148 Havoc Wing: Riding Slow Enough to Fist Bump Mid Ride

Two riders, two boards, one fist bump, and a big front wing doing the quiet work that makes it possible. This episode is Laura and Stephan lining up on the same stretch of lake and touching gloves mid ride, which sounds trivial until you try to hold a foil steady next to somebody else who is also trying to hold a foil steady. It works on the first attempt. The rest of the ride is carving, a long argument about what an eFoil should and should not carry, and a camera on a stick.

Why the 148 Havoc wing makes this possible

Stephan rides the Lift5 Pro with a 148 Havoc front wing and a 36 Glide stabilizer, and the thing he keeps coming back to is how slowly that setup will stay up. A bigger front wing carries the same rider at a lower speed, so you can back off the throttle and still fly. That low end is what turns a pass alongside another rider from a sprint into something you can actually steer. Laura is on the Lift2 Sport 200 Surf V2 with a 48 Surf V2 stabilizer. Two different setups mean two different comfortable speeds, and the one with the range to go slow is the one that does the waiting.

Riding close enough to touch

Neither rider has touched another person while foiling before, which is worth saying plainly, because eFoiling is usually something you do near other people rather than with them. Getting two boards within arm’s length means matching speed, holding height, and trusting that the other rider will not suddenly pitch. It also means accepting that the boards will knock into each other, which they do. Laura’s control is what changed. Early in her riding Stephan had to hold the throttle for her from behind the board, because she would not give it enough power to get up. This ride is the other end of that progression.

Shot on one invisible stick

The whole episode was filmed with an Insta360 X5 on an invisible selfie stick, which is why you get an outside view of both riders with no chase boat and no drone. One detail worth stealing: the camera does not float, so the wrist strap is the only thing between a good shot and a camera on the bottom of the lake. Stephan lost a strap once riding with Glide Water Sports and got it back at Foil Fest, and the one in use here was scavenged off an unrelated piece of kit. Any strap beats no strap.

The drink holder question

A good chunk of the ride goes to whether an eFoil should have a built in beverage holder. Stephan is firmly against it and says he would answer no on the customer survey. His reasoning is about what the board is for: if a ride is long enough to need supplies, the answer is a support boat or somebody on a kayak, not a cup mount on a foil board. He calls that an excursion and treats it as a different activity rather than a feature request. The counterargument, being a mile offshore and wanting a drink, gets a fair hearing and loses.

The music

The soundtrack is two remixes of Haters and Creators by Approach Vector Icarus, from the album Ride Forever. Both are free in the B-Sides collection on this site.

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