Wing Foil Interview: Sam Loader with PPC Foiling is back on the Blue Planet Show

The Blue Planet Show

Wing Foil Interview: Sam Loader with PPC Foiling is back on the Blue Planet Show

Aloha friends! This is Robert Stehlik, Welcome to another episode of the blue planet show, where I interview wing foil athletes, thought leaders and designers right here in Honolulu, in my home office. And in today's show, I'm interviewing Sam loader, the owner of PPC foiling based in Auckland, New Zealand.

We're talking for the second time on the boot planet show. In the first interview, we went more into his background, his business and foiling scene in New Zealand. This time we go over, what's new over the last year and all the equipment he's coming out with. We talk about the soar boards, his new wings the foil he has planned.

So stay tuned. You can watch it right here on YouTube with all the good visual content, or you can just listen to it. Audio only as a podcast to search for the blue planet show and your favorite podcast app. Okay. So without further do, here is Sam loader, right? Sam, welcome to the blue planet show back to the boot planet show for the second time.

How is everything going for you? Cheer, Rob, thanks for me back. Yeah, it's been it's been a while since the last show. It seemed it seems like, yeah, it was actually a lot's happened. Now it's been going, it's been going really well. It's been going really well. Been extremely busy.

I've never been this busy in my life, but At the end of the day, at least we're at least I'm designing, foils something that we love. And so yeah, it's just been pretty full on since so much has happened since last interview that then we it's it's crazy yeah, so hence why the catch up yeah.

So it's, it is great to catch up again and like for anyone listening if you haven't watched the first show, if you're interested in, at Sam's background and so on, just watch that one, we're gonna talk more about your business, your equipment just what we've learned over the last year with what's just changed what's in the coming up in the future.

And so on. That's what I wanted to discuss with you mostly. And I have a few questions also from Dan and a few other guys in New Zealand. So I'll try to get to those as. And gonna try to keep it in within an hour or so if we can, but we'll see. Will you call me up on my birthday?

So you a bit of be worth it, Rob? Happy birthday. Yeah. I hope you, are you taking the day off after this? I know it's morning time for you in Auckland, right? Yeah. Honestly, I want to take the day off and I want to say I am, but I'm probably not. I'm probably just gonna do some emails.

Probably gonna cover the shop a wee bit. We've got the guys coming in the afternoon. I think Josh is coming in and but yeah, later on, I'll chill out. We'll go out for dinner, stuff like that. Pretty cold in New Zealand now. Yeah. It's winter time for you. Yeah it's dropped a lot. It's certainly not summer anymore, but it's, there's still breeze, so there's still good conditions for testing.

And by drop, it's only dropped to about a three, two wetsuit, so it's it's not too bad down south has got some snow, so we've gotta go down there a little later. We, the skis up maybe take a win to the mountain, I always wanted to do that, so yeah. So I'm sure you have a lot of people coming into your shop asking for that are beginners just getting into it.

So I, I just wanted to always start the show with some tips for newbies people getting into the sport beginners, what do you tell people? What, what are some tips for people getting into the sport? Yeah, since, I don't know how long it's been since it started, but.

I think right now, because there's so much information out there. Like when someone walks in the store, we, we just, my game plan is to try and simplify the whole process. So it's quite, it's overwhelming. When you look around, you can see Royal boards, wings, and people just go, whoa, where do I start?

But we've written down like a, the board, the wing really simple, we've actually got some super high volume boards, like one 30 S and stuff. We're doing like a bit of a trade and deal at the moment, so they can buy a bigger board and then they can progress on that for around six months.

And then we can switch them out to a board that they're gonna, have for a longer period of time. And then we'll recirculate those bigger boards. It's maybe a bit of a stuff up on my part by having too many big boards in production so we're just making the opportunity to yeah.

To it's just in favor of the New Zealand customer, to make their learning experience a a little quicker. And then yeah, I think when you get the w we've got three, four brands in the shop and then we just, it comes down to a little bit of budget and a little bit of, what the customer wants to spend.

So it's. Yeah I think so what volume, like for a beginner, like getting into, do you do you put, send them right out on a floorboard? Do you tell 'em to use a windsurf board first with a dagger board? Or like what and then from the first board, like what kind of volume do you recommend for beginners?

Usually? If it's like the one board, I would just say 20, 20 liters above body weight. But we've got Ellen down here at the lake. He's doing lessons and cuz we've got these high volume boards, like 1, 1 30 S and one 40 S we, they can just jump on those. Even if the ad kg they're gonna be super buoyant, they're gonna learn the wing probably quicker than being on like a hundred liter board.

And then they can just come back and switch that board out. But I think now it's 20, 20, 30 liters, maybe about body weight. I think the whole trend's obviously coming down boards are getting smaller. Yeah, I think the 50 to the eighties, the kind of the common sizes actually most of mine went all around the world and didn't come here.

So I ran out but yeah, it's I Def I definitely think the whole process for the new guy coming into sport, new girl, come into the sport. It can be simplified a lot, they don't have to have, three wings, three foils two boards. It can be, down to one of each and then they progress and then they come in and get some feedback.

Yeah. You want, you wanna be able to get people on going without spending too much money too? Yeah, I always, exactly the main thing I've just noticed people just getting too smaller board, too smaller foil. If you increase those two factors, then the. Process is just gonna be so much easier and so much more fun.

