Alex Aguera Wing Foil Interview- Blue Planet Show #15

The Blue Planet Show

Aloha friends is Robert Stehlik. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the blue planet show. on the blue planet show. I interview Wingfoil athletes, designers and thought leaders. And I asked them questions, not just about wing foil equipment and technique, but I'm also trying to get to know them a little bit better, their background, what inspires them and how they live their best life.

You can watch this show on YouTube for visual content, or you can also listen to it as a podcast on the go to search for the blue planet show on your favorite podcast. I haven't come out with a new blue planet show for awhile. It's cause I've been super busy. You might've heard that. We took over a new shop in Haleiwa on Oahu's north shore, formerly known as tropical rush.

We just opened there and I've been super busy, getting everything set up. It's really exciting, but it also, it takes a lot of time. So I haven't had as much time for the YouTube channel and the blue planet show, but I've been waiting for a long time for Alex to come onto the show and he finally had some time to do it.

So I got a great interview with him. Alex is nutty about wing foiling. He's coming out with GoFoil Wing foil boards and wings. And of course he plays such an important role in the development of the sport. He basically invented the foil that allowed Kai Lenny to do downwinders on a big long board. And basically kick-started this whole sport of foiling in the surf and now with wings.

So thank you for that, Alex. And without further ado, this is the interview with Alex. All right, Alex Aguera. Thank you so much for joining me on the blue planet show. So how are you doing today? Doing great early in the morning, over here. How are you doing Robert? I'm good. Yeah. So I'm on here on a Oahu. You're on Maui, nine o'clock on a Wednesday. So yeah. So tell us, let's start a little bit with your background. Where did you grow up and how did he get into water sports and like early childhood to start from the very beginning? For getting into water sports, it started when I was let's see about 14.

We went on a family vacation. I grew up in Clearwater, Florida, by the way. And. We went on a family vacation to the Virgin islands, British Virgin islands, and we're going to be on a sailboat and, do the bareboat charters where you travel around to each of the islands. And it's, it was just a fun, two week trip in the, in a place where we'd never been in places that were super clear water like that crazy, it was just fantastic.

But anyway, the captain of our boat, we had hired a captain who would sail us around to the, for the first week. And then we were on our own. The second week, the the guy would put this wind surfer in the water at this one place where we first started called Soper Sol and Tortola. Any of, they would start sailing around with him and his other captain, buddy friend, on this funny looking sailing craft that, ended up being one of the original.

Baja style windsurfers. So this would be for the original windsurfer was some of the first boards that oil swipes, or it may, and it looked like a big, giant, long board made out of a fiberglass. But anyway, when we got back to Florida after the chip, my dad wanted to check this out as a possible, get the kids doing this.

Cause we were riding motorcycles and stuff at the time you wanted to get us off of motorcycles. So he calls up Hoyle Sweitzer, which was windsurfing international or whatever. They called themselves. At that time, this was really early. This is like 1975. And oil tells him, he goes, Hey, I'll sell you six of them and make you a dealer, so it was like, okay, we were the first dealer and in Florida and it all started from there. We started wind surfing right in 1975. And that's how I got into all these other sports that have evolved since then. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. Foil Schweitzer is Zane Schweitzer's grandfather who basically invented the sport and had the patent and everything. Yeah. So your dad became the first either the first wind surf dealer in Florida. Yeah. Like district nine or whatever, what are they? I can't remember fleet nine or something, the, for the ninth, one in the United States.

So that's when the books were still made out of wood and stuff like that. And the bowl we're still out of wood. There was a daggerboard was still out of wood. We hadn't progressed to, a composite looking white daggerboard yet. And we hadn't invented harnesses yet foot straps or anything.

Okay. And then, okay. And then what happened next? After that, we Pursue to get better and better at wind surfing. And my dad started to be the distributor for the Southeast United States. And we were really in the winter and our whole life changed from, he was working at Honeywell, which is one of the firms down there in Florida.

He was a engineer. And then he switched over to just going to be wind surfing. We're going to go all in, into this wind surfing thing. So from there, we add a whole bunch of people in Florida that we were the original Florida wind surfing crew. We called ourselves the fearless flying Floridians there for a couple of years.

And it was a real close crew there in the Clearwater Sarasota area that we always raced against each other. And we just got better and better. And then pretty soon we were doing well in the national and world championships. Awesome. And then. How old were you when you did that kind of the racing and your first world championship?

I guess? My first national championship was the following year. What Hoyle used to do back then was we would do these big district championships. There was like maybe five or six throughout United States and whoever had won their district championship would get a free trip to the nationals.

So the nationals then following year in 76, I'm 15 years old, a win, a free airfare to Berkeley, California, where we're going to do the nationals. And I traded it in for money to buy a bus ticket and pay for my hotel when I'm over there. So just imagine you're 15 years old, you're traveling in a Greyhound bus, cross country.

Get over there, you rent your own wind surfer back then they would have, rental packages where you just come in, rent your own gear and then raise. So at 15, that was quite an experience, to have my parents to be able to let me go, all the way across the country and do that all by yourself was, looking back at it now back then, seem oh, that's okay.

I can do this. We'll look back at it. Now. I was like, God, I would never put my kids through that. But that was a fantastic Regata because. What happened was, so it was 76. We're at Berkeley. We had a lot of wind and stuff, but as first time I get to meet Mike waltz and Matt Sweitzer, who were like the gurus back then of windshield, because they had a thing called the windsurfing news, which was like a little paper back, like a magazine, the early wind surfing magazine was a paperback called wind surfing news.

And it was always the swipe tours and like waltz and this and that. So we get over there, meet Matt and Mike can win or goes for his first championship with all the boys. And Robbie Nash does his first championship. All the boys, he, so little 12 year old blonde kid comes in from Kailua. So it was like, all of us got together for the first time at that time.

And he was Robbie Nash is two years younger than you about, okay, so you were 14 and then there's someone even younger than you showing up. Yeah. Yeah, that was, how did you do in that? Oh, I got beat up. It was blowing really hard. And in Florida where I learned, I was just learning to race around and, barely get planing kind of conditions, which we have in Florida coming up to that summertime, you get to Berkeley, it's blowing 20 to 20 fives, sometimes gusting 30 and one of the races.

And I don't think I got across the starting line. I got beat up. I was just rag dolling. Cause you only had one, one sail and it was pretty big. I probably weighed 125 pounds at the time. And I remember there was these divas, these sisters, the SWAT tech sisters. There was Susie and Martha and The girls just beat up on me.

I was getting whooped up on by girls mad. It was like, oh, bad. It was, I was humbled when I went there, but watching some of the stuff that was just then evolving because Robbie had come over and he started doing this railroad thing, it's the first time any of us see a rail ride. And I was like, oh my God, what is that kid doing?

Who is that kid? And then by the time, the week it ended max White's here. And I think Mike had picked it up and Ken were all doing railroads by the end of the week. They had figured it out. But when you first saw that, I was like, what the heck? That's something new. And then we did one of the, I think it was, could have been the very first freestyle event there.

And. The guide who Dennis Davidson, who was one of the original Kailua windsurfers was putting a little teeny fin on his board. He was doing these super fast tax and stuff. And we were like, wow. And he ended up winning the very first freestyle. Oh. And then again, so that's awesome. And so then how did that progress it, you became a professional windsurfer, right?

Yeah. That that was many years later in about 1980, started getting paid to do wind surfing races by wind surfing international and oil spikes or, and we would go over to Maui for the first time. We were going to do the Pan-Am world cup was a real big race. It was for high wind and it was in Kailua.

And the first year I didn't go to, it was in 79. There wasn't any wind. So they had to race in Waikiki. The next year, oil flies us out. I spend six weeks on Maui practicing with Mike waltz. He had told me, Hey, you gotta come over here and see this place. If it blows all the time, he had just discovered Okinawa, within the last six months.

And he goes, there's nobody around the wind's blowing all the time. There's waves. So my brother and I went over there and hung out with Mike for about six weeks. Then we went to Kailua to do the first real pan Emmerich's. It was blowing hard and it's like the windiest day you've ever been in Kailua now is what we experienced for a whole.

And we were like, oh my God, this place is gnarly. We were scared to death coming from Florida and seeing that kind of stuff. And that was one of the very first, big, high wind regattas and wind surfing history. Wow. Cool. And you said your dad was an engineer at Honeywell. So did you ever get any like formal education as an engineer or any kind of like that kind of thing?

Or is it, are you just all self-taught on the side? Yeah, on that side, it's been mostly self-taught. I went to, some business classes in community college after I got out of high school, but I moved over to Maui after that 1980 trip. I was like, oh, I'm selling everything. I'm moving to Maui.

