Cedrus Evolution Review

~Intro~

There's some interesting things about the Evolution mast. It's got a unique design and things that look different can be pretty exciting to try. It sucked me in. I rode the Evolution mast for 772 of my 2885 miles on foil this year. In that time I got to test it on numerous brands and on a variety of different foils. I started out pretty hyped up on the short chord section, the maneuverability of it was fun. However, over time, and in serious comparison to other top masts, issues became very clear. As the miles went by, the issues worsened, the excuses for them grew more unreasonable, and that eventually led to me getting rid of the Evolution mast. I've re-written this Cedrus Evolution review a couple times because the available information on the mast has changed repeatedly. Since I no longer own this mast I think this is likely the final iteration of this review. I've tried to focus on as much data as possible and everything else that is filled in is based on my experiences, opinions, and information from Cedrus and the owner Kyle.

~Rider and Gear Data~

I'm a dedicated swell rider and use my wings to get me around. I look for steep, down the line, wavelike swell formations to ride on. I commonly downwind for several miles while flagged out and then charge back upwind. Recently, I've spent a little time learning some wing tricks but deep down inside I'm really a swell/wave rider.

Weight: 87kg

Board: Sunova Carver 5'10"x20" 85l

Experience: Approximately 8000 miles wingfoiling.

Location: Columbia River Gorge 150-200 days a year.

Speed: Not fast. I average 12.2mph in my sessions. I've only hit 20 knots on foil once in my life.

Wind range: Single knots to 60+ knot gusts.

Total miles ridden on Evolution: 772.

Wind range for these test days: glassy to extreme.

Wing sizes used: 2m-4m

Swell sizes ridden: Flat to head high.

Foils tested with and/or in comparison to the Cedrus Evolution Surf (CES):

Cloud IX: fs850, fs900, fs1150

Code: 850s, 980s

AFS: Silk 650, 850, 1050, Ultra 750

Lift: 130 fx and 150 hax

F-One: Sk8 850, 950, 1050

Masts I rode and compared to the CES:

AFS UHM

Lift M2

F-One HM 14

Cloud IX high modulus and standard

No Limitz v2

Code Standard Mast

~My Evolution Surf Weight and Dims~

77.5cm (equivalent to 79-81cm depending on how adapter affects length)

CES mast without adapter: 1511g

AFS adapter: 296g

Lift adapter: 226g

F-one adapter: 210g

Cloud IX adapter: 197g

2 M8 bolts to attach adapter to mast: 25g

Mast Dims:

At foil (metal insert in mast here):

117.91mm chord

19mm thick

In center cutout:

107.75mm chord

16mm thick

At board (metal insert in mast here):

117.67mm chord

18.67mm thick

~Craftsmanship~

When I first unboxed the Evolution mast I was pretty frothy on it. I had convinced myself that I had purchased the best possible mast on the market and when I think back on it, I didn't even consider the fact that there could be craftsmanship issues. Later on, an Evolution Wind rider reached out to me who reported he was having issues with ventilation and was getting his mast redone. He showed me some flat spots in his mast and educated me on what to look for on mine. I was surprised to find some abnormalities:

I've never had a mast from any company with any visible build issues before and have checked every mast I've gotten my hands on since. Kyle, the owner at Foil Cedrus insists that "None of the defects you point out degrade performance in any way. If anything, some low spots from sanding actually reduce drag."

I, personally, think defects matter. The very first day I rode this mast it was noisy and vibrated, but when I brought forward my concerns I was always given bizarre excuses: It's the foils fault, the mast is so stiff that it makes foils vibrate, the rubber in the mast makes vibration impossible. On and on. At this point I've seen multiple Evolution masts with defects and every Cedrus user that I've heard from that has issues with ride quality, stiffness and/or ventilation has defects on their mast which is really concerning to me. Cedrus is the only company that seems to openly admit all their masts have imperfections because of the way they are made, yet continues to claim the defects don't matter.

~Physical Attributes and Performance Notes~

Length:

I prefer to ride masts no longer than 80cm. 75cm is my honest favorite length as an all around choice since it does so well in a variety of conditions. 65 is awesome in flatwater and small swell. However, 80cm is a little more forgiving when surfing aggressively in steep swell with breaches. I bought the 77.5cm to land around 80cm so I wouldn't hesitate on the biggest of days in the gorge. When I bought this mast I did ask if there were any issues with using the Surf or this length winging and I was told no. Since then, the Cedrus site has updated to say that they believe wingers have been buying masts that are too short. As far as I know, Cedrus is the only brand saying this.

Thickness:

19mm at the foil is almost 50% thicker than my current mast and is even thicker than any foil I own. I do think this sacrifices performance. In order for them to make the adapter system it makes sense that the mast needs to be thicker and I can't imagine the adapters ever breaking off with the new Evolution design. However, I'm comfortable saying that I'd prefer a thinner mast at this point.

