Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2021 i Foiling Magazine

The Wingfoil World Tour started the 2021 World Cup season with the traditional event in Leucate, the Mondial du Vent, at the end of April. Under extremely challenging conditions and Covid-19 protection requirements, the GWA managed to get this important event off the ground, in which the two official World Cup disciplines – Surf-Freestyle and Surf-Race – were held. A total of 53 riders from all over the world registered for the event. They made all the effort needed to participate in the GWA Wingfoil World Cup, such as the mandatory seven-day quarantine. Significantly more riders (especially from Maui and other water sport hotspots in the USA) had registered, but had to cancel their participation at the last moment due to the stricter border-entry regulations. The event then kept to…

EVOLUTION I made my first surf hydrofoil in July 2016. I had just finished filming the first year of the ultimate waterman event at which Laird and Titus Kinimaka were ambassadors of the event and had brought with them their first gen clip in foils. Kai Lenny was also at the event and we talked about foiling. Not long after the event we all saw the Kai Lenny clip of him foiling in Fiji and a week later I was in my garage shaping my first foil out of foam. The first foils I made were mostly hand shaped foam cores then wrapped in carbon in a conventional wet layup. The designs were built from hand drawn templates much like surfboard shaping. They were very experimental with crazy amounts of…

WEAPON AK PHAZER DIMENSIONS 4’8 X 19.5 X 36L RIDER HEIGHT 5’6 RIDER WEIGHT 150LBS Working with the AK Durable Supply Co. team developing and designing the Phazer was a blast! Including the R&D that went into it, I’ve been riding it since February 2019. I put this board through the ringer until we got a board that was Zane proof. From beach and dock starts to foil surfing Pe’ahi and launching 25’+ jumps with the wing, this board has been through it all and is solid as ever. With a reinforced construction around the areas of impact under the feet and around the foil mount, along with the full pad and foot strap inserts, this board is my go-to everyday choice. Early on when foil surfing on SUP and…

LOCATION JAMEOS DEL AGUA, LANZAROTE DATE FRIDAY JANUARY 1ST, 2021 This was a great day for foiling. And a great time to be on Lanzarote. It had been forecasting big conditions for three days (6m swell, with winds heading in from the northeast). By the time the swell had wrapped around the island, conditions had become perfect. It was very calm, with no wind. Gabriel was able to do three sessions to test all our high aspect foils, to see which one was the best in the waves, which was best for pumping, and so on. Moreover, this happened to be a semi-confinement period on the island, so we were alone at this spot. We also had very good light for shooting. We’re lucky to regularly get to ride in…

Wing design is moving along quickly, and Starboard x Airush have updated their FreeWing Air rapidly for the 2021 season. The larger sizes are a completely separate design this year, with the 6m and above a very different shape to the 5m and below. We’re immediately presented with a truly capacious bag. This is to avoid having to fold the wing tightly and creasing the windows. The windows are still large but slightly reduced on the V1, and run in an arc behind the leading edge tube and provide decent forward vision. The larger 6m we tested also has two cheeky rear-view windows tucked into the tail either side of the strut. Leash wise, it’s a neoprene wrist cuff design with a buckle which constricts and feels reassuringly solid. The…

FLYSURFER are a German kite brand with a beautiful development center tucked in the foothills of Bavaria. They are responsible for a lot of innovation in terms of closed-cell soft kites for both snow and water use, which are highly technical to produce. We were eager to see how they could apply all this top-level aeronautical design to a handheld wing. First of all, you are greeted with an excellent backpack – two straps, decent pockets, and roomy enough to get the wing into without being a black belt in origami. It comes bundled with both a waist and wrist leash to give you all options, which is a great touch. The MOJO has a twin chamber inflation system with an iSUP valve on both the strut and leading edge.…

AFS is part of the Foil&Co group, a French company from Brittany designing and manufacturing hydrofoils, wings, windsurf boards and SUP boards for AHD, Sealion, AFS and Nah Skwell. The foils are all produced in France. The AFS Flyer range is composed of a large quiver of sizes, with all elements of the range being modular and covering a large range of sports, from surf foiling to SUP, wing foiling and downwind foiling. The wings come with a beautiful yellow brushed-finish layer and the T-bar mast and top plate are made of pre-preg carbon. They come from two different molds and are then glued together and reinforced by three unidirectional carbon stringers. The baseplate is made out of compressed carbon fiber and is thicker than most of the baseplates on…

Gaastra are a brand with a long and respectable history in the wind sports market. They’ve now entered the wing market with their second generation of wings. The Gaastra Poison is their dedicated waveriding wing, that joins the progressive all-round freeride Cross wing to complete their 2021 wing range. Featuring a thick leading edge and profile, a very light and rigid triple ripstop construction and three perfectly positioned handles, it is a well-conceived and effectively designed wing. Along the middle strut there are harness attachment points and a couple of Velcro patches allowing the rider to get creative and take accessories with him or her. While waveriding and flagging, the wing floats in the wind with a lot of stability and holds in the air by itself. It is really…

