Is it possible to kite a surf-foil?

[opie]

Curious what's the deal with the side mounted rear wing? That's looks like a new twist. And I wonder what the attachment is for front wing? Looks like only a couple inches for bolts?

It is an adjustable rear wing. They have a user manual on their site for the foils. You can see on their site there is plenty of room for three bolts to hold on the front wing.

[norcom]

The rear Naish wing looks like it could be mounted either up or down. Though I have no idea if that's possible or why even do that. The front wing looks like a wedge bolt on design.

[norcom]

After visiting the Naish site, their plate IS the Takuma copy. The video shows identical 6mm T-nuts. Which makes me think the mast is similar to Takuma. Naish will have a Tuttle and Deep tuttle conversion mounts for this mast. Opens up a little more choices for the Takuma and copies.

[BWD]

I recently purchased a surf foil. The main aim was to try to aggressively hit wind swell and do lots of carving turns

The designer says the foil gets going in a couple of knots less wind than his freeride foil so I am hoping to get a touch better light wind performance without buying a new kite.

I have only had two sessions on it so far, and those sessions were the first after a 3 month lay off (surfer's ear surgery). I was using a 5m kite, mainly to experiment with underpowered riding.

From the first turn I was carving every little bump in sight. I could push into them as hard as I wanted.

The wind was around 20 knots but dropped down to under 15 knots. The TT and surfboard riders on 10-12m kites could not ride. During the lulls I could not water start but it took only small puff to lift me up on the board. Once there I was off and riding.

So, on a couple of hours experience I would call it a massive success. I am very happy with the result.

https://www.jshapes.com/collections/foi ... ruzer-foil

Looks great.
Curious, what's the top speed like?
One poster to this forum said they had only had their takuma (or clone) to 21km/h. That's <12 knots, which has me hesitant to pull the trigger. Even if it is great for slow waves, I fear it would be too slow for faster ones, and not as versatile for freeride. I could see going bigger/slower than my 710cm2 zeeko carver, which can hit 25 knots, but I'm not sure about anything that won't do 15 or so.
Does the jshapes foil fall in between, or is it also super-slow?
I see they claim over 20, but curious for a "real world consumer" perspective.

[slowboat]

That Jshapes Cruzer foil looks great. I wonder how it compares (size and feel for wave kiting) vs. the Takuma or something like the Lift 150?

[Jzh_perth]

Gunnar said the Takuma is compatible with Naish and Axis so it makes sense if they are all from the same factory. Takuma also show a tuttle adaptor on their website so it's definitely available.

I got 23 kmh with takuma as my top speed on my first session. Average moving speed was 12kmh. Was riding a 9m Lei in 12-15 kts

Here is the gps link :
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1953639156

[juandesooka]

12-23 kmh is 6-12 knots. I'd guess 6kt is about the speed someone could paddle fast on a sup -- so even without wind or waves, you could probably paddle this onto the foil and pump it stay up on foil for at least a little ways. 12kts is about as fast as you surf on a decent wave. I think this highlights the use of this set up -- it's made for surfing waves without additional power. Kiting is also something you can do with it, but it's really not made for it. Though fun to play around with a kite too, why not! Just expect it'll be super slow.

On the other hand, that J-Shape above, the spitfire xlw, or the zeeko carver, those are kite foils that are made a little bigger so you can ride in and amongst waves. But they are made to go a lot faster than someone can surf. Without the kite's power, they can't likely surf waves, they'd stall and drop. These are also fun, just in a different way.

Clarifying that we're talking about two different things in this thread. It started out talking about foils made specifically for surfing, based on paddle power -- how do they fare under a kite? These shouldn't be directly compared against kite foils, as they are different beasts.

[OzBungy]

....
Looks great.
Curious, what's the top speed like?
One poster to this forum said they had only had their takuma (or clone) to 21km/h. That's <12 knots, which has me hesitant to pull the trigger. Even if it is great for slow waves, I fear it would be too slow for faster ones, and not as versatile for freeride. I could see going bigger/slower than my 710cm2 zeeko carver, which can hit 25 knots, but I'm not sure about anything that won't do 15 or so.
Does the jshapes foil fall in between, or is it also super-slow?
I see they claim over 20, but curious for a "real world consumer" perspective.

The short answer is it is too soon to tell. I have only had a couple of sessions on it, the weather here has been unpleasant, and I am being careful after my ear surgery.

I had a quick look at my GPS logs and on my J Shapes Freeride foil I average in the low 20's kph. On the Cruzer I averaged just over 19 on a riding around day, so similar style to what I would do normally.

On the second session I just carved wave after wave after wave, so I was never locked in and blasting, and averaged just over 15 kph. There are so many turns on the track that there is no way to sensibly count them. Even looking at the speed trace there are no clearly visible pauses. I did play the track and roughly counted 25 direction changes in an hour. About 2/3 of those were in the wave zone near the beach.

I think speed has more to do with rider skill and intent and the conditions. I only go fast on my freeride foil if I try to and the conditions allow it. My max speed is a touch over 40 kph (25 knots) knots. I suspect I could get close enough to not care on the Cruzer foil.

[Deaf Paul]

The Alibaba page says 59x26cmn and 38x11.1cm rear. It's an identical/original copy. The whole package comes with the case, T-nuts, screws just like the Takuma.

Can you post the link to the Alibaba ad?

It's also on the first page. https://sublimationsports.en.alibaba.co ... 2c54FRTZ11

I'm also trying to find a working link. Where are the deals? Thinking that the future for me is going to be these huge foils that lift at very low speeds for those 4-8 mph days. Been testing/flying a Cloud D 13.4 too for those kind of days when my Core XR3s would just fall right out of the sky.

-Paul

[Jzh_perth]

Can you post the link to the Alibaba ad?

It's also on the first page. https://sublimationsports.en.alibaba.co ... 2c54FRTZ11

I'm also trying to find a working link. Where are the deals? Thinking that the future for me is going to be these huge foils that lift at very low speeds for those 4-8 mph days. Been testing/flying a Cloud D 13.4 too for those kind of days when my Core XR3s would just fall right out of the sky.

-Paul

The links on alibaba seem to change frequently but if you look thru the gallery of foils you will find it. I've previously shared Rachael's direct contact details in this thread too.

The cheap prices are when you buy 10 foils, I bought just 1 initially and it cost me just under $600USD. This is why I want to do a group buy for the Australians