As soon as I can. It took me about a year and a half to be able to pull it off. Then I moved back in 1982 to become a professional. Nice. Yeah. And then, so how was that getting started on Maui in the eighties? That was something, it was great. We were, I don't know if Paya very well, but back then there was, it was hardly anybody in pyuria.

There's no traffic light. We rented a place. It's right next to where mana foods is now, back then, there wasn't any model foods yet, but we rented a Quonset hut there. That is where they still store some of their, use it for storage of some of the stuff that the store. But anyway, there was at some time, six of us staying in this Quonset hut for 250 bucks a month rent.

So we're all paying like 40 bucks a month rent and living in Maui, nobody around we're going to hokey every day and just having a blast, nobody around on the road, everybody you saw on the road was a windsurfer. You knew everybody. It's like now it's all tourist going by. Yeah. Molly has changed a lot.

I lived there in the nineties or late eighties and early nineties. I lived in Peggy too, like really close over there. So I remember those days we lived in a basement apartment, which is super cheap, but yeah. And then driving old Molly cruisers rusted out cars, all that. And then, and then at that time, when surfing was developing really rapidly and changing and stuff.

And did you start making equipment back then already? Or how did that, how did you get into business that business? I used to, I was sponsored by high-tech surf sports and Craig Masonville, who was the original guy for high-tech used to shape all of my boards. And we were riding the old asymmetrical, wind surfing boards that we used to ride at hook.

I want a couple of the big contests that hook keep a riding those. And then I was always on the pro world tour for wind surfing. And eventually it was hard to get the boards that you wanted, because I had to start working for my French guys Tega and they were making me boards and then Craig was making me boards and it was hard to get boards on time sometimes through the high-tech factory.

And I said, oh the heck with this, I'm going to try and start building boards myself. So in 1989 was probably the first time I was racing on one of my own boards. I remember racing in the Gorge and doing really well on that. And at the high-tech surf summer series I won a couple races on my own board and I was all proud.

I was like, oh yeah, I might be able to do this. So that's how long ago I started. Yeah. Nice. So those are, slalom racing boards is, were your first boards you built? I got the first boys were slalom racing boards. The way boards is a little bit more technical cause it's easier to break those. So the first law and boards, I didn't have any sandwich on them.

They were just covered with carbon and I had some elaborate process for stretching the cloth over it and wetting it all out and keeping the rock or shape, and then learn how to do vacuum bagging and sandwich construction after that. Yeah, I was working for hunt Hawaii in those days and he, we were, he was still building boards with using polyester as in, but then I guess at that time it would switched over to Potsie.

So is that, what do you use the proxy or polio? My first boards from Masonville were always polyester. Then we started switching to a poxy in about 1985. I've got a slot onboard that Dave calling on, who was the laminator for high-tech back then we started experimenting with styrofoam and carbon fiber, and I raced the first one in 1985.

I think it was. And that's where we're like, oh man, this is white, stiff and strong. And we're like, the lightness was just incredible compared to polyester. And I won the Gorge the second year in a row on that board. And I won the Japan world cup that year and in the spring on that court.

But we learned a lot of things about, styrofoam construction goes back. We would just sink the boxes into the styrofoam. And then by the time I had finished the Japan race, my deck box had collapsed into the board. There was a big hollow spot inside. Okay. We were learning a whole new phone core and what to do with it.

There was a lot of learning in that. Luckily the board stayed together until the race was over. Yeah. Classic. And then use like vacuum bagging and all that kind of stuff too, or just regular later. Yeah. When I started, I got my first vacuum bag bored by this guy, Gary efforting, who was a, you might remember him.

He was the guy that made Hypertech in the Gorge and him and Keith notary would do these. They called it a clam sandwich or something where they were doing vacuum bagging. But Gary and I, he was a friend of mine because we all grew up in the same area in Clearwater, Florida. And he was showing, he made one of my original 12 foot long boards that we used to raise some world cup.

And he was using this new aircraft technology called sandwich, construction. And he was the first guy that I saw doing sandwiches on boards. And slowly I learned how to do all of those process. A lot of it was trial and error, but eventually I was, I had retired from the pro wind surfing tour and started running the probe windsurfing tour.

And then at the same time as being the race director, I started building boards for top guys like Kevin Pritchard and Mike abou Zionist. And those were all, they had to be super custom, super like sandwich boards. Wow. Okay. And then I guess when tiding came around, you got into kite surfing or yeah. W what happened there? The kite surfing, it was it was funny because we were sitting over here. We're all wind surfers. Layered was still a wind surfer. And he started playing with this kite and my other buddy maneuver Tom from France was starting to experiment with this kite thing and we'd see him at home Keepa.

The guys were takeoff with these funny, real bars and all kinds of weird hiding stuff and start sailing this kite and go cruise down the coast, and ended up down at Kanawha or wherever. And I'm like, wow, that looks pretty interesting. What the heck is that? I didn't want to do it until somebody got back to the beach.

They started out, I'm not really into this down winter and you're out there, on this thing, out in the blue water, with the, whatever could go wrong in palette around with the shark. So okay. If you could get back to where you started, that's what I finally started getting into it now.

I don't know, in 97 or 98 or whatever, somebody was finally making it back. But what really got me into it was flash. Austin had moved over from Florida. He was lived in Daytona and he came over and he was this new kite guru guy. And I would watch him jump and he's 25 feet in the air and just hang in there and then come down real soft of flashy to have great Ky control.

He still does. And I was just watching that going, wind surfing. If you jumped 25 feet in the air, you come down hard. I don't care what kind of stuff you're doing. It's that there's an impact. So I was like, I really want to do that. That's what really got me interested in kiting was watching flashed land softly.

I'm like, okay, now I want to go boosting. So when you got into D did they still have those reels where you had two reel in the kite, if you get, if you drop it in the water. Yeah. Those guys were still using that, but I'm Brett lyrical and all those guys had their kite reels and I'm like, no, I'm not playing with that.

Cut real. Does they look like you eat it? And then there's all this metal and stuff in your face. I started out with one of the two line whip, mocha kites, and then progressed to a two line Nash guy. And then eventually we started making four line kites and it got a little bit easier, those original to lion whip because, and stuff, they were all that was around, but they were a little bit dangerous.

There was a lot of accidents in those early days. It took a while before at least five years before the kites got, safe enough to where, people weren't hurting themselves so bad anymore. Yeah. And then I guess around that same time the strap crew I guess layered and restaurant, all those guys started foiling, right?

Torn, foiling and jaws and stuff like that. So when was the first time you tried foiling and how did you get into that? Foiling. I didn't try foiling until much later. Those guys were all into these BNN, bindings and strapped into this little board and everything weighed about 60 pounds.

It seemed and big aluminum, mass and just super heavy. And then of course, these guys were real right. They were like, Hey, we're going to go to jobs. We're going to ride out or spread, it was like, you're all in, or you're not, and I'm like, they're like, Hey Alex, you got to try this.

And I'm like, no way, man. I'm not going to be strapped into that tank and going over the falls. And that looks dangerous. But those guys there, they really were into it at the time. And we were all towing too at the time. With, our little tow strap boards. And I remember one day we were out at Spreckels mill and rush Randall is towing around.

It's pretty small for tow day. We like to tow it. It's eight foot plus, and have some fun and it's four feet occasionally. And you're waiting for a set, but rush is going around in circles, just on his foil, cruising around at least doing backflips, going out with this thing while he's getting pulled with the checks.

And we're like, man, what the heck? Russia's having a lot more fun than we are. So that was one of the first times where I really looked at it and go, wow, this could be fun. But for me to actually get into it myself, I was kite foiling at the time I had start, this is a, it was a funny story because I had stopped kiting for like about five years, Jesse Richmond, who was the world champion at the time.

And his brother, Sean, they were like the best or kiters on Maui. And Jesse goes, Hey, you got to start making some kite or some tight race boards for us. I'm getting beat by girls out on the course. We just started this tight racing thing. So Jesse got me into kiting again. So I built a few boards.

Then I had to test them with those guys. And that's how I got back into kiting then. So this lasted for. Maybe three years of kite racing. That was the one that we had the big, three fins on it. And you're, racing up when, so then my buddy in Martha's vineyard, we started foiling back then they were riding all kinds of funky foils, but it was the early days of foils.

Most of them came out of France back then and he goes, Alex, I need you to make me a kite foil board and I'll trade you this foil, you got to start getting into foiling and you I'll trade it for a board. So I did this with my buddy, Rob Douglas, he's the world speed record holder for kiting back in the day.

And he goes, okay, we're going to do a trade. So that was my introduction into kite foiling. And he gave me this foil that he had already beat up. He weighs about 2 35 or breaks the heck out of everything. And it was all wobbly and I had to keep fixing it. I was breaking it and stuff, and that's how I got.

