GoFoil GL 140 WOW in Big Waves & Small

I ordered the GoFoil GL 140 after hearing Dave Kalama and James Casey rave about it on the Progression Series Podcast (below). I was skeptical because the wing appeared too small. I couldn't be more thrilled with this new high aspect wing.

My local spot is Mavericks in Half Moon Bay, CA. What this means is that I have access to bigger surf than anywhere else. The trench that produces 50 foot waves on big days also delivers head high conditions when everything else is flat. When conditions are 12 ft @ 10 seconds the inside of Mavericks will be heaving 10 to 15 footers that no one else surfs because the waves jack and then fade too fast for conventional craft.

Last year I was trying to catch these inner waves but was having a hard time getting in early enough and keeping the wing down. Not anymore. The GL140 has changed all that. I can get in and my confidence has risen to the point where I am willing to take off on a 10 to 15 foot face under my own power aka big wave foiling with no jet ski. Fantastic stuff!!!!!

I have been filming but from my perspective it doesn't look big. From a distance it looks like this. These were shot at HIGH tide which means I am taking off in deep water aka NOTHING SMALL BREAKS HERE.

The wing is fast. Last year there was a speed competition from Ocean Addicts.

An entire session on the GL140 would be among the fastest waves in the world. Every wave!

Maybe other brands are making wings like this that fly well, stay down and rip in the surf. For now this wing is GREAT!

The 27.9 MPH below translates to 44.9 KMH - The Fastest Wave Recorded in the World (un-assisted). This was just my second weekend of data on the wing. OMG!!!!!!

Link here: www.oceanaddicts.com.au/hydrofoiling-competition/





Last Year's Speed Results:

RAD. After hearing all these glowing reports, I am attempting to make a 140-homage ... if I can achieve even half of the benefits of the real thing, I'll be ahead I reckon.

x2 on the Progression Project. I have all of them downloaded on my phone and listen to them when driving. The stoke level on there is off the scale, I really enjoy having an hour with other people who are as stoked on this as I am. The only negative, they get me so hyped up and frantic to get on the water, that it verges on unhealthy. ;-) The other negative, I guess, is me obsessively sending links of key episodes to all my foiling and non-foiling friends, trying to get them to listen ...

Piros: aha, connection made! Really enjoyed his chat on there.

Eddie O'Gata ripping on the GL140 in Medium and smaller waves. Although the opening scene is a nice overhead drop.

Interesting info Beasho, thanks for posting it.
Most interesting to me is Piros hitting 42.3 Kph on a Kai, and even the speed on the Iwa was pretty good.

First to Fly Mavericks.

I was the last one out at Sunset. The second to last surfer was paddling in and I said "Hopefully I'll pass you on my way in." And I did.

You can pause and look around. GL140 on a 7' 4" Big Wave Gun Hah!

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colas said..
Wow...

Is that kelp we see bobbing out of the water, for instance before you catch the wave?

Yes - Bull Kelp. Yet another challenge to taking off at that spot. No shortage of excitement. When I am dropping and eventually up and riding I am navigating the kelp heads. On takeoff the wave rises up and the kelp disappears but after making the drop or flying the troughs the kelp will take you out.

PS: Colas - Your trick of leaving the back foot out of the strap on bigger takeoffs is what I use to survive when things get to unruly. Sometimes I just fly the entire wave with my foot out. Thank You!!!

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Beasho said..


PS: Colas - Your trick of leaving the back foot out of the strap on bigger takeoffs is what I use to survive when things get to unruly. Sometimes I just fly the entire wave with my foot out. Thank You!!!

Ever tried foot hooks? I use them for kiting, allows for some "grip", something to push against, but in wipeouts there's nothing holding you to the board.

Lots of people use a single strap kiting too, but there's always the danger of your foot not coming out in a wipeout....that's a potential leg breaker.