• Cedrus states: "chord length has twice the relative impact on drag due to it's influence on wetted area."

• However, every other brand that I have seen has chosen to go thinner, but kept a deeper chord for their performance masts.

There's a few different metrics I looked at in my time with this and other masts to try and hone in on why I dislike thickness. I compiled the data on several different masts using the same foils. 30-35 sessions and approximately 500 miles on each mast showed the following:

• Speed: I compiled all the average speed data of my time on the Evolution (19mm thick, 117.91mm chord) and two others on a 650, 850, and 1050 foil. The total averages all come out to the Evolution as the slowest. If we break it down and look at specific foils like the middle sized 850:

  • A thinner mast with a deeper central chord (13.8mm thick, 115mm deep)

    • Ended up being 11% faster than Cedrus Evolution

  • An even thinner mast with a shorter chord (12.8mm thick, 100mm deep)

    • Ended up being 16% faster than Cedrus Evolution

  • These two thinner masts actually showed faster average speeds than the Evolution on the 850 even when the thinner masts used the larger 1050. The 13.8mm thick mast was still 4% faster and the 12.8mm thick mast still 9% faster.

  • So, after over 1500+ miles on the same three masts and same three foils my data pointed too thickness as having a bigger impact on speed. Top speeds on all foils were also set on the non Evolution masts.

• Heart rate: Thicker has always felt harder to manage when winging. I feel like my body acts as a dampener between the pull of the wing and the drag of the foil and you feel this tension wearing out your hands/arms/body as you ride. Winging with the Evolution mast showed the highest heart rates of any mast I tested, averaging 119.3 beats per minute. Every single mast that had thinner profiles showed lower heart rates. When I rode my thinnest mast, I averaged 111.2 beats per minute, the lowest of all masts tried this year.

  
  

• Pump and glide: on the Evolution mast at 19mm thick I only managed to link swell over 1 mile in distance once in all my time with it. As the masts I compared it to got thinner and stiffer (pumping the Evolution felt like bouncing on a spring), the distance of my swell rides got longer. My current UHM mast at 12.8mm thick routinely links swell for rides over 3 miles (which is my full run) and the other masts I tested routinely linked swell for over 2 miles. So, my Evolution best was about 1/3 of what I do most days on my current mast.

The Evolution mast needs to be thick because it has to accept their adapter system. But, IMO, other than making it universal there is no justifiable positive to being 19mm thick.

Chord Length:

Short chorded masts are really cool. They give a significant improvement to maneuverability which has all kinds of fun impacts on most foils I've tried. The Surf mast does benefit from this when you are riding it deeper in the water. However, if you are going to increase maneuverability by decreasing chord length I think you need to increase stiffness. The increased maneuverability of this mast which is really cool, unfortunately exposes some concerns for me with stiffness when I started doing more advanced maneuvers.

Stiffness:

I'd say the Evolution mast feels like medium stiffness. It's as stiff as or better than some of the older basic carbon masts out there. On the water it feels like the high and ultra high mod carbon masts are stiffer. This is most apparent in pumping, turbulent water, and tip breaches. Other masts cut through those scenarios better and were confidence inspiring, pushing me to be a better foiler. My Evolution mast on the other hand would feel unstable, shaky. If I saw whitewater, I tried to make sure I was standing straight up to brace for it. I altered my riding to avoid tip breaches which shook badly. I couldn't do hard turns on the Evolution mast without it ventilating. I did share this with Cedrus/Kyle and he did respond that stiffness wasn't his main priority, he was trying to make it faster:

"Furthermore, making the mast stiffer generally makes it slower (you are adding thickness and chord) so I didn't want to do that."

So, since it wasn't their goal to go super stiff and it's already slower than my other masts it's not surprising to me that the newest masts on the market feel stiffer. However, when I used stiffer, newer foils, the Evolution struggled badly. The last foil I used on this mast (a foil in ultra high modulus carbon construction) was, in my opinion, miserable to use when matched with the Evolution. The mast shook terribly when I was simply mowing the lawn and it was stalling out in basic gybes around 12-13mph.

How to make it better? It's gotta be stiffer.

The first change is just upgrading from intermediate to at least high modulus, if not ultra high modulus carbon. That seems to be relatively normal on new masts so I think it was a blunder to go against the industry there.

Second, in my opinion, the rubber is too problematic without any noticeable performance benefit. One user told me that their trailing edges got deformed in transportation from a bag sitting on them. Another said a harness hanging on the foil and touching the mast in the sun deformed it. This resulted in shaking and vibration until the rubber was reshaped back into a normal position. My mast concerns were initially refuted because I was told the rubber made it impossible to vibrate because it was too soft. Later on I would be told the rubber on my mast was actually too stiff, which made the mast vibrate. Kyle informed me that all of the rubber can have variable hardness levels. So, not every leading and trailing edge is the same. They get soft in the sun and hard in cold water. This, IMO, is a terrible compromise. I don't want the stiffness and shape of my mast changing because of the weather!

