Recap - M20

This race certainly delivered on the promise to be interesting. An incredibly dynamic race both from a tactics and gear perspective.

The start was flat, with maybe 10 minutes of pumping required. Many top riders getting stuck for 30min or more in the flats. The end was upwind, with a few swells wrapping the point into the finish line.

James Casey came from behind to take the win narrowly pipping Oskar Johansson in a prone paddle battle.

Edoardo Tanas was underfoiled for the start (see below orange board) and had a cardio blow up and had to take a rest. He managed to get to the wind line eventually and recovered a massive amount of ground to place third. Pretty incredible.

Kai Lenny took fourth and Andrew Gibbons fifth.

James gives his take:

The bunch mid race, live tracking keeping everyone safe and visible.

Reef dodging on the last bend before the upwind slog to the finish. Great clip:

FOIL DIVISION RESULTS 🏁 (link)

Female
🥇 Olivia Piana @oliviapiana
🥈 Annie Reickert @annie__starr
🥉 Andrea Moller @andreamollermaui

Male
🥇 James Casey james__casey - their reflections
🥈 Oskar Johansson @oskar_foil - their reflections
🥉 Edoardo Tanas @whoedo

Other reflections worth reading:Kane (Allure?) Gabriella de Bella, Sup Tomo

I will focus on pumping endurance and overall fitness design and preparation for racing!

Some great videos

• Start video, and end video

• Armie frothing so much he doesn’t mention Americas Cup once in 10min

• Edo describes his experience, lots of detail

• Voyager Foiler Crew reminisce, long form chat about being overamped and underfoiled

• Overview video of the race

• Josh Ku with an hour of detail if you’re planning on joining next year

Recap - Open de France Downwind Foil

This is arguably the most important event of the year,. The only foil exclusive large scale downwind event, which ran over three days:

Stats:

1. 60 athletes, 12 different countries

2. 15-km, 20-km and 12-km over 3 days

3. 2 x bay runs, 1 x ocean

Foiling Magazine review from Jon Mann:

Overall the event was a resounding success. The organisers did a fantastic job to put on a great event that not only ensured rider safety but posed a good challenge for the riders of the 3 day period.

Day 1:
I went for the AXIS ART Pro 1201 combined with my 7’7” Appletree Skipper and the late arrival of the wind meant that the race director chose a slightly shorter course (16km).
…
The run was tough with a lot of pumping in the small bumps, but that didn’t stop it from being fun, sharing bumps with so many new faces. From the get go the contenders made themselves known, sprinting off the start with a close race eventually taken by the “dark horse” Etienne Fleur from Tahiti followed by Oskar Johansson and Matteo Ell.

Day 2:

With the good forecast the race director also decided to extend the run further up the bay to make the run around 20 km. This put the start close to shore paddling out at Roscanvel, with a short fetch and almost flat start.
…
The remaining 18k was extremely fun with decent and steep bumps thanks to the current and I myself forgot about racing. Competitors opted for two different lines. Down the middle where the bumps were bigger and a bit faster, or down the right where the bumps were smaller and easier to ‘up and over’. Upon converging I think there wasn’t much in it, but it also really came down to foil size and selection. Strung out weeds added a challenge and proved crucial for the top 5 ranking with a number of guys having to stop for weed including the eventually first placed Oskar who was closely followed by Etienne and once again Matteo in 3rd.

Day 3:

With a light forecast, and a small 2m swell left over from the previous days the race director opted for an ocean run to add a technical element to the racing. The wind was anywhere between 10-15 knots with the swell in the mix. Checking the bumps up from the ‘Cap de la Chèvre’ the field was split. Some opting for fast foils to keep up with the faster ocean swells and some choosing for the bigger foils in order to ensure getting onto foil as the priority. (I opted for the AXIS ART Pro 1201 being less experienced in Ocean runs). To get to the start of this run, we piled into 10 boats with all our gear and drove about 14km upwind out to sea, taking in the scenery, chatting with new friends and enjoying the last day of racing. Unlike the previous days which had been rainy, the icing on the cake was blue skies and sunshine so everyone was in good spirits as we got to the start line. As before the contenders got away at the drop of the flag, but much to my relief, a lot of the field struggled at the start. Once I got going the field was so spread out that I didn’t even feel like I was in a race, moving between the ocean swell and the wind bumps. I just soaked in the surroundings on what was the end of a fantastic week in Brittany with 3 days of awesome racing.

