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Wing ditch with backup Paddle
3mt Cabrinha Mantis goes for a dip

Nice! how long for the wing to come back? Did it go pretty much straight downwind? Looks like you didn't need the paddle after all.

Hi broVan, I first seen wingfoil dropwallet from a local guy Thomas at Woodman's point when I started foiling last year, he was making it look so fun but I had to learn to wing first so that took most of my first summer up , I made it my mission to have a crack at it this season. As I'm pretty time poor and not much into logistics and organising cars ECT for Downwind but so much wanted to get into dropwallet it cut all that organisation out, I am lucky enough to have a awesome spot (beach 1)that is dead onshore and has nice nuggets coming through when the wind hits 15kt with no boat / public traffic on the water so started doing just dropwallet with my wing board but got caught out a couple of times and didn't like becoming shark bait, then I came up with the idea of adding the paddle with my new downwind board as a backup incase I come off foil then I can still 'chip in' and continue on. The good thing about having the plastic 1 lt Gatorade bottle is that you can fill it to the desired weight depending on wind conditions and that dictates the drag speed in which you can speed up(less seawater in bottle) or slow down the wing drft( more water =weight) it's a bit of suck it and see but adds that extra bit of excitement. At the moment I have it weighted pretty spot on that by the time I get to the beach I have a few minutes to catch my breath / reload and wing back the back to repeat.If you get the chance next time your out grab a Gatorade bottle attach it to your leash and give it a crack ( maybe start with a short run first) It's so sick.

Looks great dude! I saw you out there that day , i was out wing foiling on the bigger mantis. looked like you were having so much fun! Was going to have a chat to you about your setup and that weighted leash but you were gone by the time I finished up. I'm very keen to get into this and a bit time-poor so seems like a great solution.
what is your foil setup for days like these?

see you out there next time!

Hi herbyburger! That's a super interesting idea. Do you have a video where you can see how the wIng behaves in drift and how it comes onshore? Where on your body do you store the bottle when you go out? Thanks a lot man for your input!!

Hi Caracol, this is a vid of typical behaviour of my 3mt mantis with a 600ml Gatorade bottle in about 17kts. The first few goes i stored the bottle in a clip on bumbag in the zipper section but have found that undoing the zipper while foiling was a bit hectic so now I just shove it in between the belt and my body as its easier to access and deploy when underway on foil. As all wings have a different shape and sizes they will all behave a bit differently when drifting, I have seen my mates smik wing in dropwallet and it sits and drifts nicely.
The thing about Dropwallet is that it really doesn't matter that much what is going on after you let it go as long as you can grab hold of it with some kind of control when you get close to it. Cheap/ bagged out second hand wings is all I'm looking for now...

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Jay K said..
Looks great dude! I saw you out there that day , i was out wing foiling on the bigger mantis. looked like you were having so much fun! Was going to have a chat to you about your setup and that weighted leash but you were gone by the time I finished up. I'm very keen to get into this and a bit time-poor so seems like a great solution.
what is your foil setup for days like these?

see you out there next time!

Hi Jay K, yea, saw you tearing it up on the mantis, sure was big smiles that day, I was using a Takoon 1200 S-glide foil , alu 85cm mast, and a 400 c-glide stab. I'm 90 beers fat

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Wing Ding Fling Thing

I tried this the other day with an old naish . It didn't drift at all just sat where I left it . Have you tried different wing shapes and had different drift rates

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siny said..
I tried this the other day with an old naish . It didn't drift at all just sat where I left it . Have you tried different wing shapes and had different drift rates

I went out yesterday and tried it with no weight attached in lightish winds, it worked well.
Another friend was out same time dropping his weighted PPC wing and was having no trouble.
Just have to try to get the weight dialled to conditions.

Tried it for the first time yesterday, light wind at first so went with the 5.5m (also my oldest and baggiest wing) and a 1 L bottle. Was a bit hit and miss, when lucky it would sit and float but sometimes it would keep on cartwheeling forever. Also, I don't think a coiled leash helps... next time I'll get a smaller wing and a straight leash..

