Dock start pump foiling attempt!

My friends Johnny, Mike and Geoff are three of only a handful of people I know who can dock start and pump foil. Well, there are lots of videos of people dock starting on the Internet. My theory right now is that there are maybe a few thousand people in the whole world who can do it. Certainly in Ontario it’s around a dozen people I know of. Even at the AWSI event in Hood River the number of pros able to pump foil you could count on 10 fingers. Even the brand manager of one of the companies selling foil equipment said he only knew five people who could do it and three were his team riders!

So when Johnny started making his own line of dock start pump foiling boards, I was excited to order a custom Endgrain board and maybe start on my journey to join the small group of people who have invested the time to learn.

After deciding on nice calm and sunny day, I drove over to Mike’s place. We chatted about the fact that it had just been a year and a half since he started his foiling journey. A super competent kiter, he had been afraid to try foiling because of the scary looking sharp foil stuff under the water. In Hatteras, I put him on my Fanatic Stingray 140 with the Slingshot 99 foil and 60 cm mast for his first ever foiling attempts. He caught on very quickly with that super stable gear. Now he was ready to teach ME some new skills!

We set up the nice Endgrain Biskit board that Johnny had made, complete with Launch Pad logo. The big Duotone AMP SLS 2145 high aspect foil underneath met with their approval. Both Mike and Johnny gave my set up a try and said it would probably work even for a big guy like me.

I gave it 9 attempts, just trying to glide off of the dock onto my knees to get a sense for balance timing and angles. In between my attempts, I watched them confidently pump foiling around the lake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWrF6XHumP8

Then it was time to take Melissa out for her at first ever foiling attempts. The trick to getting up behind the boat is to be well outside the wake which she was able to do. Sure enough the big Duotone Stingray 140 with the Slingshot 99 and 60cm mast was the ticket to get her up behind the boat for the first time. Whoohoo!

The guys gave me the opportunity to try wake surfing for the first time in my life. What a blast. I easily got up and had two runs where I stayed on the wake longer than any of us expected. I can see why that sport is so popular, even if it requires a massive specialized boat.

Back to shore to try some more dock start pump foiling attempts. This time I was coached to get onto my feet right away. What a challenge. I tried 9 more times and did get a little bit of distance on one attempt.

I’d say I have reset my expectations from "I’m never going to be able to do this" to "there’s a chance if I try several hundred more times that I might someday sustain a few pumps."

Let’s see where my dock start pump foiling journey takes me next summer. Certainly another visit to Mike’s place will be in order and then I’ll need to build some kind of structure at the Launch Pad to launch from.

A recent global survey on dock starting of 131 people who have an interest in it suggests that it requires 388 attempts on average before someone can foil consistently. Most social media chats suggest 20 days doing 20 attempts each day. So a long way to go.

PS - I finally finished the video for this post on our way to Bonaire 8 months later. While in Bonaire I met a nice kid who was the only one pump foiling on Lac Bay. I asked him how many people he actually knows who can also pump foil? He said lots! I followed up and asked specifically how many. He said "well everyone who is on the European Wingfoil tour". I think that means 24 people? He was actually one of the people using the pool at BOOT Dusseldorf 2026 which I saw lots of on social media. When I mentioned Balz Mueller he said oh yeah, he's a legend and even signed my board! I think the pumpfoiling world is really quite small. See photo above!