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kite foiling cook strait


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Choppy seas and a collision with a shark didn’t stop Brian Walters and Justin Grobler completing the first-ever kite-foil double-crossing of Cook Strait at the weekend.

The duo set out from Makara Beach on Saturday morning in a light northerly and finished the 68 kilometre return trip in 2 hours and 58 mins, averaging almost 23.2 kmh.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/300264906/cook-strait-tamed-by-foiling-kite-surfers

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There is so so much going on in the foiling space at the moment. I can see it totally eclipse yacht racing.

I was watching a couple of moths tearing around Manly last night, and pondering my stoush with Tamure about the cost of racing sails for keel boats (sorry about that Tamure). For a bit more than the price of a black square top for a 35 fter, you can get a black square top on a boat that can go 2 or 3 times faster than the 35 fter, be $20k / yr cheaper to operate and maintain, and not have to worry about coordinating  half a rugby team of crew just to go for a sail. If you really want, you can line up against several AC skippers one on one as well (refer to Foil Week boI in Racetalk).

Throughout the white pinhead / black square top discussion, I'd overlooked the fact I have a black squaretop. It cost me under a $1,000 new, and I'm using it 2 or 3 times a week. Consistently getting 13 - 14 knts, which is twice as fast as typical speeds on the yacht requiring my $40k sail wardrobe. And at 13-14 knts I am slow, am still learning. I'm hoping to be foiling in 2-3 months, and total outlay would be $6-$7K. Should be able to achieve speeds of 20knts with that outlay, and 30knts with some poosher gear - budget another $5k on top of the $6-7k to get to 30 knts.

Can rig up in 10 minutes, compared to about an hr for my yacht. Starting to wonder why I own the yacht, especially now I need to sort out the antifoul again...

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