My first initiation into foiling and how to build foils. Cause I was always fixing it. And then I started making my own wings, and that's that was, started me all into foiling. Yeah. And on those foils for kite, for them back then were tiny, right? Really small wings and really long mass and so on.

Or is that kind of what you started on? That's what we all started on because back then it was the same thing with layered in those guys. We had these really thin foils cause we were only interested in speed. We wanted to go faster and faster. Nobody wanted to make something to go slower.

So everything back then it was, they were small, they were thin, everything was like the fast race foils were less than, 13 millimeters thick. They were, 14 or 15 millimeters was a fat foil. So that's what that's what we used to do. Yeah. And then at, and did you, when you made your own fuzzy, like CNC of them out of G 10, or what kind of how did you make your own foil?

Basically what I did in the beginning was I would take some existing foil that I had, and then I would reshape it and try to figure out how to make molds. So I was making molds and figuring out how to do that. It was a whole different process. I was used to building boards and sandwich, construction, vacuum bag now on a changed to, Hey, you got to learn how to make molds and make these wings.

So it was a big learning curve. I've made a lot of mistakes. I burned up a lot of molds. I did all kinds of crazy stuff. It was just like learning to build boards. You've got, there's a big learning curve, but that's what I ended up doing. And I would take some of the wings that I got and that I wanted it bigger or smaller or whatever, and I would reshape them and then make molds off of them.

And then when did you actually start your business? The gold foil business and started making foils to sell? Like when was that? Yeah, and I think for Gofoil, I probably was in maybe 2013 or 14. First I put the, a name on my kite foils. Then I went to Vietnam to have my buddies over there at kinetic T.

I taught them how to build the foils and then I changed it to go for it. I had this idea I'm over there with the boys in Vietnam and it, they don't speak English, super well. So I'm telling them, what do you guys think about this name? It's like gold foil, just go for it.

They'd were like, yeah, I don't get it. I had to go for by myself cause I couldn't get anybody to confirm that, Hey, that's a good idea at the time, but I got my buddies over there to make me the logos and stuff. And that's where I came up with. The name go foil was when I first went over to Vietnam and started putting it in production that's way before any of the foils that everybody knows as gold foil.

Now. So the kinetic factory was making your first kite surfing. Foils. Yeah. So the ones in production at first, I was building it all here, custom and I started building boards and the foils over there at Connecticut. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm going to screen share a little bit here. And then at some point He made a foil for Kailani.

And then he posted this video that kind of took, I guess now it has over 5 million views, which is just amazing. But can you tell us a little bit about the backstory behind, behind this and how that all came about? There's a long story behind that, if you want to go into it, the, we want to hear all about it.

Okay. In the beginning, this was about maybe eight months prior to this Kai was riding my kite foils and we decided that we were going to put one of them on his one of his standup boards. So we put a Tuttle box and one of his, I think he had an eight foot standup order, 76 or something at the time.

And we put the kite foil on it and he was going to go stand up foil. And I never really heard back from Kai about it. He comes back about six or eight months later and he goes, Hey Alex, we gotta redo that thing about going down, wind foiling again. And I go what happened with the first foil? And he goes it's dangerous and there's not enough lift.

And it was really hard to ride and I'm like, okay let me think about it. And I'll try and come up with something. We'll try it again. So what ended up happening was I spent two weeks taking one of the old kite foils that I had that I really liked that had the most lift and I kept changing it.

And adding on, I had this idea that we got to rethink all of this, that, thin foils is not what you need to get going under your own power. We need something that's going to be a slower foil that can lift up more weight, at a slow speed. And I'm thinking shoot, these big aircraft planes that are lifting tanks and stuff go by having bigger thicker wings and different foil sections.

And I started trying to mimic that on one of my kite foils. So I would build it up Bondo and AB foam, reshape it and glass in and kept playing with it. And about two weeks before I finally said, okay, you've done enough remodeling here. Cause you're never going to get it. Perfect. You have a little bumps here or whatever, and you're like, okay, let's try.

So I call up Kai or I sent him a text and Kai is oh, I'm in LA, I'm on my way to Europe. I'm doing the indoor in in Paris with Robbie. We're doing, it's a wind surfing indoor. Okay I'll try it out and see how it works. So I go down to sugar coat, which is here on Mallee, which is a kind of a bumpy funky way when it's fairly big.

And it's like head high Peaky sets all over the place and kind of gnarly, for trying to foil for the first time I go out and say, what the heck I'm going for it. And actually Jeffrey and fin Spencer are in the water surfing and my dentist Barclays in the water. So we've got all these guys witnessing me going out there and trying to kill myself.

So I go out big standup paddleboard, or what did you put the foil on? Yeah, I had made a board that was. I think it was eight, six or nine foot was my standup board. I put a total box in it about 24 inches from the tail and I'm thinking, okay, this should be good. Where I want to stand on. It will give me a little bit of lift.

Cause I moved it forward compared to what I do on my kite foil. And I use the kite mass though, which is 38, 39 inches tall. I've got this new front wing, which ended up being the original Kaiwei. And so I put that on there, go out. I had a tail wing that I didn't like for kiting, cause it had too much lift.

So I used that for the sup foil to cause I needed more or less. So I'm like, okay, I'll try that. See if it works, get out there. All of a sudden I rise up and I'm like, I got plenty of lift and then I roll over and I'm looking at these wings in my life because I'm on this giant mask, and it's just, I kept looking at the wings.

After about five near misses of hitting that wing with my face. I go into the beach and I'm thinking to myself now I know what Kai's talking about now. I know why it's dangerous to the masters too tall. So I go back to the shop, cut the thing in half, I cut it down to 18 inches or something and go back to lower lowers it.

the next day. And actually take my GoPro and film myself writing. I remember I went over an Eagle Ray or something that day got a nice video and I'm going like, at times almost 50 yards, I'm like, whoa, I could do this. And it was just like amazing. And a couple of my buddies were in the water and saw that fuck buck saw it and Jerry Rodriguez saw it.

And these guys were just like, they couldn't believe it. They're like, oh my God, he's doing it. But anyway, is this on your YouTube channel? I put it in Facebook back then Facebook. I put it in Facebook. I've got it somewhere. I can find it. I don't think I ever put it in YouTube.

I don't know. I might've. Yeah, but you go that far back, but yeah, I tagged Kai on it and then Kai saw it. He goes, oh, wow, man. I've got to try that as soon as I get back. So he was all stoked. And then when Kai came back, you put Khan on the same board, the same thing. And it's hard to describe right now.

We take it for granted that, what are you watching Tom Brady? I couldn't believe that's ridiculous. But anyway while I'm a big fan of the Tampa bay Buccaneers, so he's brought it back to my town. So he's like my hero. He was always a hero for me, but now he's like a super hero, but anyway, Comes back jumps on the same equipment and it's hard.

Describe the first time you see a guy who's foiling and he goes, past the peak goes way out to the left, comes back across the peak goes way over to the right and keeps going back and forth. And you're looking at them going, what the heck is he doing? It's just, it was mind boggling to see somebody do that for the first time.

And I was like, oh my God, what the heck is going on here? Maybe we have something here. And, Kai is just a freak. He was just doing stuff that was, unbelievable at the time. And I was just like, oh, maybe I should make a patent out of this. This is it. It was just like a revelation seeing something like that for the first time.

Yeah. And that, the first foil I got we jet my friend, Jeff Chang, and I'd tried it on a kite foil at first, be behind a jet ski and stuff. And we were really struggling in same thing. Like almost killed ourselves, falling into the foil and stuff like that. But then when we got the first Chi foil, that was like, oh, this is so much easier, but it's funny because at that time, the Chi foils seemed like a huge foil, but now it's actually a kind of a small foil. Most people start on a much bigger flow. Yeah, exactly. That's a really small foil. Now, getting back to the story, how that evolved to your video. Okay. Kai was just riding in the waves that sugarcoat doing this stuff.

Henry Spencer took a video of him that was like the first time where you see this going crazy. And then he starts going. He goes, okay. We got to, I got to talk to Rob. We got to put this on one of my downwind boards because we tried it on my downwind board, the same board that we were riding in the surf, and I'd go out there with Kai.

He has his 12, six, his regular, Nash board. We're paddling down. When I cannot get up to save my life, no way, especially on a Chi foil. So he goes, Hey, let me try that. Give it to Chi and Chi proceeds to get up like seven times on the way down to sugar coat, like immediately, even on that standup board.

And I'm like, the kids are free. He just paddles his weight to strength ratio is just off the chart when he's battling. So he's all over the place. We get all the way down to sugarcoat. He takes off from the outside, which is like at least a hundred and 150 yards outside. And he cruises all the way into the beach and it was like, wow, this is something he spends the next week, trying to talk Robbie into being able to turn one of his Nash boards and put a total box in it. So I go, okay. We'll do that. Just keep talking to Robbie. See if you can pull it off. Eventually Robbie gives him the, okay. Okay. You're going to do it on that board and blah, blah, blah.

