foiling!

I had some 3 year old Covid cancellation WestJet dollars so we booked a week in Mexico. We didn’t find any last minute hotels near the foiling beaches near downtown Cancun though. We wound up at a nice Secret place in Playa Mujeres where there isn’t much gear for rent, and it wasn’t really windy enough anyway during the start of the week.

Luckily toward the end of our week the wind picked up and I booked a day with Shaka Vibes wing foiling school. They were great, with Marianna picking us up at our hotel and navigating us through the newly built luxury harbour area to the idyllic little beach where there are 3 kite/windsurf/foiling schools. Shaka Vibes owner Max has been teaching windsurfing and kiting there for 7 years and has been leading the expansion into foiling. He is from France and is headed back to the Defi wind there in a few weeks.

Jen started out on a 3.5 wing on a 160 litre SUP foil board and skimmed back and forth nicely getting a feeling for winging - this time on water (not ice like in February).

I took a 6.0 F-One wing and a 110 litre board (my smallest foilboard ever) and slowly got myself adjusted to foiling again. It took a few tries and I’d quite forgotten to point downwind when getting going. Initially I was pointing upwind and overfoiling each time I took off. I had a great 1 hour, 9.5 km session finally getting a few jibes by not switching feet and riding switch between turns. My turns out in the deeper, wavier water weren’t so elegant and I’m surprised at how much I swear when falling into even warm water. On a more positive note, I’m very happy that my right knee worked very well having recovered from the meniscus tear in February.

9.5 km wingfoil GPS trail with a few smooth jibes
Yes there are 3 entrances in the break wall

Back on the beach

My rental gear

Max coming back from his session

Jen checking out the E-foil

After a break we decided to try the nice Lift V3 E-Foil that they had available to rent. Tosho gave us good instruction with the help of his energetic little son Saba. Jen got going but found it more tiring that we had expected… It certainly would have been easier if we’d tried it earlier in the week when it wasn’t windy and wavy. Here are a few shots of her session.

Jen getting a feel for it!

Nice smile

I found the E-Foil to be exactly as I expected it. A few falls while getting used to the slower pitching motions of the heavy foilboard, then nice smooth runs. Very nicely designed. It doesn’t overfoil - you just hear the propeller start to cavitate and slow down. The board has nice release from the water when you touchdown so you don’t get pitched over the front like I expected. I was able to hop to switchstance and carve turns in both directions. The handheld controller was relatively easy for me to use, all those years of keeping AFX slot cars on the track helped. I’d love to have one on Georgian Bay to teach foiling on and to take little Timo for a ride on. It might make a good addition to the www.launchpadwindsurfacademy.ca.

First E-foil session

I was able to start my GPS while riding on my 2nd session!

After that, I went out for another half hour wing foiling session and started linking even more turns. My GPS watch wasn’t saving session info properly though, so I don’t have a GPS trail of that session.

Jen’s view from the beach

I’m heading out to the well marked breakwall

My last run into the beach

The sargassum we had heard so much about wasn’t really an issue anywhere we saw - Isla Mujeres island really shelters the beaches north of Cancun and the hotel beaches protect the Port of Cancun.

I’d strongly recommend checking out club de playa in Puerto Cancun. Try Shaka Vibes as we had a great day or for us next time for variety perhaps we’ll try the Fanatic Duotone Centre I noticed while there?