FCS Mutant Foil Surfing Leash

  • One of the quintessential dilemmas of every foiler is whether to wear a leash or not. I always wear a leash. The few times I decided not to I regretted. Foiling is hard enough without having to swim fifty yards to retrieve your board after a fall. I fall a lot so I would know. I have tried many leashes and went through some frustration in the process.  I struggled with the leash getting under my wing and skipping along the surface while foiling. I found that with a regular leash five foot was the longest I liked for the wing catching issue, but I wanted a ten foot one when I fell to let the foil get away from me. I decided to try a cheap coil leash from Amazon. It was thick and heavy but would stretch out to 10 foot when I fell. I could really feel the drag when I was paddling. These issues kept me searching for something else. I was up in Morro bay on vacation and discovered a lightweight coiled SUP racing leash by FCS at a local SUP Outfitters shop. It was lightweight and thin diameter so I bought it to try. The only problem was that it came with a three-foot tether. This made it way too long while paddling. It is made by FCS so I decided to see if I could switch the tail section off a regular leash and attach it to the coil leash. Since FCS uses the same attachment on all their leashes this was quite easy to do. Unscrewing an allen screw and switching was simple and fast. I found this length was perfect for me with just a slight tension on my ankle while sitting. I found this length leash would not drag on the surface while up on plane.  There was still some drag with paddling, but it was much less than the thick coil.

There are two drawbacks to this design.

First is the coil leash will wrap on itself a fair amount. I find that I have to stretch it out when I get back to the line up to get out the knots a fair amount of times. This can be rather annoying, but the benefits outweigh that issue.

The other is the price. This leash is around $36 on amazon and then you need to have a FCS surfboard leash as well to use on the tail tether end. I had old leashes that I used in the past, but my most recent was from a new one. If you have to buy both leashes it can be set you back over $70. Click HERE for FCS website

The last leash advice I can give is to put your leash plug on the back or bottom of your board. This alone will solve the issue of the leash getting under your foot as you take-off. I have been doing this on all my boards and it works well. It does not affect drag and since your board is in the air most of the time it is a none issue for foil performance.

I get a new leash every year since it seems to knot less when new. You can keep reusing the old FCS tail tether since that will last through many years. Overall, every other leash I have tried has not been as good as my mutant leash. This combination design allows me to have a short leash that does not drag too much while paddling, keeps the leash out of the water while up flying on foil and stretches out long enough to let the foil get away from me on any wipeout.