Foam Hits 3
Summer sun, summer fun
In the words of James Casey “someone registered the dwfoil.com domain, they started something, I should reach out and see if they are still at it, this stuff is important, someone needs to do it”
🫡🥲
So,
Summer is here for the N-Hemi, which in the UK means it goes flat, in Hawaii and Southern France it gets windy.
Downwind is pretty firmly on foil people’s minds. Each and every foil brand has released some kind of downwind or downwind-style board, most of the foil companies are working on related gear. If 2023 was the year of the downwind race, 2024 might be shaping up to be the year of the downwind saturation?
What matters though, is that people are frothing to get out there and figure things out. Have a look at the list of races for 2024 (some complete, some unconfirmed).
Racing does seem to mostly end up being held as no-wind pump races. The M2O deep water channel crossing being the exception, and rare to have that much in between.
Even more interesting than racing is seeing downwind popping up in increasingly unexpected spots. Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, Idaho! Any one of these places could turn into some new centre of gravity for the progression. Or at least show you the extreme reach.
I’m excited to see where things go, but in the meantime it is summer, for me this means light winds, long days and occasionally small clean bumps.
Matt
People downwinding
Kai Lenny hits 30mph, which is pretty amazingly fast. Kai is by far the most famous person to be actively interested in downwind. I wonder what his sponsors think of this strange side hobby.
Speaking of pro surfers. This is a great clip of Ezekiel Lau paddling prone. The first few tries he paddles super hard, but doesn’t get going. On the bump that he gets up on, he barely paddles, and even better, he hardly pumps at all. Clearly deciding when to go is more important than how hard you go.
Upwind in a train, downwind in the sea, best kinda foiling! I think that there will be some natural pull towards destinations with hassle free logistics. I’ve got a list going here.
Huge send in NorCal.
Huge send in SoCal
This clip from Jack Ho is epic (skip to 4min for the run). Catching chip-ins on the prone board is the best, pity it is so hard to find good setups. Small boards and no-falls is super fun.
Huge send in France (though there is a lot of boat logistics going on here😅)
Another one from France - flatwater pumping out into the zone. My money is on someone that speaks fluent French taking a few wins this year in Hawaii.
New time on foil record 👏 According to Matt Costa it is easier to do this in Hawaii (3hrs on foil that is). There is a long discussion around how different water temperature and salinity affect the lift of a foil (viscosity is the thing, not density, fyi)
Gear
Kalama and KT have released new boards, which look epic. Add these to the Armstrong DWP and you have some very high performance boards for big ocean conditions.
Kalama 8'12 x 16 - 102L
KT 8'0 x 19 - 105 L
Armstrong 8'11 x 17 1/4” - 108L
In the more mainstream mid market, both Duotone and North have launched DW products - this is significant because both of these are big players with deep pockets and investors to please, and they generally follow the crowd, or indicate that there is a large market (they aren’t here to play games so to speak). It might just be that there is sufficient demand from the wingers.
Still not sure about an inflatable downwind board… but I’m sure it works for some. Takoon released one too (incredibly cheap $650?), alongside Gong. Starboard has a version which bolts through the deck, which honestly seems like a reasonable idea.
On the efoil front, I’m sure most people are probably bored of hearing about foil drive, related etiquette issues (which I think is very important), and the predictable banning.
On a more interesting front, I present my solution, which I don’t think would be classed as a PWC? Basically a winch that gets you on foil beyond the backline and then you pump in to catch a wave.
A PWC is described as this in Santa Cruz (where efoiling has been banned, among most places)
MPWC is any vessel less than 20 feet in length designed to be operated by standing, sitting, or kneeling on, astride, or behind the vessel and is propelled by machinery, a water pump or drive. MPWCs can include Jet Skis®, wet bikes, surf jets, eFoils, air boats, and hovercrafts.
On the whole I endorse efoil for learning to downwind but I think it’s pretty lame to use in the surf where you could otherwise foil, or even worse, could just surf.
racing
An outlaw style race happened in California this weekend which seemed to have good conditions. I like the idea of social gatherings with a competitive element 😉. Maybe it was my time downhill skating back in the day, but a good meetup + unsanctioned bragging rights at the end is pretty fun.
Doing unofficial racing is mostly illegal, and becomes more illegal as it gets better attended, publicised and formalised (there is real personal liability attached to doing this). I think the way to run these would be to keep them invite only, informal and offline. #sponsorfreesince2023
@oahufoil has been doing a few of these “get togethers”.
At a more organised level, the “DW Triple Crown” of races is happening in July. James Casey says pretty much all there is to be said at this point about this in the video below, but essentially they’ve put all the Hawaii races back to back, and crowning a winner of the 3 as a mini series. Pretty much the crown of the Downwind world.
As a reminder, here are the points from last year (the points I awarded unofficially).
Two races in Spain recently, first the wing-foil crew added a demo race to their roster:
Then the Barcelona stop of a more formal SUP tour ran a foil race as an add-on, across two days. Interesting to see the interest from Wing and SUP, both interested in grabbing this new discipline and adding it to their roster.
In any case, Clement (mentioned as a beast above) won on a Starboard foil. Here is some more info on the foil he probably used. Here is a writeup of the race.
And here is a review of the Barcelona race from Romu, with some insights on logistics.
And another format - Sydney crew ran a “Strava style” race, where you recorded runs at a set location and the fastest submitted run won.
learning
Gwen and Damo with some humble tips, this was great:
And then a few tips across the following videos:
smaller tails sometimes worth a look
keep paddling once on foil
learn to brace with the sup paddle when paddling
learn to link without pumping
learn to shim your tails for optimum trim
hand kites
folding wing - Integrate a SUP paddle, make it smaller and lighter and we may be onto something.
Another sighting of the mythical kite:
Here is a video of a commercially available version, and some details on the design.
And another version:
And if one wing wasn’t irritating enough, how about two…
leftovers
“the wing is not in my way” 😅
Lol, though to be honest if the conditions are marginal I’ll do a reconnaissance with the wing
Efoilers
