Today was the day of silly ideas. It started before we even got to the beach, when Jay thought a 3-piece mast might work even better than a 2-piece mast. Silly! At least the water was warm enough for a 30 minute swim back to shore.
I was barely foiling for 20 minutes when I came up with a silly idea of my own. After seeing Nina winging so nicely in so many sessions, I tried to partially imitate her. A key thing about winging is that the wing is not connected to the board. That can easily be copied with a windsurfing sail:
I forget a couple of little details though - the most important one being the to leashes that wingers use, one for the board and one for the wing. My board instantly realized my mistake, and took off to enjoy its newly found freedom. With a little help from chop and wind, it easily outpaced my tepid attempts of catching it again by swimming "fast". So I turned around and swam back to the rig, so I'd at least have some company. Fortunately, this being a nice summer weekend and all, a couple of motor boats quickly stopped by, after realizing I was not just swimming and waving at them to be friendly. The first one picked up my boat, the second one offered me a beer (just kidding!). Well, the second one asked if I was ok, and what they could do to help. They then drove to the other boat and told them to please, please deliver the board back to me, which they promptly did (big thanks to both boaters!). No major harm done, except perhaps for my ego.
On the way back to the launch, it was time for my foil to join the silly idea club. Apparently, the front wing was getting sick and tired of always being a foot or more under water, and decided to end the continuous drowning. Quite successfully so - after a surprise crash, I saw it happily swimming on top of the water. But I cut its dreams of escaping short by swimming after it, putting it on top of my board, and stepping on it:
By then, the wind had picked up into the mid-20s, and my 5.0 m sail and Slingshot 84 wing had gotten a bit large, anyway. I actually planed a little bit on the way in - I guess the 90 cm mast is big enough to work as a fin. The foil setup looked a bit sad now:
That was my second Slingshot fuselage that broke. I blamed myself for the first one since I had drilled an extra hole to move the front wing further forward. But this time, the fuselage was not modified, and the screws were still nice and tight. I checked the GoPro video, and there was no obstacle in the water, either. Sure, the Slingshot fuses are relatively cheap, but replacing them on a somewhat regular basis because they break seems like a silly idea - and I've had it with silly ideas right now. I think I'll pay a little extra from more solidly engineered gear from other brands in the future.
Here are the GPS tracks from today's session:
