eFoil Event Coordinator FAQ

It is where you register an eFoil event and let riders find it. Register one anywhere in the world and it gets its own page, its own link and its own QR code. List it publicly and it surfaces for every rider searching near them; keep it private and it goes only to the people you hand the link to.

Riders add themselves to the roster in one press, so you know how many boards are coming before the day and who actually made it on the day. Afterwards the page stays up as the place everyone who was there adds their photos and video. The full picture is on the About page.

Four.

• Ride Meetup. Open group ride. A time, a launch point, and whoever comes.
• Lesson or Clinic. Structured instruction, from a first-time intro to a skills session for riders who can already foil.
• Demo Day. Boards to try, or someone strong walking a group through one specific thing.
• Race. A timed run over a course built to the league standard, ranked against every other course in the world.

If your event does not fit any of them, register it as a Ride Meetup and describe it in the notes. That is also how we find out what to add next.

You need a Verdant Ride account to host an event and to join one, and the account is free. You can create one with an email address or with Continue with Google.

Joining is then one press. Any cost belongs to the event itself, is set by the host, and is shown on the card before you commit — a lesson or a demo day may charge, a Saturday meetup usually does not.

Hosting is tied to an account for one reason: riders will drive somewhere on the strength of your listing, so it has to be attached to a real, accountable person.

Not always. Some hosts have a board to borrow, and whether they do is shown on the event card. A Demo Day exists for exactly this: boards to try without owning one.

If the card does not say, ask the host before you drive. Turning up boardless to a meetup where everyone brought their own is a long afternoon on the beach.

Open Join an Event and put your town or ZIP code in the search box. Sorting by distance brings the closest event to the top, and you can switch between a list and a map.

Races and the other three kinds are listed together on purpose — a meetup two miles away is worth knowing about whether or not you came looking for one. The coloured tag on each card tells you which is which, and the filter row narrows it to one kind if that is all you want.

Press the green button on the event. That is the whole of it: one press puts you on the roster.

Joining takes a free account, so if you are not signed in the button sends you through the login screen and brings you straight back to the event you picked.

Press the button again. One press puts you on, one more takes you off.

Please do it rather than just not turning up. A host planning for nine and getting six has bought too much of something, and on a capped event your seat is one somebody else wanted.

You go on the waiting list. Hosts can set a rider cap, and once the confirmed seats are gone the roster keeps taking names in order behind them.

The moment a confirmed rider drops out, the next person on the list is moved up — straight away, not on a later sweep. Nobody has to ask, and nobody has to reshuffle the list by hand.

Yes. Every rider needs a current signed release, and the host is asked to check it before anyone launches.

If your release is current it carries across to the event on its own. If it is not, the site sends you to sign one before it will put you on the roster, so the gate is never something you can accidentally skip.

• Who the event is for. Hosts are asked to say plainly whether beginners are welcome, and it is worth believing them. A beginner at an experienced-riders session has a miserable afternoon.
• The cost, and whether there is a board to borrow. Both are on the card.
• The launch point. Every event page carries a map pin and driving directions straight to it.
• The time. Turn up early. The launch is always busier than anyone expects.

Sign in, open Host an Event, and fill the form in once you know the date and the launch point. You choose which of the four kinds it is, whether it is public or private, and whether there is a rider cap.

You get the event page, its link and its QR code straight away, and from that point on the site does the promotion: send the link to the riders you already know, and let the public listing bring you the ones you do not.

• Being there, early, and being findable at the launch point.
• Saying honestly who the event is for.
• Checking that everyone has registered and signed the release before they get on the water.
• Checking riders in on the day.
• Keeping an eye on conditions, and calling it off if they turn.
• Posting something afterwards, even if it is three photos. An empty event page tells the next rider nothing.

Setting expectations is the part that decides whether your event works. Say who it is for, say what it costs, say whether there is a board to borrow, and say what happens if the wind gets up. Riders will drive two hours for a well-described meetup and will not drive twenty minutes for a vague one.

Yes. Private keeps the whole thing between you and the people you hand the link to, which is all you need for a few friends and a quiet stretch of water. It does not appear in the finder and search engines do not index it.

Public puts the event in front of every rider in your region and lets search engines find it. Public is how you meet the riders you have not met yet. You choose when you register, and it is yours to change.