Results

(Official Press Release)

Women

🥇Olivia Piana

🥈Amandine Chazot

Men

🥇 Etienne Fleure

🥈 Oskar Johansson - reflections

🥉 Jack Ho

Foil Championships

Oskar has a taken it with a 4 point lead over James. Congrats to everyone who put in the time, effort, money etc into getting to all of the races, it has been very entertaining to experience!

After looking more closely at the numbers, I realised that it was effectively a dead heat between James and Oskar, and so for posterity I’ve just pinned it as a draw, given them both a crown and next year I’ll have a more robust system. You can read all about it in the footnotes1

If you’re interested in seeing how it came together, spreadsheet here.2

Constructors I ran off top 5 only as it is too much of a pain to find out who rode what and even fourth and fifth is tricky. My impressions:

• Lift - Very good showing in Hawaii where they are the default choice.

• Armstrong - Top rider and double-dipping at the French race took it for them.

• Code - Excellent debut, pretty incredible to launch a foil and take it straight to the top.

• Axis - Interestingly, since the race Andrew Gibbons and top female rider Gabriella Bella have both signed up to the team.

• SPG - One race, huge points. Clearly a dark horse for next year.

• Fanatic - Spencer fam definitely could push these into the top 5 if they weren’t winging.

• Phantom - I wonder if Kai will continue to race with them, he rode Axis for M20 but still uses them for doing flips.

• F-One - Talented Jack a strong contender for next year.

• KDFOILS - Definitely one to watch, Kate is absolutely one to watch for developing incredible foils, uniquely short feedback loop because of his talent on the foil

Nearly all of the brands above have released their race prototypes to the public, Axis even released their mega-mast even after saying they wouldn’t.

Looking to 2024

1. More interesting races: James and I agree, foil racing should do its best to stay fun to keep it interesting. See my proposal:

   

   If you have anything to add or any thoughts, comment below or DM

2. Those to watch: Andrew Gibbons - you can feel the intensity, the intent. Clearly one to watch. The other person to watch is Etienne Fleure who gave Oskar a real reason to keep at it for 2024. Etienne only competed in a single event and almost won all three days straight in varied conditions, Oskar getting him only on day 2 by a few seconds.

Foam Hits

• Hood river looks like a good time, absolutely massive bumps.3

• Jonn Mann’s blog is good.

• If you’re downwinding in windy spots, realise that you may stray into a pretty established line up - below example of what not to do and almost getting a fin in the face. If in doubt, turn away early and obviously, not at the last minute.

• This is rad. Though my current feels are that paddling up onto bumps isn’t as hard as I expected, and I only see this catching on if it can also go upwind.

Anyone new to F-one coming from Armstrong now having severe whiplash? Adam ripping the shit out of these waves is really just amazing, and the camera work catches the detail in slow motion. Cool to see.

Map contributions

• Garda 2024, I’ll be there in June. Outlaw time trial race? Check out a clip from Michi Schweiger below

M2O - Preview

James Casey chats with Kai Lenny, running through the history of downwind foiling, then some recaps of the M2M and discuss the M2O.

Around 18min in, they discuss the tactics and the open question of what the strategy should be considering the 1 mile upwind pump section at the end, and how the pump played into the previous races. Kai discusses his relationship with Phantom, AFS, Kane etc around 30min and again at 49min - Kane’s foil felt ridiculously good!

Condition discussion at 40min. See some more tactical considerations here, swell, currents, flat water, gear. Far more variables than any of the other races!

This is an excellent primer to the race. Interesting!

Gerry Lopez (a surf legend) describes in the video below his experience paddling the M2O. Whatever craft, it is clearly an undertaking!

Here is clip of Kai running the downwind on the foil in 2018 with a few other competitors, after not being allowed in 2016 having just discovered the possibility of foiling downwind.

The Axis crew spotted sanding their foils for maximum glide. Will we see Axis with their first 1st place this weekend?