Btw, the foot hooks are pretty expensive for what you get. You can DIY them pretty easily with flattened PVC pipe or a strip of plastic cutting board bent with a heat gun. And if lucky enough to ride somewhere without booties, sew some neoprene over top for nice soft touch. ;-)

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Thatspec said..
Interesting info Beasho, thanks for posting it.
Most interesting to me is Piros hitting 42.3 Kph on a Kai, and even the speed on the Iwa was pretty good.

It is interesting looking back at the older wings and the way we used to ride back then. I think there may be something in it. We all look at the new HA wings as being super fast, and in many ways they are, but more so they are efficient. This is a different thing. When I look back in to 2018 on the Thrust Surf Large from Naish, I have sessions where half of my waves were over 40kmh. These days this is more like 28-30kmh. I do believe the average speeds are higher, and the rides are longer (in most cases), but we definitely hit higher highs back in the good old days. I also think the shorter board trend is also largely to answer for speeds going down in many instances. Swing weight is good when you're flying by the seat of your pants.

Beasho ripping buddy. Thats smoking. What length is your board?

Ride safe,

JB

Yeah I'm dubious on my early speeds , cracking 40 kph is ridiculously fast. One thing we know for sure now is the Garmin & Ripcurl are very inaccurate plus when you get launched that's generally where you get your max speed from on the Garmin. The Apple watch is far more accurate and we have done plenty of test with wearing multiple watches at once and surfing side by comparing individual wave stats on the Apple. The Gyro in the Apple rarely records a freak speed no matter how hard you hit the water.
Since we have all switched to the Apple no one has cracked 40 kph. 37 , 38 is absolute max and we are on high and low aspect wings on 4-5 prone boards. The consistency in the figures on individual waves and tons of testing and comparison makes us believe the Apple is the most accurate. So my point is we are now measuring speed more accurately , we are not getting slower.

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Piros said..
Yeah I'm dubious on my early speeds , cracking 40 kph is ridiculously fast. One thing we know for sure now is the Garmin & Ripcurl are very inaccurate plus when you get launched that's generally where you get your max speed from on the Garmin. The Apple watch is far more accurate and we have done plenty of test with wearing multiple watches at once and surfing side by comparing individual wave stats on the Apple. The Gyro in the Apple rarely records a freak speed no matter how hard you hit the water.
Since we have all switched to the Apple no one has cracked 40 kph. 37 , 38 is absolute max and we are on high and low aspect wings on 4-5 prone boards. The consistency in the figures on individual waves and tons of testing and comparison makes us believe the Apple is the most accurate. So my point is we are now measuring speed more accurately , we are not getting slower.

Yep that makes sense Piros, when I use the garmin with the surf tracker app I don't believe the speeds, but when I have used the kite or sup app I have never gone faster than 36 kph on any surf wing, which seems more believable.I have to say I was going so fast on the Armstrong 1200 wing the other day surfing that I don't care what speed it was, as long as I don't fall off cause I know it would be pretty!

Thanks Piros for weighing in on that, makes sense. When I look at that (fairly) recent video of Jame Casey foiling Uluwatu, that sure looks like a Kai front wing he's on (maybe a Nalu even)
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the GL series and see they're more hydrodynamic though with significantly less anhedral. So Casey has access to the latest prototype gear yet here he's riding a "dinosaur". Handling?... Or as simple as that's all that was available?

(I can watch that over and over...)

I was hoping that Speed Puck would be good. BUT NO!

I have been using TRACE for 5 years. It recorded data 5 times per second. I know because I have ripped out more than 2 million data points from the device over the years. This is key to understanding takeoff speeds.

The Apple watch is my second go-to because the TRACE kept losing its battery, getting water in it or crashing. I would buy this device but at 1/2 lb it would weigh down the board AND the data coming in every 2 seconds might be good for an 8 hour sail but no good for us on waves.

I am using Dawn Patrol on the iWatch - LOVE IT. Any better recommendations out there. I would like to be able to download the data.

