F4 Mesina
What a great ride. I’ve just come back from my first session on the F4 Masina Foil slalom board and I have to say I am impressed. That was a really good ride 30.3 knot peak on the first outing and a 21.7 Alpha that happened to be one of my best gybes ever, just the way I carved around felt beautiful and the trim of the board made it feel effortless.
I bought the Mesina 85 wide 159 L that comes in at 208cm long, so a compact design with a small nose and flat deck profile, built with aero- and hydro-dynamics in mind.
The hull has a deep Vee in the nose section transitioning to a flat planning area with some deep cutouts in the rear. The rear deck is quite straight giving good leverage with the back foot and the deck curvature is comfortable especially with the outboard foot straps.
In terms of positioning, I just happened to put the foot straps in the middle holes or one forward of the middle and it just worked perfectly. I positioned the mask base just forward of halfway and that seemed to be the right spot for my CHS 7.1m sail with the 540 Wahoo Foil 170L) and it just worked really well.
Multiple 27, 28, 29 and finally 30 knot runs fully in the straps locked in and the ride felt really good. I was actually pushing off the back foot like a slalom board on the fin and I felt that once before on a speed run quite awhile ago on a different board and I kind of missed it on the Phantom 85 I’ve been riding lately. I could never really get locked in and cant that board over and just push off the tail, but with the new F4 Mesina today it felt really good doing that.
The nose is quite small so, you know, don’t spend a long time trying to tack it as you will sink but that small nose has an advantage when it comes to the chop. I did one dodgy gybe and the nose pierced the crest of a wave and just didn’t murmur at all just rode straight through it since it has such a small area, the impact didn’t really upset the board. I could continue on with my gybe whereas if it had more width or shape, it might have bounced up a lot more or dug in deeper.
The foil box is thick and my Foil mounted naturally with rake of 3° which I like as it made touchdown generally pleasant. Although there was one odd moment I noticed maybe because I’ve cantered the board over towards windward more, I could feel that more of the rail was contacting the chop when I did touchdown (when heading upwind) but on a speed run the touchdowns were quite pleasant and the Mesina just bounces through the touchdowns, so no complaints there.
A freshwater lake here makes the wind look stronger than it is and so my 7.1m and 540 combo we’re working well but some of the light winds pumps were required effort but the cutouts are quite effective. I didn’t notice at any point the feeling that the Foil was pointing downhill as I was pumping the board on the surface so the cutouts must be doing their job letting me sink the tail which easily brings the Foil angle back to neutral at least so that as you’re pumping more of the energy goes forward and gives you a lift when you need it. Some of the original Messina prototype photos showed the tail with no cutouts and large chines the whole way along the rails, much like they’re racing Windwing board. A concept they tried to copy over to the early prototypes but they decided it wasn’t as effective as traditional cutouts so F4 have reshaped to the current layout.
Couple of negative points are worth mentioning. You will probably need to buy some new Foil bolts. I ended up needing 90mm M6 bolts with a 10mm head. I couldn’t get torx longer than 80 at my local stainless steel screw supplier so keep that in mind. Annoyingly, you will also need to buy some foot straps because for some reason F4 can’t supply them.
Speaking of foot straps, I decided to put most of my foot straps in the middle position or one screw hole forward and I like the outboard position. I tried one side inboard and one side outboard and I definitely prefer the outboard slots.
I weighed my Mesena board dry before I put the foot straps in, and it came in at 9.6 kg so even lighter than listed on the website. Hopefully the full Divinicell wrap underneath the carbon layer makes the board strong, as I’m sure it will experience some wipeouts that will test to see if the construction is up to the task.
So there you have it. The new Mesina foil slain board from F4 does everything you would expect, pumps well, flight control and configuration are spot on with solid construction under the paint make for an exciting ride.
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