I’m sure most of the racers are glad to see some wind forecast, a 50km pump race would suit only a very few of the competition.

Cutting right is definitely still going to be on the cards! Have a look at this map to see the winds around the islands, including the pretty incredible wind eddy behind the main island.

See the University of Hawaii forecasting models as the updates come in for race day.

Gorge - Recap

The Gorge race went down in light conditions, and was an endurance pump race but with tactical elements around gear selection leading to a very competitive finish.

1 Gage Schoenherr 00:40:52

2 Finn Spencer 00:41:08

3 Ben Tardrew 00:42:00

4 Raiarii Fadier 00:42:21

5 Mateo Ell 00:42:48

Race winner Gage describes the event (slightly reduced for brevity, thanks Gage)

The conditions before the race were less than ideal for the gorge and the wind was up and down from 10-30KTS making it very difficult to choose the right foil. I ended up sizing up from what I was planning on riding …

At the start I got a perfect little bump and was right onto foil, Jack and Finn were to my left and right and I was able to take the lead a mile into the race. From there I just tried to keep my head down and maintain a good pace without blowing up the legs. I was able to work up a 30-45 sec gap in the middle which allowed me to rest a bit before the long flatwater pump into the finish

… it was a super demanding race with very little actual downwinding and a lot of pumping.

Gage was on an Armstrong 1125, Kane rode a bigger Gofoil and I guess the gamble didn’t pay off. Ben used a Code 860 R.

Here is a drone clip of the conditions, which to be honest look better than I expected!

Kalia Aguera’s second day downwinding, maybe we should all move to the Gorge for the summer, feels like anywhere else is just a battle!

Paddle Imua - Recap

It looks to have been a classic sprint race, Josh Ku captures the vibe. Results are as follows, with not much between them.

1 James Casey 28:03:00

2 Andrew Gibbons 28:25:00

3 Kai Lenny 28:43:00

4 Jeffrey Spencer 29:14:00

5 Oskar Johansson 29:32:00

Here is a rumour of how it went down:

James and Kai got up super quick. Andrew took a bit to get up. But then took an outside line and was reeling them in. Had the race gone on longer Andrew would've been overtaking them.

None of the foilers knew that you had to do the beach run up and through the gate. So James came through and was sitting in the water and everyone yelling at him to run and his heart rate spiked and he runs in. Could've been 20 seconds faster maybe if he hadn't stopped and started hanging out.
Now the reason that he was chilling in the water at the end. Edo tried to enter day of. But the event was so popular they hit their permit limit of 300 entries. So Edo couldn't officially get in. He ran the race course with everyone anyway and beat everyone. He came into the finish first, but didn't want to run up and through the finish gate because he wasn't officially entered. So when James came in officially 1st and saw Edo just sitting there, he was ready to just hang out there thinking the race was done.

Andrew on Lift, James on Code, Edo on small ART Pro. Kai on a larger Phantom than what he did M2M on. That's all I've dug up

Thanks to our roving reporters!

See the clip below for some cool footage from the race.

GBROC - Recap

It seems like the race went down in super marginal conditions, with 3hrs for the winner of the longer race. Tough conditions, but interesting to see that it is still viable and faster than most of the other categories. 45 km with little to no wind nor swell!

GBROC Results and Recap

Mini G Results and Recap

Foil Championships

Two more races, more points! Lift maintains the lead. Kane ahead but with 55 or more points for first place at M2O it is still wide open! As usual, no comments section on the list, but some commentary follows.

We got a request to do a Board Constructors Championship too which I’ll try add. Slightly trickier as a few people will have changed boards. I imagine a tight battle between KT and Kalama?

I’ve had a look at the pace (minutes per km) for the winners of each race, and the grouping is pretty interesting, note these would include the time off foil at the start, and the ends which often were flat water, so the average open water paces must be even faster!

1. M2M - 0:02:18

2. Kamalo - 0:02:18

3. Wetfeet - 0:02:19

4. Paddle Imua 0:02:33

5. Gorge - 0:03:10

Last time I asked for votes on M2O, I wonder if perhaps Edo was short-changed considering he is well within reach of the overall win, and seems to have let logistics get in the way of winning the Imua?