So we put a tunnel box in at 48 inches. Cause Kai says, that's where I stand. I think that's going to be the good place to put the tunnel box. So we put it in there. I get this text he's down at the Harbor practicing and he goes, Houston, we have a problem. And then he goes on to describe that I'm going plenty, fast enough to get foiling, but the tail is hitting the water and I can't get up just because the total box is so far forward, his tail would drag and bring him down again.

So he goes, okay, let's put a tunnel box at 24 inches. Like it is on the other board. And w we should be able to get up and I go why don't we just cut the tail off, and see about it. Like in this video, you can see how I cut the tail off of that board. Put like little diamonds. Yeah. So the next day he shows up at the shop with the board, I said, yeah, we'll put the fellow box.

And he goes, Hey, I think you're right. Let's cut the tail off and just leave the total box where it is. That'll give me less bored after he thought about it overnight. And then within about two weeks, he makes this crazy video of him just jamming down the coast on this. And one of the, one of the scenes from the video that really caught my eye was Dave Kalama.

And Jr is his cousin are in a two man canoe, which is two man Outrigger, which is the fastest boat. Usually in Maui the pattern and he goes right by them and it was just like, oh my God, what is going on there? It was just amazing. It was like, oh, we've got possibilities now. Yeah. They always screws.

That's the dream to be able to just surf the open ocean swells and just be able to keep going indefinitely. And then something that layered had always talked about, we always played volleyball and we were always around together. We always played at Brett's house and layered would always talk about that going.

I think we're going to be able to just cruise for miles down the coast on one of these foils. And then, like 10 or 15 years later this is what we. Yeah. That's amazing. And then, yeah. And then what happened after that? Pretty soon after that, Nash started making foils as well.

So how did you feel about that? I did not feel super stoked about that. And it was like, Hey, we've got it. All right here. You could just, we could build it for you to put your logo on it and you can go from there and then I could make some money out of it.

And Robby was, he's always, do it all yourself and keep it inside the company. And they wanted to do it all ourselves and Mickey, he had told me one day he goes out, he really going to be bummed if we do this all by ourselves, because Rodney wants to do it himself. And I'm like I'll be bombed, but we'll still be friends.

And I guess you did, you did that with star boards for awhile, right? You put the Starboard's logo on or co-branded with Starboard's

was starboard logos as well. We had done a lot of them were just go foil and a lot of them were starboard Gofoil. So there was both of them were branded at the same time for a while. There we were in the early days we were connected with starboard. And then you got a patent on the, on your foil design.

So how come you never, did you ever try to enforce that? I Obviously like now there's so many companies making foils. Is there any way, like anything you ever were able to do with that patent or was it just not feasible? He never really pursued it. If there was a lawyer out there who wanted to pursue it, and work at his, work on his dime and then split it, 90, he takes 90% of the profits.

We get. Then we could do something, but it's something where, you don't really want to jump into that game unless, it's financially feasible. We've got patents on the patent that all kinds of aspects of, the surf foiling and stand up for healing. And basically as being, a new thing and, thickness of foils being thicker than the norm and all of that.

So there's a bunch of aspects to the patent, but we never really pursued that to where it gets expensive, and you'd rather, nobody wants to take that on, and get their own money. You would do a 90 10 split, huh? Split. Get that

out there. That would do it.

Oh, rate is 8% is royalties that all the companies should be paying you, they could get 90% of the 8%, but yeah, that's just one of those things in the beginning, we went for that patent to, it was like, wow this could really be something big. And is it a utility patent or did design patent, do you know?

I'm not even sure which one it is. It's the more expensive ones and that's a utility patent. That means that, that means it doesn't have to be like, even if it's not an exact copy, if it's the same concept and yeah. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we went for. And we have a big time patent lawyer firm that did it, but it's hard to enforce, obviously you have to prove that it's and he was going to chase it, on their own diamond set of you paying for these lawyers because the lawyers and all that gets expensive, we've got the patent and the us China and.

Australia, we didn't pursue the other countries because you got to pursue every country separately. And then how, and then how did you, did it evolve? Like I know in the early days, like everybody wanted to buy foils and there, you couldn't just couldn't get them, like you couldn't make them fast enough.

And like, how did you ramp up production and what kind of issues did he run into? Yeah, you're in the early days, you, haven't a lot of problems with how to construct this and how to keep it from breaking in me. I always making wind surfers in the early days. I really hated warranties that will end up ruining your business.

You do all of this work and then you got to give the guy another board or fixes board or whatever. So in the beginning, we didn't even want to put out the product till we were pretty sure that we weren't going to break it. So that stalls your production and stuff. And then once you do ramp it up to get, full on production going, then you end up, you have to watch out that things are evolving so fast to not make too much of the, something that might be outdated by the time you get it, because it takes a long time for these factories to build our stuff.

What happened with us, which was unique with us is that my two brother-in-laws build canoes over in China. My one brother-in-law owns the factory because he got burned by some Chinese factory he was working with. So he decided to do his own us own Chinese factory. And then he got asked to jump through all the hoops to do that.

But anyway, they were making the canoes. And he makes a bunch of different models that you see around in Hawaii and

the manager of the factory, my other brother, a brother-in-law Michael Gamblin is my other sister's husband that owns the factory. He's the genius behind, put it all together. He's the guy that I do all the CAD work with and building the foils and the wings and stuff. He's really super smart.

And he's, can pull all of this stuff together. It has the drive to do it where people go, oh, wait a minute. That's way overwhelming. I'm not going to do my own Chinese factory. That's going to be too many things to overcome. But anyway, what happened was I had been building stuff in Vietnam.

And it was getting to where it was hard to get stuff out of Vietnam fast enough. And I was seeing that these foils you're going to need a lot of these are going to need thousands of these things, cause it's in hot demand. So I asked my brother-in-law Michael, Hey, do you want to start building these at your factory in China?

And I showed him the video of Kai and the 5 million views. He's oh my God. He just went by Dave Kalama and junior on the two man. Okay. We're all in. Let's do it. And that's how it started. And now it's a whole family business and we build all of the main hydrofoils in China at his factory. So I guess in the beginning, like I remember the first one I got it started to crack right by the mass of base, like between the base and the Tableau box.

And then also on the fuselage. That's, those were the main points where a lot of. You had a lot of issues, right? Yeah. You have issues like that in the beginning where there's a, it's a process of trying to get your carbon fiber loaded, just right. The direction ability or, you're 45 degree angles and how much materials in there and, the compression, there's a lot of issues that you had to overcome.

I like the first one I got we got one from the factory in China comes over and we had all of the fiberglass or carbon aligned in the wrong direction. And I snapped the front wing right off writing, riding. All of a sudden my front wings gone. And it's just a matter of, you've got to have fibers going the right way and the 40 fives and everything to work perfectly, especially with prepregs is a whole different animal where there are layers and layers put together in the middle.

Okay. So they're made as a union directly. Think of it as the strands are uni directional. Like these are the strands are the carbon. Each sheet is like this, you can align it like this or whatever. And you cut these all, put them in the wall in a certain way. So there was a lot of learning curves to get, not all right in the beginning and how much should be here and how much should be there.

And where are the weak points and all that kind stuff. Yeah. We went through all that too. So very frustrating to get stuff back that just breaks, right? Yeah. I know. Warranties. Yeah. And then again, then, sorry. And then and then what happened then? The develop, what was the development after that?

Like how did you ramp it up and become a global brand. In the beginning, it was easy because nobody else had any foils. So we were, we went globally right in the beginning. And we were selling shoes couple thousand or 3000 foils in those first couple of years, just because we were the only guys who had foils.

So that was easy. So then we got around worldwide, fairly easy in the beginning, then it becomes harder and harder because you've got, 10 guys get in, want to make foils. And you've got 20 guys who come in and then you got 50 guys. You've got people you'd never even heard of or trying to build foils.

And everybody wants to jump in on this bandwagon. It's like the early days of wind surfing or stand up, everybody jumped into the show to try and be. So that makes it harder. So you've got to, you've got to keep up really good quality. Don't you don't want warranties to come back to ruin the business, but at the same time, you're trying to make faster stuff or easier stuff or, whatever and try and keep progressing is the way we try to do it over here.

Yeah. And then, so you got into more high aspect, foils and fast, faster designs, thinner foils, smaller for us and so on. What do you, what are you working on now? It's like your latest latest designs and what's, what do you see for the future? What we're going to do in the future is we're going to try and weave the last couple of years, we've gone into speed and try to get faster and faster, and we've made a bunch of.