And then in terms of learning you said there's somebody doing lessons on a lake kind of smooth water. Like any recommendations you have for the location and then any tips for technique or getting started? Yeah. Yeah. We're pretty lucky with the shop here.

We've five minutes down the road. We've got this freshwater lake and Alan operates down here. It's not ti obviously, so he can be there at any time. So flat water it, there are no waves, so it's really stable. So it's really easy to get going on each side. And then we've got the bays, we've got fun pro coast with manly and all these sort of sheltered bays, which get, in like a west to a.

Right around to south sort of Southeast. So you've always got that kind of flat water with those winds. So I would just say, just try and stick to the flat water with wind, if you don't have access to a boat. And maybe even just grab a wing, jump on a skateboard or something. We're doing these little skateboard, you don't have to go on the water straight away.

You can grab a wing, jump on the land, go to a big ASALT, concrete area and just get the feel for the wing. I reckon that's been a cool thing. A lot of people are actually getting skateboards lately. So we're getting these little what have we got on the shop?

These slide carvers and yeah, they're selling pretty well with the wing. Which is pretty cool. Nice. Yeah. That's a great way to learn as well. All right. And then terms of the, like I know during the pandemic, probably a lot of people got into a sport. I know here in Hawaii, like it was, there was like booming and we never had enough inventory like last couple years, but then it seems to tr be transitioning where the demand's kind of slowing down a little bit or the growth seems to be slowing on.

Do you and here in Hawaii anyways, are you experiencing the same thing in New Zealand? Yeah. Yeah. It was funny, couldn't, could it get enough stock? Couldn't get it in time. It was just frustrating at the time I remember. And then it all arrived at once and , we did, we were just like full and then it the demand dropped off at the same time.

So it was funny, but we actually had a seriously busy summer last summer. I was actually really surprised. It was extremely busy. We went through everything and yeah, at the pandemic, there was a massive demand for gear, but which did drop off, I don't know, it just spiked, but then it dropped off and now it's flattened out but I'm still seeing new B newbies coming into the sport, which is cool.

Yeah, so actually speaking of the pandemic, so it I know in New Zealand, you pretty much had no cases for a long time and you were able to keep COVID out of New Zealand, but seems like recently, it's you guys have COVID too now, right in New Zealand and it's like more prevalent or.

Yeah, I think it's, everybody's just getting it really . Have you gotten COVID yet? Oh yeah. I've had it. And then we've got, we've got like a bit of a social win group developing, good friends and, one of them each weeks dropping down with it. But, it's that majority is just like a little cold and then that bitter in a week, and most people are vaccinated by now.

So it's not as bad as was early on. Yeah. And no more shutdowns. Is that, do you still have shutdowns or like what are no nothing like that. Kind of wish we, I shouldn't say it wish we did click it. Click and collect. Collect was working out pretty well getting on the water but yeah, no we haven't had the shutdowns.

I think the government just realizes everybody's gonna get this and and most will get better and yeah, move on and yeah, just get back in the water. I, after I got it, I just got in the water as soon as I could and made sure I flushed out the salt water and yeah. Yeah. It's it's, it's not as bad as we think it is.

I think we need to just yeah, carry on. Yeah. It depends on the person too. Like I've had ki I had a, kind of a cough for a long time that didn't go away, which is really frustrating, but but yeah, the, oh, you hit it. You, yeah, I had it like in December and then it took me like several months to get over the coughing, like it wasn't that bad the COVID itself, but it had this.

Tickling in my throat and I kept having, like having a coughing thing going on. I'm too. I'm too weak. If I cough, just sorry about that, but no, it's fine. No, it's getting better. I honestly feel much better after wing foiling, honestly. All I can remember every, everybody in the world, if you get COVID take up wing foiling, cuz it'll get you better quicker.

Yeah. This salt water flushing helps. Yeah. But tell us a little bit about the foiling scene in Auckland and New Zealand. Like what, are, is there certain spots where everyone goes is it pretty busy and like how big is it compared to other water sports and stuff like that?

I'm curious. Yeah. It's funny. Cuz it's I'm noticing like it's just foiling, winging was the thing now it's I'm noticing all these little categories are emerging and the wing has allowed people to get into toe or, or pump or wake or, we're even starting some races here at Auckland, which getting pretty popular.

Down winding, there's a bunch of guys that I downwind with every now and then it's, I'm actually loving it. It's it's, I don't know, kind an endless wave for an hour and a half. So we do it from, it depends where we do it. So we have a couple of spots they're about 20 K maybe.

And now we're just thinking, do we need the wing? Maybe we'll just drop the wing and get, maybe get a pedal and just see if we can do it without the wing. I know my friend, Jason my friend who I met down winding one day I was just going past him the other day and just, I just threw in my wing and he grabbed it.

I just said, just grab my wing. And then I just keep down winding, like just without it. And, just to be without a wing and just have your vision open right up is pretty awesome. No, I think like the wing has definitely helped, like all these separate foil categories emerge and grow and people probably wouldn't have the confidence to do that if the wing hadn't come along.

So it's pretty awesome like that, I think. Yeah. And it seems like the whole down wind equipment improved a lot too. Like you, you can get BOS out that are more narrow, faster, a little bit longer for down wind foiling, on a scent with a paddle. Cuz when I started, I was just using my regular.

