For me it's that brief moment at the start of a session. I water start, often straight up onto the foil, run downwind to clear the reef, then carve a turn to head out and dodge the fishos and their lines on the rock wall.

As I drop down the foil starts what feels like an endless carve. The bank angle gets deeper and I get lower and lower to the water. Speed and upwind angle increases. I ease in the trimmer to counter the increasing apparent wind. It seems to go on forever.

On a very good day the endless carve continues until I get out past the boating marker and smash out a roll tack. When it's perfect the board is banked hard the whole way through the tack and pull of the kite stretches my spine as it goes up through the apex and I drop on the new course with a stupid grin on my face. When it's not perfect I get wet.

AquaPlow said..
.... I can relate hang-gliding 130km goal some days u knew it was in the bag from 5-10 kms in.
....

Old paraglider pilot here. One of my best memories of paragliding is where you've been kicking treetops for ages and you get a turn with lift half way round. Each turn the lift gets a bit more consistent. You centre and climb and eventually it kicks off into a screaming thermal all the way to base. From there it's a fast glide dolphin-ing through climbs back to the landing paddock.

On the foil there's a vaguely similar thing doing a coast run. Ride out, turn, pull in the trimmer, stomp the foil, and rocket upwind. There's that point where you know you're just going to run all the way home without having to turn or slow down.

This week, we had some great conditions for foiling with a tiny 3m kite. With a surf foil, small kite and a few waves it's hard to think of anything negative as you fly across clear, blue water. In fact following on from dafish, one of the things that does come into your thoughts is music, randomly selected from your minds playlist, a suitable song or even instrumental piece to suit your emotions and the conditions.

Far from the experience of the first season of foiling, it's the muscle memory which takes over leaving your mind free, watching the natural world under your foil. Last week did have a slightly unusual experience however. As I was coming into shore and turning to make my way out again, I saw what appeared to be a very large, dark shape on the bottom approx. 10m downwind in chest deep water. Fascinated by large stingrays which are common here, I foiled over to take a closer look at one of these beautiful and gentle creatures. As I approached and then foiled over the shape it became much clearer, it was a 2.5m shark displaying all the angular pectoral fins of a great white, slowly travelling down the beach, undisturbed by my activity

Although it showed no interest in me and and I felt more excitement than fear, I saw another TT kiter make a dash for the beach after passing where I had been. I also went in to see if we saw the same thing. I was assured we had and we discussed on the beach with other kiters whether we should warn other kiters or let the moment pass along with the shark. After 15 minutes i went back out and other kiters and a wingfoiler did as well, figuring perhaps we could all share this beautiful place without conflict