An impressive first!

Video on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/p/BUzHFrUAAP9/

Dave Kalama: "My son @austinkalama has just officially turned foiling into a flat water sport. Now we still have a lot of ground to cover, but this proves it's possible. I envision flat water foil sprint races soon. What's more important though, is foiling just potentially went from kind of this niche surf and down wind sport, to being accessible to everyone. And again like I said, we still have a ways to go, but the sound barrier has just been broken, so to speak. The board is a Kalama performance 6'0"x23" ( his new wave board ) and the foil is a @gofoil Maliko. The paddle was the @qbpaddles Quickblade V-drive 91."

it looks like a potato sack race on water

ugly...

somehow i still think there is a super long way to go, considering he looks like he weighs 70 kgs tops and is riding a 6 foot board, this pretty much rules out almost everyone except himself and kai lenny

Jarryd

Geez all you knockers sound like the anti Sup gang in my early days. You just witnessed a major development of the Sup foil that was only introduced only a year ago. What this means for the punters is a more kook proof Foil with slower lift speed and easier to control. Props to GoFoil for the constant R&D .

That new blue GoFoil that he is using is a massive foil. It's meant for down winding. I'm not surprised that someone with the skills was able to do this on flat water. Would make foiling in rivers with a decent amount of current very possible.

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Piros said..
Geez all you knockers sound like the anti Sup gang in my early days. You just witnessed a major development of the Sup foil that was only introduced only a year ago. What this means for the punters is a more kook proof Foil with slower lift speed and easier to control. Props to GoFoil for the constant R&D .

how is voicing a opinion being a knocker?

your the man piros..a leader and innovator,awesome stuff

third time watching it and it still looks like a potato sack race on water,do you dissagree ?

More Austin Kalama.

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chrispy said..

Piros said..
Geez all you knockers sound like the anti Sup gang in my early days. You just witnessed a major development of the Sup foil that was only introduced only a year ago. What this means for the punters is a more kook proof Foil with slower lift speed and easier to control. Props to GoFoil for the constant R&D .

how is voicing a opinion being a knocker?

your the man piros..a leader and innovator,awesome stuff

third time watching it and it still looks like a potato sack race on water,do you dissagree ?

Ha fair call

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DavidJohn said..
More Austin Kalama.

No. He's he's using strrrrraps

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chrispy said..
how is voicing a opinion being a knocker?

Actually, in usability testing, a tester saying "it is ugly", "I do not like the color", ... is most of the time just the negative expression for a feeling the person does not want admit openly, such as "I do no feel capable of using it", "I do not understand it", "I will fail at using it and will mock me", "I will lose my job other this".

Seems a lot similar here :-)

For me, he looks likes a bird taking flight. OK, the bird has to move its wings, it may look awkward... but it is flying!

On the board size, note that he is on flat water... so using a tiny board is not as hard as it would be in the waves.

I see it as a virtuous circle: some 100-meter dash event will be organized / gear and technique will be refined for heavier and less technical riders to be able to do it / this will be applied to foil SUPing in waves, to boost turns, just like the pumping movement at the core of great surfing turns.

For instance, Gong offers now less stable stabilizer wings (smaller sizes) to ease pumping and sharpen turns. So you can just change the stab (quite cheap) as your technique increase. And most foils allow changing the angle of attack of the stab for increased lift, that can be translated to tighten turns, a bit like adding some tail rocker to a board.

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colas said..

chrispy said..
how is voicing a opinion being a knocker?

Actually, in usability testing, a tester saying "it is ugly", "I do not like the color", ... is most of the time just the negative expression for a feeling the person does not want admit openly, such as "I do no feel capable of using it", "I do not understand it", "I will fail at using it and will mock me", "I will lose my job other this".

Seems a lot similar here :-)

For me, he looks likes a bird taking flight. OK, the bird has to move its wings... but it is flying!

On the board size, note that he is on flat water... so using a tiny board is not as hard as it would be in the waves.

I see it as a virtuous circle: some 100-meter dash event will be organized / gear and technique will be refined for heavier and less technical riders to be able to do it / this will be applied to foil SUPing in waves, to boost turns, just like the pumping movement at the core of great surfing turns.