Stand up surfing board, which was pretty short and wide, but it's really not ideal for catching bumps. And it was definitely hard work to even just get a bump and get up on the foil, and then by the time I got up on foil, I was so exhausted. that I couldn't stay on very long usually, but yeah, I think I definitely want to get into that again, as.

Yeah. So you're you, I I know, Hawaii obviously is you're the leaders of the down winding side of things. You've got some pretty, pretty leading shapers brands there, which we all look at, but is that kind of emerging over there? Just the downwind side of things.

Oh yeah. There's a pretty big crew here that does the downwind foiling. There's yeah. A bunch of guys, they call themselves Voyager. They go on pro boards. Actually they catch a breaking wave and then pump out and then do downloaders on prone boards, but if they fall in, they're not able to get back up again front, in the bumps, they need to paddle into the surf zone and then catch another one.

But there's also quite a few guys doing it with Santa paddle boards. And I want to get back. That's how we got into winging. Derek and my friend, Jeff, we were just down winding on Santa foil boards. And then when the wings came on and we're like, oh, let's try that. And then it was just so much easier, yeah. It's nice having the backup of a wing. And like you were, we were considering like doing the whole deflate thing. We've got these little mini travel pumps that we can. Take out and do that. But I think I think the goal now is just I have designed a downwind board we, yeah, we'll just start seeing if we can do it on those.

It's gonna, I think it's gonna be a bit of a learning curve, but a fun one. It's like the challenge of the wing, and I don't think we're gonna, it's not like we're gonna ditch winging. It's just like another. That we're gonna be doing, in the right condition. To me, it's just yeah.

Without the wing, these things just probably wouldn't have emerged so fast. I don't know if we would've been thinking like this, but yeah. Yeah. If anyone wants to get into downward filing James Casey has a great podcast and goes into a lot of detail on, how to do it and like what, how to get into it and stuff like that, which is I think really good.

He's very passionate about it. He's a bit of a freak he's yeah, definitely watching him and learning quite a bit. A lot of us here watching his spot, his YouTube videos and stuff like that. I was just wondering, are you on a, are you on a mobile computer? Can you give us a little tour of your shop?

Can you walk around a little bit or is it like a desktop or something? Oh, it's good. Yeah. I've actually, yeah. Give us a little tour of what I blocked. It's a small shop. I blocked the front door with the w so no, see, yeah. Welcome. What are the foils you have it looked, I just saw some axis.

What are those stab foils? We've got a few it's scattered everywhere at the moment. So yeah, we've got some access. We've got some sub, we've got some, we've got some lift and then, yeah, just a big bunch of boards here and that's it. Yeah. Wow. So you basically, every pretty much everything in your store is foiling or wing, foiling related cuz I, I know you originally you started as a standup paddle brand.

And, but seems like you pretty much transitioned to all foil stuff. Yeah, I've got some stops just sitting down the back kind of collecting dust, but yeah, hopefully someone comes along and people come in and do that. But I, I still thinks surf and it's pretty cool sport, so hopefully it doesn't fade away to nothing, but yeah it's definitely a win specific shop.

I, we are the only win specific shop, the other shops. They do a bit of everything. Even wet suits, we gotta approach the other day. Not I'm like, oh, I don't know if I wanna sell wet suits. It's just gonna, it's just gonna complicate things. But we down the street called Barry's point road, it's like kind of the street for toys.

There are three other sort of surf. There's backdoor, there's another one up the road. There's one next to us and they all sell that sort of stuff. So yeah, the shop's gonna, we're gonna get surfboards, just fun boards in the summer. I think there's a bit of a market it's emerged, so that's gonna be cool.

Just bright, fun boards and stuff like that. But yeah we're pretty much full wing specific and yeah really specialized in it. Just feel and everybody here, wings who works here, so it's pretty cool. We've got some really talented wing forwarders that are working here too.

Yeah. Right on. So I wanted to talk a little bit about your the soar boards. Like we recently got those in stock and just share the yeah. We it took a long time for the, for us to get them. I think it took six months or something to shipping to from Vietnam to Hawaii.

It took quite a while. But but we do have them in stock now and I've been testing it. I have the one right behind me here. And and yeah I just wanna talk a little bit about the boards and get your have you talk a little bit about them? Yeah, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about the whole design thing and yeah, actually I have a little video too, so I did wanna share that.

Let me Go to that, but yeah. Tell us a little bit about the design and everything and I'll just play this video in the background a little bit. Yeah. Cool. So this is this is basically the saw is I guess evolution from the glide, which is our, which was our first kind of wing, specific board that we did that I designed.

So this is quite a small size. This is on the 34th, just so you can see it. The popular sizes are the 50, 50 liter up 50 to 90 liter boards. I've actually got 10 sizes. Now I just chucked in all these extra sizes to fill the gaps. I don't think there's any downside of having too many sizes now between sort of 30, hundred liters.

So yeah, the whole design behind the sport and the change was basically just. Flattening the tail and just losing all kind of that be that we had on the glide. And just keeping the board really flat through here. And I always just want to keep that kind of surf look of our boards with the nose.

I don't know, to me, it just feels you're still on a surfboard. You've still got that kind of like responsive kind of surfboard of feel. I don't know. I know a lot of boards are going square, but trying to keep the outline surfboard, wing board as much as I can. And then just a little concave in the deck.

But the main unique kind of factor with these sports and we haven't really gone over it. That much is a construction. Yeah. So tell us a bit about the construction. Yeah. So they're made in, they made in Vietnam. They made in one of, probably one of the leading factories in the world. So each board actually has their own specific mold.

