Back to Tuttle – Back to Performance

Foils and Boards - Gear Talk
164

The most useful thing Kalama said in the entire discussion was actually this: “Not all products have to be for everybody.” Exactly right — and that’s the whole story of how tracks displaced Tuttles in the first place. Tracks are cheap to install, easy to source, and compatible with whatever foil a beginner pulls off the shelf. That’s a legitimate mass-market solution. It was never a performance solution.

Airplanes don’t ship with adjustable wing positions because the center of gravity problem was solved 120 years ago. High-performance foiling is no different — if you’ve dialed your setup, you don’t need infinite fore/aft adjustment. You need the most direct, efficient connection between your feet and your foil. As Chris Radkowski has pointed out, the high-performance foil racing world never abandoned the Tuttle. The rest of the sport is just catching up to what the racers already knew.

Tracks = low-performance, adaptable solution for the masses. Tuttle = highest performance for those who’ve done the work to dial it in. The downwind and performance community is figuring this out in real time.

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Aircraft don’t ship with adjustable wings, true, but they also don’t sell just the plane fuselage and then the customer bolts on a variety of wings with slightly different fore/aft positions :slight_smile:

I’ve designed my last two boards using your method Beasho, and it’s mast is pretty much exactly in the middle of the foil track and doesn’t move more than 10mm, but I guess that would change if I swapped foil brands.

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166

Nothing like a little disengenuous quoting there Beasho. Humility abounds.

Can you define the drag difference for say a speed range of 10 to 20 km/h for tuttle versus plate as a percentage increase of the total drag including the board and foil? The massive inefficiency of a DW SUP with its large wetted area and your talking highest performance versus low performance. Lets say for stupidity sake that a plate has double the drag but it the plate is only 0.5% of the total drag now we are at 0.25% reduction. 1/4 of a percent for all that elitism.

The only DW racers using Tuttle will be the representatives of the brands trying to sell you the next not greatest thing that you absolutely don’t need.

I think Dave made himself pretty clear.

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167

Does it make sense to be talking about the drag of a Tuttle system in the context of elite dw sup foiling, where the podium finishers are doing a single popup and covering 40 miles? Isn’t the sales pitch for Tuttle in this context that there is more control and more efficiency?

All else being equal, everyone benefits from a more direct connection, but folks in light wind spots disproportionately benefit. E.g. I would expect Tuttle to take off at a place like Leadbetter Beach (Santa Barbara CA).

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168

There’s a bit of discussion about the Tuttle box here https://youtu.be/oMRs5Tg4I-8?t=4010

In short, what Adrian mentions is that the beefy masts tend to be thicker and wider than the standard Tuttle head. And a wider tuttle box would suffer from bowing.

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169

I might be one of the very few people in the world who 1) installed a tuttle box on a track board to accept either kind of mast 2) own a converted plate mast into tuttle alongside an identical plate mast and foil system 3) A/B tested back to back in the same conditions

I can tell you for absolute certain it is a lot more than fractional percent better. Its fine with me if you don’t believe me, I’m not trying to convince YOU of the scientific method. Would it be better if we dragged them in a hydrodynamic towing tank with instrumented drag force versus speed to prove it? Yeah, and I haven’t done that.

What I can tell you is this - paddling up the plate mast feels like I’ve got a bit of seaweed stuck on the mast. I can feel it easily and immediately. The difference is real.

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170

That’s really interesting. I guess you’ve got that big fat lip of the mast plate the water has to go up and down over, plus the two track voids etc.

That’s such a good comparison though. I wonder if you could tell the difference of running it as a tuttle and taping the foil track to save that drag too?

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There were production boards in the early era of prone foiling (2018) with both tracks and a tuttle in the middle. I owned a few and we ran both as the tuttles masts were phased out. Nothing new there. As a percentage of drag the little 4’4” prone board was more likely to suffer than a 8’6” SUP, but we were happy for the adjustment and didn’t notice any increase drag at all. It was never even in the discussion.

You have two distinct phases in the paddle up. Planning and foiling. In the planning phase you won’t find more than .5% I believe difference in total drag. 8’6” Sup with 80kg foiler dragging all that wetted area through the water. Mathematical common sense says no way.

Now in the foiling phase there is this very microscopic moment where you have succeeded in your paddle up and instantly lost 90% + of your drag, for that split second, where the fat end of the plate mast exists in the water but the board is free, you now have something we are all use to feeling having that fat 50mm section of the mast in the water. I am sure the human brain will feel that split second. Is it of significance to anyone’s success, i doubt it. Considering the mast is in that phase for maybe .25 of a second on a successful 1hr + downwind run. Lots of low hanging fruit before anyone should be proclaiming the difference in low performance and high performance and chasing it.

Is it worth letting go of a whole standard for that split second of mast dipping?
It it significant to anyone success?

How does the fat section of a plate mast compare to the extended chord and thickest part of production tuttle mast that can also be felt as height on the mast is lost?

