Safety foot strap

[swchandler]

Appears that only coachg is getting the picture. Some of you are erroneously assuming that Kauli was injured sailing out when he was mowed down slogging out. After getting eaten, you can readily see that Kauli's sail is intact aboard the jetski exiting the impact zone. It was the later big wipeout after going off the lip that injured Kauli. Whether his left foot was injured while still in the rear strap is totally unclear. Myself, I don't think that it was. The damage to the board was on the bottom, and one is led to believe that it was Kauli's left foot that did the damage. I think the real impact that injured him is something that we don't see in the video.

[JamesHardy]

[jc_surfsail]

So I tried a bit of velcro mods by simply using some Duct tape to cover the Velcro.
I covered pretty much all the velco except about 1” piece on the inner part of the strap to start out.
I mounted it on a 2x4.
I messed around with putting my foot in the strap and rolling forward. With 1” of velco it was difficult to get a release but with ¾” very easy.
Next I mounted the 2X4 upside down and tied a 5 lb weight to the shoe with some rope and tried some drop tests from 18”
When I did this with 1” of Velcro I could not get the strap to release after multiple attempts. I continued to remove velco in ¼” increments all the way down to ZERO Velcro connected on the inside portion of the strap and still no release….WTF. The only Velcro connected was the outer cover Velcro and I even taped off the Velcro which connects the outer strap cover to the inner strap.
That 5 lbs weight from 18” is quite a bit of force it seems. Probably not enough to break your foot but I am pretty sure it would hurt a bunch.
To really figure out if this can work I think it needs to be tested on the water but not sure I want to be the crash test dummy.

[spennie]

Simple solution to all this: Ski boots, and bindings on your board!

[isobars]

I would mount the strap so I could put my foot in it and lever it up until it released or I said, "NO MAS" ... whichever came first ... then adjust accordingly.

[jc_surfsail]

Actually you make a great point Spennie, the fact that we are 100 years behind the evolution of the ski binding.

https://skiinghistory.org/history/release-history-safety-bindings

[DanWeiss]

Release (sic) footstrap for windsurfing board. Patent No. US5378181

Check it out here with all submitted design pics: http://www.google.com/patents/US5378181

Another design here: http://www.google.com/patents/EP0084863A1?cl=en

A third: http://www.google.com/patents/US4960063

Yet another: http://www.google.com/patents/US4693199

Perhaps one or more of these designs could be modified or built?

[jc_surfsail]

Hey Dan, thanks for digging up these patent designs. I took a quick look at them and they seem to vary from pretty simple to fairly complicated. Looks like most of them are expired due to non-payment? It would be interesting to talk to a few of the patent holders to see why they never got off the drawing board. What it does show is there are many ways to skin this cat!
Ideally I would think it would be nice to have something that was light, adjustable, resettable, and not too expensive. It would be even better if it could be used with your existing favorite strap.
I would think that a windsurf company like RRD that has $$ and likes to produce all kinds of different sailing products would have a bright young product developer who could make it happen.

[isobars]

35 years now of WSing, preferably overpowered by most people's standards and still crashing much more than most people, and no time-lost injuries yet from footstraps (bruised an instep once). Unless releasing footstraps offered great, repeatable, highly reliable, comfortable, and very easily adjustable (NOT like these damned multilayered straps that come with every board on the market) performance with no downsides, I would not be interested.

[cgoudie1]

Maybe you could set them at "recovering ACL repair" tension.

Just a thought.

-Craig