So each size, each model has a mold. It's Amania mold. So the cause basically formed in that mold. And it's, it forms a perfect core, like CNC, you get a little bit of aeration, a little bit of non-perfect kind of feel finish or whatever. So you get a really perfect core.

And then after you've got that core, the whole board's basically wrapped in PVC. A, about a milk of HD and then the whole carbon out there, and it gives you this kind like I, if you have you squeezed them,

kindy, concrete feel even though super light. So it really, like more, I think wing foiling, like really pushing boards and putting a lot of stresses on boards. We've seen like tracks coming out. We've seen, things happen to other boards, but it's funny cuz this construction process has meant that.

We haven't really, we haven't had any issues. We haven't had any warranties, we haven't had anything. So it's been cool that. We can like confidently just sell a board, which is gonna last, and I think that's, when I was younger, I used to buy surfboards. I used to get just over the fact that they're just soften up or break down after a while.

But even though these are double the price for manufacturing they, that they'll last forever. That just yeah. I was gonna share this video and maybe I can talk a little bit about my impressions of the board too. Yeah. I, the one I tested that's beyond me, that's the 83 liter model, which it's actually a little bit bigger than the one I used and I used like a Mount on my strut of my wing.

Yeah. But yeah, so the board is a little bit bigger and wider than the one I was used to, but it felt really nice. And on, on a lighter wind day, Definitely makes it a lot easier to get going when you have that more stable board, and then also I really like the concave shape that it, when you're kneeling on the board, it just kinda feels real solid.

Like you can of almost that, that I guess that concave deck, it feels like you can almost push your knees against it on the side. So it makes it feel nice and stable. So that's something I noticed that for getting up on foil, it was, it felt really good for that.

I actually, I wanted to ask you why you like I know on your original boards, you had like longer fin boxes, but then on this one, on the store boards, you just have the regular size us boxes, right? Yeah. So the long, yeah, the, there was nothing against the long boxes, but they just add. Quite a bit of weight that we didn't want, when you have a long box, the whole thing's HD it's, top to bottom deck to the base.

So it just added unnecessary weight. I felt we could just position the box in the right spot after testing a lot of different sizes and just get it in the right spot. And we tested a lot of different four brands and they all worked in that spot. So I don't know, yeah.

Reducing the weight was just Yeah. The main factor on that one. I've gone. I I feel like the regular size boxes are fine. Yeah, but yeah, this was wondering if you, yeah. Why what you're thinking was on the, it was just to wait for honestly, when I think people are getting more CRI like kind of not picky, but they can be right.

It's a lot of money to invest in a board. And yeah, a light, a Lightboard is something that people look for. It's nice to have a Lightboard under your feet and, if you can make it light and strong, I think it's just a winning combo. So yeah I'm, I'm glad you said that about the concave, because it, although it gives you quite a kind of thick looking rail, it, when you're in it, you feel a little, I think, a little more locked in just being a little closer to the foil.

So that's cool that you notice that. Yeah, that definitely. And then also having that flat tail, for Bo and the Y tail, it feels very stable because it is so wide in the tail as well. And then just having a flat bottom definitely helps especially I'm using a more high aspect foil now and which you can't really pop it up at a steep angle.

You just have to slowly ramp it up. And for that kind, for those kind of foils, especially I think having any kind of kick in the tail doesn't really help much, cuz you wanna just go start it more flat and slowly come up instead of popping up the foil, so I've noticed that for kind of more high aspect flows that shape definitely seems to work well, you. Yeah, it's almost like the sport is like a simple version. The, our first board, I think it was good, but it was a bit it had a lot of chime it, I think we are just maximizing the surface area.

And then once, once you lift off, so you don't want, you don't want much board under your feet. So I guess the goal with designing the sport was the most stable board for the size. And I think we achieved that pretty well. So I'm stuck on these boards. I think people are gonna love them really good feedback so far.

Yeah, it's cool. Right on. Yeah. And then I just wanted to ask again too, about the, your volume recommendation. You said rider weight plus 20, 20 kilograms or so And then just to be clear, like that's the weight in kilograms. So if you're like, like it's always, you have to convert it first from pounds to kilograms if you're in the us.

So one or two, 2.2 pounds is one kilogram. Yeah. So you have to take your wa body weight and pounds divided by 2.2. And that gives you your weight and kilograms, and then add 20 kilograms to that. That's a pretty good weight for beginner inter intermediates. And then as you get better, you can have more, lower and lower volume, but you don't want to go low volume too early, cuz yeah.

It's a lot harder to, to write a smaller board, yeah. I, even for myself, I think I'm going to increase my volume, which is which sounds weird, but I've been writing 52 liters. Is it 52? Yeah. 52 liters. Yeah, the 52. I keep forgetting the volumes, even though I designed them all.

So yeah, I've been riding that one a lot. But honestly I get a little caught out on the light breeze and don't really wanna drive around with three boards in the van. I think I'm gonna chop between two. So I'm gonna use like a, the new 68 and the 82 for the light days. So yeah I wanted to go as small as possible, but did that and I, I could ride the 39 liter or whatever, but I don't know.

I just, now I just wanna be comfortable. And I, if I want to if I get off the, for I'm still on a really short board, like I think, four eight is a really short board, in my opinion. You can still really carve it around and just have that volume if the wind drops or something in your session to get going.

