Quiver Reflections – May 2024

So…Code foils…

With my recent change to Code foils I thought I’d do a short quiver reflections blog (also wary of how long I haven’t posted for, something called work…). I’ll do a more detailed one in a few months when I’ve had some time to dial in more of the foils.

First off, big thank you to Axis foils for the support. Most of my foiling between 2019 and 2024 has been on Axis foils. I’ve made so much progress on their gear and to get to be a team rider / ambassador for them over the last couple years has been a pleasure.

So why change? My main focus has really shifted over to downwinding (surprise), with the racing aspect and also the long distance aspect as my primary interests. I’ve always been open about the fact the ART Pros were never my favourite foils (especially compared to the Spitfires) and really with the cost of self funding travel to go to races and events I felt I needed to try and find foils that had the feels I was after

Note: this is hugely personal, what I might like someone else might dislike and vice versa. This has nothing to do with how good a specific foil brand is. There are no bad foils now, just different feels. I add this as I feel that sometimes people get super defensive of their brands (almost like football hooligans), so please keep the vibes nice, I still am a fan of Axis foils, just I couldn’t get the feels I personally wanted out of the ART Pros (plenty of people love them, I am the anomaly), and they were the foils best suited to my current focus in the range.

So, what am I riding….

Well my quiver is going to compose of the 720S and 980S from the S series and the 770R, 860R and the 960R. To be honest if I didn’t have racing interests or long distance interests I think these two S series foils would be a ‘2 foil quiver’ to cover DW, prone, winging and dockstarting for me. Who knows maybe I will end up with a 2 foil quiver after France this year depending on how much I like racing…

Given I would like to give racing a crack just to push myself personally I’m really keen to get into dialling in the R series.

So far I’ve had some great runs on the 980S combined with the 142AR tail on a medium fuse. I found this set up to be super confidence inspiring (so confidence inspiring i decided to take it for a 55km run on its second outing). It has a heap of low end, turns easily, pumps easily and has more than enough glide for the North Sea. Initially I wasn’t even going to try it, but as I was waiting on the 860R to arrive in the Netherlands and the feedback I got was that the low end was comparable to the 860R, I figured I may as well. I’ve also had a couple outings on the 770R which really blew me away. For me I was amazed at how slow it can go for how small it is. The high end was already apparent after I saw Josh post a story with 14 consecutive sub 2:00/km splits one of which was 1:47/km which is extremely fast but the thing that appeals to me the most about the R series is not the sub 2 splits in the last sentence, but the fact that there were 14 of them in a row. These foils are so efficient at maintaining speed and that is what I find appealing for both racing (consistent avg. speed is more important than one off speed peaks) and even more so for long runs where the ability to ride fast with low energy output is important.

When the 860R arrives I’ll have to figure out which of the two (860 or 770) will become my daily driver, I suspect the 860R with the 120R tail, and I also have a 960R for the light wind days, flatwater training and dockstarting (though the 980S is pretty good at that too).

For now that’s all I can say about the foils, as I said before I’ll do another post in a few months with more detailed reflections. I’m super stoked to be able to be an ambassador for Code foils. I’ve admired their work from day 1 and big thanks to Hub from codefoils.nl for the support as well.

As always, any questions about kit (Code or Axis, I’m just keen to help people out) feel free to reach out, email or instagram.