So the wings to go a lot faster because in the beginning, everybody was hitting on us going, oh, your oils are outdated. They're so slow in this and that and blah, blah, blah. So then we worked on our speed. So now we've gotten to where we were like about the fastest foils out there. So now we want to try and get back to, without losing some of that, you'll have those lines of fast, easy foils to ride, but then something that is really easy to ride it, doesn't accelerate on the turn, something that's a little bit user-friendly for the intermediate type guys, the guys that are really advanced and ride.

These are NL wings, which are super fast and, tourney and everything. But the the intermediate is get a little bit, shy away from that. It's we're going to make the GL is a really good one for winging it for the intermediate people, but I'm going to try for next year to make something that's super easy.

So we're going to have a different line. We'll have three different lines, basically. So are you making a foil that's specifically designed for wing foiling or are they all all around foils for Steph prone, foiling, standup foiling and wink foiling, or depending on the size of the wing or like how, yeah.

They all can cross over. So we're finding out that, you want one, that's supposed to be erasing foil. Okay. So we're thinking downwind or are racing for wings or or towing falls into that category. If you're in really big waves, you need some super fast and Then you have the other wings, like the NL, which are great for stand up.

They're great for surfing the smaller ones, prone surfing, but they're really good for winging also. So it's funny how all of them, you can almost do every one of the sports on each one of those wings. It's just a different style of riding you have to do, or a different size riders, weight, might like the bigger wing where the smaller guys like, oh my God, I can't write that thing.

I need a little tiny thing. But all of them seem to cross over. I can tow on, on different size waves on any of the wings I can wing on any of the wings. I need particular amount of, a lot of wind for the small toe wings, but on the Raceway. Like when I'm paddling downwind, a lot of the wings crossover to me, paddling downwind too.

So there's, it's funny. They all have their moments and can crossover. Yeah. So I guess the same design just in different sizes works for different things. I guess when you're Don flooding, you probably needed a little bit more surface area, a bigger wing, to keep going. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Cool.

Yeah. And then how did you get into wink foiling? What I know you were one of the early wing furthers. You were on an ozone and stuff like that. Posting videos of you riding at lanes and stuff like that. So how did you get into that? A wing foiling started with the way it started over here was flash.

Austin was always tightened down there with us and riding. Type foils and stuff just decided to put together this funky wing thing with some windsurfing battens and some old kite material and just put this whole thing together. And he goes, Alex, I need one of your foils. I think I can get distinct foiling.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes, yeah, I've been hiding down at the sewer plant, try and testing this thing. So get him a foil on it. He comes up there, we take pictures of them. These are the first things we see of the new of evolution of Wingfoot and where it started. So we kite and rode this thing at the same place where Ken winners, right next door to us, he does all of his kite testing there too.

And then Ken saw him one day and he's oh my God, what is that? I'm going to put that in production. I'm going to build a couple of those and we'll start doing experimenting with it. So Ken takes it from there and puts the boom on it. Cause Ken's an old time windsurfer and he just liked the book.

And the very first wings that I tried were kin winners, duotone wings. And that's how we first learned. Alan could, is got me down there one day. We were down there with Alan at canal and he goes here, go try it. And then I proceed to get up and cruise around. After about 10 minutes I was riding it pretty well.

Cause I already had, was really good kite for her. So it was easy for me to learn, oh, I used to be a windsurfer and then my wife tried it and stuff. And then from there it was like, oh my God, this is fun. So the first year I went to the Gorge with, it was maybe three years ago and I was on a, do a tone.

And then I got to try ozone for the first time they had a couple ozones there at the show and they gave me one of those. So then I was using the ozone and the duotone at the hatchery and just having a blast. I was like, oh my God, this is fun. It's like the early days of wind surfing. Where were you working?

Everybody was super stoked and feeding off of each other. And it's just a bunch of fun between everybody and they're all talking about, Hey, what are you writing? What I'm I learned this, what should I do? I'm having problems with this. And it's like the whole same atmosphere of the early wind surfing days.

Yeah. And people are very open about sharing their ideas and their knowledge and what they learned is pretty cool. That it's not as close hold as in some other disciplines, I think. Yeah. And then what, so what are the like behind see those two boards and like what is, what are you working on now?

What are you latest products and yeah. Tell me what you're up to. Latest thing now is we'll be getting in our boards from the kinetic factory. I worked with the kinetic factory again that used to build my kite boards to start making a wing boards. Their full sandwich, Connecticut is known for making.

Some of the best boards in the world, as far as the factory goes, they're super solid. They, anybody who's gotten any new Jimmy Lewis boards in the last five years knows that they're built very well. So we get a container of those come in. Yep. That you can see the they've all the boards and the first container will have a total and a plate.

There's all kinds of foot straps placements. You can see that has a handle there in the middle. And just the typical things that you need to have on a wing board, as you could see how the volume of this is in a pretty volume forward on my boards. I like to have a lot of volume up forward when I'm winging, because we're going shorter and shorter board.

And you have a tendency when you're standing up forward, the board goes underwater. So like you come down off the plane and then all of a sudden the front goes under. It does a summary. So as you can see some of these, can you show us yeah. Maybe pick one up and move that chair out of the way. I'd show us the shape a little bit.

Yeah. Let's look here. This is 105 liter board is five, six, and you can see how we have a lot of thickness up in the front of here. Cause we get the five, six you get up forward. If you have the traditional theater noses that look really cool, they sink on their water. When you stand up here, basically we move the flotation of forward.

It's a little bit bigger, fuller outline up forward as compared to the tail. So it's reverse of what a lot of the boards are. That bigger tails, a lot of float in the back. I like to have the full rotation of forward. We've gone shorter and shorter, and it's easier to stand on something when it's like that this one you can see has the traditional, like wind surfing style footsteps.

This is 45 degrees here, and I have one strap in the back. I like to ride wind shift and style. It's really easy to switch your feet and stuff. You go from strap. A lot of people are coming from surfing background, have a problem with switching your feet. And so then you have foot straps that can go straight.

Like you're just going to go one direction. So it has the answer it's for going riding with just one set or footsteps, or you've got the list surfing style where you can switch your feet and go forward and start to learn how to go both ways. Because if you get in a problem where you're trying to get up and really like when TOSA.

You're crossed up on your bad tack. It's hard to get up like that. And it's hard to go up wind like that. So if you do get into light winds, it's easier to switch your feet better to learn in the beginning, because once you start going just tow side all the time, you never switch feet again.

The deck is pretty much flat. Or do you have like concave in the deck? Any kind of, I don't like on caves so much. I want everything to be a flat platform for my feet and nothing weird. And I don't concave too, because. I'd rather, if you fall on it, I want it to be flat and not have a little bit of a rounded edge to hit your shins or your knees or whatever.

I'd rather we're getting back on is easier on a slide deck. I find it. And you don't hit your elbow or whatever on that hitch. Yeah. Yeah. Like I used to ride on Connor. Baxter's, downwind board, he's got this big scoop out, all those star wars at the Umar and I'd fall on that thing.

I'm like, oh my God. And he has whacked myself with this heavy concave. So it's cut that system. I don't like that. So I figure if it works, don't make it all fancy. Like the same thing with the bottom sheets are real flat so that it has an easier release to pop up when you're planning it real light.

Is it a, if slat all the way to the nose and you have a little bit of convex in the nose, it was pretty much flat. The holes in soft rails, the rails in the back towards the tail of the board would have been, it's a little bit round here and you have a little bit of a kick in the last, behind your total box and your plates.

And can you show that the profile, the contour, like you said, it's a little bit thinner in the tail than in the notes. No. They're about the same thickness, but now are thicker in the front and thinner and the thickness keep about the same thickness. So don't go crazy with, making a super sick.

I don't like the way that feels when I'm winning. I want a lot of float up for, because most of the time on these short boards, like this board is my four, six. I tow with this and I wing with this and can kite with this also. But even with this board, it was one of the things too, when you're out of your boards you want the bone flow to be about the same so that when you sinking it, especially on sinker, it seems evenly because more of my boards, I have a pretty big it's a little bit thicker in the front than the back.

And I float like this and I go down and it's hard when you're sinking like that. Not really far forward and concentrate on the nose going down. So there's all types of, trial and error and into figuring out what really feels good for me. Always made my own board so I can go ahead and, make a board that week and test it again.

But I don't make custom boards anymore for other people, but the family still gets nice. Thanks for showing us that I'm going to show the screen share again real quick. Oh, sorry. Let me let me go back to that. So are you going to show your bottom here? You can see all of what the, oh, you got the measurement for where to place the foil and the bottom handle.

Yeah, I guess guide there. So like you use your, this is how far you are from the tail and the measurements. And then if you like your plate in certain position, you remember what your number is to go, okay I like it at, seven inches or whatever it is for the plate title of course goes in just one place.