Yeah. I think that's the thing, like in lighter on lighter wind days, if you're on a really small board, you tend to then wanna basically you have to use a bigger wing or something that you have to make up for it, because you want to be able to get going. So yeah. Then you have to use a bigger wing to be able to get going on a smaller board.

And that's a trade off too, cuz it's nice to have a smaller wing when you're, especially when you're on a wave or something like that. It's always a trade off, and yeah, smaller, isn't always better necessarily. I would say no. I talk, I speak to people with the windsurfing and the same thing I think happened, everyone went as of small as they could and then came back a little bit and then every, and you find your kind of comfortable volume so that, that's a thing that I've just realized in myself.

So I'll just, I'll hand it on to people coming in the store or whatever. Yeah. And then in saying that. We're I've we, we are introducing a so pro, which is gonna be 53 63, 73, 83 liters. And it's just gonna be that kind of that's 23. Yeah. What is it, 23 kinda with I think there's a little bit of a need for that.

Narrowish kind of board, just to give you a bit of responsiveness and as people are progressing, they're wanting a smaller board under their feet, so . Yeah. So this is basically based on the same shape, just a little bit narrower, the pro version. Okay. And if flat a deck and no concave, so I've planted the deck off, squeezed a bit more volume in and narrowed the board.

And it, I think it's gonna be a cool one with the race scene. And it's just got a slightly wider. Stands. Okay. So yeah, I just wanted to mention again, we do have those, so boards in stock now here at blue planet and our website price includes free shipping in the us. So it's a pretty, pretty nice price.

They're not cheap, but like you said the weight and size, the weight and strength ratio is excellent. And these are the sizes we have 34 years, 52 liters, eighty three hundred, five hundred thirty, a hundred forty four. So that's how you name the models too, by the volume, right?

I think, yeah, we name them by the volume and it confuses the sh the crap out of the factory. Yeah. It's yeah I don't know. I think volumes a good indicator for a board, maybe in a shop for, for your staff and stuff, selling them for the customer. It I don't know. What do you think it's it I think it's the most important number for, like for wing board probably is the volume I would I would say, yeah, I think it's that makes sense, but of course also the width and the length and all that kind of stuff is important as well. But definitely the volume is the first thing I, I would look Yeah.

So yeah, I, they are pricey, but they are around probably double what a board maybe cost in China to make. So one, once people, if they pick them up, feel them, understand the construction process and know that the board's gonna last a lot longer. And then the resale values, obviously a lot easier or higher you can justify that price.

Yeah. Yeah. If only people compared to other yeah. Other brands are in that same price range too, the Armstrong. And if they're, if it's a good high quality construction, it costs some money. I always think in life, there's gotta be a reason why you pay more for something. I was listening to a pretty funny podcast last night about like threads and textiles and like sheets and the whole thread count thing is like a complete ish.

Like it's not correct just saying you've got high thread count. It's the actual quality of the cotton and the weave. I think it's called Brooklyn sheets or something. It's a us based company, but it's a really interesting podcast actually. I listened to a lot of business podcasts, but that was just one of them.

And I think this is, yeah I, myself I would feel, I would feel wrong selling something at a high price for no reason. So this is the reason they do cost double to make. They do have their own mold that you've gotta invest in. And yeah they are significantly lighter and stronger, I think, than a lot of boards on the market.

So I'm pretty stoked went with that. Yeah. You also just sent me this picture of a new model you have coming out. You wanna mention that real quick? Oh, cool. Yeah, that, that's the link. That's the downwind board I mentioned earlier. So the link, the linking, the waves yeah.

It's narrower, a lot of volume impact in To one board and obviously it's got the 16 tracks. I think with the longer board, a little bit of adjust, a little bit more adjustability is quite a good thing. I think you'll be going a little bit further forward, maybe for the downwind and stuff like that.

And then you can see it's hard to see, but you've got these sort of channels up the side where the tracks are, it's obviously flat, but the channels run all the way up the board. So they almost set like fins all the way down the board. So they keep you tracking. So one, one of the things when you're paddling, the board goes side to side.

So the design behind these boards that you'll track. and then that'll assist you with, popping up on the foil, cuz you're gonna be straight. You're not gonna be using your body to keep the board straight so much. So did you design this as a downwind standup foil board or for wing foiling?

Downwinders downwind. Standup pedal board. Yeah, but the, I think the smaller side, 90, 91 liters. So it could be a bit of a crossover. But yeah, ultimately designed it for Darwin stand up pedal it's a hundred percent with a pedal. Okay. I also wanted to ask you real quick on the the leash plugs.

You have one that's off centered Over here. So I was just curious yeah, I'm using the off centered one to, to test it out and I guess it helps with the board not coming straight back at you. Is that what the thinking is behind that? Yeah it actually happened to me. I was just, I was about a year ago.

I was wing foiling at one of our local places AWA and I came down a wave and then I just crashed really fast. Everything happened really fast. Like it does when you crash and the board just Slingshot it into my head and I got like seven stitches here, which was , which is pretty funny.

And then it was it's actually Josh, a guy that Josh Armit, who works in the shop. He is one of my team riders and he actually, I'm not gonna claim this. He suggested just why don't you just offset a li So it, so the fall just grabs and doesn't come straight back at your head.

