Dawn Patrol Foil Drive - 3/23/2025

Foil Drive on the dawn patrol today.  Same gear as yesterday.

I did bring out the GoPro Hero 4K.  With the extension I had it on, and it's wide angle, it was hard to get a good view of what was going on in the video.  I'll either need to use a longer extension, or the GoPro 12.

The waves were smaller than yesterday - and throughout the session it just kept getting smaller.  But I still managed to ride bumps and stretch the battery out to past 2 hours.

The waves from earlier in the session had lots of carving opportunity, with a drift to the left.

I'll call this 22 rides - slim pickings (but this definitely shows the capability of the Foil Drive on a small wave day).

Dennis, Dean, Noel, and Prayot were all out trying to make mountains out of mole hills.

Small waves and light winds forecasted for then next several days....

W:22/FD:46/PW:1/S:4

Dawn Patrol Foil Drive - 3/22/2025

Dawn patrolled with the Foil Drive this morning.  Really nice conditions!

No.40 with the same lower assembly.  I've been wanting to use the Spitfire 900 - but the waves weren't consistently big enough to use it and still get long run time out of the battery.

And I didn't want to do a battery swap since the tide was on the low side (me being lazy).

Full crew out today - Mark, Andrew, Thursday Matt, Dean, Dennis, Noel and others were out.

I had some really long rides today.  All but a handful of waves were pretty low energy - but there was enough shape to bounce turns between sections.

On the handful of bigger breakers, it was fun to drive to the bottom of the broken wave, zoom back up the face behind the section, bank off and head back across where the wave broke.

23 or 25 rides depending on which data set you look at.

This distance view of the ride data makes the longer rides more obvious.

Should be similar conditions tomorrow morning.

W:22/FD:45/PW:1/S:4

Dawn Patrol - 3/21/2025

Dawn patrol on a surfboard this morning!!!

Got some fun rides on the Pigfish - once I got through the initial paddling adjustment (winging and Foil Drive-ing I frog kick the gear out, not paddle).

Next outing I am going to switch out the Machado Quads for an upright twin and a tiny trailer.

W:22/FD:44/PW:1/S:4

Wing Foiling Session - 3/20/2025

Hit the beach after waking up from a nice nap.

I was waiting for the tide to come up a bit before heading out.  It was still on the low side when I got there.

The wind was steady and good strength.

The waves were somewhat bigger than the previous days.

I got No.40 out for a wing session!!!  BLUF - the foot strap worked perfectly to keep the foil from dipping when I landed at the end of the session.  And I got in pretty close.  I've done this plenty of times before this - but the issue I was working through was "where" the foot strap needed to be.

AFS mast, 850 Silk and HA40 today.

And the workhorse - the North Nova Pro 5.0

Pretty good stats today.

Was riding from Coves back down to Cabins -

There were a few sizable waves that came through.

I probably could have used the North Mode Pro 4.8 - but I didn't want to chance it.  And there were some lulls that the 5.0 helped get me out of.

The Silk delivered also!

Roland - always the last in!

W:22/FD:44/PW:1/S:3

La Knocking it Out of the Ballpark!!!

I've been on a quest to get board bags that aren't too big for the foil boards I'm building and also can accommodate a foil set up on the board (and even a Foil Drive fully set up).

With board geometry changing so fast, it is really hard to find a board bag that meets all the requirements that I have.

But with La's sewing skills, I am able to modify bags that fit the boards well, to be able to accommodate the masts and Foil Drive.

And these Dakine Hybrids are reasonably priced to boot!!!

Garage Works - 3/20/2025

And this morning I got to reshaping Dennis's rear stabilizer.

For this work, the bench grinder is best.

Got outline dialed in and the tip foil redone with the grinder.

Then I used the random orbital to do the final shaping and the initial sanding runs.

When the shape was good - I went ahead and wet sanded to 1000

Once the sanding was all done I looked it over and noticed that the core just poked through the carbon.

I went ahead and placed a thin coat of epoxy over the core showing to makes sure it was waterproof. 

I had to file some of the epoxy creases off -

And Dennis already stopped by to pick it up.

Good stuff!!!

Garage Works - 3/19/2025

This was yesterday in the garage.

First up was getting the footstrap installed on No.40

This one is only on the starboard side and really only used for landing at WPB.  When I round up at the end where I want to land, I can use my right foot in the strap to keep the foil elevated when in shallow water.

Ready for testing.

And this was after the session at PV.