When you got a, a nice. It's nice to have a handle on a wing board because getting in and out of the water is much more for me. And then on the deck, you don't have a handle though. So I don't like the handle on the deck because when I'm stepping all over the place and my toe gets in there, I've had a couple of problems with almost breaking my toe, like having all the dash.

Yeah. But then I guess when you're carrying them without the foil attaches, it's off balance, but you can, I guess you can still carry with that bottom, but you could still carry it. It feels a little bit nose heavy, especially on the bigger six oh board, but you can always, the smaller words really.

Yeah. Not that hard to carry it. Yeah. And I was going to show the different sizes you have available here. I guess you have a 46 by 44 liters, five oh, by 87 liters, five six by 106 liters and then 600 by 134 liters. So four different sizes. And when are those going to be available? Next week, I think container arrives next week could be the following week.

I don't know how much we get stuck with, trucking and customs in Honolulu. It's already in Honolulu. So I'm just going through the, the process of getting it over here. Nice. And then, oh, I think I had this on here too. So tell us a little bit about the co also making your own wings now, right?

Is that Craig, is this one of your prototypes? This is one of the prototypes. This is the actual version of the three. Which will it'll have stripes on it. It's got all the logos and stuff, and I moved the windows closer to the middle strut on the production style, but I've been using this thing since I want to say February or something, it's the the quality of it feels really good.

I haven't stretched it out, and it hasn't blown apart. And I put it through some tail this day is probably, a regular 25 to 30 knots. And just imagine some of the days where we're 35 to 40 and I'm still using that week. So they're built super solid. And what I like about my wings is what we did was make the bladders a little bit bigger to make them stiffer.

So when your sheet in with these things are not moving all over the place, like some of the wings, we got a little bit more of a, it feels like a windsurfing sail you shoot in, and it doesn't move all over the place. Yeah. And that makes them more powerful too, I'm, the Armstrong rings are like that, that they're really thick flatters, which make it more rigid and powerful.

It seems yeah. It looks like you made the wing tips pretty squared off. So you have less of a wing span to, is that one of the things you were working on or, just maybe talk us through the different prototypes, you try it out and what you've learned from trying different things.

We did with this is basically our, we call it our elliptical style. It's more of a standard style, but we do bring the wingtips closer together than some of the wings. Cause you'll notice how on, F1 or Armstrong have pretty long wingtips and you have a tendency to touch those in the water very easily.

So my wing tips are broadened together a little bit more on that. Ellipticals. So you got a little bit more cord in the middle. So think of it as a longer strut in the middle shorter wingspan, just to make it easier to turn without touching your tips. Then we have a square model, which is the one that I was writing at home keep.

Or the one day you might've seen that with the square model is better for really light wind so that when you're, you get on those bigger wings and you're having problems pumping, to get up. So they like you're, you just want to get foil, like that one, that's the square model.

You see how that one's way more square than that elliptical style you just saw. This looks almost a little bit more like a, that slick wing at a new Ken winners. S duotone one. Yeah that closer to a slick, whether you score off the ball just so that what I like about this is I do a lot of windsurfing style wave riding, hurting like that.

When I call it cheating in, you can keep the tip further up out of the water, but the main advantage of this one, forget all this hotdogs and stuff that I'm doing here is when it's really light. When you have problems pumping up to get onto a foil, it's a day where you're out. It's Hey, I wonder if I can get foiling today, and you go to the pump, and you keep touching your tip in the water and it stops the whole progression of trying to get up. You got to start all over again. So the square tips are made for that to where when you pump it, it's easier to pop up the foil and have a lot less problem of the wing tip touching while you're trying to accomplish them.

That's the biggest advantage of these square model. So the square models are made in the bigger size. It's like a four or five, a five, five and a six, five. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And that's one of the things about some of the earlier designs is when, you think you could use a bigger size to get it going in lighter winds, but then then the wing tips were so wide that you couldn't really create a lot of power with it because of it has, because it's like the wingtips is drag and you can't really bring it vertical.

You give you that forward power, this just lifts up, but you can't really get that forward momentum with it. That's where that, I think the square design makes a lot of sense. So you actually have two different wing designs or is it just by size or how does that work? You can wing styles, but it's by size where they convert over to the other ones.

So by elliptical side, Those 2, 2, 2 7, 2 7 is like a main state here in Maui. Everybody, when they get lit up over here, the two seven is really nice. I ride the three, five, and then the four or five. So those are the ellipticals. You got 2, 2, 2 7, 3, 5, 4 or five. Now the square model, like you saw in that last video is a four or 5, 5, 5, and six five.

So it's more towards the higher end because when I, those ones don't loft is easy. They're a little bit more unstable if you're just luffing and want to cruise down the coast and, hi, I win. So the medical ones, I like a little bit better for that. And my feedback from my riders that, you've got to get it, some of the intermediate and beginner riders, because feeling stuff that's different than you and they get on it all the way out.

This elliptical is way easier for me to. In handled. But when you get into that day, when it's six to eight knots and you cannot get foiling, like even my wife, she was, didn't like the square model, having all kinds of problems with it. And I'm like, I put her out in it's fairly windy. Then we have one day where it's not very windy.

She goes out with the four or five elliptical and she kept touching the tips and she's getting all upset. And I go, okay, here now try the square model. She goes, gets right up. She was like, oh, okay. Now I get

fantastic. So those wings you have available now for sale, you have them on Maui. No those are all prototypes as everybody who are having problems, getting wings, those will probably show up in September. If we're lucky. I said, yeah, we're going to start building them in August and we're going to ship them in September, then.

Nice. Oh, my shipping, do they have to go in a container or do I get a good rate to air freight them then what we won't know until we actually have the product and see how you take the ship. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. The whole pandemic thing and like what, how did it affect you and your business?

I know shipping has been a nightmare, like getting stuff shipped in containers and stuff like that. But other than that, like how did the whole pandemic workout for you at Maui? The pandemic here on Maui, it was we're out in the, to where, there's not as many people over here, they shut down the islands, nobody was loud and, people didn't want to leave because they couldn't get back in type of thing.

So I was in Florida when all this happened, we were doing a tour over there and demos all over the place. And then they're like, Hey, they're going to shut down the state. We got to fly back to. On a mad rush to get back home. And then I stayed there for a, since last March. No. Did I go anywhere?

I think I went to a wahoo last month when they finally opened it up to where I could go without all kinds of tests and get my nose probed and everything. I went anywhere. Maui is they closed down the beaches. We're not allowed to go to canal hall. They closed it all down and that's where we were all winging it from.

But you're allowed to go to the Harbor. So you go to the Harbor and what ended up happening was everybody had nothing to do and started learning how to go when they closed down the canoe guys, because the six man canoe, as you're too close to quarters and they wouldn't let them do a six man canoes and they have all the lessons and stuff from the teaching and races.

So they closed down. Basically the canoes were. The wing foiling, and then the wing Oilers just took over. There was no trap boat, traffic, and all, there was a bunch of wing boilers and all of a sudden you've got kids and grandmas and old windsurfers who had, and wind surfed in 25 years coming back into the water.

And it's, it was just crazy. There's some days there was 50 or 60 people down there and it's still going on down there now it's started a whole, a whinging. This COVID started a winging revolution on a big community down there. Yeah, that's awesome. And then more recently you had that you had a gold foil get together at that at a big house over there.

And I know my friend, Derek, Thomas Saki went over there and stuff. And talk a little bit about that. That was great. We do this usually once a year, we have we rent we have a friends that have the access to the house down. Yeah. And he lets us go into it for a weekend or whatever we're trying to do.

So we do go foil weekend and it's called come ride with us. And then we invite everybody from the outer islands that are, Gofoil riders like Derek and Kalani and lay, and Todd, and all these guys come over. They stay in the house and then all of the locals that are, are, go for riders of Maui, come down and ride with them and we get those guys just have a blast.

They've, it's like one of the best places in Maui that if you could own a house that would be one of your top pitch, wind sports. That's where that's the property you want to just launch right out of there. There's the summertime is the best place for winging. I feel on Maui it's, there's waves right out front and.

The boys, we, I take my boat there. As some of the videos, my boats right out front and there we use the boat to get up to malico and film them coming down. Peter King was taking all kinds of videos from the boat and the boys from a wahoo and Kauai, all they want to do is do a down winder from Mullica and what best fun is right out there.

And those were like, no, we want to do downwinders. So they just want to do two downwinders a day and just come back to the house or go to the Harbor to do the, the full Monte. And they just have a blast. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it sounds like they had a lot of fun. They were definitely posting a lot of videos and photos and that trip, I was jealous Derek he's we'll do two downwinders and then at the end of the day, he'll take fuzzy or Who else was he with Garrett and they just take off for a evening run to the Harbor.