So much low hanging fruit out there and we think this is the difference between low performance and high performance. Just another distraction inflicted on foilers by foilers.

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172

thanks for linking that podcast, I hadn’t seen it. Adrian is correct on both points and has the experience to back it up for sure! BUT I’ll say my thinking for what it’s worth:

  1. masts are so wide at the top because they need to transition the vertical carbon fibers to horizontal for the plate. Carbon needs to go through a gradual transition to make it strong, can’t just take an immediate tight turn. The transition from vertical to plate is the weakest part of the mast because of all the inter laminar stress - and there is a lot of extra shape and extra carbon material used to make a plate mast structure work. Carrying the vertical stressed fibers straight up through the tuttle box is by far superior for strength and stiffness without having to artificially make it so wide. All this extra thickness and sectional shape is part of why I can feel the plate mast drag. My F4 mast is no wider than the tuttle box at just under 16mm at the top, with a plenty stiff connection to the board.

  2. I am making my own long adjustable tuttle boxes (up to 5” of adjustment) and pushing hard on them in my boards. I’m a big boy and can feel the stiffness. The longer boxes need a more burly layup schedule to keep them stiff when they are so long like he says, but only requires dozens of grams of extra layers of carbon (not hundreds of grams).

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173

They get paid too…would Lebron wear Nike’s if Adidas paid him $100 million more than Nike?

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174

Nice work, Beasho—interesting interpretation of the conversation, and a creative way to support your view that a Tuttle mast might be the answer. Appreciate the perspective.

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175

Wow, Jondrums—calling Dave Kalama a kook? That’s some elite-level confidence. Rare to see that kind of bravado these days. Keep up the good work you savage!!

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176

The calculated drag numbers could be meaningless vs reality.

Do not want to beat a dead horse but there are quite a few posts from the Cedrus guy proving that a thinner masts gives no significant advantage…theorethically.And i am sure his numbers were perfectly correct.

But anybody who has ridden a slim mast knows otherwise, a thick one feels like seaweed…which is exactly what Jondrums says he has experienced with Tuttle vs Plate.

As for Adrians misgivings of Tuttles,yeah,ok.

So let’s redesign Tuttle,make it beefier.And BTW you could use spacers that gripped together the sides of the tuttle walls to control any bending,if any.

Plus no need for 10 or 15? inch tracks if they are in the right place on the board.

Main problem with a new system will be standarizing it, plate system is an abomination but one that works for all brands.

I cannot see all this egos and market experts agreeing on anything.

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Yes, he very clearly contradicted himself on a few points. I wouldn’t think you could listen to that conversation and not notice the tension. Despite that I thought it was excellent and Dave has likely done more to make foiling accessible than anyone else. Credit to him. I was surprised Liam being the engineer didn’t push back on those points, clearly startstruck :smiley:

Funny to hear Adrian rattle off his extremely strong stance against the tuttle too, but just before that hear him have to walk back his position on dihedral and upturned tips. You could dig up equally strong and contradictory views from a year ago where the Axis perfectly flat foils were “theoretically optimal” but all rode like absolute pigs with their straight median line… Even the “experts” are just tinkering away in their own way and finding out what works and evolving their theories, and holding strong opinions to support them.

As I think anyone would agree, the proof is in the riding not the talking. Building shit to find out is the only answer. Adrian and Dave have an intense urge to build shit to find out, and many others on the frontier, which is what makes this fun.

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178

You have to consider both Dave and Adrian not only try and build the best boards and foils, but also have to manufacture and market that equipment. Bringing in another type of foil attachment system will create further headaches for them and retailers so I would expect some pushback.

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179

Nothing like someone who can’t hear straight! Ha Ha! – See full text below, not counting where he went on an on about the benefits of a 10% advantage and how just 2-3% would be ground breaking at this point.

Well now we have a horserace! As Austin Powers would say “Who does #2 work for?” as he swirlys the bad guy.

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When I heard that the generic guys interviewed Dave Kalama, above, an he mentioned a Tuttle I went to listen, but the podcast was 2 hours long. So I wrote some python code to strip out the Text from the podcast (.mp3). Then I searched for Tuttle and found the full translation.

python -m whisper “C:\Den…\2026_03_31 Generic Foiling Podcast Dave Kalama.mp3” ^
–model small ^
–language English ^
–fp16 False ^
–output_dir “C:\Den…\Coding\Podcast MP3 Translation”