One might imagine that after upwards of a year spent in quarantine, hydrofoil designers would be out of ideas, but, happily, such is not the case. With the latest generation of foil designs has come an entirely new level of all-around performance that blows everything prior out of the water — literally. Within Lift’s overhauled lineup, released this past February, lies the 120 High Aspect (HA). This piece of kit is a truly spectacular hydrofoil. At a glance, it’s not hard to see why this wing stirred a buzz that caused it to sell out in mere days. With an aspect ratio (AR) of 10.2 and an area of just 775 sq/cm, the 120 is more akin to a racing kitefoil than the standard fare we’ve seen in the surf…

Picture this: An international brand books a shoot to create content on a range of new products in one of the only places in the world where travel is accessible, and the wind is blowing: South Africa. The shoot gear gets air-freighted to Cape Town, and on the day the gear arrives, the president announces another lockdown. Beaches are closed, and foilers are officially persona non grata! This was the situation that we on the Flysurfer team found ourselves in this past January. All geared up and nowhere to go. With our new MOJO wing ready to hit the market, we had a mission to accomplish, and we were going to find a way… Alarms were set for 4:30am, leaving just enough time to brew some hot coffee to keep…

01 RRD DYNAMIC PRO CARBON 1200 The Italian brand’s “expert level” SWK (surf/SUP, wing, kite) Dynamic Pro front wing uses some of the stiffest carbon on the market for such a toy, giving it extreme rigidity in both flex and torsion. Speedy, carves hard, and is gagging to get amongst it in the waves… 02 NORTH NOVA North’s Nova wing comes with North’s ever-present attention to detail. A stiff geometry means you’re not going to struggle getting to your feet and riding in almost all wind conditions, while the perfectly formed ergonomic handles are guaranteed to keep you locked in when it’s pumping… 03 SPG ULTRA~X The team at Signature have a very versatile board range, with lots of foil, wing and crossover options. The Ultra~X is their dedicated wingfoil board that enjoys…

Hi guys. The brand was founded in 1994, 27 years ago. Svein, how did it all begin, and what did the water sport landscape look like then compared to now? Svein: Back in Arendal, Norway 1976, my father gifted me a subscription for the National Geographic kid’s edition. It had an article about a new sport called windsurfing. There were pics of Matt Schweitzer windsurfing at Lake Tahoe, and after seeing those images I could not stop dreaming. Two years later I had delivered enough newspapers to buy a second hand “windsurfer” which I pretty much ended up living on. I was so addicted and spent up to 10 hours a day out there, my skill level went up, despite having very little talent other than being stubborn – so…

New Zealand seems like a hotbed of wing and foil development at the moment. What's making it the perfect incubator for the emerging sport? I think there are quite a few reasons. The country has a really high proportion of passionate water people, and it offers a wide range of wind and water conditions in a small area. The coast is 15,000km long and you are never further than 130km from the ocean. The weather is nice enough to test there all year round productively, and innovation is also part of the culture. The country is a long way from anywhere, so you get time to think, and it's costly to import, so there are drivers from both ends. You also have easy access to a lot of skills relevant…

LOCATION WAIKIKI, OAHU DATE SATURDAY, APRIL 3RD 2021 I made the short but thrilling voyage from Kauai to Oahu for a downwind competition in March. It was my first time flying alone, and one of the first races in over a year that wasn’t canceled. My friend Jack Ho had invited me over for the event, which was cool because competitions with friends are more fun! The course was a Hawaii Kai run, about an eight-mile run along the ocean swells fronting the south coast. Due to social distancing, the race was self-timed and self-monitored. On a clear spring Saturday morning, we jumped in the water and had a great time racing down the coast. There were also some other kids that showed up to do the race with us.…

Keith Teboul’s name is synonymous with performance board designs across a spectrum of applications. Now several seasons into the surf foiling game, KT’s prone foilboard lineup spans from the 56L Drifter F down to the 25L Drifter S, which we’ll dive into here. Let’s open the box and have a look at this 4’4 Drifter S. A sanded red carbon finish and set of premium MFC deck pads comes standard — quite a sharp combination indeed. If the dimensions didn’t already convince you, the Drifter’s pulled-in nose, double concave bottom, and sharply chined rails inform you of this shape’s intentions. The bottom rear is characterized by cutouts around the foil box, which serve hydrodynamic purposes in addition to reducing the board’s “hips” in steep turns. At 18.5” wide, she’s on…

