Florida

I’ve been fortunate to get in the water almost every day since I drove south on December 20th. There was a strong N/NW forecast for Northern Florida and I was treated to an incredible side-offshore wave kiting session with a friend in Jacksonville. I was lucky to get access to the Mayport Navy Base where they have a dedicated kite spot with a large jetty sticking out into the ocean. N/NW is slightly offshore here, but travels over land with very few obstacles which resulted in very clean wind. I hadn’t kited side-offshore wind from the left before, and it felt incredible to make backside turns with the kite pulling me perfectly down the line of the wave. The 7m Ozone Reo was perfect for this day with winds averaging 30 mph and I was riding my 5’7” KT Driver kite surfboard. I couldn’t believe how cold it was and needed a 4/3 full suit with a neoprene hoody on top.

Wind wasn’t consistent for my first week in Vero Beach but I made the most of each day practicing surfing and working on foil dock starts for the first time. I was surprised by how close I was to nailing the dock starts during my first session and finally started to ride away pumping the foil after 3-4 sessions of about 20 attempts each. I used a 42L 4’10” KT Wing Drifter with Axis Foils 1010 front wing (1458 sq cm area), 75cm mast, short fuselage, and 440 tail. If I could choose any gear to make learning dock starts easier, I’d use a larger front wing for extra lift, a smaller (thinner) board to shave weight and provide a more direct connection to the foil, and a longer fuselage for more powerful pumping. I started with the foil all the way forward in the box, thinking I needed all the lift I could get, but this seemed to just make the foil stall and my first successful attempts happened after I moved the foil to my standard wing/prone position (about 25% back from the front of the track). There are also tutorials online for building a frame to hold your board up and out of the water, which should make takeoff much easier (YouTube). I am still dialing in my foil pumping and my two pieces of advice are to make sure each pump is “lifting up” instead of “pushing down” into the board, and to be sure that you are pumping with your momentum going forward instead of just bouncing up and down. Damo & Gwen have released a great foil pumping tutorial you can watch here.

My surfing has continued to improve as well and I’m glad I picked up the sport at age 29. I grew up on Long Island Sound in CT, where there are almost never surfable waves, and spent my college years in Vermont. For years I had excuses not to learn the sport in my head such as crowds, sharks, how much easier it is to learn as a kid/small person, the cost of buying more boards and the fact that surfing is more of a cold-weather sport in New England (since our Summers rarely feature much swell). After getting beat up in chest to overhead conditions my first two days in Florida, I started to find success again on 2-3ft days at Fort Pierce Inlet Park. The sense of accomplishment when you catch a wave is huge and the incremental progression over time is so satisfying. The days that were too big for me were discouraging for sure, but that made it even more exciting when I was able to catch waves consistently on the smaller days afterward.

Wing foiling has been my go-to wind sport since settling in Vero Beach. I’ve had two great days at the Fort Pierce North Jetty, riding both East and S/SE winds. The East day featured waist-to-shoulder high waves with light wind, and I was able to fly down the faces of waves making endless turns while having just enough power in my 5.7m Wasp v3 to get back upwind for more. There have been two days above 20 kts in Jupiter, blowing S/SE, and I was treated to some incredible riding on my “sinker” board (KT Wing Drfiter 42L). Boards of this size are very agile, can turn on a dime and I like to ride this board whenever conditions allow. I typically need 18-20 kts to water start this board with a 5m wing and have been able to ride it strapless since this past summer. It is easier to use foot straps for the sinker start but after 6 months of riding this board strapped, I had no problem balancing it underwater and getting started strapless in flat water. When a first transitioned to a sinker, I used a great tutorial from Wingsurf World (LINK). I thought that the strapless sinker start would be much harder in waves but have had no issues getting started after a fall and have only been caught inside unable to water-start in very big storm conditions. My last Jupiter session featured waist-to-chest high rollers, and I was able to make hundreds of turns over four hours of riding. Low tide produced the best bumps, and I was able to ride breaking waves over the sandbar by keeping my foil high and close to the water surface. This has been a major long-term goal of mine because riding with the foil closer to the surface provides more power from waves and I can wing surf calf-high bumps by keeping the foil as high as possible.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an album for this update but have a few photos and clips in my highlights on Instagram (Link Here).