is there a way of securing the potential of the entire foil setup coming away from the board that people have used?

1 leash from wing to you.
1 leash from board to you.
You can attach to waist, wrist, or leg.
2 leeashes.

You can run a thin rope/string from your back foot strap or leash plug then around the base of your foil.

I used to do this with my windsurfing foil in the early days after hearing about people hitting something and loosing the whole foil.

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LeeD said..
1 leash from wing to you.
1 leash from board to you.
You can attach to waist, wrist, or leg.
2 leeashes.

Thanks mate, but I meant for the foil set up from the baseplate to the foil wings.
A guy lost his the other day when the boxes ripped out of his board.

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DavidJohn said..
You can run a thin rope/string from your back foot strap or leash plug then around the base of your foil.

I used to do this with my windsurfing foil in the early days after hearing about people hitting something and loosing the whole foil.

Cheers David, a guy told me he uses some chord from his kite surf rig.

I'm sure there is someone who safety ties every component to himself and other components, but we have to pick our battles.
Having 5 leashes tying everything together needs lots of thought and maintainance.
Suspect matches should be avoided...but accidents do happen.

This isn't something you would want to do. Any chord or leash under the water connected to the wings or foil is going to cause a huge amount of drag! It will feel like your dragging seaweed around with you everywhere.
the best thing to do if your worried is to triple check all bolts are tight and that none are cracked or stretched. Your foil will never come off if you do this.

This happened just yesterday to a guy. Brand new board, crashed in a gybe and pulled his foil out and gone. You could use some 2-3mm dynemma tied to the base plate through a spare hole, and electrical/stickyback it to the board into the leash plug. This would be a clean hidden system and very much doubt you'd notice much drag.

Some tight elastic chord maybe - that is tied between one base plate screw and whatever you call the stainless thing it screws into that sits in your mast track - then stretched and tied to your footstraps / waist leash board attachment. (So elastic chord is running through your mast track, and wrapped tightly under back of board, you may not feel any drag when starting. When up no drag.

Racers here use the thin Dyneema idea.
Some inside tuttle, most outside to rear screws with fender washer.

Yeh so kinda like my idea . what's a Fender washer ??

Big washer to hold line tightly without pinching it.

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wicka said..
This isn't something you would want to do. Any chord or leash under the water connected to the wings or foil is going to cause a huge amount of drag! It will feel like your dragging seaweed around with you everywhere.
the best thing to do if your worried is to triple check all bolts are tight and that none are cracked or stretched. Your foil will never come off if you do this.

I use kiting line tied to my leash plug and looped around the mast (the line ends up quite tight) - can't say I can notice any extra drag at take off. Even if there is a bit of drag, I'll happily live with that rather than worry about my brand new Armstrong rig being lost at sea. Agreed that tightening the bolts and keeping them serviceable is very important - won't help though if the boxes get ripped out of the board.

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Nov8 said..

wicka said..
This isn't something you would want to do. Any chord or leash under the water connected to the wings or foil is going to cause a huge amount of drag! It will feel like your dragging seaweed around with you everywhere.
the best thing to do if your worried is to triple check all bolts are tight and that none are cracked or stretched. Your foil will never come off if you do this.

I use kiting line tied to my leash plug and looped around the mast (the line ends up quite tight) - can't say I can notice any extra drag at take off. Even if there is a bit of drag, I'll happily live with that rather than worry about my brand new Armstrong rig being lost at sea. Agreed that tightening the bolts and keeping them serviceable is very important - won't help though if the boxes get ripped out of the board.

I would second consistently stripping your gear and inspecting it. When I changed from GoFoil to Axis, on my second session I had cracked 3/4 of the T-nuts. Lesson learnt that my starboard box was deeper and needed 30mm+ screws. Would never of noticed this if I didn't pull my gear apart every session.

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Nov8 said..

wicka said..
This isn't something you would want to do. Any chord or leash under the water connected to the wings or foil is going to cause a huge amount of drag! It will feel like your dragging seaweed around with you everywhere.
the best thing to do if your worried is to triple check all bolts are tight and that none are cracked or stretched. Your foil will never come off if you do this.

I use kiting line tied to my leash plug and looped around the mast (the line ends up quite tight) - can't say I can notice any extra drag at take off. Even if there is a bit of drag, I'll happily live with that rather than worry about my brand new Armstrong rig being lost at sea. Agreed that tightening the bolts and keeping them serviceable is very important - won't help though if the boxes get ripped out of the board.

Yeah sorry, I miss read the post. I thought he meant connecting it to the mast AND wings.

having something up around the top of the mast connected to the leash plug would work fine without any drag.


But honestly, if your worried about your box getting ripped out of your board you should be looking at getting a better quality board..

We have a lot of moving rocks in Moreton Bay, some can be 100 kg or more. They have also been known as turtles and pop up in front of you with no notice. I've had several very close calls so my racefoil is tied to the board using a Ozone safety line bungee, dyneema with bungee cord through the middle. It wraps around the top of the foil and the other end is screwed to a foot plug.

Hopefully that although the board will be scrap, there might be enough of it left to keep the foil floating if I hit one at 30 knots. I don't use one on the wing board as the speeds are much less.

Is this a real risk? never thought about losing foil before. there are a few rocks where I go out, might need to think about this security measure.

Everything can be a risk.
I leashed my foil for 100 sessions before stopping.
Like helmets, flak vests, booties, and sunscreen.
Pick your battles.