I am surprised about the speed puck. I know a few coaches that use them for dinghy coaching and swear by them. As you said with the 2 hz it should be more accurate.

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Beasho said..
I was hoping that Speed Puck would be good. BUT NO!

I have been using TRACE for 5 years. It recorded data 5 times per second. I know because I have ripped out more than 2 million data points from the device over the years. This is key to understanding takeoff speeds.

The Apple watch is my second go-to because the TRACE kept losing its battery, getting water in it or crashing. I would buy this device but at 1/2 lb it would weigh down the board AND the data coming in every 2 seconds might be good for an 8 hour sail but no good for us on waves.

I am using Dawn Patrol on the iWatch - LOVE IT. Any better recommendations out there. I would like to be able to download the data.

Hey Beacho,

With Waterspeed App you can export to many forms including the raw GPX files. It will not recognise your waves like Dawn Patrol, but it is great for measuring longer runs and replaying runs as you can watch the data like speed, heading and HR. I basically use Waterspeed for Winging, DW'ing and SUP racing, then use Dawn Patrol for Surfing. If I can be bothered extracting the waves (which is actually pretty easy) then Waterspeed app has some better data to drill back into if you like data (I generally send my GPX files back to Naish for analysis) .

Here's some screen shots from a recent Wing session to show just some of the features of Waterspeed.

Here's the export screen. Plenty of options.


The Export Share screen.

Session stats Speed vs HR and Session info.

The Splits. These can be done in 500m, 1KM and 1NM.

Secondary Stats. Bests. Basic headings, HRs etc.

The main page. You can play your session back in 1x, 2x, 4x speeds with stats showing in the box lower left. Pretty cool.


I am talking with the App developers now to try get a wave separator happening, but you can basically use the scissors at the bottom and extract between two points (that you select) and get wave by wave data.

Worth a look.

JB

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Beasho said..
I was hoping that Speed Puck would be good. BUT NO!

I have been using TRACE for 5 years. It recorded data 5 times per second. I know because I have ripped out more than 2 million data points from the device over the years. This is key to understanding takeoff speeds.
JB said..

Hey Beacho,

With Waterspeed App you can export to many forms including the raw GPX files. It will not recognise your waves like Dawn Patrol, but it is great for measuring longer runs and replaying runs as you can watch the data like speed, heading and HR. I basically use Waterspeed for Winging, DW'ing and SUP racing, then use Dawn Patrol for Surfing. If I can be bothered extracting the waves (which is actually pretty easy) then Waterspeed app has some better data to drill back into if you like data (I generally send my GPX files back to Naish for analysis) .
Worth a look.

JB

JB - This is super helpful. Can I send my data back to Naish for analysis?

With all seriousness I may have a solution. If you read the article I did on Microsoft Power BI I was getting 'Massive' GPX downloads from my TRACE. There was the pretty graph that TRACE would provide on my phone, like Dawn Patrol, but then David Lohskin from TRACE would upload the GPX files from every session to a Drop Box. This was SAS automatic. I would download them and run my Power BI custom APP on top of the data. I say massive but really it was just 5 MB raw files with 25,000 GPS way-points. No wave identifiers, just rows and rows of time series data.

Time: Every 1/5th of a second? Speed: Meters per second? Azimuth: Orientation North / South? Latitude? Longitude? Elevation Meters

I WROTE THE CODE TO FIGURE OUT THE WAVES.

In simple terms it was Wave = Where speed >> 4 miles per hour for 2 seconds or more. The graphics I showed in the article were from MY APPLICATION. Not that I have a ton of time but I could modify that code to do the same thing for the GPX files from Waterspeed. You, or anyone else, might be able to just take the desktop app point to the latest file and BUILD the same view you have on the watch but with an ability to play through the wave, build graphs . . . . .

I thought people would be interested in taking what I built and running with it but like foiling at Mavericks NO ONE WANTS ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. Maybe there are some other mutants out there.