The whole experience was a lot harder than I first thought with figuring out where to store the bottle and how to release the wing and taking a paddle while winging... once I got that figured out I had a couple of nice but short runs... definitely good for learning how to read the bumps!

Why not use a drift anchor? Really not seeing the advantage of a weight, the amount of resistance an anchor provides is more weight than I would want to carry while riding. I had been using a cheap anchor from Amazon but recently switched to the anchorman from cloud 9. It really is well designed and addresses all of the shortcomings of my cheap solution. I love dropping my wing, do it every chance I get, especially when the wind is light.

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herbyburger said..

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Wing Ding Fling Thing

This looks so cool

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herbyburger said..

siny said..
I tried this the other day with an old naish . It didn't drift at all just sat where I left it . Have you tried different wing shapes and had different drift rates

I went out yesterday and tried it with no weight attached in lightish winds, it worked well.
Another friend was out same time dropping his weighted PPC wing and was having no trouble.
Just have to try to get the weight dialled to conditions.

Hey Herbyburger I was out there dropping my old PPC the other day and it sure was a lot of fun. Had a few technical issues with my rig though. Made a weight with duct tape around a water bottle it had a duct tape loop to attach the leash. The duct tape loop snapped after a couple goes . I'd had a long run then was surprised to see the wing wasn't weighted when it caught up to me, also surprised to see that it wasn't too out of control even without the leash.

I also tried another rig with a water bottle duct taped to a kite leash. The extra length of the kite leash was a pain and the quick release on the kite leash was annoying both when releasing and putting back together. I am convinced the quick release isn't necessary, can see you're not using one. I am using a 500ml water bottle and it works well. I think the water bottle is great because you can adjust the weight. You go so much faster than the wing and if you get a good run it takes ages for the wing to get to you. I think the key is to adjust the drift to the point where it will move as fast as possible on the water but not fly out of control on the land. I was testing the weight with about 250ml of water (3.8m wing in about 20 knots) I gave the wing a little toss and it went flying almost up into the carpark. Another local guy tried it with the Anchorman sea anchor and he said the wing moved far too slowly for use with downwind. Works great at a surf break though as you can see in this video of James Casey killing it.
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Youngbreezy said..



Hey Herbyburger I was out there dropping my old PPC the other day and it sure was a lot of fun. Had a few technical issues with my rig though. Made a weight with duct tape around a water bottle it had a duct tape loop to attach the leash. The duct tape loop snapped after a couple goes . I'd had a long run then was surprised to see the wing wasn't weighted when it caught up to me, also surprised to see that it wasn't too out of control even without the leash.

I also tried another rig with a water bottle duct taped to a kite leash. The extra length of the kite leash was a pain and the quick release on the kite leash was annoying both when releasing and putting back together. I am convinced the quick release isn't necessary, can see you're not using one. I am using a 500ml water bottle and it works well. I think the water bottle is great because you can adjust the weight. You go so much faster than the wing and if you get a good run it takes ages for the wing to get to you. I think the key is to adjust the drift to the point where it will move as fast as possible on the water but not fly out of control on the land. I was testing the weight with about 250ml of water (3.8m wing in about 20 knots) I gave the wing a little toss and it went flying almost up into the carpark. Another local guy tried it with the Anchorman sea anchor and he said the wing moved far too slowly for use with downwind. Works great at a surf break though as you can see in this video of James Casey killing it.

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nice one youngbreezy, I started with a quite technical setup with an old kitesurf quickrelease / clips and carabinhas and stuff but soon worked out to keep it simple as possible so now I just wear a dive belt , attach the wing leash to bottle and stuff it in the side of belt.
My next purchase will be a ''waist'' board leash and then i can just stuff it into that to simplify it even more...
Also have worked out in light winds you can just ditch the wing without any weight attached and ride the bumps and reconnect with wing allot quicker,
The anchorman setup is useless for downwind dropwallet as it is designed to keep the wing at ''Anchor"' (drifts way to slow) good for superhumans that can pump back out to collect in offshore wind ( dodgy as unless you out with a few crew to save it if it goes wrong) but for downwind it it near impossible to pump out head on into a stiff seabreeze.
as mentioned getting to know how your wing drifts and flys in certain conditions without you is key.( Adds to the excitment )