Wing · Prehistory
2015
The foil makes the wing work
Large, high-lift hydrofoils remove the drag that had held back earlier hand-held wings; Tony Logosz takes his old prototypes out again.
A board in the water, and the same board lifted clear on a hydrofoil
Earlier hand-held wings on the water had struggled with the same problem: the board. A windsurf board or surfboard in the water creates so much drag that a small wing held in the hands cannot get it going fast.
By the mid-2010s the hydrofoil had changed that. Kite riders were already flying above the water on foils; F-One, for example, brought out its first kite foil collection in 2015. A foil board creates far less drag than a board in the water.
In 2015 Tony Logosz took his Slingwing prototypes out of the closet and tried them with one of the larger foils he was developing. He was up and foiling instantly, and could cut upwind, cruise downwind and ride swell. “It wasn’t until the evolution of foiling,” he said, “and more specifically the development of big performance foil wings with tons of lift and speed, that we saw a practical application.”
With the friction problem gone, a rider with a wing could go upwind, head out in lighter winds and glide on rolling swell. Three years later, on Maui, riders began to put the pieces together.