Released at a time when most in the industry put on their horse blinders and dropped everything to bring high-aspect (HA) wings to market, the good folks at Cloud IX took an alternative route via an innovative mid-aspect outline. Seeking to circumnavigate the disadvantages of large HA shapes — wide turn radius, slow banking reactivity, high pitch sensitivity, and low speed limit — Cloud IX proposed a wing with a highly tapered outline and modest span (relative to the area). Such outside the box engineering sought to retain the best attributes of surf wings while tapping into the distinct pumping advantages of high aspect designs. In this way, the F Series was pitched as a best-of-both-worlds hydrofoil. The question is, does it live up to such a high standard? Let’s…

Olaian is a brand from the Decathlon group specializing in the R&D of nautical products designed to suit the broader public market. They are designing and manufacturing surfboards, SUPs, kayaks, apparel and are now releasing a new range of foiling products with a pretty unique USP: a safety foil! Out of the box, the foil has a unique design with soft rubber protecting the leading and trailing edges of the front wing, the stabilizer and the mast. The front wing and stabilizer are joined together in a closed frame to avoid injury when learning to foil. It is 100% designed for beginners who want to start their foiling journey. The Olaian foil is super easy to assemble. The fuselage comes on top of the front wing and gets positioned with…

Congratulations on a truly delicious looking new range. Can you give us an overview of what’s in it, and what are your key products? Thank you, we worked very hard and it’s good to see the products ready for the customer. We are very proud of the new hydrofoils and boards for both wing foiling and surf foiling. In total there are four new foils, two new masts, a new fuselage and three new boards for wing and surf foil. Later this year we will release three more sizes for the wing board series, the Boom. On the hydrofoil side, we have added a 1200cm2 wing (the smallest in the Shaka Series) and it’s a great foil for strong winds and big waves. We love to go on big air…

So Gary, congratulations on the first wing harness! Was this something you took upon yourselves to design, or was the call of the market loud and clear? Thanks for the good words! The sport of wingsurfing is moving so fast with innovation and product ideas it is mind altering. Right out of the gate we did embark on the idea of a wingsurfing harness in our own vacuum, but rapidly we saw the “want” and “need” from the market becoming more and more apparent as we started to see people in the water using harnesses, on the socials posting about harnesses, and on forums and groups talking and debating about what the perfect wingsurfing harness would be. The debate of using a harness or not I think will be hotly…

All the members of the Annecy Foil Team are from the ski community. Some are professional skiers and snowboarders, ski coaches or photographers, and they all spend their winter up in the mountains… The team is composed of myself, Victor Daviet, Edgar Cheylus, Roy Hummel, Scott Cheminal and Lalo Rambaud. Here’s a little look at each of us… Victor is from Gap. At 30-years-old he is the ‘dean’ of the group! From snowboarding the steepest faces of Alaska to foiling the Annecy Lake, he is a passionate rider. Like most snowboarders, Victor spends the summertime on a surfboard. His passion takes him from south east France to Nicaragua and back to Annecy where he spends most of the summer riding on the lake with the team. At 19-years-old, Edgar is…

Hey Kalani, could you first tell us a little about yourself… How old are you, where do you live, and where’s your favorite spot to ride? Hello, I’m 8-years-old, I live in Mo'orea (the island in front of Tahiti). My favorite spot is the one where I learn every water sport called Haumi Pass. It’s just in front of my house, so it’s super easy to get in the water. What kickstarted your love of foiling? The main thing that really excited me about learning to foil was the movie from Takuma that was shot on my island Mo'orea with Matahi Drollet, Tikanui Smith and Lorenzo Avvenenti. I love the style of the riders so much and how cool they are in such heavy conditions. They inspired me and I…

Until recently, foiling for me was mostly about going fast, pointing high, trying to beat people around the course. Wing foiling hit the scene right as I was stepping back from kite racing. Though I’m still launching from Crissy Field in San Francisco Bay most days, winging has changed the way I view my local spot and allowed me to appreciate it in a new way. Instead of looking for steady wind and flat water, the Crissy wingers now congregate in the sloppiest places we can find. A local favorite is the South Tower of the Golden Gate bridge. On a strong ebb tide, 6+ knots of current sucks out under the bridge in a glassy slick, uncharacteristic of a windy venue. The tower’s wake forms a series of standing…

• So first up, it’s important to have a good understanding of the spot and the wave swell orientation. This is key because if you don’t things can go badly wrong and pretty fast… • Having a small boat or a Jetski is the best option (on small waves the foiler can manage his own safety, but on bigger waves the pilot of the Jetski must be ready to pick up the rider between waves and the timing is key). • Having a tow-partner who you trust and is part of your team is critical. The Jetski driver needs to place the foiler in the right spot of the wave at exactly the right time, so they need to be highly experienced. • Choosing the right foil for the right…

