That's awesome Untill you hit a turtle! I want , stand up is all about the glide and that would be the ultimate glide.

teatrea said...
That's awesome Untill you hit a turtle! I want , stand up is all about the glide and that would be the ultimate glide.

Agree once mastered the glide of that would feel endless and so smooth.

On the otherhand. The speed and roughness and wild ride a decent bump givds you is a one of a kind feeling.

I see a few nutters getting right into this idea

[b]
I see a few nutters getting right into this idea

Awesome! I'll be one of those nutters!

& another nutter. Great to see many is Aus sooon.

It will still cost alot of money and if i know one thing about foilboarding is not everyone will get it!!

Looks super fun and i'm sure if you lived somewhere where it blows 30 knots every day then it could be worth playing around but good luck getting that thing up in under 20 knots.

teatrea said..
where do i sign up for the hydrofoil nut job brigade Never really been into downwinding always seemed a lot of hard work for minimal rewards , this could change that. Plus I don't need to buy a $3000 plus board or have several for different conditions.(hold on) The foil will probably be $3,000

Alex Aguera just messaged me

Get on the list soon as it is a two month back order at the moment. Carbon SUPFOIL from Go Foil $1500US. alex@alexaguera.com. New upgraded Gofoil website coming out this week to handle to response.

Just wait a few months and there will be heaps forsale 2nd hand when people realize its not quite as easy as it looks. Bargins will be had i predict.

Could be like when they said these things won't take off because they're too expensive....



Fully kitted, they're only about $50k and the number built would be closer to 4 digits than 2

It is the future you'd better believe it.


www.facebook.com/kai.lenny/videos/10154213478959312/

Hard to judge from the footage; however given that the foil looks about 1.5' from the tail I would estimate that the board is about 10'-11' long.
If that is the case then I don't think you will be able to just strap a foil on your 12'6" race board and away you go, so not only will there be a cost for the foil but there may also be an outlay for a specialist foil SUP.

Latest out airial footage of Kai catching bumps
www.facebook.com/oceanpaddlertv/videos/1118927221499835/

paul.j said..
Just wait a few months and there will be heaps forsale 2nd hand when people realize its not quite as easy as it looks. Bargins will be had i predict.

The first time foiling appeared for kiting it came and went with not much more than a ripple. It was extremely expensive and nobody could quite believe that it could be done.

A few years later kite foils are much more expensive ($2800 for a carbon foil) and much more refined and there are lots of people doing it. As a result Liquid Force and Naish and Zeeko and a bunch of other manufacturers are bringing out reasonably priced foils with aluminium masts and cheaper fittings ($1000-2000). They work just fine.

Among kite foilers, once you get it wired you just don't want to ride anything else.

I guess time will tell what sort of skills and conditions are required. I can pop up onto my low aspect foil and stay there while virtually stationary.

DavidJohn said..

....

I like the surfing feeling you get doing downwinders.. I'd miss that..

...

The thing about a hydrofoil is that you are riding your own personal 1 metre wave. You can carve back and forth and up and down. You can pump it to generate a little more speed and do little cutbacks and forehand carves.

I've only experienced the foil with a kite, but it doesn't take much kite power to get up and riding. The face plants coming off the top of the foil off the top of a wave hurt.

Looks like fun. But extremely sketchy safety-wise for downwinding unless you have a support boat. It doesn't seem even remotely practical for 99.9% of paddlers, to me. You are going to crash a lot, even if you are Kai, and in a strong wind and sizeable swell all kinds of things could go wrong with a large blade attached to your board, flying around in the wind. I'd like to know how easy it would be to recover from a crash in high winds while keeping hold of your paddle.

Maybe for SUP surfing. But then getting away from shore, and then out through white water is surely going to be extremely difficult?

I suspect that the experience of SUP foiling for most people would be lots of time spent in the water, lots of heavy wipe-outs, and lots of frustration and expense. So, surely this is going to be very niche? The things that has made SUP such a success as a sport, such as adaptability, not needing highly specialised gear or circumstances, cheapness etc are all missing here.

So, like everyone else, I'd like to have a go. But spend a small fortune on something I'd use a handful of times a year, and might not have the skill or time to ever master? Not likely. It seems like something you'd do maybe at a specialised facility or location, perhaps a close potential cousin of eg. wakeboarding.

But what do I know? Probably nothing.

Kai has such great flow! I love the way he surfs on almost nothing. Innovative to say the least! I can't wait to see foils on the market