Haven't seen any good debating in here for a while...

The foil seems to be taking off and will be intereseting to see where it fits in with either SUP Racing or Surfing or both..
Will it be in State & National Titles next year.
After seeing the results for the M2M on the weekend with both DNF.... are we jumping the gun by adding them to races at this point..
And I think the week before they couldn't finish the race as to shallow with the reef....
I think they are racing in WA at the end of the year how are they going to finish coming into the beach...
Love them and think they are great....
Interesting to hear feedback.....

I wont get into an ongoing debate, but I don't like them and see them as a bit of a novelty.

However, I will state that I haven't tried one and probably wont either. I would suggest that given the speed they can generate and the weight of the one I have picked up, perhaps the users should stay away from more traditional and popular areas of surf activity. I certainly wouldn't want to wacked on the nut by one.

As regards racing and competing against one another I would suggest that if they do race in a series that they compete in their own class. it would be unfair to have a foil competing against an unlimited or even vice versa.

ET.

It should be a non-question that solves itself. If you get enough people on foils to have a competition then you have a foil competition.

I would have thought that the "unlimited" class is, by definition, unlimited. If people turn up and race on foils, and win consistently, then why would anybody race on anything else?

I think foils have already been banned from state and national titles by Surfing Australia in both surfing and racing. They did that long before anyone even thought of putting a foil on a race board.

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E T said..
I wont get into an ongoing debate, but I don't like them and see them as a bit of a novelty.

However, I will state that I haven't tried one and probably wont either. I would suggest that given the speed they can generate and the weight of the one I have picked up, perhaps the users should stay away from more traditional and popular areas of surf activity. I certainly wouldn't want to wacked on the nut by one.

As regards racing and competing against one another I would suggest that if they do race in a series that they compete in their own class. it would be unfair to have a foil competing against an unlimited or even vice versa.

ET.

If I hadn't seen the headline I would have thought this was a post from 5 years ago.....

I think this is a non-issue. If you try foiling, you will see that it is a very different sport, real 3D flight compared to 2D surfing. It makes no sense to have them mixed in contests. They are 10 times mode different that shortboarding and longboarding, for instance.

There will be racers in the future set up for foiling I'd imagine. Start and finish lines will simply be deep water starts deep water finishes.

I dont know if that distance on the weekend is right for foiling for the majority. 42km and 50+ kms is a hell of a long way with out a rest on a short board pumping away.

10-15km racers would be ideal I would think.
Snapper to the alley sort of thing

At our local break we have a "no foil" policy. We have a 1k punt out to get to the sandbar, on a busy swell day we get about 30 Sups hitting the waves, so we all agreed to to a self policing "no foil" area. Just down from that sandbar is another smaller one, we encourage them to go >>> over there. Luckily the only guys who have/are trying it are super nice and very cool surfers, know who we are and are happy not to attempt to come our way. A couple of windsurfers are trying further down the beach, but they're really just beginning, we have 5 kitees who are really good at it and don't come anywhere near us.
So far so good, we've been polite and inquisitive but pretty much against them from the start.

What I'm not keen on is all the media interest and advertising currently. It seems that's all that gets reported or viewed or printed.
Fad ? Or Here to Stay ?
Hopefully a fad.

Out in the open ocean..

N

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SunovaBouy said..
Fad ? Or Here to Stay ?
Hopefully a fad.

I see it just as a fad as SUPing, Windsurfing and Kiting, kneeboarding, waveskiiing, ...:
A fad if you consider the percentage of surfers that will do it: nearly nobody if you compare to the mass of surfers out there.
Not a fad because some people will get hooked and keep doing it.

Actually, I don't see a lot of surfers getting into it: from what I see, most people hate to start as a beginner again and lose face.

PS: Hoping something awesomely fun be a fad seems to come from quite a bitter and sad mind. Cheer up!

Sunovaboy said :- on a busy swell day we get about 30 Sups hitting the waves.
I bet the local proners are stoked with that . Sup was called a fad and look at it now.

We have now tested the same foil on a windsurfer , Kiteboard , prone board & Sup . It's far from a fad we are riding open ocean , fat spilling waves you could never paddle in on. No matter how small and sh!ty the surf gets I'm still getting waves every day on my SUP foil. No wind and no waves , just fire up the boat and life is good , just go chase the open ocean.

For sure stay away from local breaks you just don't need to SUP Foil there. Look at the places no one else can prone or SUP paddle in on . Don't own a foil on small days , just sit on the beach drinking coffee and watch our 200m rides.

Foiling on prone & Sup is in its infancy and with the constant radical R&D it will soon be the paddle in big wave riding Mecca. We have reduced the learning curve down to 30 mins to an hour behind a boat and one or two sessions in the ocean for good surfers , bit longer for average punters but now we have a plethora of surfers that are now all over it.

Watch this space and it's far from a Fad.This is what I have been teaching on the DC Foil board with a Kai GoFoil 7-6 x 28 . Mast mount 23" from tail. It has dual boxes so we can run Tuttle mount and twin track mount foils .

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supsurfers said..
Haven't seen any good debating in here for a while...

If you're looking for a good debate, ask everyone to speculate about why N.S.W lost the origin this year. Analysts and journalists have been pretty busy with it over the past 7 days. Lots of overtime for those boys.

Another topic, just as debatable, Sunnyvale flat white versus Sunnyvale Fruitylexia

or if you're watching the surfing on the stream, weather Jordy Smith's first 10 was really a ten. Judges watched his next wave and went oh ****

Foiling is awesome, I was getting bored on the supn and over the crowds.Its a whole new ball game and the feeling is addictive to say the least. Just waiting for the right conditions to try a downwinder, I used too hate the wind know I'm praying for it!

Windsup foiling? And no, not taking the piss.

That would be pretty mellow and you could do it way the phark out in the middle of nowhere riding along on some ocean swell having a great time and pissing nobody off, right?

I'd actually be pretty keen on trying this

Our Proners don't paddle out the 1k to the sand bar, they have a break further down the beach that they go to and we don't, oddly for our bit of the UK, we all get along quite well.

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SunovaBouy said..
At our local break we have a "no foil" policy. We have a 1k punt out to get to the sandbar, on a busy swell day we get about 30 Sups hitting the waves, so we all agreed to to a self policing "no foil" area. Just down from that sandbar is another smaller one, we encourage them to go >>> over there. Luckily the only guys who have/are trying it are super nice and very cool surfers, know who we are and are happy not to attempt to come our way. A couple of windsurfers are trying further down the beach, but they're really just beginning, we have 5 kitees who are really good at it and don't come anywhere near us.
So far so good, we've been polite and inquisitive but pretty much against them from the start.

What I'm not keen on is all the media interest and advertising currently. It seems that's all that gets reported or viewed or printed.
Fad ? Or Here to Stay ?
Hopefully a fad.

That's funny. At my local break there is a no SUP policy.

I've had a go foiling and it was certainly a lot of fun with the correct instruction. I can see potential issues fairly soon with learning SUPs and learning foils on the one break. There were a few near misses at the Scott's Head event so there'll be an issue shortly.

As for racing its still early days. It will be interesting to see which way it goes. I can't see Surfing Australia doing anything with it as it's hard to get them to run more than one SUP event a year or even add a 10 foot class.