Starboard tuttle heads

I just got a SB SuperCruiser with a 75 cm mast, thinking it might be more fun for playing with swell than the GT-R. Interestingly, the 75 cm mast has a different tuttle adapter. The good thing is that, unlike the 85 cm mast of the GT-R, it has a flange that's supposed to flush with the board. The bad thing is that it is a bit too wide or deep for the box in the Stingray 140, so there's a 1 mm gap between the flange and the board, even after pushing down with my 200 lb, and pulling the two screws as tight as they go. The second bad thing is that it is to fat for the Starboard tuttle-to-track adapter. Unfortunately, the tuttle head on the 75 cm mast is aluminum; the one on the 85 cm mast is plastic, so it was easy to sand down to fit. Sanding down the aluminum head would not only be a PITA, but it would also remove the protective coating layer on top.

I've had to sand at least 95% of all tuttle fins I ever bought to make them fit into various slalom and speed boards, to it seems a bit strange that SB chose aluminum, and then made the adapter quite fat. Even more peculiar that it does not even fit the Starboard mast track adapter. I think the Slingshot tuttle head is also aluminum, but I never had a problem putting it into a board.

Any suggestions? I mostly foil at spots where the 85 cm mast is too long about half of the time. With Slingshot foils, I have mostly been using the 71 cm mast. I prefer the 91 cm, but take it only for high tide sessions, since both ground and wind are quite uneven, and avoiding shallows with the long mast can be nearly impossible at lower tide.

The SB tuttle-to-track adapter came with a piece of rubber, with adhesive on one side. The flanged tuttle head unfortunately did not.

I did some digging on the SB web site. It's slightly confusing, with 3 different and largely incompatible fuselages, and different mast lengths listed for windfoil and wing/wave. It appears they sold the flanged tuttle head together with the 75 cm mast for the freeride for a year or two, but have since switched to the head without a flange completely. For the SuperCruiser, they now only list the 85 and 95 cm mast options, both without flange. But in the wing and wave section (starboardfoils.com/pages/2021-mastsets), they still show 72 and 82 cm masts. These include the track adapter, which adds 7 cm; remove it, and they are 65 and 75 cm masts with tuttle heads. They state it's not recommended for wind foiling, but that may be because they got some bad test results when they shipped foils with the 75 cm mast in the past.

Seems the store I bought from had old 75 cm masts lying around, but did not bother mentioning that the tuttle head is different. It's the same store where I bought the tuttle-to-track adapter for $US 170 a few weeks ago, and the same person handling both orders. I should have known better, since several local foilers received "complete" foils from the same store with essential parts like screws and foot straps missing.

Make a spacer out of a cheap cutting board and don't stress about it.