Light wind racing

Nearly all of the races this year have had seconds or at most minutes between the top 3. This indicates very healthy competition. I like the fact that the Gorge race in light winds was as competitive as the strong breeze days, but the results brought out some new names.

It would be cool to incorporate pump endurance as one aspect of the racing. James and Kai discuss SUP flat water racing in their chat, and the idea of making the course specifically challenging or tactical to choose the equipment stay on foil.

Having just watched the Tour de France I thought, maybe incorporating teams? Imagine a sprint finish with team lead outs for their sprinter who is on a faster foil. There are a bunch of interesting tactics - Drafting, Crosswinds, Sprint trains, Time cuts etc. Allez Allez Allez

Foiling could be an entirely new style of ocean racing. Imagine Grand Tour style team multi-day stage racing.

Foam Hits

Downwind logistics

Logistics is the biggest hassle of downwind, if you can’t find a train, what about Lake Garda in Italy where the wind switches 180 degrees every day in the summer. Can someone say Eurotour?

Finally there is a place where you can leave from one location, do a downwinder, wait for the wind to switch, and downwind paddle back to your original launching point. This is not a dream, Lake Garda, Italy has ideal conditions to accomplish this round-trip downwinder.

Hand paddles, parachutes, anything but a SUP paddle

If your foil chat group is like mine, besides logistics around coordinating sessions, the other primary topic of conversation is various novelty downwind popup techniques. I think these creative solutions are super interesting, and I hope to see more of them!

Hand paddles: Jordan shows how it’s done on the hand paddles. My most recent downwind run in 15 knots included a few attempts with the hand paddles, and I will say that they are easier than I expected to get the board going, and probably about as tricky as I expected to pop up. If you take the time to get the popup right, then I think it is totally viable for most. Interestingly I could quite easily get the board up to foil speed, more easily than the SUP for a big 1300 downwind foil

Parachute: A parachute, shown by Cynthia, it seems to have no directional pull. I see this as a way to reduce the need to pump once up on foil more than anything, as I would imagine in nuking conditions you wouldn’t struggle to get on foil, and because the pull is straight downwind, the power reduces the faster you go, as well as being less stable.

Kite: A kite as demonstrated by Sam has directional pull, meaning you can ride at an angle to the wind, reducing the issue of accelerating into the kite like with the parachute. Another benefit is that you can ride upwind with this.

Sail: I bought a used dinghy spinnaker for $10 and tried it twice on downwind runs. Primary issue at this stage is that it is both huge, unstable and has no directional pull. It pulls like a train though, and maybe if I use the paddle as a mast I can get it to work. Marginal at best.

Wing: Winging has all the benefits of the the above, but you’re left holding a big old wing:

Foiling Voyagers

Maybe not exactly what you’d expect on a foiling blog, but doing 600 mile upwind / downwind sends on a 50 foot offshore foiling yacht is pretty wild. Pushing 40 knots on the downwind section and barely sleeping for 4 days straight is quite a task. I sailed the Fastnet race in 2019 as a terrified crew and I can say that the downwind leg was exhilarating but the slog to get there was among the worst experiences I’ve ever had. Sea sick for 2 days upwind.

M2M addition

A wing recap of the M2M, with some cool footage of the start and commentary.

Board aspect ratios

I put together a list of downwind boards to simplify comparison. A theory: to simplify things I propose considering volume and then length to width ratio, ie aspect ratio.

I think most interestingly, the more recently released boards have gone longer and narrower. Weirdly, most brands are highest AR on their biggest boards.

Beyond this there is endless nuance in terms of appropriate board for conditions (nice guide from F-one), suitability for brands, track centrality etc but that is impossible to meaningfully aggregate. If you’d like to filter it, make a copy (File>Make a Copy) and apply the filters, and if you’d like to contribute, make a copy and add yours and send it to me!

Map contributions

If you have any cool runs to share, please contribute to the map. Or let us know of your crew and I’ll add them to the list (I’ll start a list). The map lives at map.dwfoil.com

I’ve been scouting out EU spots for a summer euro-tour trip next year (with some races?), so the map is coming along nicely for Europe.

I would like to supplement that with a few trade wind spots in the tropics. Did you know that the wind funnels between Bali and Java due to the trades accelerating between the mountains. Maybe a dwfoil retreat on the cards.

