Has anyone seen the kind of variation on the surfing hydrofoils as illustrated in figure 1?
I haven’t followed the evolution of this sport. But after watching a brief clip of Laird Hamilton hydrofoil surf on some channel a while back and did some light research on the internet but couldn’t find any history experimental designs that they may have tried and rejected.
The variation is, hopefully pretty clear in the figure 1. Basically you get rid of the boots and add a pole, with the surfer using a wakeboard like board which sits on a half ball joint, the wakeboard being free to rotate and tilt. The idea being that he holds on to the pole and using the wakeboard he can apply all sorts of force on the hydrofoil plane. In fact he could grab the pole and swing out leaving the wakeboard, if the maneuver called for it.
I’ve put a little bit of foil in pole so that when the surfer grabs it he knows which way the hydrofoil in directed. (As the wakeboard, being free to rotate will not necessarily tell he which way the foil is directed.)
By the way, this is not meant to be an accurate drawing; neither with respect to dimensions nor geometry of the respective parts. As for the wakeboard like board, it seemed a natural choice as wakeboards have fins at both ends - they simply seemed ready-made for the task (not to mention they’re pretty strong.)
Forgive my calling it ‘pole surfing’ - it seemed natural enough.
However, no apologies would suffice for “Pogo Surfing”, see Figure 2. (Actually I think somebody has done this?)
Kevin
Of course, on those flat days, consider …