Ventilation or "Flow Separation":

I had never heard the term flow separation (the term Cedrus is using to describe this problem) before and I may have been one of the first people reporting ventilation issues with the new Cedrus Evolution (June 2024). When riding this mast I had ventilation/flow separation issues on Code, Lift, and AFS foils. Never at high speeds, only when I would lean into a tack, 360, or carve. There was zero notice of anything going wrong and then game over. I'm slammed to the water. These crashes are all pretty brutal, foils flipping into and destroying my wings and my head slamming into the water.

The initial excuse was that the mast wasn't ventilating, but was actually making the foils ventilate which, was a really bizarre excuse to me. Why would I want a mast that makes foils ventilate? Once I confirmed that those same maneuvers were all fine on other masts (I tested longer and shorter lengths, deeper and shorter chords, thinner, all without issue) I decided to get rid of my Evolution mast. I can't afford damage to wings and/or injuries to myself. Cedrus recommends "you may need to adjust your turning style" with the Surf mast but I don't want to dance a fine line between dialing back my turns or dealing with crashes. This is the only mast I've ever had ventilate so it doesn't make sense for me to keep it. If the gear can't perform at my level, it just has to go.

Cedrus now acknowledges these issues, both on their site and in the forums. This information wasn't available when I purchased the mast:

"Due to the shorter chord length, it will be more prone to flow separation, which can happen in very tight radius turns and/or when tips are breached. Simply put, it's less forgiving" When I bought the mast it was simply stated that there hadn't been reports of ventilation yet. Now, the ventilation reports are acknowledged and I've come across multiple people who have this issue with their mast. Along with the previous gen 1 history of ventilation that Cedrus seems to have makes it a deal breaker for me.

Is it universal?:

Yes, the Evolution masts are universal for connection. For some people this is going to be extremely important. I wanted to do a ton of foil testing this year and wanted to control the mast and isolate the foil performance. However, multiple foil companies explained to me the importance of designing, developing and testing foils on their own masts. This makes sense. I tested the following on the Evolution mast:

• 14 foils tested

  • 2 undeniably better on the evolution.

  • 3 were a toss up, I could ride the Evolution or brand matched mast and be okay.

  • 9 I would prefer a brand matched UHM mast for.

So, 64% of the foils I tried were best on brand matched masts. It took me a long time to reach this conclusion. Months of testing and thousands of miles on foil. Even now, doing the math on speed and heart rate has been eye opening. Most specifically, I've now noted that it seems the newest released foils performed the worst on the Evolution mast while older foils from previous years seemed fine. I think this speaks to how fast the industry is changing and the incredible difficulty of making a universal mast that can actually keep up with every single brands progression. To be honest, I'm not even sure it's a reasonable goal.

~Customer Service~

I was deeply disappointed in the customer service from Cedrus. Bringing forward concerns about noise, vibration, ventilation, stiffness, fit, craftsmanship etc. even from day one, were pushed off repeatedly with negativity pointed at the foil companies: "All these brands are really just marketing companies, and relying on overseas manufacturing to actually build and QC the product." which created an absolute nightmare for me to deal with. (I will say, every foil company and every shop that I tried to trouble shoot these problems with other than Cedrus was amazing).

Trying to get help dragged out problem solving for six months and 150ish emails. When I stopped believing the Cedrus excuses and finger pointing that was aimed at the foil companies I was publicly branded a liar by Cedrus. I endured heaps of insults, accusations and attacks on my credibility both publicly and privately. I don't think any company should be blaming their competition, the brands they are supposed to be universally functioning with, or discrediting reviewers. Unfortunately, my negative experience isn't alone and I've been given a lot of support from others who have struggled with this company which I really appreciate.

~Final Thoughts~

It's likely no surprise that the Evolution mast while unique and innovative doesn't make the cut for me. I totally understand why some people want a universal mast and if that's your jam then I would strongly recommend one of the many more affordable universal options on the market. I, on the other hand, am looking for top tier performance and excellent customer service for my $$$. Since the Evolution clearly couldn't perform at a high level with many of the foils I tested it's not the right mast for me.

Should I try the Wind?

Many recommend this but no, I don't have any interest. The reviews I've seen on the Wind mast state that it isn't any better than the average mast on the market, has worse maneuverability, and according to Cedrus the shorter wind masts are slower and still comparable in stiffness to the Surf which already wasn't sufficient for me.

~As Always~

Thanks for taking the time to read. I hope you found this article informative and don't ever hesitate to reach out with questions via email or by joining the site (free) and dropping a comment below.

See you at the river,

Bryan Lee, M.S. Experiential Education.