Our new Falcon Foil is a super lightweight, high-tech board especially for foiling! We have asked Fanatic product manager Daniel Aeberli all about it!

So Dani, what is this new Falcon Foil all about?  Why do we need it? Ok, let me first explain the difference between a regular slalom board and what we have produced here.  What you want to achieve for foiling is the perfect balance in your feet whilst you are standing on the rail.  For that reason you want a board with a more parallel rail shape, setting your back foot a bit further out and putting you in a more balanced standing position.  Standing further out also makes it easier to control the board, especially when you’re foiling with a powerful performance foil.  At the same time, you are also trying to have the balance of the board a bit more compact, which is why the dedicated foil board is shorter. The other significant difference is the bottom shape.  Because the bottom is not really touching the water most of the time, we have way more vee, which helps on the occasions that the board does touch down.  It kind of softens it up a bit.  We also have softer rails in the nose section, which makes the board more forgiving in tacks and gybes if it happens to touch down. The fin position and mast track remain almost the same as on the comparable slalom board.

Can you use the Falcon Foil also as a windsurfing board? No, it’s a dedicated foil board, for foiling only.

Who is the Falcon Foil intended for? The Falcon Foil is for the dedicated foiler who wants the very best and most competitive foil board. It’s a no compromise foil board, designed one hundred percent for foiling performance and built in our top-end full Biax Carbon sandwich construction.  Compared to one of our foil approved windsurfing boards, it will be more balanced when foiling which improves comfort, but also results in a higher level of performance.

How does it actually compare to the foil approved boards in the Fanatic range, namely the Falcon Lightwind, the Falcon TE, the Jag, the Blast and the Gecko Foil Edition? The Falcon Lightwind is the closest windsurfing board we have to offering the foiling performance of the Falcon Foil.  The construction is not quite as top-end as the Falcon Foil, so it is a little heavier, but it’s really good at foiling and obviously great as a light wind windsurfing board. The Falcon TE, Jag and Blast are essentially high performance windsurfing boards that give an option for foiling with their Foil Approved sizes. However, the most obvious alternative to consider is the Gecko Foil Edition.  This is a foil specific special-edition of our very successful Gecko windsurfing board.  It offers the same great windsurfing performance as the Gecko LTD and comes with a Tuttle Box freeride fin to match the Foil Approved Tuttle Box of the board.  It has extra reinforcement around the nose area and is the perfect board for either learning to foil on, or enjoying the fun freeriding performance the board offers when windsurfing.

How many sizes is the Falcon Foil being offered in and what would you say is the sail range? Just one size. It can take up to 11m, but our race team have designed their light wind foil sail at 9m.  Most riders use 8 or 9m2 sails for the lighter breezes. I would say a 7.0m2 in up to 20 knots is getting close to the top-end of that board.  With the Blast and Gecko you can go as small as you like and they can use any type of sail – wave to race.  But when you look at the size of the Falcon Foil, you reach a certain point when it makes no sense to take a smaller sail.  There is just too much board size and windage when it gets strong.  I’m sure you could do it, but I can’t really imagine using a 4.5m2 wave sail on that monster!!  The Falcon Foil has been designed as a lighter wind, out-and-out performance foil board.

More: https://bit.ly/2wwCce2