The wing foil waist leash explained.

In the below we discuss leash options. We compare a wrist leash and a wing foil waist leash. Looking at the benefits and drawback of each.

Whilst designing foiling leashes we experimented with a range of options that are currently available on the market. We noticed that the wrist leash is by far the most obvious ‘go to’ leash out there, and for obvious reasons. It is convenient, it is obvious, it’s light weight and most importantly it just makes sense! We 100% agree that it is a great leash and it offers all the versatility and performance you need. However after a lot of testing we found a few areas that it is compromised in. Below we explain these.

Whilst riding in waves a wrist leash works perfectly. Until you either have to swim through a surf line, or get taken out by a big load of white water. If we look at the latter first. Getting ‘wiped out’ is the least amount of fun at the best of times! But getting dragged along by your wrist whilst tumbling around is even less fun. For us this was a real down side of the wrist leash. ALSO, if we couple the wrist leash with an ankle leash it completely hinders your ability to swim. So wipeouts become even less fun and more dangerous.

Going back to our first point. If you have to swim through a Surfline, or anywhere for that matter, then having your wing attached to your wrist is less then ideal. It really inhibits your movement and ability to make solid progress. This can lead to fatigue and tiredness. Meaning you have less energy to rip it up and have a solid session.

So testing led us to the conclusion that a wrist leash is a great product but in certain areas it is a little awkward. This bought about our wing foil waist leash idea. Initially it takes a little getting used. With the leash line going in front of you and being a bit more obvious. However, you soon get used to that pretty quickly. Having it on your waist means you can swim and you can survive wipeouts a lot easier. It’s still comfortable, like the wrist leash, but just allows you a bit more freedom whilst winging along.

Our wing foil waist leash features a loop on both the port and starboard side. This means you can attach the supplied Karabeena to either side of your body. This can be handy if you ride goofy or regular as it allows you to position the leash in a way that it stays out of your way.

As well as attaching the leash to the loops you could attach it to the leash loop that spans the back of the harness. This leash loop can offer a multitude of options and one is attaching the Karabeena too. Where this is handy is if you want to try some of the new freestyle moves. It allows you to pass the wing around your back or rotate it around you. Working a bit like a kite handle pass loop it provides the 120 degrees of freedom no other leash system offers.

Another option for the leash loop on the back of the belt is to attach a board leash to. Simply take the ankle/knee leash around the leash loop and you have a board waist leash. We have specifically over engineered the webbing and the buckle to allow it to work like this.

Talking about the actual belt itself we wanted to make something that we as riders would have 100% trust in. When looking at the belt we used 40mm webbing with a strong abs plastic buckle. The leas loops are triple stitched in and we have used an incredibly strong dynaema line. We chose to cover the leash in a premium 4mm neoprene to give the comfort and padding we felt riders need. And of course it features the premium FBC embossed logo patch on the back to look super cool.

Hopefully this gives you a little insight into why we have designed the wing waist leash like we have. We aren’t saying that the wrist leash is a bad concept, totally the opposite in fact as our FBC wing wrist leash is a superb product. We are just suggesting that for some riders there is definitely another option to consider and that we can see some benefits in certain conditions for that.

Enjoy your foiling, if you have any questions at all please do get in touch with us. We are all passionate wing foilers here and we love talking about it so please do send us an email or drop us a call.

For more info check out our youtube page here.