Wingfoiling at Sha Ha Beach, Sai Kung

Most Sai Kungers will be familiar with Sha Ha Beach to be found at the northern end of Sai Kung’s waterfront promenade where there is a beach bar, two restaurants and a bbq centre. 

The beach is not gazetted and thus has no lifeguards or toilets – or restrictions. It is thus popular with dog walkers and is populated by local enterprises offering kayaks and windsurfing boards. It is not, however, a swimming beach as the sea is very shallow and it is possible to walk out only shin deep for quite a long way.

Local government assists these watersport enterprises and regular beach users in keeping the beach clean and recently finished clearing all the typhoon debris – beached and broken boats,  driftwood and other maritime detritus.

A fairly recent addition to the beach activity is a group of Wingfoilers who usually turn up on weekend and public holiday mornings with their expensive equipment atop their mostly expensive automobiles.

Wingfoiling evolved over the years initially from Surfboarding (a lie-down or stand-up surfboard) and Windsurfing (a stand-up board attached to a handheld sail) made famous in Hong Kong by Hong Kong female Windsurfer Lee Lai-shan who won HK’s first-ever Olympic gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

^{LEE Lai-shan BBS, MBE} 

Then, along came Wingsurfing (a stand-up board with an unattached handheld sail and finally, Wingfoiling, similar to Wingsurfing but with a hi-tech hydrofoil on the underside of the board which allows the board to rise up well above the surface once the board is moving quickly. This is popularly known as “winging” and speeds of up to 25 kts (46 kph) can be reached by experienced “wingers”.

If this sounds like something you might like to try, head on down to Sha Ha Beach on a weekend (if it is reasonably windy) where there is free parking until 10:00 am and speak to the Wingfoilers themselves.