I recently bought the aluminum foil kit from Clearwater Hydrofoil. The kit came with an aluminum mast and fuselage. I also ordered the surf wing (largest wing below), kite wing (middle one) and the tail. And, I ordered a short aluminum mast which will make learning much easier
The wings were just plain wood so I needed to fiberglass them before I could use them. This required so many hours of work! I wasn’t close to prepared for what would be required. There’s a 4-hour curing time for each of the following steps…
- Fill the screw holes with resin
- Glass the bottom of the pieces
- Glass the tops of the pieces
- Run a bead of resin around the edges
- Build up the lip that will attach to the fuselage on the surf wing
- Build up the lip that will attach to the fuselage on the kite wing
- Top coat 1
- Top coat 2
Then, there’s the sanding and the painting. Lots of sanding. Lots of painting. Then… even more sanding.
Below, you can see the bit that I had to build up to meet with the fuselage. And, it had to line up closely with the holes that were already in the wings.
I first painted them neon green because it’s my favorite color. Then, I remembered that the lake typically turns this same color for a few weeks in August/September. So, I primered over the green and went with neon orange.
Below, you can see the bits that were built up with resin to accept the fuselage.
Endo was impressed with my fiberglassing and painting skill. But, he must have thought me crazy when I drilled holes in my store-bought Slingshot Glide kiteboard. But, I haven’t used that particular board in 3+ years… since I got the surf board. Now, it’s likely that I won’t use the surfboard ever again, either.
Saturday, I got to try it out for the first time. It wasn’t windy enough, but I gave it a go anyway.
The learning curve is steep, but it’s so much fun to be challenged under a kite again! My friend Jennifer was there to get this short video of one of my first attempts…
To see what it’s supposed to look like, check out this video from YouTube