About a year ago I bought a second hand Neil Pryde aluminium foil and started to learn to foil. I used a twenty year old 75cm wide Caveman board. I was certainly not a natural and progress was quite slow, a few early injuries put me off a little but slowly I progressed and decided it was time to upgrade. I bought a shiny new Slingshot Ghost Whisperer. It was the most I had ever spent on a single piece of equipment. I had been using my Simmer Godzilla 85cm board for foiling for the last couple of months as it was a little wider than the Caveman. The new foil was a perfect fit in the deep tuttle box and the Whisperer has a large flange to spread the load.
My first few sessions were great, the new foil was certainly easier to fly. I checked around the fin box for signs of cracking, everything looked good. Then last Wednesday I was caught out in a strengthening southerly which must have reached 18-20 kts. I breeched badly and decided to head for home I was nearly back when suddenly I found myself in the water. I looked behind to see the tip of my foil disappearing below the surface!
Luckily I had my GPS on so I had a good fix on where it went down. I was hoping it would only be 3-5m down, but maps of the lake depth told me it was more like 10. Three days went by the more I discussed the issue with friends the less hope I had of seeing my foil again. They pointed out that the bottom was most likely not firm but either soft mud into which it would sink or deep seaweed which would obscure it. They explained the visibility would be terrible and that the foil may have drifted as it sank.
I took out my boat yesterday to see how easy it would be to get and stay in the correct spot. I measured the depth at 10 metres. Today two friends came laden with serious looking diving equipment. I had loaded a waypoint into my trusty GT31. We navigated to the spot and tossed in the anchor. They followed the anchor rope down and then attached a string to allow them to circle the anchor. Visibility was between 1 and 2 metres. For 12 agonizing minutes their bubbles floated up all around me, then up they came with the foil!

Location of foil

Blue line is the track of the foiling session, red and yellow boat tracks





Fin box completely torn out of board.