Standup Zone Forum

The Foil Zone => Prone Foiling, Surf foiling, Pump Foiling => Topic started by: SUS4Life on May 28, 2021, 10:29:58 AM

Title: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: SUS4Life on May 28, 2021, 10:29:58 AM
I saw this guy yesterday at my local foil spot.  He was catch the small bump way inside the rivermouth.  I was like wtf, what the hell is that thing.  Luckily someone was able to interview the guy who built it cause there isn't much info anywhere.  I surprised with the heavy batteries on the top that it doesn't flip upside down or maybe its self righting??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9z6BP8Y42U&t=64s

Found a bit more info on it:
https://foil.zone/t/electric-tow-boogie/9844/24
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: surfcowboy on May 28, 2021, 07:24:29 PM
There are few here in LA and more on the way. Super fun and no, they do flip over sometimes.

We’ve been talking about making a sort of jet ski looking hull so that the batteries could be in the bottom and self right.

Super fun little things. They inspire joy.
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: Califoilia on May 28, 2021, 07:37:10 PM
So that video is from Sept. 2020, and I think Merten (the guy shooting the video) has since built one, and another guy Tom, has since built two of them...one which he sold to another guy - Jason - who was out a Sano with it today, and created a funny story.

So Jason's out with it, and uses it to tow himself into waves, and then lets go of the rope while surf foiling, and the boogie just sits outside until he paddles back out to it. On one of those runs, a guy walking the beach, sees the tow boogie just sitting there, and thinks it a foiler who's down in the water hurt.

He then runs up the beach, and starts asking me if I have any binoculars to see if the "guy" needs help, because now another foiler is paddling over to "him". I had binoculars back in my van, but before I turned to go get them - since it was hard to see what was that far out in the water - Jason was back at the boogie, grabbed the rope, and took off again with it towing him back out to search for another wave. 😅

I laughed, told the guy who and what it was, and he felt kind of silly and embarrassed...but I reassured him that it did really look like someone was down in the water and not moving.

Later in the morning when Jason and I were headed back down to the water - Jason w/o the tow boogie that had run out of battery - I shared the story with him, and after he got a good chuckle about it...did say that he had been kicking around the idea of putting a tall flag on it just so it can be seen better by other foilers should it happen to start floating closer to the line up, and I think this is going to be the final push to get that done finally. 👍🏽👍🏽
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: MikeLima on December 29, 2021, 11:11:39 AM
Has anyone tried to do this with an efoil like Damien Leroy?

https://youtu.be/ljj0YkaPlMo

He flipped his fuse front to back, but for my takuma it seems easier to flip it upside down. Any reason why it wouldn’t work that way? I’m planning to use it to get a lot of pumping practice in. Eventually tie into waves when I know I can pump back out.
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: flkiter on December 29, 2021, 04:47:25 PM
You can take the foil off and put a trim tab on the bottom of the mast. Attach the rope to the mast base to help keep it from coming out of the water. One of the Foilers in Cocoa Beach does this technique and it makes it easy to get towed into waves.
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: PonoBill on December 29, 2021, 09:40:14 PM
Yeah, I did that with my takuma efoil, it was okay, but not what I really want which is something I can downwind with. I'm building that.
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: PonoBill on December 30, 2021, 09:27:58 AM
Yeah, I did that with my takuma efoil, it was okay, but not what I really want which is something I can downwind with. I'm building that.

I used my Takuma at Doheny to catch waves on the far outside reef. I caught a really nice unbroken wave and rode it almost all the way back to the beach. When I paddled back out I couldn't find the eFoil--took me more than an hour of searching to spot it. The Takuma I have sits very low in the water and the colors are too muted to help spot it. I actually found the tow rope first, and still couldn't see the Takuma--I thought it had sunk until I started pulling on the rope. I added a flag and an extension off the back to make it steer better, but it made the board wheelie a bit and torque steer. It takes some fiddling to get the pull just right so the eFoil is controllable. Reversing the fuselage works if that's feasible for your setup. I ran mine with no foil on it and the rope attached as a bridle to the rear of the board and to the bottom of the mast. It works, but if you get throttle-happy it wheelies out.
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: MikeLima on December 30, 2021, 10:44:30 AM
I might put a flag on it, and a box to hold an anchor and rode, since I might use it just to take me to breaks that I paddle into. I’m thinking of using my 750 upside down, maybe shim the front of the mast base, since I’m not currently using it yet for anything else…but I like the bridle to the bottom of the mast idea….
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: PonoBill on December 30, 2021, 06:18:58 PM
I've got the core software working, meaning the navigation system knows how to aim a servo to go towards the user's GPS location. I walked around the garage holding the user's LoRa/GPS/blah, blah and it followed me. Yay! Turning the motor on and off is trivial, but now I need to make sure it doesn't run me over. Calling this navigation is a wild exaggeration. It will only work in a situation where there is nothing between me and the boogie. But that describes most of a Viento run and all of a Maliko or Southside run. Yes, with a big bend in a river it can run aground. I'm not building self-driving, I'm building "find me and don't run me over", or perhaps better yet--"stick with me kid. We're goin' places".
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: Pasquales on September 22, 2022, 01:50:17 PM
Looks like Takuma has jumped into the "tow buddy" market.  The product looks nice, and probably not cheap based on the weight of the darn thing (75 kg, 165 lbs ). 

https://takuma.com/en/accueil/308-etow.html (https://takuma.com/en/accueil/308-etow.html)
Title: Re: Electric Tow Boogie
Post by: PonoBill on September 24, 2022, 09:09:22 AM
12K Euros??  You could buy two cheap jetskis for that. I guess I should get off my ass and finish mine, though summer is over and my time in the shop is limited.
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