Do you guys ever add up how much you spent on wingfoil equipment, total, over the last 12 months? Do you ever come close to $10k?
Asking for a friend.
Select to expand quoteCh0p said..
Do you guys ever add up how much you spent on wingfoil equipment, total, over the last 12 months? Do you ever come close to $10k?
Asking for a friend.
Three stages of ownership:
1. When you are proud of how cheaply you have managed to buy into a hobby/sport by buying used or making your own gear
2. When you start lying to your wife about how much you have spent
3. When you start lying to yourself about how much you have spent
I have bought and sold over 40 SUP's in the last 10 years and about 20 or so surfboards. I thought this would be a simple sport. It looks like the more information I get the more I realise that this could drain more money than either of the other two.
I know when I load all the wing foiling gear into the car to goto the beach, the value of my car doubles!
Select to expand quoteSteven F said..
Cheap compared to a fancy car.
My car maybe $5000
I am less worried about the wife than being stupid :-) But like one of my beach pals said, I do use all of this stuff. One wings I only used twice in the last 12 months, the other ones 30 times each. So it still costs me $30/session with my frequently used wings. Board and foils another $50. If you wingfoil everyday these numbers will look different for you.
If I can get my costs down to $50/session total I feel that it's a good deal given the amount of excitement and how alive I feel on foil. I just need to stop buying for a bit ?? a
I am not trying to kill anyone's fun, just being realistic about costs.
The real problem is that foiling is still fairly early on the maturity curve as a sport and I'm early as a learner. If I go back five years and do the same math on my fin windsurf gear I could amortize it down really cheap because I would buy one year old rental boards in good shape and keep a quiver of sails for about 7 years. (Often bought at the end of the season.) Things weren't - and won't be - changing much.
Foiling is still improving the gear a lot. Most of us are still improving a lot. We're having to buy brand new gear because there is hardly any used market and demand currently exceeds supply. That will change eventually.
At my stage of life sailing is my gym membership, my therapist and probably a. Few other things all wrapped in one.
When you get to a certain age you don't care much about the cost -- it's easy to rationalize -- you can't take it with you! The only people who care are the beneficiaries of your estate -- they'll have to figure out what they're going to do with a transport truck load of winging gear!
Select to expand quotedejavu said..
When you get to a certain age you don't care much about the cost -- it's easy to rationalize -- you can't take it with you! The only people who care are the beneficiaries of your estate -- they'll have to figure out what they're going to do with a transport truck load of winging gear!
my wife windsurfs and wings, so she'll be happy to use it :-D
funny thing, she asked a few months ago what a foil actually costs, and she was appalled. Now, anytime I'm being cheap or won't buy something she reminds me how much our foils cost and how many I have.
The only way to rationalize the cost is to go out as much as you can! I replace my gear every year (same for windsurfing/foiling and kitesurfing/foiling) and I estimate I spend about 20E a session winging, but only have 1 foil/board/wing. Sharing my personal kit with a friend and being fortunate enough to get a lot of demo gear on loan helps heaps.
Pace of gear improvement is the killer. You think how can it get better than this then you foolishly go try a new bit of kit the shop has on demo...
My favourite argument or justification is.. the average 20-pack costs around AUD35. That means a pack-a-day smoker will spend AUD12,500 over the course of a year. Wingfoiling is a much healthier addiction.
It's been a year since I started wingfoiling and I think I have spent around $8-9K. I think I had around 150-180 sessions so that makes $45-60 per session.That's not bad for the first year.
Having said the above, I really don't care much about the cost cuz it is so much fun... I only worry about how many sailing days I have left till I physically can't.
it's only expensive finding the one foil that is right for you, it's a journey and it takes skill and time to define what you like and what you don't like, it took me half a dozen foils to find it kiting and probably the same with winging, but once you find it you stop looking for anything else. I've probably spent 10K kite foiling and the same winging, but that's nothing, some guys spend 10-20k on a road racing bike :) or that's a marina fees for a yacht for a year...
Select to expand quotesunsetsailboards said..dejavu said..
When you get to a certain age you don't care much about the cost -- it's easy to rationalize -- you can't take it with you! The only people who care are the beneficiaries of your estate -- they'll have to figure out what they're going to do with a transport truck load of winging gear!
my wife windsurfs and wings, so she'll be happy to use it :-D
funny thing, she asked a few months ago what a foil actually costs, and she was appalled. Now, anytime I'm being cheap or won't buy something she reminds me how much our foils cost and how many I have.
That's just a part of marriage -- remember, no matter what you did or when you did it, it WILL be saved in your wife's memory banks as ammo for future use. Woman can't remember doing this or that but they sure as hell can remember what you did, even twenty or more years ago!
Select to expand quotenorth_kiter said..
it's only expensive finding the one foil that is right for you, it's a journey and it takes skill and time to define what you like and what you don't like, it took me half a dozen foils to find it kiting and probably the same with winging, but once you find it you stop looking for anything else. I've probably spent 10K kite foiling and the same winging, but that's nothing, some guys spend 10-20k on a road racing bike :) or that's a marina fees for a yacht for a year...
I agree with this totally .... I am just short of 2.5 years into winging and most of ythe cost was in year 1 ......
Started on a 150 Litre board and Naish V1 4m (it was the only wing available at the time) and soon moved to Duotone V1 (swinging everywhere) and a 125L board. Then WASP and 110L etc etc etc.
I have settled on AXIS foils and will occasionally change a front wing (glide verses carve). Have settled on the Fanatic 95L (thanks stinkbug) and have settled on Cloud wings. So my costs per session are really starting to decline.
I think I am roughly $2.50 per kilometre and decreasing rapidly, although I expect a big ALUULA wing will cause a rapid increase.
