Inaugural run at Hickam with the Foil Drive for this morning's dawn patrol. From the boat ramp you could see Firsts breaking pretty good.
Dennis, Kalani, Arvin, Jesse and myself were on it before the sun came up.
Firsts really focuses swell. When sets make their approach, it feels like an arena - your senses heighten and you wonder if you're in the takeoff or impact zone.
With the Foil Drive, you can get onto a wave way before it gets critical, and with that extra time you can get to the peak (since it shifts depending on the swell direction and height). This fells less like prone foiling, and more like wing foiling (just without a wing).
Caught a ton of waves and for most got long rides. I did wipe on one of the peakier ones. That tested the anchor point repair I did yesterday (no issues - mahalo JB Weld).
I used the HPS 980 again - I've been using this front foil for a while now. I think I could have used the ART999 - the wave at Firsts was really clean.
Looking back at when I built this board, I could not have predicted that I would one day get a Foil Drive - and here we are and this board is just about perfect for prone foil driving!!!!
I drove the battery down to 40% and then headed in. I wanted to see what the draw on the battery would be coming in at a higher speed. I chewed it down to 14% but was going at a good clip.
And here are the other suspects - same crowd when the wind is up - now just on alternate equipment to get the same results.
This was a really fun session and a good exposure for Bill (who did catch at least two waves that I saw) and Jesse (who is frothing for his FD).
W:66/F:66/S:30
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