It's like the can't get enough. It's getting it's after five o'clock winds getting a little sketchy down by, there we go. We're going to the Harbor house out there, down to the Harbor. Just great times. Yeah. Yeah. When you call a sketchy win on Maui as for us as probably pretty good conditions on Oahu, it's funny.

It's a joke when they all show up. And I check the forecast on window room before they come over and I go, okay, forecast looks good. And the boys are like, okay what do we need to bring? I go make sure you bring your three just in case. And then when they get over here, it's blowing hell again.

It's 35 knots every day. And I go when was the last time you guys were in this kind of window? Last year when we were here. Yeah. You don't get 35 knots an hour, really rarely a hurricane coming through. I've been up the coast and we're going back up to malico and then you start to see lanes and just pass mama's fish house for people who know the area, you're getting up to keep a, you see all these white cats and then it was Derek or fuzzy.

One of them's goes, he goes, you know what? We see little patches of white caps like that in our courses in a while, who in collide, but we don't see the whole ocean look like that. The whole ocean's wife, white cats all the way to call Harbor. So they just, they love it over here.

Yeah. It's like smoke on the water, but but yeah. Tell us about four or five with a. The five oh board. So that things like 85, 87 liters, a four or five wing. So when you at Rooney ride with the wind, a wind powered up versus just holding it on the side, like what is, I guess you just have more speed or what, why do you do it sometimes? What, why do you hold onto the wing versus holding it next to you?

Do you power? Me being an old wind sear for, I liked that style that we ain't able to jam turns with full power and just feeling the juice of it. I could turn sharper and turn harder like that when I'm windsurfing, as opposed to luffing, like this is not as, I can't turn as quick, it's still a lot of fun to turn luffing, but wind surfing style turn, that's gets back to my roots, to where I really like to do.

So are you working on any new thing, new moves or new tricks or anything like that? Or what are you into these days? Like when you go in funding, are there any tricks you're trying to learn or anything like that? Occasionally I'll go into trying to learn some new tricks. Like the what was I doing the other day?

It's like at the end of the one video, I tried to do a luffing move at the end of attack. And I dragged the wing behind me while I'm tacking, as opposed to putting the wing up above my head when I'm tacking. Yeah. Behind the back luffing tack. And I was one of the things I was working on this week, but I've got a lot of new racing foils that showed up.

I'm supposed to test for production that comes out and several months. So the last three days I've been just going super fast, trying the really small ones. Cause we had a race. What was it? The paddle of Moolah race we did two weeks ago from Maliko to Kanawha. And in that one, you get to experiment with a little bit of your fastest foils and cheated in the whole way, going down wind.

And so I'm progressing with the feedback I got from that to try and make something even faster than what I was on. So in the video, this was your wife, Carla

that's Carla, right there. That's that? What size wing is that? It looks tiny. The two seven, that's a magic size for Maui because it's blowing 35 constantly. Yeah, no problems writing because they're getting beat up out there, but you see how solid that wing is. It's really rock solid and easy to ride and a lot of wind.

Yeah. And so you went on a downloader with a 70 year old friend of yours is that he was having a blast, had a lot of fun with that. He was talking about doing is his downwind or this guy right here. This is Ken right here. And this is his wife. And this is Allen they're talking about before we go.

And it wasn't very windy that day. That's really went from, so the, he had a little bit of trouble getting up, coming back in after he fell in. So this was his first down winter. So he was just really happy that we all. That's the great thing about whinging. You've got a seven year old guy just having a blast.

He's learned a new sport and he's just oh my God, this is fun. So I'm teaching or leading a a young lady. I think she's 70 years old, down at the Harbor right now use the 5 0 85 leaderboard. And she's just, she's an old, older windsurfer who just you'll be windsurfing for years. And now she started foiling and she sent me a text last night, says, oh my God, I got foiling today.

Most of most foiling I've done so far, I'm having so much fun. And it's just, there's a lot of people in all different age groups really gravitating to this wing. Yeah. What would you say like for you? What, why is winging so addictive and why is it so fun? I think that one of the best aspects of winging it.

You're combining the foiling, like what I've been doing standup foiling, in waves or standup foiling, what I'm, racing down the coast and you've got this wing that can let you do all of that in case you can't get enough power to, get going again. You just shoot in with your wing and get going again.

Like the stuff we're doing out downwind, like the other, that other video where I'm just surfing down one with three, five, you can't, I've done lots of wind surfing. Downwinders kiting downwinders, but there's nothing like winging down with you, just cruise and you're surfing down the coast and riding these waves and you can't slow down like that on your wind share for as soon as you're on sheet, you're going to stop and competing is just you're you can't, you're not connected with the water as much.

You're more connected with your kite when you're kite flight. Know, you're outrunning the waves a lot when you're yeah. And you can't completely de power and then just put it, put it aside basically. Yeah. When you start doing that, what ends up happening? You forget about your cut and then,

cause I interviewed both Alan and mark and they both said that. Yeah, basically Ken Ken winner got into it when basically they used to do the standard pallet downwinders together and then, Ken was struggling to get going with the paddle. So he that's why you started making those wings, so you could keep up with Alan and mark doing the downwinders I guess foiling and then yeah that, that's how they got interested in it too. When Ken started making all of that stuff, Alan gravitated to him straight away, he was because Alan looked across the street from Ken.

We could test together and Hey, you want to try this thing and let's go test this model and I need some feedback. So he uses Allen as a test partner. They were just testing two days ago. And you know where it is from Allen at the latest greatest stuff from Ken is rip thing. Ken's always been progressing that and that's how he started.

He was paddling from CU, with Alan all the time. And that was the old malico 200 days trying to go down, wind foiling. And I think Ken kept hurting his shoulder and it was too much on him. And that got him into whinging. Why for winging down wind for that? It's not, yeah, I've been trying to get Ken winter on the show too.

One day. I'll hopefully get him to agree to come on. And I've been trying to get you on the show. So thanks for finally doing it. But one thing I always like to ask everybody is. Your, your skills, your wa water, sports skills. Is it a result of your like, kind of God-given talents or your natural born talents, or is it like practice and, spending time and, work, working on it repetition and so on.

For me, it's a little bit of both, I've got pretty good balance and stuff and not, super stupid or anything. So figure these things out pretty fast. But for other people, it's, some people are just raw talents that just pick it up. You can't believe like an Austin camo or Kayden Pritchard that just got, they're just boozing talent, and then other people just have to work at it.

It's Hey, you got to practice this. You've got to dial in your equipment. You've got to, figure it out. Okay. I'm getting too much lift and what is causing that? Do I need to move my mask back or forward? And some people would really have to work at it hard and it just comes from repetition and it's like riding a bike, you got to get used to it.

And me I've been foiling so long and made all of these terrible tight foils in the beginning. So I learned to ride all of this crummy stuff and what was causing it. So I'm at an advantage to get on something and go, oh, we should do this to make this feel balanced. Where a lot of my friends, I have to get on their equipment and say, oh, wait a minute.

This doesn't feel right. You needed to feel like this. And this is what you should to do. So there's a lot to learn about, what is causing you to feel like you're over foiling or you've got too much lift or not enough lift, are you doing a lot of this? Porpoising that usually means. You don't have enough lift.

You need a little bit more lift to have something to steady against. If it's doing this all the time, it's like wherever you point the foil, it goes. So put a little more lift in it to have something to stand on. Just little things like that. Or just little tips that some people, it takes a while to learn what that is all about.

I get those questions all the time. So what are some tips that you give to beginners that are trying to get into foiling or wing flooding? What are some good pointers that people can use to, to get started or progress? What I recommend that you try to get into some fairly flat water to where you don't want a real bumping when you first learned the wing and you want to have if you could, pick your ideal wind conditions, it would be like 15 knots steady wind.

You can put on the wing, feel the wind and know exactly where it's coming from. Put on a fairly big foil, and you need to try to stay closer to the center of your board. If you're with straps or without straps, be closer to the center line of the board. That's where you have your best balance. And you've got to remember that foiling is a front leg sport.

You've got to learn to when I get up, don't lean back, like you're surfing or wind surfing. You got to lean forward. It's you're almost standing up more vertical and be towards the front of the board. You get up. It's more like you're standing on your front quad. You're not on your back quad. Don't put your shoulders backwards towards the back of the board.

So those are some of the first tips when you're first learning to win. I like this picture. It shows that really well. Yeah. Leaning on your front foot. She is. All the way forward and look at how she's standing on that front quad, all of her wings right there, and she's pretty vertical. So that's, you need to be balanced and she's basically in the center of that board.

So you have a good platform to feel that foil in the center of it. Some people like Derek will ride his feet, all cup of coffee, all over the board. I know he's got to like really almost diagonal, like on one. Yeah. One on each side of the board, but like words are free. So yeah, he definitely is.

