Texas Foiling

As a kid, I loved to wakeboard, so when wakesurfing came around, I didn’t care for it much. I love the feeling of going fast over the surface of the water, cutting into the wake, and launching myself into the air. The novelty of learning wakesurfing was fun, but I didn’t like the comparatively small amount of airtime you get on a wakesurf board. 

I distinctly remember conversations with my friends about “what watersport will come next?” Even though the AirChair had been around for decades, foiling felt like it came out of left field. 

I think around summer 2018 the “Foil God” came onto the scene on Lake Austin. My friends and I had no clue what the name of the Foil God was, but we could spot him from a mile down the river by the way he rode. The Foil God would do huge, sweeping turns behind the boat with so much speed and style. He would cut away from the wake, pump through flat water for what looked like forever, and pump back to the wake, only to perform another beautiful turn. Sometimes the Foil God’s boat would drive by, and we’d look around wondering where the Foil God was, and see him riding a roller 200 yards behind his boat. 

For two summers we oodled as the Foil God danced all over Lake Austin. He was playing chess and we were playing checkers. 

At the beginning of COVID, one of my neighbors, Quincy, got a Lift foil setup. One day I went down to his house, grabbed the gear, and hit the water. I set up a 75 ft long wakeboard rope, and my goal was to ride the first roller. I got bucked off the foil my first couple attempts, but within a few minutes, I was cruising in flat water while holding onto the rope. I slowly creeped towards the energy of the roller until the foil was right in the middle of the power. As soon as I felt the wave push me and experienced the glide of the foil, I was hooked. 

COVID was the perfect time to learn because everything was shut down except for the lake. I started foiling every day, and it was not long before I was pumping, turning, and loving every second of foiling. 

I started crossing paths with the Foil God, and Ryan and I became friends.

As the foil designs have evolved since 2020, foiling keeps getting more and more fun. Foils are now stiffer, more efficient in the water, and come in a wider range of options depending on the conditions and the type of riding you want to do. 

Over the years, I’ve gotten into all the different disciplines of foiling – wing foiling, prone foiling, tow foiling, tanker foiling, and recently SUP foiling. It has opened up doors to have fun in all of the conditions that the Texas coast has to offer. 

It turns out that Texas is a great place to live if you like to foil. The mushy waves along the Texas coast are typically not great for surfing, but they are perfect for riding on the foil. A subset of the Lake Austin foilers have also gotten into riding at the coast, and some of the most fun weekends of the year are spent in Port Aransas with the Austin foil crew. 

Learning to foil on Lake Austin and the Texas coast has taken me to some places I would have never imagined going. I’ve foiled in Nicaragua, Indonesia, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Portugal. Funnily enough, I still feel like the Texas coast stacks up well with some of my best days of foiling anywhere I’ve been. 

Teaching all of my friends and a handful of Executive Watersports clients to foil has been a great pleasure. Some people that have learned alongside me now share the same passion for foiling that I do, and I want to keep sharing the stoke with all of Lake Austin. 

Nowadays I wonder, “What will come next?” It’s hard to imagine a watersport more fun than foiling.