Topics

46

Classifieds / Axis foils for sale

« on: August 05, 2021, 05:05:08 PM »

Complete intermediate setup--ready to bolt-on and go with two wings and two fuselages that are perfect for general riding and downwind. Foils surf or wingfoil--these are goto setups for intermediate riders. If no one wants the full setup within five days I'll be willing to part out.

900 wing--semi virgin, used twice, no scratches. Primo--with cover  Retail: $533  --        Ponoprice  $260
1010 Wing Great for downwind or cruising. Lots of reef rash, Kanaha is cruel. $671         Ponoprice  $320
Standard fuselage--use standard to pump, glide or learn $351 std                                  Ponoprice  $175
Short fuselage --turns quicker $310 short                                                                     Ponoprice  $150
440 Stabilizer--easy trimming for 900 wing--with cover $205                                         Ponoprice  $100
75 CM 19 mm aluminum mast. This is the stiffest mast I've tried. Stiff is good. $108       Ponoprice  $50
19mm Aluminum mast base for tracks. $108                                                                Ponoprice  $50
screws--precoated with tefgel. Does not include base screws and T-nuts  $65                 Ponoprice  $20
Retail: $2352                                                                                                            Ponoprice  $1105
Buy it all: $1000 plus shipping  Includes Axis Kit bag as well as covers and Torx drivers   $1000


Like a Virgin. When I got the 900 I was too fat and too slow to use it, so it languished in its cover except for two sessions and NO scratches. Rare among my wings.



Another angle. Lovely wing. No, the KTM390 is not for sale.



The 440 stabilizer is more like the rest of my wings and stabs. Nothing super nasty, just reef and rock rash.



Short fuselage, and standard fuse with wings attached





1010 wing. My goto downwind wing until I got the 1150 and the 1300. The 1010 actually glides better than the 1150 but doesn't turn as quickly. Some rash, some of the scratches are too deep to sand out. If you're OCD about wings being pretty then this isn't for you but there no effect on performance that I can detect.

47

Classifieds / The hobo wing fleet is for sale

« on: August 01, 2021, 08:04:28 AM »

I have 3.5, 4.2 and 5.0 F-one V1 swings that are surplus to my needs. All have minor canopy tears that have been professionally repaired. All work just fine. $300 each or $800 for all three. In Hood River available for pick up, or you pay shipping.

48

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Impact vest/harness/leash

« on: July 19, 2021, 06:46:01 PM »

Several people have asked me about my impact vest with a reel leash and a wing harness hook added. For me, it’s an ideal combination. The sewing looks like works of primitive man because I used my wife’s sewing machine in Maui instead of the brutal TuffSew in Maui. The combination is easy to use, does everything I want it to, and it’s both slimming and gives me abs. I may start wearing this all the time under my shirt.



I got the reel assembly and belt from Blue Planet and the hook from NSI. The reel was a bit floppy on the belt, so I riveted it onto the impact vest with the heads of the rivet on the inside for cruising comfort.

The belt had a plastic buckle–I’m not a fan of those for anything important, so I replaced it with a stainless steel loop that reverses the velcro and holds well. When I return to Maui and get into bigger surf I’ll add a safety strap, but for now, this is fine.

I set up the belt so the hook is held between the buckle and the loop. The second loop will be for the safety strap, which will work as the third flap on a surf leash rail saver.

Here's a little video:

49

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Nuking at the WTF level

« on: July 15, 2021, 08:11:12 AM »

I thought the beginning of the week was full of tasty gorge nuking treats. I didn't realize it was just a warmup for yesterday. I had a pretty good idea it was going to be crazy when I carried my board down to the water--it was difficult to hang on to it. The parking lot at the event center was nearly empty, there were only a few people on the grass and no kitesurfers on the spit. One lone windsurfer in the water doing about mach 3. One kiter. No wingers. I put that mostly down to it being early and I blew up my 3.5 and headed out.

I should have known. As my friend Tony Garmey says about challenging race tracks "that separates the sheep from the goats". He's from New Zealand. No, I don't really know what that means either but it seemed about right.

