SURGE 1240 on Lake Geneva: three sessions with a team rider

The SURGE 1240 is the biggest SURGE yet: 1240 mm span, 142 mm maximum chord, 1340 cm² and an aspect ratio of 11.48. One of our team riders, a 75 kg pump and dock-start coach on Lake Geneva, has spent the season on it and filmed three sessions.

"Nobody asked for a SURGE 1240"

That is how the review opens, before explaining why it turned out to be the wing nobody knew they needed. The low end is close to the PNG V2 1300, so you can learn to dock start on it, and it turns better than the Fireball 1250, staying steady when a hard carve brings a wingtip out of the water. In the review's words, it is "the first wing that we can buy as a beginner and that we keep for life".

Pumping and glide

After riding a boat wake out for 2 km, the rider pumped the 2 km back into 8 knots of headwind, eight to ten minutes, with energy to spare, and puts the 1240's pumping time at over fifteen minutes. The KAIWI mast flatters that number, the video admits: it gains you a wing size. Glide is about 10% less than the Fireball 1250 and 1350, the price of that easier turn and a low end called incredible: "we can go so slow".

Downwind in minimal conditions

The second video is a downwind run in 10 to 12 knots with bumps of 30 cm, the kind of day most riders leave the big foil at home. The 1240 is in its element: slow enough to wait for the bumps to form, and able to take off again from almost stopped "without any problem". In these conditions it replaces both Fireballs. The honest caveat: if you already pump a Fireball well and love it, you do not need this wing.

Wake thieving behind the lake steamer

The third session is pure fun: an evening riding the wake of a paddle steamer, linking wave after wave without pumping, thirty waves before stopping. "I'm stopped, I'm waiting for the wave to push me. It lifts me up, I'm doing nothing." That does not happen on the Fireball, nor on the SURGE 1150 or 1080. The smaller Fireball 1160 still carves tighter, but for gliding from wave to wave the 1240 is the pick, and it will be the rider's winter wing for wake thieving.

The set-up

• SURGE 1240
• Black Sillyshort Advance+ fuselage
• SKINNY 250/20 rear wing. Run it with a small rear wing to find all of its potential; the SURF SKINNY 280 held the wing back a little.
• KAIWI 780 mast
• Dock 880 board on the downwind run

Who it is for

A first dock-start wing you will not outgrow, a pumping and downwind wing for light days, and a wake-thieving wing that keeps you on the wave. The SURGE 1240 is available now at axisfoils.com and from your AXIS dealer.