For instance, Gong offers now less stable stabilizer wings (smaller sizes) to ease pumping and sharpen turns. So you can just change the stab (quite cheap) as your technique increase. And most foils allow changing the angle of attack of the stab for increased lift, that can be translated to tighten turns, a bit like adding some tail rocker to a board.

You wasted a lot of words trying to be right...and still miss the point

And looks like a bird flying

I agree with Piros....Foilboarding is like sup'ing in the early days...Some surfers still don't get sup'ing even though it gets you out there on days you wouldn't shortboard but even if you do you sit around twiddling your thumbs....Now foiling gets you out there on days you wouldn't even sup.....Having been a surfer for 40 years & chasing perfect waves all over the world....Foiling now gets me out there on days I wouldn't surf or sup...That's not a bad thing...
Foiling might not be for everyone but neither is sup'ing....
You can keep doing the same thing or you can push yourself to try new things...Foiling is in it's very early growth days & it's growing fast...It's the most challenging but exciting things I've ever done

I don't think anyone is knocking foiling as such - just that trying to do it in the vid appears to take a SERIOUS amount of effort.
He's a fit young bloke and looks absolutely buggered after trying to keep it up for 25m! Not sure that foiling on flat water stacks up on my effort vs fun scale (whilst in the waves it definitley looks fun).

Interesting? Maybe. Am busting to grab one and hit up my local lake? Nope.

Damo I get what you are saying but wind the clock back 3 months and that was impossible no matter who stood on the board. The video is not really about promoting flat water foiling but showing how good the Sup foil efficiency has improved. It opens a whole new realm of what we can ride if you can start from no assist from a wave or swell. It has progressed so much in just the past year when I first posted this video . I taped a kite foil board to my Sup.. I now have 6 specific Sup foils in my shed along with a bunch of custom boards. Watch this space it's going to get exciting....

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Piros said..
10 million dollar rigs but all this R&D will eventually filter down to us.

Exactly. Or see the fallbacks to everyday life of things deigned for Formula One racing or space travel...

In Austin vid, I see many things interesting:
- the technique to take off can be translated to a way to "pop" into weak waves on takeoff, akin to the shortboard "cork bobbing" into a wave
- the refining he does gradually on his pumping on flat water, we can see it becoming more and more efficient

So, maybe only top young athletes with no fat can hope to foil on flat water with the current equipment. But their advances in technique and gear will "trickle down" to us. Plus, I will be interested to try a huge foil (twice as big as the largest current ones) to have a go at it myself. I will surely try to build a huge front wing, should not be too hard to do...

Colas you are missing the point. Nasa has a great saying Gravity Sucks... and so do low aspect foils .You simply can't keep increasing the foil size for more lift without increasing drag. It's a damned if you do and damned if don't scenario. So forget about Austin's weight. He was able to drive enough forward speed to get the foil to rise without an assist. That translates to us fat buggers & punters we only need a smaller swell or bump to get the lift on that foil. Forget the flat water pumping thing .

That was just a show of the foil efficiency. Don't expect if you have too much junk in your trunk you can do the same but with a small wave or swell assist you will be up and riding on the same size foil.

There is so much technique and experience involved to achieve what Austin has done. Look at what Kai is doing. Yesterday he paddled prone in to a wave on a 3'8" board and foil surfed it.

Last month I managed to wake foil behind a bare boat tender with an 8hp (these things barely plane at the best of times). At my weight this should have been impossible. While this is not quite the feat of Austin, I was amazed that I could pump my myself faster than the boat and sustain this speed long enough for the tender to get planning. Without this there is no way it would have got onto the plane with two people (especially one towing behind). There is no way I could have done this 2 months ago.

When I first started foiling, I believed that weight would play a huge part in the equation, but now as a more experienced foiler I believe technique and skill is so much more important. I am blown away at what I am riding now, and how early I can get up. Way beyond my expectations, and I feel that I will continue to be amazed as my skills increase (hopefully). Everything I have experienced has been been on the exact same foil, the same foil Kai has been using, the same foil Casper has been using, and the same foil Chuck has been using.

I think efficiency is key! Foil size is good to make it easier, but is useless without the skill. I also think Naish have hit the nail on the head with their foil(s), making it easier to learn and control.

MY2C

Ride safe,

JB

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Piros said..
You simply can't keep increasing the foil size for more lift without increasing drag.