Yikes. Crazy wind. Like 35 gusting to WTF. I did a few passes on the edge of control and quite a bit past it. I started wearing my goofy Spartacus helmet the day before after my board blew over my head twice following some over foiling face plants and the foil went past my ear with a fairly loud whizzzzzz. Earth to Bill--this is your last warning. Wear the fucking helmet. I was glad I had it on.
I was up on my tiptoes going over every swell, very hard to keep the board under control. The gusts were so strong that they shoved the board around under my feet. 3.5 meters was much too big.
I went in and pumped up my 2.8. This little toy is so rarely used the price tag was still on the bag. I headed for the channel up by the bridge. My plan was a nuclear upwind/downwind. About halfway there my little toy got ripped out of my hands by a gust. It hit the end of the leash and just stayed there like a patient poodle. I had more than enough power to stay up on the foil with the wing tugging on me. "Hey look at me, I'm doing a Chris Anderson." Of course, Chris does that every day, and he does it on purpose, but still...

I reeled the little bugger in and it started darting around like the poodle suddenly got rabies. I managed to get the handles and continued up the river. When I got to the hatchery the swells we so monstrous that it was hard to go upwind. With virtually no one around to do body recovery the entire enterprise started seeming unwise, so I downwinded back up the river. I was back at the EC in a flash. A few other wingers and windsurfers showed up. I mowed the lawn with occasional forays to the bridge, but my wing got blown out of my hands twice more (this thing is about the size of a pillowcase) and I started getting cramps in my back leg, so I bailed after about two hours. Gregg Leion (Covesurfer) came by and gave me shit about the size of my wing. If it looks tiny to Gregg, it's megatiny. I have boardshorts that are bigger.

I went back for a second session in the late afternoon and found a much lighter wind. So light that most folks were on 4.2-5.0 with the lighter folks on 3.5. I blew up my 6.0 and had a blast. What a great wing that thing is. The wind kept dropping and I was having a great time, though I kept getting sloppier. My Switchfoot jibes are coming along well, but after an hour or so I didn't make any. I kept losing the turn and splashing down. Commit, dammit!

I came in after about two hours of playing. The wind still looked good for my monster wing. But I was beat. I woke up with leg cramps, ab cramps, and arm cramps about four times last night. Oh well, the cost of doing business.

50

Random / Everybody crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man...

« on: July 04, 2021, 01:38:28 PM »

Thank whatever that my wife likes me, even though I'm not a sharp-dressed man. But it would be nice if she, and for that matter, my daughters, would be a little kinder with their comments. I appeared downstairs this morning dressed to wingfoil. Board shorts, vintage (old) SUP Cup shirt, and geezer compression socks topped off with the requisite "Paddle With Riggs" fluorescent hat. She dove for her camera to record the moment for posterity. "you look like the last of the Rajneeshees". At least she couldn't complain about my color coordination.

51

Windfoiling, Windsurf Foiling / Packs of wimmen

« on: July 04, 2021, 09:15:33 AM »

When windsurfing was a big thing Hood River was the standard all-male sausage fest (with rare, stupendously gorgeous exception). My friends and I used to call it the "never gonna get laid" club. Spend your weekends dredging the river with a pack of other male lunatics, sleeping in your car, and smelling funny at breakfast at Bette's instead of strutting like a peacock in Portland nightclubs and your success percentage with the fairer sex is inevitably down to the single digits at best. One might expect the same thing with wingdings. One would be flat-out wrong. At Luhr Jensen yesterday there must have been 50 wings on the lawn at any one time, and a large percentage belonged to women. Lovely, fit, rapidly progressing women wingdingers.

Seriously? The gods are definitely screwing with me. Here I am, 74, married to the love of my life, and mostly harmless anyway, and I'm in a sport being taken over by packs of women.

Joking aside, it's very nice to see. What's not so nice is that they are getting very good, in tough conditions, much faster than I ever did.

52

Random / Oyster Pan--who knew?

« on: July 01, 2021, 07:07:59 AM »

On a whim, I bought a cast iron oyster pan from Sur La Table. Well, actually from Amazon. I like barbequed oysters a LOT.