Dennis said he lost his foil board at the S turn and it messed up his foils.

He also said the Spitfire 900 wouldn't turn for him.

With both those issues, I said go smaller on the rear stabilizer.

And in a case like this, it is actually easier to grind the stab down to a new shape rather than try to rebuild it to where it was.

350P superimposed on the 375P

I'll trim it up today.

Evening Foil Drive Session - 3/19/2025

Today was as far as you could have gotten away from yesterday's conditions.

It was windy - which on Foil Drive translates to choppy.  But this was mega choppy.

The waves were bigger - but that made it even harder to pick rides (without blowing up).

Robby, Norm and Marvin were out - Dennis would have made it, but he lost his setup out of his truck (eek!!!).

Same lower assembly - but bolted on to No.40 today.  I wanted to test out the location of the recovery/landing footstrap.

Today just down right sucked.

First off as I was motoring out in presumably deep water, I grounded on the same high spot three times.  I put some good scratches on the bottom side of the front foil.

Then the whole session I was fighting water splashing in my face the whole time.  All the while the wind was getting stronger.

What I should have done was head back in and setup the winging gear.

I had the HO battery - so despite motoring the whole time, I got nearly an hour out of the battery (could have gone a little longer - came in at 37%)

I did manage to get some rides in.  Hard to tell what is what on the first graph.

Using distance traveled, you can more easily tell what were rides and what weren't.

17 rides (but maybe only six of them were noteworthy).

Tomorrow I may try dawn patrolling with the Foil Drive again, then get an afternoon winging session in.

W:21/FD:44/PW:1/S:3

Garage Works - 3/18/2025

I sanded down the epoxy fill on these footstrap inserts this afternoon.

I also used a chamfer bit and opened up the area immediately around the insert center.

I'll drill out the hole tomorrow so I can rig a footstrap.

There were air bubbles I opened up when I sanded.  I went ahead and filled those this evening.

I'll check on this in the morning before I go to work.  Originally, I was going to put the deck pad cutouts back in place, but truthfully I think placing the footstrap right on top will be just fine.  I could also check on the health of the plug just by looking at it.  It might even be covered by the strap.

If the wind gets up to winging strength, I could test this out tomorrow (but if there is any winging to be done, it'll likely be on big stuff - North Mode Pro 6.8 or 5.5, Dragonfly 100l, AFS Enduro 1300).

Evening Foil Drive Session - 3/18/2025

After work Foil Drive crew session at Pavilions.

Super light winds.  Nice full tide.  And there were some waves to be had. 

Since I'm working on No.40, I set up No.39.

The lower set was all the same as what I've been riding.

This setting is way better than what is marked.  I'm going to need to sand and relabel this.

For using the regular Max Power battery, and having peer pressure all around to efoil (every now and then), this really wasn't a short run battery time.

If you trace the outbound line, about halfway out, you see me pick up and wave, ride for a bit then turn and head out to the break proper on efoil.

From there I had several rides, but today they were on the shorter side.  The tide was probably too high for the wave energy coming in to break longer (lots of deep troughs out here anyways).

19 rides in less than an hour - ridiculous!!!!

Fun day!!!!

W:21/FD:43/PW:1/S:3

Garage Works - 3/17/2025

I skipped going to the beach today to get some rest and spend some time with La.

After dinner, I did convince myself I needed to get the starboard footstrap inserts placed into No.40 - I use this footstrap when coming in and when I round up near shore, I can keep the board on it's side and most of the time prevent the foil from grounding. 

It's hard to determine where these really should go - especially if you end up using a bunch of different foils.  F Ones generally like to be forward.  AFS are further back in the tracks.  And Axis varies depending on which fuselage you are using.

I've been checking my foot positioning when I've been winging last go around and for the AFS Silk 850, this seems to be a spot that can also be used while foiling.  For the F Ones I'll likely be forward of the strap - but can drop back into it right before landing.

The main thing here is that the strap is not in the way of my left foot when riding regular and Foil Drive-ing.  I got lucky when setting this up on No.39 (works perfectly).

This is only a small amount of epoxy (0.6 ounces of resin and 0.24 ounces of hardener, plus enough milled fibers and aerocil to thicken the epoxy appropriately).

I'll remove as much of the excess epoxy as I can tomorrow.  After that I'll drill a pilot hole, replace the deck pad over the holes, and install the soft footstrap.

I'll likely let it all continue to harden for another day (and test it on Wednesday when strong trades are expected back along with some swell!!!)