LOCATION PYRENEES MOUNTAINS DATE TUESDAY MAY 4TH, 2021 Getting up at 5am has a unique flavor. It's getting up with happiness and going off to find suspended moments in time. What could be more exciting in life than to live from your passion? It has been and still is the common thread in my life. With an eFoil on my shoulder, bare feet in the morning dew, I can anchor myself in the present moment. I am incredibly lucky to live in a splendid region. In a few minutes, I can go from the sea to lakes in the mountains. This morning in May, I chose the small Pyrenean lake at the foot of the Canigou in St Jean Pla de Corts. At dawn, the lake smokes… I plunge into…

LOCATION LANGEBAAN, WESTERN CAPE DATE FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26TH, 2021 This year a lot of new things happened. I joined the RRD team and just a few days after that I received an invite from them to take part in a photoshoot in South Africa. It came around pretty quick, and I found myself at this shoot with the other team riders who were all avid foilers. Apart from a few sessions in El Yaque (Venezuela), it was the first real experience I’d had with the new wingfoil equipment. I remember this first session in Langebaan very well. I arrived the day before the shoot, and was pretty tired after three days of traveling from Venezuela to South Africa. I felt I definitely needed some fresh water to recharge my batteries…

Italian wind sports megabrand RRD have released a mind-bogglingly large range of modular cross-discipline hydrofoils this year to cover every aspect of foil sports conceivable. The Dynamic SW 1700 sits as their more performant wing-focused foil with a cross application for paddle in. It comes in three sizes, with a 1400 and 2000 available either side of the middle of the range 1700cm2 we tested. Fresh out of the box, all the fixings are super sturdy M8, and with absolutely zero movement in the joints. The aluminum top plate is bolted and bonded into the mast permanently. All the fixings are stainless helicoils and getting the foil together is a simple process with the M8 bolts clamping the front wing down tight. The fuselage has had some unique channels cut…

AK do their product development in South Africa and have a wealth of kitesurfing knowledge stretching back with their sister brand Airush, so it was only a matter of time before they produced some wing gear with the heady mixture of wind and waves down in Cape Town. It is fascinating testing wing boards at the moment, with such a rapidly advancing sport diverging out into quite defined genres already. Some of the more wing-specific boards have started to homogenize into short stubby and relatively wide affairs, carrying their volume quite uniformly through the rear three quarters of the board. The Phazer does things slightly differently – the bulk of the volume is under where your front foot naturally rests, and it has a defined and more traditional surf nose…

VAYU is a new brand on the wing market and they’re jumping in with an interesting new feature on their wings: a foldable wishbone that they called Bridge Boom technology. I had the 4.4m on test, which is part of a range of sizes that also includes a 3.4m, 5.4m, and 6.4m Featuring a thick leading edge and profile combined with a Teijin D2 canopy (without battens) plus the Bridge Boom central strut (which is a strut with a boom mounted on it) the VAYU VVING has a slight dihedral shape combined with a clean panel assembly. The design is pure and effective and results in a very well-balanced wing. Due to the boom, the VVING is a little bit heavier than other 4m wings but this is compensated by…

KOLD is the brand of German kitesurfing legend Mario Rodwald. At the core of the KOLD philosophy is sustainability and the brand strives to make gear with as small an environmental impact as possible. All of their boards and foils are produced in the EU, and they take steps to ensure that all carbon used in the production process is offset. This is 100% not ‘greenwashing’ and kudos to KOLD for placing environmental impact at the heart of the brand. The Viking is KOLD’s first foray in to the foil world, and they have arrived at a good time with the benefit of a few years of evolution of designs and with the arrival of winging on the scene. With this in mind the Viking is a relatively high aspect…

+ There are no limits to this sport. The limits are only the ones we set for ourselves. I’ve been exploring more caves and secret taverns all the time! The amount of waves and spots that foiling is opening up are really endless. As far as tricks and maneuvers, same thing, we are just scratching the surface with what we are about to see what the new generation is gonna be coming up with, and the technology is only improving. The foils are constantly getting lighter, faster, stronger. They are getting more and more efficient, it will get easier to balance, to pump, to turn… I mean we are seeing big improvements every six months. + Foiling is so awesome because the silliest, smallest waves that everyone would normally pass…

We’re big fans of Brian Finch. Not only does the guy keep the good content flowing into our social media feeds via his @foiltheworld channels, he was also integral in hooking us up with the right people, right at the start. And here we are today – eight issues deep and doing better than we ever anticipated. So for this issue’s State of Play Brian ruminates on the diversity of the disciplines in our sport, and how defining them sometimes doesn’t come that easy… Foiling. It has to be the most diverse water sport in the world. The numerous foil disciplines crosshatch and intertwine into a blur of immense options. I imagine you're familiar with this scenario: "Do I prone today or wing? Or how about a wing-downwinder? Nah, too…