The heavy buggah arrived the day after I made a too-large pot of salmon and clam whatchagot chowder, effectively cleaning out all the slowly composting leftovers in the refrigerator (too late for a lot of stuff, but just in time otherwise). The unlikely combination of the carcass of a hefty whole Alaskan sockeye salmon for the stock and meat (I cooked the filets for a dinner with CoveSurfer and his much more charming wife a few nights before), a container of frozen chopped clams, pureed parsnips, pan-roasted corn off the cob, some yellowed broccoli, some wrinkly russet potatoes, and heavy cream that was turning to creme-not-so-Fraiche turned out to be amazing, but needed a hearty companion. The biscuits I made the first night weren't quite up to the match. So I made cornbread in my new Oyster pan. Awesome.  So awesome that it's been my lunch and sometimes dinner for the four days Diane has been gone on a ladies' golf trip. Yes, I revert to a grubby bachelor as soon as her car leaves the garage.



So yeah, turns out a cast iron oyster pan is great for corn bread sticks, but last night I froze the last serving of chowder and shucked two dozen oysters from Roseauers. No, oysters 'r' NOT in season, and these were a bit gunky. A little extra time in the barbeque with lemon butter and some Josephson's flaked sea salt and I was very glad I didn't have dinner guests. 24 oysters were gone in an embarrassingly short time. My oyster pan is a new treasure.

53

General Discussion / Rest in peace, Gregg Noll

« on: July 01, 2021, 06:49:02 AM »

A life well lived and an inspiration to oversized surfers everywhere.

54

The Shape Shack / Preventing footstrap insert leaks

« on: June 26, 2021, 10:18:57 PM »

My wing board was sitting in the sun and I noticed bubbles in two of the strap insert holes. Damn, I know better. The five-hole inserts that are commonly used just adhere to the deck with a little fiberglass and only eps under them to support them. If you step on them with no strap attached you risk cracking them away from the deck. I usually put a screw and washer in the first and last hole of every insert strip to keep them tight to the deck. It also helps to poke some gorilla glue in the holes and then spray them with water. The foamed glue doesn't keep you from using the inserts later. I'll put screws in tomorrow. For custom boards, I generally specify no inserts and just stick NSI inserts like the one shown exactly where I want them.

55

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Make and Mend Day

« on: June 26, 2021, 08:50:21 AM »

No wind in the Hood, No surprise since the Black Snake is in town. But I decided to do some mods to my wing foiling gear. I bought the Blue Planet reel leash recently, and I like it, but even with the loops I sewed onto my impact vest it's kind of floppy. A stiffer belt might solve that, but decided to rivet it to the vest. The loops look like I was learning to use a sewing machine while I did them, but it was my wife's fancy-schmancy Italian sewing machine in Maui and it didn't do neoprene and nylon strap very well. As goofy as the top of the stitches look, the bottom is far worse. I decided lots of stitches was the answer. While I was at it I ditched the plastic buckle (not a fan) and replaced it with a stainless steel loop I filched from a spare Da Kine Maniac belt. I added an NSI plastic hook between the loop and the vest so It won't get lost (The steel loop can be wriggled through the 2" slot, but not without a lot of fiddling--it's not going to happen by accident). I used my el cheapo but mega tough TuffSew machine so the stitching looks less like works of primitive man. Still not the neat work I'm capable of, but not super fugly.





Then I inspected the leash extension. It uses plain nylon string for the end loops, dipped in some kind of rubberized stuff. Looks good, but I could see that under the rubber gook the nylon looked floppy. I suspected it was frayed inside so I attached it to my bench and pulled on it. It broke fairly easily, and yes, frayed inside the goop where it couldn't be seen. I tried a couple of ways to replace the gooped nylon loops with spectra, but finally gave it up and replaced the entire shock-corded extension. More work for the TuffSew. What a monster. I'm sure it would sew my finger to the straps if I wasn't careful. I don't think these are being imported anymore. Too bad, great machine.


Then I went home to make dinner for the Black Snake (Greg Leion AKA Covesurfer), his charming wife Marcia Leion. Their gay dog Eddie also attended dinner (hey guys, no shame, just let him screw Zack with pride) but I didn't make any salmon for him.

And yes, I'm gonna make someone a great wife someday.

56

Random / Steve Gates Memorial Ribbon Cutting

« on: June 14, 2021, 08:49:28 AM »

I went to a nice ribbon-cutting ceremony at the memorial for Steve Gates last evening--a tastefully done piece of public art and architecture at Frog Beach in Hood River. It was pouring rain and I'd just got out of the river after a cold wingfoiling session. For some reason I decided my shorty spring wetsuit was appropriate for the three-hour session, so I was chilled to the bones. Diane came for the ceremony--she was going to walk, but when she saw how hard it was raining, she decided to drive. Good choice--we would have both been standing there wet, cold, and shaking. If I'd shot this picture it would be blurred. Fortunately, she was warm, dry, and steady.

