I brought suitable wing foiling gear today - and as I was getting ready to leave work, the wind was actually dying. I was going to do a grocery run then head home to swap out my winging board for the prone - but sitting the parking lot, the wind kicked up nicely. I headed to Hickam and got a few things done. First was testing my new pump. It certainly saved me from manually pumping so it is a winner. I think the correct setting is going to be 6.5psi (or just below 7). I'm going to see how many fills I can get out of a single charge.
The second test was whether the second +1 rear stabilizer shim I used was driving the nose down (and shifting the sweet spot backwards from where the front footstraps were set). The short answer was 'yes' - foiling without the second shim brought everything back to where it was.
While I was driving up, the conditions looked really good. By the time I was launching, it still looked ok, but it had come down. I did some warm up laps then headed out. The wind was up and down outside, and even started to swing hard north. It got pretty bad and I decided to try and head in to avoid getting stranded. With the directional shift, I had to ride through Seconds to get upwind. Well - thats when things got ugly. The wind dropped and the spot I was stranded in was shallow. I ended up hitting the bottom twice - once with the rear stabilizer, and a second time with the front foil. I absolutely hate hitting bottom - it is the one thing I cannot stand. The wind finally picked back up and I worked my way back without any more drama.
On a good note, I took the GoPro out and not only didn't lose it, but I got some decent photos. The following sequence is me going through a jibe - from weak side (goofy) switching to regular (my strong side).
Harris was the only other person to go out. I saw some texts where Roland was trying to shoot video of Kalani - both at WPB.
Tomorrow should be way better - we'll see!
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