What did you think of this issue?

Prefer less links? Less instagram? More pictures? Feedback below please!

🌊🌊🌊 blowing 25 knots

🌊🌊 blowing 15 knots

🌊 blowing 5 knots

Questions for the comments section:

What are you working on in your DW journey?

Any advice on the latest breakthrough you’ve had?

In trying to keep up on the actual water, after seeing the various kites, hand paddles, parachutes and other novel ways of getting a foil going, I’ve found an old sail… let us see where that goes. Necessary as I keep pinging my shoulder overdoing it with the SUP paddle.

In growth news, we now have 105 subscribers and 2k views, it seems like there are a few people interested in anything to do with foiling, even this. Welcome everyone, and thanks!

Events, races etc

Recap - Molokai Holokai (M2M)

An impressive 88 foil entries, an even split between SUP and wing. It looked like an epic race, with a very close finish, top 3 within about 1-2 minutes of each other and coming down to the wire. This video has an incredible drone sequence of the start, recommend if you skip everything else, have a look at this clip from 7 minutes in.

SUP Open

I’ll do a top 5, some big names!

1. Kane De Wilde - 1:39:44 - KDMaui

2. Andrew Gibbons - 1:40:22 - Lift

3. Edoardo Tanas - 1:41:01 - Axis

4. James Casey - 1:43:41 - Code

5. Kai Lenny - 1:43:54 - Phantom

Debrief from James Casey below - who along with Kai Lenny took the straighter “SUP” line, which is the straightest line to avoid the current, but concedes that the deeper route into the channel with bigger bumps was faster. Inside was relatively flat and they were doing up and overs along the coast. Kai on possibly too small a foil.

Glassy bumps and cross wind into the finish leading to James passing Kai across the line and Kane beating Andrew. Finishing tactics lost Kai two positions according to James. Josh Ku describes the course here.

Check a very vibey video from Josh Ku, and another good one from Dylan.

SUP Women

Great to see 5 women competing and a very competitive finish, under 2 minutes between 1st and 3rd.

1. Annie Reickert - 2:02:02 - Lift

2. Olivia Piana - 2:02:11 - Axis

3. Gabriella Bella - 2:04:38 - GoFoil

Wing

The wing was less competitive with a very big gap to third. It seems Zane Schweitzer was under-foiled and struggled along the last stretch to finish 30 minutes behind 1st place. Great ride-along commentary from Giampaolo Cammarota, who reckons it was kinda light conditions. Is this Finn Spencer in the first clip of this video? Explains the lead. Serious power to weight ratio.

1. Finn Spencer - 1:14:44

2. Anderson Gallagher - 1:16:38

3. Livio Menelau - 1:33:15

Stats

Some random stats from the full results. The finishing of the top 25% of SUP Foil was pretty close, with a few groups forming.

Median age for SUP was 34, wing was 46. Judging from the below, the younger riders performed slightly better

Foil Championships

Round two completed and so now we can calculate some points. Lift with a lead. Kane ahead and Andrew well within reach!

The formula is as follows: Points for top 5 x Distance x number of entrants.

As you’ll note, there is no comments section on the standings list, as in life (there is commentary, however).

As you can see the number of entrants and the race distance impacts the weighting significantly. Impressive is that if we did a constructors championship for tails, Kane’s Marlin would probably already have won, even Kai Lenny was riding one. Kane rode his own foil on the M2O which I’ll describe as KDFoils until I get better info!

I’d like to do this for more events, more riders (maybe top 10) and more categories (wing, women) but honestly it is too time consuming to extend. 2024 will go big.

Rad People

On the back of the M2M, here are some completely unfounded and entirely irrelevant emoji based observations for the rest of the races.

Andrew Gibbon. Kane De Wild 👌

Dave Kalama, James Casey, Josh Ku, Olivia Piana 🤙

Oskar Johansson, Kai Lenny, Tomoyasu Murabayashi 🤔

Preview - The Rest of July

The Gorge Challenge has 25 entrants listed as starting this weekend on the US mainland. Supposedly quite a bit of travelling to get there and then back to Hawaii for the M2O. Kane is apparently heading over.