Steve was such a great guy, we all miss him. A good-sized group gathered despite the rain--big fat drops pounding down. Then this happened.

57

Random / Punched full of holes

« on: June 10, 2021, 07:16:22 PM »

Went to see the dermatologist today. They found it necessary to biopsy four places on my head and chest. I planned to leave the docs and head for the river--it looked perfect for the new 6M. Foiled! but not the good way. Getting old continues to be a pain in the ass, though this time it was the face.

On the bright side, I had an extensive physical for my car racing license (I'm going to do the Kastner Cup race in Portland in July, and then retire). The doc says to keep doing what I'm doing, most of his patients above 70 don't or can't do anything physically taxing and their blood test results are horrible. I'm mid range on about everything.

58

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / New three-strut 6.0 f-one Strike

« on: June 09, 2021, 05:56:45 PM »

I got the new three-strut strike 6.0 today. Big Winds was doing a demo day so I went down to the hook to try it. The Hook is actually a shitty place to wing foil, there's a big dead spot from Wells Island, it's shallow in spots (sediment gook) and when you clear the dead spots the wind swirls in every direction. Other than that, perfect.

At first, I thought the wing was kind of hard to handle, but ten minutes in I started McLovin' the thing. Tons of power, and so controllable. There were som big swells and I was going to flag it to ride them, but instead I one-handed the thing in the middle of my fake boom and rocketed downwind, like a monster spinnaker. Silly fun, though I overfoiled and shot right into the middle of the thing. No damage, but as I was flying into the canopy I thought "oh great, I'm going to blow this thing apart the first day I have it.

It goes upwind like all the strikes--you've got to whip it. But when I did I went from the hook to the downriver side of the hatchery in one mega-close hauled swoop. I was hiked out as far as I could with the 76cm mast, I'm pretty sure I had a wingtip out of the water.

I made a few jibes, which is always a surprise, but the best one was a super-tight 180 that I did by basically hanging on the fake boom and whipping the board under me. I have to work on the one, it felt really great and it seemed easy.

For a first day with a new wing in whacked conditions this was all pretty epic.

59

Sessions / Toasted where the sun don't shine

« on: May 22, 2021, 09:58:49 PM »

I managed to get a sunburn today--3 days left on Maui and I get a burn!!! I forgot my rashguard, didn't want to wear a neoprene shirt (hot) or my spring suit (hotter) so I just did a long, long session with my impact vest on. Exacerbating the problem is that this exposes some areas of me that not only haven't been exposed to much sun, but they also have no hair and never tan--a little reminder of one of my stupid accidents, sliding along highway 30 at 85mph in my jeans and a flannel shirt. My safety gear was bungee-ed to the rack on my motorcycle and managed to work its way free and tangle in the chain. I wound up in the emergency room in Tillamook getting road tar scrubbed out of huge abrasions with plastic brushes. I can't recommend the process.

Anyway, those spots don't tan. Fortunately, only one area was exposed, which is good for everyone at the harbor since two major ones are my butt cheeks.

60

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Fake boom and a new dipshit idea

« on: May 16, 2021, 08:13:15 PM »

I've had more than a few people ask me about how to make these. It's so simple I made my latest one in less than 30 minutes, including an addition sure to cause derision. I wanted a  minimal one for winging without a harness, so I did this:



My current fake boom is above with the harness lines on it. The new one is below and here I'm adding strips of self-adhesive velcro to the sections that will attach to the handle. I leave the middle section empty. This boom will have no excess length. Previously I used the loop velcro to attach to the boom. this left a bit of excess hook velcro, so this time I used that. I thought it might be less comfortable, but it's not.



Once the Velcro is in place I wrap hockey tape over the end and throughout the middle to keep the velcro from lifting and to add grip for one-handing. I don't like boom grip. I like to keep my fingers open and hold the handles and boom with my fingertips.



Here's the dipshit part. This is a short chunk of KeNalu shaft and I have an old beat up KeNalu xtuf blade. I cleaned up the inside of the shaft and the ferrule of the blade and got a nice, tight fit.