So I did. So there is a reason why that thing is offset. And when you're going super fast, if you do have a crash like Josh, Armit doing 32 knots sometimes, and you have a crash, it is quite nice to not have that board slinging at your yeah. It's attached, especially if you have a shorter leash, I guess

Yeah, exactly. I don't think Josh actually uses a leash when he does his speed runs, which is a good idea. Oh, okay. all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a couple questions that Dan Regan sent to me. So first of all, he said pro in terms of product marketing, as an example we both sell each other's products.

So you have some boot planet products in your shop. I sell your products in my shop. Yeah. And you have your alien. Yeah. You have our alien wings and some of the boards in your shop and so on. And you both have the same issue. The boards are not known in Hawaii and the alien wings are not well known in New Zealand.

It's an interesting challenge. Just, can you talk a little about that and like how. Yeah. The challenge of selling something that people are not as familiar with. How do you do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. Familiarity generally helps us sell pretty, for a shot, that it's if it's like anything, if you focus on it and you spend a bit of time out there on it and you talk to people at the beach, I know Dan he's always at the beach, he's always out there winging he's in coy, which is pretty cool, cuz it's a different part of Auckland. So I mean he's out there all the time.

We've got them in the shop. I'm about to start riding them and I, I'm looking at them and I'm going they look really cool for down windows cuz they've got their Dhara I know they're gonna fly flat. I can just tell by looking at them. So yeah we're, we've actually minimized our wings to actually we only sell at the moment.

Your wing and our wing in the shop. And I know that kind of sounds a little biased, but there's just been a lot of wings been bought into New Zealand. So we've just simplified it a lot. So yeah, I think I'm loving the big window and your wing. I was gonna ask you why did you actually call it the alien?

What did you see a UFR when you were away? Like I, when I just saw some video of me using it it looks I thought it looked a little bit like the head of an alien with the funky oval eyes, but the, those windows, cuz originally I had one prototypes with the window and without a window.

Yeah. And and I found actually the windows. If anything, I actually liked the way it worked better with the windows for some reason, I think maybe because the location and having maybe a little bit more stretch right there where the windows are actually helps with the profile of the wing. Maybe I don't know why, but it felt really good.

The one with the, sorry, go ahead. People commented. They've seen it in the shot and they've just gone. Oh my gosh. I can see everything. I think it's really cool. And the wind, the wing feels really clean. I reckon it's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna do really well. Yeah. It has a nice profile. The yeah, it has like a really stiff lot of tension in the wing itself, like pretension.

Yeah. I noticed it's a lot thicker than ours through here through the hole. So pretty a pretty beefed up wig. Yeah. Rigid frame. So on. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's the idea behind it. But yeah. Let's talk a little bit about about your new wing design. So what's what's new on your wings? The main thing with our wing was getting it a little lighter.

So we just we rearranged the whole panel layout to just simplify it. We played around with the, I don't know if I spoke about that last time. It was probably after, but we actually, we tested a hundred percent different panels. And then we landed on just using these panels, Chuck it in here, because these are the panels, which take the load.

You actually, yeah, you just avoid a lot of stretch through here with the, it seems like that's always where the wing tends to wrinkle. I get wrinkles when it's powered up. So yeah, I could see that. Yeah. The wing itself the wing tips, we pulled them in a little bit. Some people were complaining with the surge.

It was a little bit spany so we pulled the tips in changed the panel layout, different windows, and the slide changed the handle positions as well, a little bit just to balance it out. But yeah, it's honestly pretty similar. It's pretty similar field but it is a lot different at the same time.

So I think ultimately the canopy might last a bit longer having this play. And then in terms of the play you said you tried the whole wing and like rein has that one wing. That's all XLY. And but what was your experience with that and why didn't you go full XLY on the wings?

Like what was the downside of it? I just didn't like the weight of it. And I just, it, it's super powerful. There's no doubt about that. But I think to me personally, it was just to a point where it was almost too powerful and it was just a bit too kind of jerky or whatever.

And I think with wings, just weight is a big one. We're seeing it with new materials and stuff emerging on the market, bringing the weight down and, these materials are super expensive. I think a lot of brands are maybe fighting for them at the moment, but yeah I just wanted to keep the weight down while having a powerful win.

If I think if you, for the smaller sizes, you're gonna be on a lot of winds, the weight's taken away with the wind, but then the biggest sizes, you're always gonna feel that weight. I think, especially with anyone learning, if you can. If it's, if you don't feel as much wing, it's gonna be a it's to handle the wing, it's gonna be a lot easier.

See it's a tough one. It's a tough one when you're designing these things. Yeah. Yeah. It's always, it's always a compromise between different things, right? Yeah. But Dan's asking here, where do you see wing tech going? And are we going to see wings becoming more genre specific now that racing and freestyles freestyles seem to be diverging more?

Are we going to see wings designed specifically for high speed versus more freestyle free riding? I think so. Yeah. I always wanted to do a carbon laminate wing the Mo cells, they have like a. Full carbon laminate, probably shouldn't say on here, given away my idea anyway I, but look it's not gonna be a big part of the market.

You, I might make 10. We were gonna, we were talking about it last year, doing a full carbon laminate wing. The wings' probably gonna retail for $5,000. It's not a, it's certainly not a recreational wing. It's a performance wing and it's yeah, it, yeah. You'll use it racing, but then I don't know.

I think wings, we're still at the stage where it's Rick and they do stretch. They do, they, they have a lifespan. Yeah. I think we'll see some, like the thing is, I don't think we haven't seen huge changes in the last two years. They're still inflatable. Most brands are still using the same canopy material.