Great Barrier Reef Ocean Challenge in Australia joins DW month in July. Reported to have 15+ foilers racing in the Mini-G, 5 taking on the GBROC. James Casey was the only one to do the GBROC last year. Seems like a professionally organised event, lots of support craft and infrastructure. More details in the Casey Catchup.

Paddle Imua and then M2O to round out July. 43 entrants to the SUP Foil category of the M20, and a longer distance so more points available.

Foam Hits

When I named this section, I didn’t expect to see an actual frontside ollie on a downwind setup. kpfoils busts the first I’ve seen.

Another recap of the WetFeet Voyager race, this one showing the start.

A dangerous looking pair of sunglasses encounter an even more dangerous looking shark off Oahu. I didn’t know these prone senders had sharks to deal with.

Josh Ku surfing his new surf-rescue craft down the famous Maliko run. Classic style.

Wing or SUP

In the early days of this page I will try to cover both as much as possible, at least until some direction appears. I’ve surfed my entire life, and also kited back in the day and sailed offshore a lot, even recently learned to windsurf, I must be honest and say that while I’m slowly getting into wingding aka wang aka wind wing, I’m generally more interested in the wingless-downwind, primarily because I find the wing turns the bumps into moguls instead of the actual source of energy, but that is most likely because I can’t wing that well.

Bay runs

James makes an interesting point on bay runs, the favourite starting point for beginners. Obviously, but maybe not that obviously, if the wind dies, the bumps die instantly. Having never found any suitable bays on the North coast of Cornwall I’ve not managed any bay runs anyway, but I’m sure the bay-blessed among you may find this interesting.

Map contributions

• Greece - 3 fun looking runs from Dimitris Komninos around Athens. Having spent a bit of time sailing around Greece I am glad to hear there are some downwind routes being scouted. An abundance of islands, ferries, summer wind as well as being an incredibly appealing place to visit makes this a compelling stop on the Euro-tour in my mind.

• Australia - Some details on what must be one of the main Aussie downwind runs - Perth. Works most days in summer. Clean wind bumps with minimal groundswell. Stay inside the shark buoys. Greece first then 🦈

What did you think of this issue?

Prefer less click through links? Less instagram? More pictures? Feedback below please!

🌊🌊🌊 blowing 25 knots

🌊🌊 blowing 15 knots

🌊 blowing 5 knots

ps - I found out how to ride switch

Events, races etc

Voyager X Wet Feet - Recap

Over 100 people entered, slightly more SUP than wing. It looked like an epic race, with a very close finish, top 3 in both categories within about 1 second of each other and coming down to wire.

SUP

1. Kane De Wilde - 26:42 (Lift 90?)

2. Andrew Gibbons - 26:53 (Lift 110 HA)

3. Mala'e McElheny - 28:17 (Lift 110 HA)

Wing

1. Brian Tricarico - 27:45 (Gofoil)

2. Derek Hamasaki - 28:00

3. Eli Maioho - 28:34 (Gofoil)

   Full results

James Casey chats with Andrew Gibbon below. Andrew placed 2nd in SUP. They discuss board length, smaller foils, and how the race went. Andrew is doing 2 to 3 downwind runs PER DAY and then hitting the gym 6 days per week. Serious shit!

Andrew describes some of the big hitters from Hawaii and the secret senders. The race recap starts here. They had a big East groundswell and then a fresh South groundswell on the day, 25-35 mph wind, double overhead on the sets. Andrew has been doing SUP downwind for about 1 year, great progress!

Blue Planet Show chats through the race from a wing perspective. Lots of interesting stuff about the relative speed, Wing has to sail zig-zag lines while the SUP crew can pin it straight downwind. Highlights from the video: Kane hits a fish and still wins, advice is don’t use polarised sunglasses, also someone broke a paddle in the surf final stretch.

Looks like the wing foil and SUP foils were about the same speed to the finish, with a challenging finish in some decent surf and a few people missing the finish line. Apparently there was a prone format at the Voyager X Wet Feet? You could submit runs and the fastest time wins.

Paddle Imua - Preview

Another race added to the list, this time Paddle Imua on the 23rd of July, running the famous Maliko run on the North shore of Maui. Checkout the location here. As a regular human, this race looks hugely appealing. See some 2017 downwind foiling drone footage below.

