Dawn patrol this morning with Marlon. He brought his longboard - after he paddled out I did not see him (because he headed over to Coves). He said he was also in testing mode, seeing what the different center fin positions did for his riding.
I was continuing with comparison weekend. The waves came down a lot. Was lucky if waist high. The wind was still down and the tide was rising. I started with where I left off yesterday - the 4'8"/Kujira 1095/218/75cm PC mast.
I caught several waves at the crack of dawn in the middle of the pack before the waves really started dropping. Got in a bunch of fun turns and pumped right back out. Then the crowd started filling in so I moved over to the Cabins. I caught a couple of triples, then decided to change out the foil setup to get more back-to-back data.
I switched to the ART999/400P/Crazy Short fuselage on the 68cm PC mast.
Out of the three setups I used proning this weekend, this one is the best (with my cadence and usage) at getting repeat rides and pumping back out. It turns really well and never has any issue at takeoff (progressive lift).
The F One Eagle has incredible glide - at times I wasn't even pumping to trim - just along for the ride while the foil did all the work extracting the energy from the wave. It turned well, but not as well as the other two. What I couldn't do with this is pump back out for repeats. I think it may have to do with the mast and the trimmed rear stabilizer.
The Kujira was the foil I had to manage the most on takeoff - I always stuck the takeoff and bottom turn - but for whatever reason, I always feel like I'm all the way up on the mast and that takes some getting used to. I can carve this as hard as I want to and it does have times where the glide is effortless (but I have to trim it to get there - the Eagle did it automatically without input from me). And I could easily pump out and triples are common place for me with this setup.
The ART - well - I can get in a 4x repeat if the waves are lined up. I can pump as much as I need to, and carve up any wave - it really is the best all arounder. But it needs more input while riding than the other two - in fact I find myself pumping while riding a wave to keep pace and get to where I want to be.
They are all good foils - but the scary thing is the Eagle has the potential to be a game changer (if I can get it to pump back out).
The rides this morning would take me across the breaks - starting at Towers, migrating to in front of the first Cabin, then going all the way over to the Admiral's Cottage, then back. Mark had been on the outside with the rest of the foilers - but then we noticed he was hanging on the way inside. We thought he was tired of waiting for ridable waves on the outside - turns out his mast broke at the base.
He was lucky to quickly find the lower set (sunk fast).
I thought the waves would have been bigger - but the session was good fun despite the small waves.
W:96/F:88/S:32
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