Some brands are using different Decron substitutes. And I mean that's alter and obviously rigid handles but we haven't, I don't think we've seen massive developments yet, to be honest. I think I might have mentioned last time, we'd see a rigid w with a, carbon frame, but we haven't really seen that yet.

And I think Kylie needed a video, yeah. With the rigid wing. Yeah. Mean, it seems like obviously it would have less drag if you have a smaller leading edge diameter. But I dunno if it's yeah. Yeah. I just, I feel like there's still a, I think inflatables, it's the way this, the way they are, the way they can pack down the way you can travel with them.

The way there aren't too many moving parts. It's like they're actually a pretty genius design so I don't know. I isn't that maybe that's just saying, they are a genius design they're ahead of themselves. That's why they haven't progressed that much. I think they're getting cleaner.

They're getting lighter. They're more balanced. All these things are like awesome. Cause that's where they need to go. For pure enjoyment, feeling something balanced is amazing. But, yeah I don't know if we're gonna see like a lot of rigid wings out there sold to, especially newbies coming into sports.

Probably not a good thing. Having anything hard on your wing actually, when you, for sure. Yeah, definitely not for entry level, but I could see it becoming more specialized where people just like trying to milk every little bit of speed out of their equipment. I was talking to Alan ADE about they have like race the summer racing now, Maui and and he is talking about the foils they use and the boards and wings everything's optimized for speed, but its a different.

Like you said, I, that was that was pretty cool to see that we actually, yeah, we've got some races of our own developing here in Auckland up at manly yacht club. And it's pretty cool guys, like Russell COO through, out there on the boat, like he's a bit of a legend sailor, so he's out there of watching us they're gold medalist, wind.

Surfacers doing these races. There are surfers coming in, obviously I'm a surf, so there are all these different kind of backgrounds coming into these into racing and yeah, they're certainly pushing things, but yeah, I think the whole the most developing part of the sport's probably been the foil in my opinion so far.

Yeah. Quickly helping out of the school. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is this the shim, like we, we sell these shims too, and they're super convenient because you can slide it in without removing the foil completely or you have, you can put the foil on and then just slide the shim in and as like a one degree tilt.

So can you talk a little bit about what your thoughts behind that and oh, you got one right there, so I'm gonna stop this screen sharing. You can show it and talk a little bit about it and how it works and what how you use it. Yeah. Okay. The shim it's important to note that it's nothing to do with the foil.

It's just the pitch of the. I don't want to confuse any everybody, so it's nothing to do with the foil, the foils shimmed out with towel shims. So we're not changing anything to do with the foil. All we're doing is changing the angle of attack of the board. So some people actually a writer, Adam Bennetts he flips it round and puts it at the back of his board.

He likes that feel that it gives him to his foil. Most writers just slide it in at the front of the board and it noses up the board a little bit. So it's just basically gonna give you a little bit of added front foot pressure. Or it's gonna just, the boards now are gonna be like that a little bit.

So when you touch down, you're just gonna pop up instead of maybe touching down and nose diving or whatever, it's. It's just a feel thing. Not, our boards don't have to have it. I ride our boards without it. I ride it with it. I prefer it with now. All the time. I'm just used to it.

It's just that it just gives you like a nice kind of front foot pressure. I think it's gonna be pretty, pretty good for racing. It speeds too. Just getting the board angled just up a little bit. So you can just push down a bit harder when you wind up at certain speeds. So go, yeah. This is molded, so it's not 3d printed.

There's a few 3d printed ones on the market. We tried that they break. So this can get hammered. There's actually quite a bit of pressure. That's loaded on these, but the bolts and the foil. And you can use it. You can slide it up and down, so you don't have to use the whole one degree. You can go to 0.5 or yeah, no, totally.

I think, and it's amazing how much that one degree of difference. You can definitely feel it. And I think where it really makes a difference if you. Or if you see a video of yourself and you're flying at high speeds and the noses angle downwards a little bit at, you gotta push the nose downward a little bit to keep the foil from over foiling basically.

Then that means if you do get close and your nose kind of touches down a little bit, that you get like a really rapid deceleration and especially for like toe foiling or something like that high speeds, you never want the nose to be pointing downwards when you're going fast. So I think that's where that Chi and sh shimming it.

So the nose is up a little bit is really helpful for that, cuz yeah, like you said, when you touch down at high speed it's much easier to recover from it when your nose is pointed up a little bit versus downwards. And then, but I've also had people say that when they put it on the backside to.

Give the foil a bit more angle. Because it does increase the angle of the front wing by one degree as well when you're not foiling, so it does help at the takeoff speed is, it's a little bit easier to take off. You got like more built in angle of attack to take off.

And when you do shim it when you put it in the front, you do have to make up for that by putting maybe a little bit more weight on the tail to lift off. I think, yeah. And it does make a little bit of, it has a little bit of effect on the foil too. These are just little toe boards, but it's because the board's so short it's, I've been using it a lot with Tofor and I've been getting more and more into Tofor then lately with the jet ski.

Yeah. But there's not a lot of boards having the Shem just. You're going a bit faster too. So it's it gives you a little bit more kind of confidence when get into a critical turn. You've got the nose up and yeah. Just, I don't know, feels good, but yeah, I'm loving, really loving my TOEFL lately.

