Flying into the Future

Light wind Foiling.
photo: Slingshot Sports

It is scary stuff. It is fun when you are high. You crash really hard. One hit, and you want more!
NO......, I'm not talking about illegal drugs. I am talking about foiling. Specifically, Windsurf Foiling.
From America's Cup boats, to surfboards, to wakeboards, kiteboards, and windsurfers, foiling and foils are becoming more and more prevalent on many types of watercraft.
For those unfamiliar, foils are a wing or a set of wings attached under the boat or the board. Very much like an airplane wing, as the foil moves forward through the water, it generates lift, in turn flying the hull or board up out of the water.  Once up on foil, the drag goes away and both speed and apparent wind increase resulting in even more speed.

Slingshot Windsurf Foil

With the exception of light wind windsurfing which I discussed  my last article, "Back to the Future", windsurfing has always been about speed. In order to go fast you either A: need to live in a windy area, or B: use large, hard to handle sails, and specialized boards. While extremely exciting, holding on to the sail for dear life is hard and hard on the body. 
Foil windsurfing on the other hand is easy on the body. Once you learn to pump the foil up, you can use a much smaller sail in the same amount of wind, than on a conventional board and still find yourself flying across the water. The key word is flying. You are no longer slapping and pounding on the water and beating up your body. Also, once up on foil the drag goes away and the rig isn't trying to yank your arms out of their sockets, just a light grip on the boom is all you need. When you are up on foil, everything gets so smooth and quiet, it is the closest feeling I've ever had to snowboarding in powder.  It is an amazing sensation.
Can someone without windsurfing or sailing experience learn to Windsurf Foil? The jury is still out on this one, but I think the answer is yes. With a floaty enough board, the foil works like a keel helping to stabilize the board, which in turn makes it easy to stand on the board and pull the sail out of the water, a technique called uphauling. In non-foiling conditions, the foil, once again works like a keel, to help the board track well, making it possible to learn to sail back and forth before getting up on foil. Obviously some windsurfing or sailing experience is a bonus. Whether cruising on a Windsurfer LT or flying across the water on a foil, there has never been a better time to be a windsurfer. 
Who is ready to Fly into the Future
Warning! Just like the illegal stuff , foiling is extremely addictive. It may cause you to skip work, and make irrational decisions based on the wind forecast. You may experience withdrawal symptoms. Most of all it will put a smile on your face, and your friends will wonder what you have been up to.   

  
    

Back to the Future

Windsurfing! 

Windsurfing off of Annapolis City Dock 2019

This is from a Facebook post I recently did in the Old School Windsurfing Group :

"In 1985, the girl I was dating at the time, and I loaded up her VW GTI and headed to Bahia Honda in the Florida Keys from the Washington D.C area. We had our two Windsurfers and a brand new “state of the art” Tiga that a friend loaned me for the trip. We camped, we sailed, we ate, we drank, we loved, we had fun. 1985 was good time to be a windsurfer. It still is."

Rigging up in Bahia Honda Key 1985

Gybing in the Florida Keys '85 

When I first started Windsurfing in 1980 or 81 it was just another way to go sailing. It was difficult to get a Laser or Sunfish off the roof of the car by yourself, but it was easy to load and unload a windsurfing board. There was nothing high tech about windsurfing, it was  a simple way to get out on the water. Just you, a board, a sail, a little wind and you were good to go. Doing it with a couple friends, and you were having twice as much fun or maybe even a race. We would take trips to new places just to go windsurfing. Small lakes all around the country, and around the world were filled with people windsurfing. Then windsurfing got high tech, high performance, high wind and wave oriented. It was still fun, but it got expensive and it got time consuming. Peoples lives revolved around chasing wind and chasing waves, buying tons of gear. Towns like Hood River, places like Maui boomed with windsurfers. Unfortunately, as the performance envelope got pushed, the gear for learning and light wind sailing  just sort of disappeared.  As the gear went away, so did new people learning to windsurf. People dropped out of the sport.  A kitesurfing friend joked,  "Windsurfing Has Been Cancelled" 

For some of us, it wasn't really a funny joke.
Fortunately  in 2017 Cobra Manufacturing teamed up with designer Bruce Wylie and set out to create a board that  so simple it could be picked up off the beach and enjoyed by a first-time sailor as well as offering superb tactical fleet racing to a more advanced sailor. They ended up creating the board now known as the Windsurfer LT. They became available in the US in 2019. I bought one.  Even with a smallish soft sail, that can be rigged in minutes, the board is super fun to sail in the light to medium winds we get on the Chesapeake and in most real world places. If there is no wind at all it works great as a Stand Up Paddle Board. The new lighter weight construction makes it even easier to get on and off the car than the 80's version.  
I have had fun Windsurfing for 40 years. With the addition of the LT to my collection of boards,  I had more days windsurfing locally last year than I have in a long time, it was fun.
 WINDSURFING.....It's Back! Back to the Future.

2019 Windsurfer Lt Sailing 

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