For interest, here is their safety gear list:

• Leashes mandatory

• PFD, Whistle, VHF/Cell recommended

Gear and People

Editor’s note - we will try keep this unbiased and impartial. No one on the dwfoil.com team has any brand affiliation and will remain impartial (do try your luck though)

Lift dominated the Voyager X Wet Feet, Lift 110 HA X has been the choice for most according to Andrew Gibbon. Kane was on a 90.

Code foils will be one to watch, with James Casey having the best mix of experience foiling, downwind racing, pro athlete-ing in the mix (save for maybe Kai?).

Speaking of Kai, will Mr Lenny dominate on a Phantom foil? Looks possibly like they make the fastest foil on the market. Memory carbon?

Starboard has a single piece foil which should prove competitive in the wing races with Zane pushing them around. Maybe give Robert Stehlik a run on his Mikes Lab! Expect a flurry of competitively priced gear from Starboard this year. I saw a pre-release Starboard downwind board on the beach and it looked and felt great (light!).

Axis will have the unreleased smaller ART PROs for their team, Olivia Piana and Perth!

Josh Ku looked like he had a faster Unifoil prototype in one of his videos.

Oskar Johansson on Armstrong is probably a good dark horse for M2O points. He could pump the whole way if it goes flat.

James and Josh talk strategy here.

DWFOIL.COM Manufacturers Championships

There are a bunch of other brands, and an incredibly stacked lineup of competitors this year. I’ll be compiling a list of the results by foil brand, and at the end of the year announce a winner.

There will be points for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and each race will have a weighting - distance and number of entrants. M2O will probably need to be weighted double. If you’re an actuary please message me.

Foam Hits

World record foil

Olivia Piana completes the challenge, cruising with dolphins, avoiding orcas, backwash, boat fuel issues, riding into dusk. 20km/h for 14 hours. Incredible! How about the endless summer nights of the North Sea as a venue to better it? Imagine daylight is the primary constraint now.

Clips

More Downwind from Hawaii, Voyager Foiler making a compelling case for Maliko run

UK Downwind Race?

The UK is blessed with lots of wind and not much surf (sorry), the only issue is the lack of reliable and consistent wind. @gogfoiler has had a great idea to do a race. Critical is finding a spot that can take advantage of the prevailing Westerlies, deal with the South West blows, and not have too much ground swell which is usually at a crap angle. Bonus points if we can find a run that simplifies logistics with a train running along the coast! (e.g. in Marseille, thanks Olivia for the idea). If you are based in the UK and keen to know more, join the UK Downwind facebook group.

SUP vs Hand Paddles

How about this clip of knee paddles. I’ve fully committed to SUP but when I see clips like that it makes it clear that on a big slow foil, anything is possible. Incredible how despite the miss-steps, they were still able to get up. I’ve already felt the value of safety strokes while up on foil, and I would guess that is worth the hassle alone.

Map contributions

• A very appealing 10km run in North Wales, UK, reliable in typical UK winds, not much swell to contend with. Thanks @gogfoiler!

• Two runs in Tampa, Florida, thanks for sharing John Nguyen.

• Share your spots here

What did you think of this issue?

Prefer less links? Less instagram? More pictures? Feedback below please!

🌊🌊🌊 blowing 25 knots

🌊🌊 blowing 15 knots

🌊 blowing 5 knots

Questions for the audience:

1. What are you working on in your DW journey?

2. Should DW races run on a set date or have a waiting period?

3. What do you think of a prone shore-run race with self tracking via GPS watch?

Let us know in the comments or on Threads app

The Va’a is the most ancient boat in the world, used by the Polynesians to explore the islands of the Pacific

These are pretty capable of sending it in serious conditions, and from what I understand a fair few of the big names in foiling have come from a background of paddling these traditional craft.

The Hawaiian trade winds are the reason for all of the attention at this time of year, seemingly less predictable in recent years:

Where for years they came specifically out of the North East they are now adjusting to coming from a more Easterly direction and instead of buffeting the islands for perhaps 300 days a year they are now only providing about 220 days of wind. The velocity of the winds when they arrive are not changing and they seem to stay steady at between 5 and 20 MPH throughout the year with the possible exception of September and October when they will generally decline somewhat in wind speeds. As these winds funnel through canyons and valleys on the islands they can also have increased wind speeds and these areas of the islands often have constant winds at much higher velocities.