Yes. Set a rider cap when you register and the roster fills to that number, then holds everyone after it on a waiting list in the order they signed up.

When a confirmed rider drops out the next person on the list moves up on their own, so a cap does not mean you spend the week before managing a queue by hand.

Yes. Your own event page carries a Find riders nearby card that lists riders within 10, 25, 50, 100 or 250 miles of your venue and says why each one is there — their home water is twelve miles away, they ride forty miles away, they were on the roster of an event near you. There is a name search for when the map has nothing.

Invite them one at a time or press Invite everyone shown. You can write one message that rides on every invitation from that event, and preview the invitation exactly as a rider will get it before you send anything.

An invited rider gets an email, sees the invitation on their account page, and is met with it the next time they sign in. They answer with I am in or Not this time, and accepting puts them on your roster as a normal confirmed rider. Until they answer they show on your roster with an Invited pill and are not counted as coming.

No. Riders are listed to you by screen name and distance only, and the email column on your roster shows a dash for anyone who has been invited but has not accepted.

The site sends the invitation on your behalf so you never need their address. If they accept, they are on your roster as a rider who chose to be there.

Yes. Repeat this event on your event page makes a copy one to eight weeks out, on the same weekday at the same time, with the same venue, kind, audience, visibility, cap, notes and banner.

The copy starts with a fresh roster and its own link, and everyone who had a seat at the last one, plus anyone still invited to it, is invited to the new one. Nothing runs on a schedule — you press the button when you want the next one, which means a week you cannot make is simply a week you do not press it.

Open the event page on your phone at the launch and tap the people who are present. That is the whole of the admin.

It gives you a headcount, it gives every rider credit toward their badges, and it means you are not trying to remember in a week’s time who actually came.

Call it off. Nobody has ever regretted cancelling an eFoil event, and plenty of people have regretted running one in wind they were not happy about.

Cancel this event sits at the bottom of your Host controls on the event page. Write a line about why if you want to, and everyone on the roster, everyone on the waiting list and everyone still holding an invitation is told: by email, by a card that comes up the next time they open the site, and by the event turning grey with Event canceled by host across it in their upcoming rides.

Nothing is deleted. The roster, the notes and the banner stay exactly as you left them, and Put this event back on in the same panel undoes the whole thing if the forecast changes its mind.

The clock. A race runs on the same page, the same roster and the same check-in as a Saturday meetup; what it adds is a course built to the league standard, times recorded to the tenth of a second, and a place on the global leaderboard.

The other three have no leaderboard because there is nothing to rank. Pick one of them and nothing about your event is timed, ranked, or dependent on anybody buying a buoy.

Everything a meetup needs — a date, a launch point and somebody who turns up early — plus three things a meetup does not: a course built to the league standard, a reference time run honestly before anyone else rides, and a Race Marshal willing to run a stopwatch all afternoon.

That is real work, and it is the price of a time that means something against every other course in the world — a lake in Minnesota compared fairly with a bay in Portugal. Pick Race when you register and the form asks for the course layout and hands you the standard to build to. It is all set out in the eFoil Racing League.

It stays up, and it becomes the record. Everyone who was there can add photos and video to a shared wall on the page, and the roster shows who came.

Post something afterwards even if it is three photos. The next rider deciding whether your event is worth a two-hour drive is looking at last time’s page, and an empty one tells them nothing.

A record of turning up. Badges accumulate for riders who keep showing up and for the people who keep organising, which is why checking riders in matters — that is what gives them the credit.

Hosting is the harder job and the rarer one, and the site says so: there are badges you can only earn by putting your name on a date.

No. Riders are shown by their screen name — on rosters, on event pages, on the roster of an event you have joined, and in the nearby-riders list a host sees when they are looking for people to invite. A host inviting you sees a screen name and a distance, not a name and an address.

You set your screen name under Edit my details on your account page, and you can change it whenever you like. If you ever see your real name somewhere on the site, tell us and we will fix that surface — a few older corners of the site still carry names recorded before screen names existed.

Every invitation carries the answer with it. Not this time declines that one invitation. Stop invitations from this host declines it and means that host cannot invite you again. Stop all invitations takes you out of every host’s nearby-riders list.

All three are on the invitation card, which you can reach from your account page at any time, and the same card is where you switch any of it back on again later.