The wind was from the north - not much in the Launch Pad wind shadow but I could see that it would be 20 knots+ in the channel out past Germain Island.
I took the 5.2 Idol and headed out in the 8c air and 12c water in my 4/3 wetsuit and thick booties and gloves. I knew I’d be comfortable even if I fell in a lot.
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| Tacking upwind into the north wind! |
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| Lots of little runs - 14 knot top speed |
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| Pre session photo caught on the webcam |
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| Comparison of the Fanatic 2000 foil on the left - 82 cm mast Slingshot 76 on the right - 90 cm mast! |
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| Weather station details |
I slogged out and then got up on the foil and started working my way upwind. This old foil takes a lot of power to get up and then stay up. Very little glide at all.
All 3 “I’m ok” SPOT messages to my wife went through. I was tacking a lot and got up to Cary and Liz’s and then started my way back downwind. I thought somehow that this smaller foil would be faster than my Slingshot 99 or Fanatic 2000cm foil. Nope, same 12-15 knot top speed. It was however still really hard to jibe.
Turns out I only fell in once - during a jibe. I didn’t overfoil at all which pleasantly surprised me. Maybe it was the lack of footstraps that made the board seem hard to control? But when I think about how easy to use the Starboard Fly 75 board and foil were to use at the AWSI event in the Gorge, maybe we’ve just seen a ton of progress in the last 4 years.
12 km in an hour. Nice to be out if just for a short while. And then shed building time for the rest of the day as the sun started coming out more. Guessing 3 more sessions this season?
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| Shed building time… |
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