Heyho. First of all your building strategy sounds good for me, i had the same (no) experiences in surf/foil/watersport and my first build in 2019 worked great from the beginning.
I would recommend a Flipsky 65161 120kV with a 75/200 vesc, a 12s-16s battery and the 80$ Maytec remote, you can’t really go wrong with that setup.
@superlefax an i just finished and tested our Surf’n’Destroy “shortcut” to an efoil which works pretty great. I would say the components we used are maybe the best match if you compare price and performance. You’ll find an accurate BOM in this thread.
Good Luck