Another year and another whirlwind race season (or 9 days in my case) in Hawaii. A wonderful convergence of amazing people in some of the best downwind conditions in the world. Being in Hawaii during the race period is one of my favourite times of the year as I get to catch up with friends and make new ones thanks to this amazing sport. This blog took a while to write as I couldn’t really find the time to sit down and put my thoughts down for a while and really just wanted to enjoy some cruisey foiling for a couple of weeks. 

This is a follow on from my parawing blog post and aims to cover some of the core skill sets that make up downwind foiling (independent of means of getting on foil – plus some specifics for different ways to get on foil). I wanted to write this post as something has been nagging away in the back of my mind for a while and it’s something I’ve been scratching my head about for a while. Gear is getting better. Yet the learning curve for people learning to downwind doesn’t seem to be getting any quicker (maybe the opposite?)…. So why is that? 

Ok, I never wrote a 3 foil quiver blog for March because March wasn’t great for wind so I didn’t have much to write about and ended up a bit busy in April and May. However in April I received not one, but 2 parawings to see what all the hype was and to finally follow up on my last parawing blog post. Both of these parawings work great, so I’m not really going to go into the differences between them (I’ll leave that for the parawing connoisseurs). Now that I’ve had a good amount of time on them, I plan to talk more about the usage of parawings from a downwinding and learning to downwind lens rather than ‘which is best’. The parawings I have are the Flow D-wing 4.2m and the Ozone pocket rocket 3m.

Continuing on from my last post – here’s a quick recap of the foils I decided to use in Feb:

So Dave posted this video about what foils he would choose for a 3 foil quiver which I really enjoyed as this is something I started playing with in December last year. I think it really helps me understand ideal use cases for certain foils (for what I like and my conditions) and it’s also has helped push me a bit outside of my comfort zone with some foils (both over foiled and underfoiled) which is also fun! So what have I been riding? For the last 2 months I’ve been riding a ‘forced’ 3 foil quiver for all disciplines (680R, 850S, 1130S) with a bit of free reign on the fuse / stab combos but primarily using the short fuse and 142 (though more recently also with the XS and the 135) and I think I’m going to continue with a 3 foil quiver ‘challenge’ for the next couple months to get me riding foils that maybe I wouldn’t have grabbed as often. But before I get into February’s quiver, I’ll explain the logic behind my current quiver. 

So you may have seen me posting on instagram about a leaderboard site (https://race.downwind.app/) that my buddy Sibren built. Originally it started as a leaderboard for a part of a local run for a bit of fun, but Sibren quickly realised that this leaderboard was scaleable and we started adding more runs globally (first through our network, and now by promoting it more on social media). This blog post aims to go through some of the ‘basics’ about the leaderboard – but in general we hope that it drives community engagement in all the various DW locations, a bit of friendly rivalry and can possibly even end up as a tool for local events or challenges.

So, another year of racing has passed, we’ve seen plenty of growth in the sport with more races and events and we’ve seen the level well and truly elevated. An element of physicality has been added in addition to the already high skill requirements, that in my opinion adds more credibility to the professionalisation of the sport. Before I go any further in this blog though, I want to add that none of my opinions or statements target any individuals (so if you feel like this is directed at you, it’s not, it’s a generalised view) and also that they are just my opinions based on my perspective. I welcome criticism (in a constructive manner) and debate, but more on that later.

The days are getting shorter as we enter autumn, which despite no longer having the chance of downwinding daily like i did when i worked month on / month off, does increase the likelihood of great sessions when I can go. However, with the change of seasons comes a drop in temperature. I for one am a fan of the colder sessions, but with the cold also comes an added set of considerations when it comes to safety.

So the parawing movement is in full flow and I thought I’d write my thoughts on it primarily focused on its use case as an alternative starting method (upwind ability for me for the focus of this blog is irrelevant) and for learning to DW. I’ll start with my disclaimer: I haven’t used one yet as I don’t want to pay that much for a parawing + shipping + import to the Netherlands, so if any brands want to let me try one, get in touch!

So this is a long one, but Hawaii and the Koa Kai Triple crown… what a blast! For those that don’t know what the Koa Kai Triple crown is, it is the combination of the three main Hawaiian SUP foil downwind races (M2M and M2O are arguably the biggest races in the SUP foil DW race calendar at the moment) combined into an overall championship. The packed timeline meant that foilers flocked to Hawaii for an intense week of prep, racing and good times with Paddle Imua (12km) kicking things off on Sunday the 14th of July, followed by Maui to Molokai (M2M) on the 19th of July (just over 40km) with the pinnacle of the racing week being Molokai to Oahu (M2O) on the 21st of July (just over 60km). The overall title was determined based on the total time across all three races with a multiplier / weighting applied to each making the total time for the Koa Kai title = Paddle Imua Time + 2 x M2M time and 3 x M2O time. I think this is great as it rewards your performance based on the difficulty of the race. In this blog I’ll reflect a bit on my experiences in each of the races and my time in Hawaii.

So…Code foils…

So one month in on my Code gear and I’ve managed to get a decent few runs in on the foils, along with a chance to race them in Barcelona at the BCN SUP World fest. I originally planned to do a video overview to go with the blog, but work and time got the better of me. I wanted to keep this blog to a ‘first impressions after a month’ so will just publish the blog. I will do my best to try create a video overview of my thoughts on my quiver in the near future.