In general, Maui is the centre of attention, and has been for as long as people have been racing downwind.

Maui is the King of DW for the Hawaiian islands. Maui has more consistent wind then any other island, it's downwind runs are world class, …it's easy to hook up with guys or groups going because there's always someone doing it, downwind shuttles, etc. Maui has two awesome runs, if one isn't running, another always will

Check out the map for an indication of how the wind directions apply to the specific routes, and have a look at the list of events here, including a new one in Australia.

Progression Project and James Casey both have new podcasts specifically about the upcoming races, check them out for more info. Exciting to hear that according to James, pace is now generally measured in min/km and speed in km/h.

Race results

Kane de Wilde (@kdmaui) took first in the Voyager X Wetfeet Hawaii Downwind Challenge. Hosted by @voyager_foiler on Oahu, it looked pretty wild conditions, and challenged some experienced riders. See below post from Kane for some behind the scenes.

And here is a video clip of the event.

Full results screenshot from instagram stories. The event looked like a great warmup for the season. It seems like Lift foils dominated the race. Full results on the Wetfeet website.

Other news

1. @oliviapiana is paddling 275 km downwind to break the distance record, it seems like she has done it, or at least 250km based on her IG.

2. The downwind map is making a cautious but steady start, check it out at map.dwfoil.com

   1. @gogfoiler in the Menai strait in Wales, UK contributed an interesting looking but technical looking bay run

   2. @Maretasurf in Puerto Columbia contributed a super fun looking (and warm!) easy coastal run.

   3. If you’d like to contribute a run, checkout the google form and send the details. I’ll follow up soon with a post describing the full details.

   

3. I’ve created an instagram account for this page, primarily for me to see what is going on in the world of DW foiling. Ideally this newsletter will mean you don’t need instagram to keep up, and you can get a digest of content without the need to be bombarded by instagram reels (what is up with reels? 99% of them are just reposts of other’s reels. Can you “block” them once you’ve seen them?) I’ve got mixed feelings, IG is a pretty effective way to get people to share content from the moment, and allows true “crowdcasting” in that there was no media crew for the Voyager race, and yet it was covered effectively, and entirely by phone content. The downside is that unless you were on instagram that week, you will struggle to find many details as most of the reels have expired and it all is gated by Instagram. And nothing can embed IG clips so you need to watch them there.

Hopefully all of this is interesting, please leave feedback below if there is anything you’d like to suggest.

What did you think of this issue?

🌊🌊🌊 blowing 25 knots

🌊🌊 blowing 15 knots

🌊 blowing 5 knots

ps - if you’re feeling like you need a new DW challenge, why not try riding switch

Details of all the listed races can be found here.

Voyager X Wetfeet Hawaii Downwind Challenge

@voyager_foiler is hosting a downwind race on Oahu this weekend, it looks epic and exactly the kind of thing we like to see. Initiative + stoke = a good time! Course details here.

Molokai Holokai

The Maui to Molokai aka M2M. Somewhat unaware of any details of this race since it looks like it last ran in 2018, but it looks epic. Credit to Zane and Kai and the legends doing this in 2018, dragging those big foils across the channel.

SIC Gorge Challenge 2023

The Gorge is pretty well known to have some of the best bumps in the world due to the “wind over tide” effect of the wind blowing up the river, stacking bumps. Happening just before the M20, will there be a big entry list or are the more serious racers saving their legs and $ for the weekend following? Either way it is an interesting one.

M2O

Molokai to Oahu is pretty much the top deal, checkout Simeon and Casey discuss the details. This will be the premier event of the season, and with the exact outline of the course still to be finalised (or recently finalised?), this is sure to be an interesting battle of familiar names.

Open de France Downwind Foil

Last run in 2021, later this year we have the running of this race in Brittany, France. The French downwind scene is as strong as anywhere (outside of Hawaii), and promises to be an interesting race.

Details of all the listed races can be found here.