I am no so sure. A big foil in laminar flow will always have less drag than a small foil stalling under pressure because it does not have enough lift. It maybe my experience with swimming with big monofins, but I would not be as pessimistic as you. Plus note that Austin has straps, and I believe they are very important for his takeoff movements.

The good part is that it is easy to build bigger front wings once you have got a foil. Just make one (or buy a cheap kite one and build around it) and experiment, I will surely try it.

I think I agree with JB, the advances to come will be as much in technique as in gear. But I think sometimes a "bootstrap" with non-optimal gear is needed for you to get the hang of it. It can be side wheels for your first runs on a bike, 1" mast or towed sessions for foiling, or I guess a huge wing to feel how to do it, even it is slow.

A friend of mine was amazed by travis videos yesterday, so, stoked to the gills, he went on the water for his first SUPfoil session (he has quite a lot of kitefoiling and some towed foil experience), and was totally astonished to be able to fly in crappy conditions he never though possible (4s 30cm "waves") thaukite.com/image-galleries/photos/standuppaddle-and-surf/20170601-1rstwavefoilsup
He will never have tried it without the motivation of Travis video... I had people told me they just ordered foils after seeing this video. It is a landmark, for sure.

Other vids of Austin:

Another flat run:

www.facebook.com/Gofoils/videos/625895040946113/

Putting the skills developed on flat runs in practice: hopping for taking off, and pumping to get the juice for 360 and even a backloop attempt on crubmbly ankle snappers:



And the pic JB refers to:

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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colas said..
Other vids of Austin:

Another flat run:

www.facebook.com/Gofoils/videos/625895040946113/

Putting the skills developed on flat runs in practice: hopping for taking off, and pumping to get the juice for 360 and even a backloop attempt on crubmbly ankle snappers:

And the pic JB refers to:

Watching a lot vids and guys i know saying how hard it is to do. Like get it a bit wrong and your off

That 360 appears to be a remarkable feat

I reckon flat water foiling could be better or possible by putting two foils on a longer say 14 board, big foil at back and small foil at front a bit like the flyak that dude come up with years ago. Personally I don't think foiling is as hard too learn as people reckon, it is though as dangerous as people say??

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teatrea said..
Personally I don't think foiling is as hard too learn as people reckon, it is though as dangerous as people say??

I think that people that tried foiling last year, using kite foils (ultra sharp and insanely hard with the 3' mast), no straps, and following no advice (like the videos of people trying it in the shorebreak) contributed to the "insanely hard and freaking dangerous" reputation.

But with proper advice, gear, and choice of waves, it is actually not so hard nor dangerous. I guess it can be similar to kiteboarding: kiteboarding is quite safe if you are cautious and know what you are doing. But danger strikes as soon as you do not pay attention.

But even with the proper gear and condition, the first time you feel the foil lift you are going to freak out, and wonder if you will ever manage to stay on the thing one day.

It's a fun learning curve all right, I've come close a few times too falling on the foil, I've learnt not too try to correct if I've made a mistake and just bail if I feel the foil ready too tip. Also I've found in faster or bigger waves it helps too have the back door forward of the foil and in small stuff you can getwaway with the foot on the foil or even behind it a little. Any way I'm hooked??

I hope these little gadgets will be available one day to fit onto any foil.. It would be a great way to learn how to foil but let's hope people don't use them near any swimmers.

DJ - NOW you have caught my attention!!

I want one and I want it now

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Smash1 said..
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Agree

When they can do this I will get one



Foiling looks so like this:

Eric Terrien explains how he does it:



I would add that:

- Look at the power of the strokes at the start: the blade is sunk deep in the water for maximum leverage, and all the body is mobilized for maximum power

- he moves his front foot slightly back at the end of the "Hungtinton Hop" first phase, I but I cannot see if he also moves the back foot backwards. But the range of feet movement seems very small.

- In the 1st phase, it looks like he uses the buoyancy of the board, by sinking it as forcefully as possible, to get some initial lift by some "cork effect". He may even use the tail for this at the beginning of the liftoff for some added push against the water

- You can see the difference in the 2 pumping phases also by looking at the position of the knees relative to the hips: in the second, planing phase, he sends his knees noticeably forward on the downwards glide of the foil to try to gain leverage by the speed of the wing rather than pushing on it. And since he is looking for speed, he must now avoid any contact of the board with the water that could slow him down.