02:01:47.520 →
before you leave? Yeah, well, what or who are you going to put in room 101 then?
God, you know what? I actually thought about this and I couldn’t come up with anything.
What do I want to put in 101? Oh, I know what I want to put in 101. Total box.
Are you allowed to say it? Oh, yes. Oh, that is that is controversial.
As you were as you were talking about about your thoughts and preferences on
hollow boards and stiffens and things, I thought he’s not a Tuttle box fan.
Well, you know what’s funny is I was when when we first started and I think all of us were using
Tuttles or at least I was with the original gofoil stuff. There are some arguments to be made and
depending upon what you find really valuable in performance characteristics, I understand
the reasoning where you might believe Tuttle boxes offer a benefit. But with how efficient
the equipment has gotten and lessened the drag of a plate system, I don’t feel the benefit of a
Tuttle is what it used to be early on when when adapters and the original plates were so draggy.
That was why I didn’t go to a plate system early on because there’s no question a Tuttle
is more efficient. But I believe that between the boards, the equipment, the bases of most
mass nowadays, they’re efficient enough and combine that with the benefit of the adjustability of a
plate system. Overall, the plate system is better than Tuttle. And so it would, oh god,
it would just create nightmares of trying to supply total and plate system again,
because I did that for a while and it was it was horrible.
Well, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. Yeah, for sure.
Well, like I say, in certain circumstances, you could make an argument for total box being the superior system. But I think in general, the public at large would not benefit from those
advantages versus the advantages of the adjustability. I think I actually on merit as to that,
what you just said there, I think I agree with you. I think for as a universal industry system,
I think actually the tracks are working quite well and they are good. But what I would say
interestingly enough is my very first impression last week of using a Tuttle mast back to back with a plate mast was that the touchdown at speed, I had a few where I was like,
I would have crashed 100% I would have crashed. And again, I’m you know, I’m probably for the
average customer, I’m probably sat at the top end of the average customer, which still doesn’t make
it appropriate for a lot of people. But this is also something that I’m finding really interesting
with this, this like slingshot drag project is there’s a whole discord page that you can join
if you want information about it and stuff. And like all the staff are in it. And what’s really
interesting about them doing this project is they’re just straight up going, this isn’t for
everybody. And some people are asking certain questions being like, Oh, are you going to tweak
it and do this? And they’re just like, no, no, no, no, no, this, this, this is, you know, not,
not all products have to be for everybody. Yeah, and we’re accepting that this one is an outlier.
This is what you will get from it. But yeah, that’s, that’s interesting.
Let me say this. One of the reasons I am not pro Tuttlebox anymore is because of the lack of
adjustability. Now I’m installing a Tuttlebox right now on that board I just glassed this morning that is going to have a an element of adjustability. But I wouldn’t, I would say multiple
positions. I almost feel like it’s not adjustable. You can either have it in the forward spot,
the middle spot, or the rear spot. But you don’t get the ability to micro adjust between all those
three different variations. If Tuttle, or well, if people developing Tuttleboxes could come up
with a system that has the same amount of adjustability as a plate system where you could
micro adjust its position. I’m in. And that that’s actually where Apple Tree are closer with Radix.
Yeah. And as long as it doesn’t cost, you know, I mean, the two fin boxes is pretty damn cheap.
And it’s a fairly easy installation. Now I know most people aren’t going to give a squat about
the installation process. But as a board builder, if it costs $200 more than a set of fin boxes,
and it’s more difficult to install, you’re going to have trouble getting some of the board builders
to jump over to that system. But I’m sure if there’s a desire to create a Tuttle system that
has all the adjustability of a plate system, and there seems to be a desire to have it
growing, then maybe it will happen eventually. And I’ll have to go into the 101 with my head
between my legs and go grab that stupid Tuttlebox and bring it back out.

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181

1 more addition to the Tuttle hype: Chris Radkowski mentioned the advantage to the wing foilers in the San Francisco Bay. During the summer there are weekly races. Typically Johnny Heineken wins everything on Mikes Lab and all the high performance guys, maybe everyone is on a Tuttle.

The one guy who wings Mavericks, Pillar Point California every day in the spring is the crazy Russian George. His is out when it is blasting, or barely blowing big, enormous or tiny. I passed him gearing up last week and I notice he is in on F4 with an F4 80 liter wing board and a Tuttle base. I stop and say what do you think about it?

He says “I was winging with those guys in San Francisco under the bridge and one day I can barely get up on my 5.0 meter and all those guys are flying all over the place and I am on a 900 foil (cm) and they are on 600’s and 4.5 meter sails and going so fast, I was like what the heck. Then I switch to the Tuttle and it made all the difference. I can go down a foil size (cm) and it just gets up so well and with the smaller foil I am flying way, way faster and in control.” Then he looks at my Axis foils and says “I don’t know how you control those …” But that is another story. For now I am stuck with Axis and a plate mount :face_with_bags_under_eyes:

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182

Everything in foiling is easily solved by spending money. :slight_smile:

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183

I 100% get what Dave means with the early GoFoil Tuttle/plate adapters. A 600g weight penalty, and an even bigger drag penalty, compounded by the fact that GoFoil required the use of their beefy washers so as to not void warranty (not that Dave would have cared about that though). No wonder he preferred the Tuttle mast option back then.

Going from that tuttle/plate adapter to the production plate mast (still with the official washers) made a very noticeable improvement in terms of reduced drag pre takeoff or post touchdown, and of course shaved something like half a kg off the system.

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