Cool. So I guess what I wanted to ask you too, is do you ever have like days where like everything clicks and you're like totally in the zone and you everything just works and you can pull off all kinds of tricks. And then the next day, you're using the same gear the, in the same conditions and you're.

Not feeling it. And you're a coop, I, that happens to me all the time. And then wondering what is it, why, why can I be in that zone? Why do I feel that sometimes? And why don't other times, do you have any tips on how to get into that state of mind or like where you, where everything clicks, Ooh, I'm not sure how to do that.

I don't usually have that problem where normally when I'm not having a good day, it's because it's too windy or I took the wrong equipment. But the, you have to learn that too. It's Hey, you might think every day is the same, but it might not be the same. You're just not aware of it. But another thing could be that, you've been going hard all week and you need a break.

You need to rest it a little bit. And you're just, you ran out of gas, Yeah, that's true. I noticed sometimes when I'd take a break for a few days and then I go back out again, I'm like all fresh and I can, yeah. It's everything works way better than when, after a long session, when you get tired, that's when you hurt yourself and stuff too.

At the end of the long session. Yeah. I was racing around with Peter slate yesterday and I did a whole full first session and did three laps around our course that we ride. And then he shows up, he goes, Hey, come on. Let's go. And then we went back out and I proceeded to start falling all over the place and okay, you better wrap it up.

You spent your load today. Just go back to the beach houses everywhere. So yeah, you gotta know, you gotta know when to stop sometimes, right? Yeah. You gotta know when to stop. I didn't do it the other day. And it was really windy and I proceeded to put three holes in my way with flipping my foil upside down.

And hadn't done that in a while, but I managed to do it the other day when I got real tired. So yeah, another question I always like to ask like a lot, lot of people during them pandemic felt like, lonely or frustrated, depressed, whatever. And just when you're having a bad day or something like that, what do you do to make yourself feel better, getting into a better state of mind.

And, but we're going to say that you can't go wing foiling or go in the water. It's what else do you do? Cause everybody says that, oh, I just go I feel fine. But what do you do to make yourself put yourself in a better state of mind chilling down or something? Shoot I don't usually have those problems, but what I do notice that some of the people that do have these problems is they watch too much of the news and it's Hey, don't go in there and start dwelling on what they're all talking about and all of the problems that are happening worldwide or whatever.

The latest thing is going on to watch some nice movies or listen to some music, do not watch the news. That'll bring you down. I never presented agree. That, they're just trying to, they're just trying to sensationalize everything and make it look worse than it is. So is there anyone you want to thank for helping you out over the years or that supporting you?

The main people, what I, the way I hope revolved around this lifestyle would be my parents, just having them. The balls and the foresight to just jump into this wind surfing thing back in the early days, and it was a chant, a risky business, what is this?

Hey, you're supporting the whole family. I've, we're going to do it by doing this wind surfing stuff. So they've supported me. My brother, both of my sisters were expert windsurfers back in the day. And that was, got us on this path to basically our whole life revolved around wind sports.

After that there were revolved around the water. It's just, no, it was just perfect timing. We went on up, a trip to the Virgin islands and just Scott just got really fortunate. And so your whole family was passionate about, it's not like it's not. Like tiger woods. His dad like always pushed him to play golf or something like that and know became super good golf player, but then also the kind of a troubled person that seems so for you, it was like, you were always passionate about it and love doing it is that yeah.

And we always loved doing it. It was like, we were all we grew up around sports, we played football in the neighborhood. We were baseball in a neighborhood where went through, literally, we went through football, little league and and all of that stuff. And so we were always around sports.

So when this came out, it was like, like doing another sport. We were just doing it in the water and we just grab it, Intuit, all the kids did. And it was just, when you go to those races, your adrenaline gets all up, when you're doing well. And it's it's one of those things too, when you have your, my brother were like a year ago, And we were like two of the best wind surfers in the world and we always practiced together and we're always trying to beat each other and having that really helped us get to where we were.

It's like sibling rivalry a little bit. Yeah. We'll look at fin and Jeffrey Spencer now see, you think it's two brothers pretty close in age, just always with each other and they push off of each other, they're doing or racing down when, and it's, it really helps, to have somebody that good as your training partner and you're always together, it's and you've blessed.

You've got a little bit of a thing. I got a feat. He's my brother. Yeah. That really worked out great for us. Yeah. Awesome. Would you say that foiling or wing filing is an addiction? Like it's like something you crave and is there a dark side to it? Is there a dark side to being addicted to four lanes?

For me, yeah, I'm really addicted to all types of foiling, but the wind foiling, especially when the conditions are great, I go to Wingfoot, especially sometimes if it's blowing like hell for awhile, I'll go downwind, foiling and paddle with Dave and stuff. Cause that's what he really likes to do. And yeah, you just it's just so much fun that you gravitate to.

The what was the rest of the question I was asking you if there's a dark side, like what I'm trying to get all my work done more quickly so I can get on the water, because it's like blowing outside or something like that. But for me, I find it, it's motivating me to get my work done more quickly and be more, more effective or productive or whatever.

But I just wondering if cause usually addiction is like, has a negative connotation, right? So is there, is it a good thing or a bad thing? For me it's a good thing, but I've got an excuse, cause I, I tell my wife, I'm going to the office. I don't want to hear about it. So I've got an excuse, but there's a lot of people.

I heard this from lay on the other day he goes and my one buddy is having a whole lot of problems, and he's going to have problems with his marriage and stuff. What is he into drugs or something? That's no man. He's into foiling. Oh, I guess some people take it too. Yeah. He never goes home and all he wants to do is go weed.

So I guess there is some people out there that do have a crazed addiction going on. Yeah, for sure. So is there anyone else you think I should interview for the, on the beats on it? Show about wing filings, winning, falling? Yeah. I would try to get a hold of the sea. Ken winter would be a really good guy.

Yeah. You've already done Al and he's one of the main guys that would do it over here. Shoot. I don't know. Maybe we're waiting for who would be a good. Actually, I should try to interview Derek actually, Derek, come on Saki. I think it would be something to talk to. I'm talking about him a bunch, Derek.

Yeah. He'd be a good guy to, to go with. He's a, Derek's a funny guy because I make all kinds of stuff all the time for people, all over the world and stuff, they just love it, this and that. But for Derek, he's got these different ideas about what he feels and this and that. And it's like hard to make stuff for Derek because he's just, he's a special rider.

You'll like this one tail wing that I hate and he just loves it. And it's just it's funny. It's I gave him a hard time all the time. It's no why are you doing that outcome? You're writing nothing. And he's I just love it. It's what I'm used to. Yeah. Classic. Yeah. So do you have any special message for those people that are still watching?

I usually say it's just like a tiny sliver of people that watch. So the very end, we get like most people have left by now, but so do you have any special message for those still watching? Shoot. I would tell you that, if you are an older windsurfer or kinder or whatever, you really should try this wing, the wing foiling, it's less pounding on your body and stuff.

And once you learn how to do it, you're just easing across the water and it's you could get, you've got places you can go to that you normally wouldn't be able to kite or whatever. There's easy access to get into the water. If it all goes wrong, you just paddle back in with your wing behind. It's just a great fun sport.

You can do it in pretty light wind, and we'll probably get to where we can do it in even lighter winds in the future. Yeah. So it sounds like you think that this is going to be become a pretty big sport globally, right? I think so, especially in Europe, because anybody who knows wind surfing Europe really is popular in Europe.

It blew up in Europe, 10 fold over what it ever did in the United States. And I could see that there would be, thousands and thousands of wingers over in Europe, all between Germany and France and all the lakes, even Switzerland as some really key places for wind surfing and stuff over the years.

And some of those lakes, Italy and lake Garda, it's probably already blown up there. It's really going to get popular and it could get more popular. Yeah, no, I think so too. Yeah. I interviewed Baltz Miller. I think it was like January or February. And he said, it was freezing cold in Switzerland.

And he said like the lake was crowded with people. That's kinda nuts, but yeah. All right. Thanks so much. I think that's a good note to end it on. So thanks so much for your time. And finally coming on the show. Good luck with everything with your new products. All right, Robert, good talking to you.

Yeah. Good talking to you too. Thanks for sharing all of us. All right. Cool. All right. Have a great rest of your day lot. All right. Thanks for sticking around for the whole show. I really appreciate it. I always joke that only about 5% of those who click on the video actually watched the whole thing. So you were part of that elite 5%.

Congratulations. And thank you. All of you who support blue planet, you are the ones who make it possible for us to put together this show. And I really appreciate everybody who supports blue planet, and then also make sure to check out our new shop in Holly, Eva. Right next to the rainbow bridge, we do stand up paddle kayaking and surf board rentals there.

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