I am considering buying locally a used 6 ft surfboard and then trying to find a suitable mast and foil to attach to the bottom to learn how to foil behind a motorboat going slowly in a lake.
Can anyone recommend a generic affordable foil to start with? I weigh 200 pounds
I want to do this at about 10 mph as that is the speed of my small boat just before it goes over the hmp and onto plane. There is a huge swell while the boat is chugging through the water at that speed right off the rear corner of the boat.
Gong allvator xxl is cheap, slow but still good quality. Something like that would work for you.
Or clearwater foil if you like diy
I have foiled behind no less than 25 different boats ranging in size from 10 feet to sizeable tonnage at speeds up to about 22-23mph when my foil starts humming.
Any foil should work for the initial part of learning to get up and balance. If you are planning to surf the wake, make absolutely sure that you are only doing it behind an inboard!!!
Once you get better, the wake shape/size of the boat doesn’t matter especially if you use a long enough rope. But regardless of what boat, foil or speed, start with the longest rope you have.
BY FAR the easiest boats to learn behind are inflatable dinghies. I regularly ride behind two of mine (a 10ft and a 12 ft) with as little as 9.9hp. They skip across the water and disrupt it very little, the driver can turn around very quickly and easily to give you a million tries in no time, and because the boats are so light there is more give and take between you and boat. Getting up behind a dinghy is more like a negotiation rather than something like a heavy wakeboat where it is going to jerk you the heck out of the water with little regard for what is attached to the other end of that rope.
I have had far more luck teaching people to foil with the dinghy than using big boats when they are trying to figure out why this wing doesn’t work at all like the surfboards or wakeboards they have mastered.
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Also, at the very beginning it really helps if the driver knows how to foil. If they try to drag you around like you normally do on a surfboard it is going to be tough
A single front foot strap helps with learning, but make sure to pull out your foot when you are going to bail.
Frankly, efoiling is much easier to learn than towed foiling whether behind a boat or kite. There is something about being able to very precisely control the speed and play with lifting onto the foil that you get to do with a controller in your hand. It doesn’t work at all like that with a kite or a boat… and yes, even boats with the fancy $800 wristband that lets you wirelessly control the speed!
Don’t have any expectation that you will be throwing the rope and surfing and pumping in and out of the wake like the guys on YouTube in your first season. All of that is much harder than it looks. It is quite challenging, but very rewarding when you get the hand of it.
I did that very same thing except I used a wakesurf board instead of a surfboard. I used a Naish surf wing. They are on sale for about $550 for the entire setup at their online store.
My buddy who is about 245 lbs used the board successfully on his first attempt (he knows how to get up on a wakesurf board). The problem is the mast plate. At your weight, I would expect the board to start cracking at the mast plate within 1 hr of use. I ended up cutting out part of the board and glassing in a wooden box that allowed me to mount the mast. That lasted until I built my Efoil board. I’m not sure on the long term viability of this setup but it seems solid right now. Obviously if you buy a wakesurfboard designed for a foil it will last but now you are spending $1500.