Naish Foils and an Interesting "foil light" Development

Hi

I promised to say something about the Naish foil and board options. I will also include some notes about a fin/foil development which deserves our attention.

Naish

Naish have placed their foil products firmly into the recreational space. No high intensity racing is going to be done on this stuff. 

This is evidenced by a total lack of carbon fibre construction and dire warnings to never take their foil into the surf. Here is some of what they say on: https://www.naishsails.com/product/thrust-ws-1-foil/

WARNING: DO NOT USE THE HOVER HYDROFOIL IN THE SURF. You will permanently damage your foil and can cause serious injury or death to yourself and others around you. Damage incurred as a result of abnormal use, or subjected to stress—including breaking waves—beyond the physical limits of the materials used in body or components is not covered under the warranty policy.

When a supplier threatens death to both user and those around him if he ever ventures into rough water, one can conclude that the product is not high tech in any way.

The foil itself looks really easy and stable though, with its comforting aeroplane-like shape.

You probably need to think very carefully about where you want to go with foiling before you commit to the Naish solution.

They have pure foiling boards with a proprietary foil connection on rails beneath the board. The advantage of this is that you can move the foil towards the middle of the board to learn, and nearer the tail as you improve.

They offer their Titan model with built in rails to attach their foil, but which doubles as a windsurfing board with power box fin.

They also supply their foil with Tuttle or deep Tuttle heads should you have a board with re-inforced fin box and are looking for a light wind foil which is fun, easy to ride and very stable.

The Titan solution is good but because the board is heavy and “recreational” in its windsurfing role, I would be unwilling to spend my money there. 

I would require a higher spec board (lighter, faster) with deep Tuttle box to allow me to choose from all the foil makers out there. The DT box then also enables me to screw in some high performance fins for normal blasting.

The above requirement means that I would personally go for Pryde’s RS:X Hybrid every time if I had the money. Your requirements may differ from mine of course.

Fin/Foil Combo

Mert Ozener alerted me to this development from the guys at FRPGear - an outfit which develops and produces fibre reinforced plastic components for various industries.

They have developed a very strong windsurfing fin with a wing at its base. They claim that this wing generates massive amounts of lift making it very easy to plane in light winds.

I will give you a link to the site where you will find descriptions, videos, comparisons with regular foils etc. I cannot verify their claims but the video footage looks promising. 

I would need to test one of these before I could make a solid pronouncement. I would like to try it at speed for instance (and hopefully not experience the mother of all face-plants).

If the fin is as good as they say, then we should all have one in our bags. How often do we find ourselves struggling in slushy, shallow conditions in light wind. Plug the FRP hydrofoil in and you are in business! I like the fact that the fin is only 30cm long but with all that lift. Nice!

I will try to get the guys at FRP to send me one of these fins (fingers crossed). If I can convince them, I will be in a position to try it, write a review and give some sort of recommendation.

Here is the link to their site:

http://www.frpgear.com/

Thanks Mert for alerting us to this development. I think it is definitely something we should be taking seriously!


Good winds

Karo’s Luderitz trip, Zulu speed fins, Local Foiling and some Slalom fins I am Trying

Hi

A few readers have e-mailed me requesting information and opinions about Naish’s windsurf foil.  I will address this in the next post.  In this post I want to give some feedback regarding the Luderitz Speed Challenge and give you impressions around some Zulu fins I'm trying.  

Luderitz

Karo took a trip up to Luderitz to participate in the challenge.  

She planned her stay to co-inside with  a windy front which thankfully showed up when she got there.  The wind at Luderitz this year, seems to come in bursts of one or two days, each followed by a week of nothing.  Not good!  I wonder when we are going to see the winds experienced in 2015 again. (?)

Anyway, Karo, never having done anything speed related, climbed onto a Patrik speed board/Zulu Hamba speed fin and small, purpose built speed sail from Severne.  She hit a maximum speed of 47.3knots with a 500m average of 39.2knots.   I have not seen these speeds reflected on the Luderitz Speed Challenge site yet, but I understand that they have been slack in updating the sailor stats.

Anyway, this was a phenomenal effort for someone new to the speed discipline.  The winds were not quite strong enough to get into the really serious speeds but I’m sure that if she gets stronger wind next year, she is going to kick all kinds of  ass on that desolate canal.

Karo tells us that Robbie’s speed fins were absolutely awesome – easy, fast, slippery and rock solid in the gusts.  No surprise to me

Zulu Fins

That brings me to some Zulu fins I am trying out (when we finally get some decent, constant wind).  I have 5 fins – all 38cm but with slightly different lay-ups.  I had enough wind the other day, and also today, to try the first fin and it is absolutely epic.  It squirts upwind, screams downwind and planes really early.  It does all of these things while keeping the board’s nose flying beautifully over the chop (no tail walk, no spin-out).

What I now find is that a small force field has developed around the fin making it difficult for me to remove it from my board.  I hope I am able to screw it loose to test the others.  If not I will just have to keep this one.  Maybe Robbie will understand!

 

Robbie has the gift of being able to create a foil which not only performs phenomenally in its role but which also seems to unify the other rig elements, allowing each to perform optimally in concert with the others.  My E-Type has always performed impeccably with free-ride boards but with slalom shapes, seems to push the nose down causing an imbalance of sorts.  The imbalance brings terror when over-powered.  This all happened with fins from another supplier.  

I’m not sure what causes the above imbalance but it disappeared when the first test fin was screwed in and I entered a nice wind band.  The fin gently lifts the nose above the chop, freeing everything up for unreal speed and comfort.  Very impressive!

Robbie visited us a few weeks ago with a foil.  It comprised a Starboard mast for which he had fabricated a fuselage and some wings.  One of the front wings was quite racy and small (not sure if it was from Starboard) but the other was a big, light wind wing, designed and fabricated by Robbie himself.

Here he is sailing each of these wings with his Starboard Ultrasonic and Loft Racing Blade 7.8.

The Severne sail at extreme left of the picture is the new Turbo GT - a beautiful thing which is feather light and rotates imperceptibly

  

Robbie sailed very carefully as the pictures show.  He avoided sheeting in fully but still went impressively well.  He had no crashes and gybed pretty successfully.  Joos says that he was hard to keep up with on slalom kit (especially upwind).

OK that’s all for now.  I will talk about the Naish foil in the next post and also provide a link to some interesting foil reviews.

Good winds