Just the speed of it and just, yeah, we've been heading down to Ragland quite a bit and other places and towing places where nobody is and it's just been pretty incredible. So that's been cool. Awesome. Yeah. So what like for you to get really big waves, like what small directions do you do you need.

So for Ragland, as it's on the west coast of New Zealand, we need just really big sort of south Southwest, west swells. Anything over sort of four meters produces about a double or triple overhead wave. Not like your swell not that big ocean swell that you guys get, but we get some pretty solid swells.

So a friend of mine, and those are usually in your winter time, when it's winter, that's when the Southwest release are probably big. Or yeah. It's yeah, it is more winter, but it's been all over the place lately. I don't know what's going on. We actually had some pretty good swells over the summer down there.

But yeah, U usually we have winter, we haven't had a cyclone on the east side of the new Zealand's kind of Usually pretty small compared to the west. No, Ragland's good. It's got a boat ramp it's safe and yeah, hitting out there quite a bit with a mate Daniel. No, it's been good.

We're both learning a lot of stuff. And yeah, the crucial thing with towing is having a good tow partner. So someone you can trust and have fun with and talk about gear and, mix it up and, yeah, it's good. Yeah, definitely. And you want someone that's like my friend, Jeff Chan, you just like under pressure, he's like super calm and never gets freaked out or, it's always oh, it's okay.

There's a huge wave coming at the ski stall or whatever. He's oh, don't worry. We'll get it going again. and then, and that's how you figure it out, but. Yeah, if you freak out, that does never helps, right? oh, absolutely. You, yeah. You can never be too safe or too calm in the ocean and yeah, no, it's yeah.

Cool. Calm and collected is key . Yeah. So in terms of wing filing, are you working on any new moves or like what what are you, what any goals for your, for yourself or like progressing. I've honestly, I've been working, I've been working so hard lately on new products and new things.

And just getting even like accessories, like a vrap and these things take so much time. So I've been relying on our team riders around here to do the moves and the speed runs and the back flips and the wave riding for me. Yeah, it's yeah, I think since since the pandemic or whatever, it's been just really crucial to be really.

Closer than ever to your factory or to your, your, designer, factory, whatever. We have a new wing designer now. So we're working on the new wing, but that's gonna be 20 late, 20, 23 new models. I think we're just gonna, we're gonna I think, slow things down, do things that kind of make more sense, release them in a kind of a timely manner.

I think I, I don't know for me to me, a lot of companies are releasing things, a little, like little too fast. And I wanna slow things down and make it, make it really make sense when you're release something. Yeah, that's been nice thing. No, I agree with that.

Just as an example, like Jimmy Lewis his boards don't really change. Like he doesn't really have a season, it's he just has his board models and they're available. And it helps retailers too, because they don't just, you don't have to discount it after a year, because it's still the same model for next year.

Yeah, if you, like in unlike other brands, like star wars, for example, they always have a new season. Everything changes, all new colors and sizes and shapes and whatever. And then all the old stuff is considered obsolete or whatever, so then you have to discount it. And and it's really not obsolete and, they, and they always say it's way better, but how mu how much can you improve it every year?

30 years, so yeah. Exactly. So something to me has, if it's way better than why is it way better? What have you done? What, how's it different? Yeah, a hundred percent and yeah, it's every retailer's nightmare to have a sale all the time. And yeah. I don't know. I think because the sports it's, we're still in the early days, I think.

Like it's rushed your head really quickly with development, but I think we're still in the early days, I think we're gonna still see a lot of new people come into the sport. And we are getting creative here in the shop this summer, figuring out how we're gonna, target more kind of mainstream maybe lines of media to get new people into the sport.

Our wings are gonna be available on a air New Zealand air airports website. So that's that's interesting because a lot of people that have never heard of wing foiling are gonna see these wings and go, what is this? I think that's cool. We're gonna do a bit of a video and go around like a mall and go up to people and go, have you guys heard a wing foiling and make a bit of an.

So I'll post that one up in a few months, but I think, generally when you go around like maybe a place like New Zealand or whatever, most people haven't heard of it. So it's still it's still so niche. It's still pretty small in my opinion. And it's still got a long way to go. Yeah. That's a couple of questions that Dan asked as well.

Like how do you get more people into winging? I agree that was still early days for sure. know? Sure. Dan, and then also, and then the second question was how did you, how were you able to get the wings out globally for the small TV based New Zealand brand? How were you able to get, do the expand globally and how do you get, how do you do that part.

Ah, don't ask me about the global question. No, no, that was, I don't know, still no. Okay. To Dan needs to come in the shop I already asked him to do jet ski lessons with me. We need to do that together. I want Dan in here a couple of days a week. So there you go, Dan. I know you've got your day job, but you would be critical to have in the shop.

You're great salesman. You're great with people. And we, we talk a lot together, so we couldn't probably wouldn't get much done. Yeah. In terms of the w globally I think it was like anything, like when you listen to all these like podcasts and stuff, it's all about timing. And we just had a good wing at the right time and managed to get it around.

The right people got up to south border, got a good review out. Got it. Around at least we had it around five or six key international sellers and that grew to about 30. So now we're selling into about 30 different countries. I don't know it's kind of social media is the platform.

Maybe you can grow things fast than what you could have in the past. You can, you can come out with great videos and photos and content. And I think it, if you do it right, you can get that kind of exposure. And someone in, Singapore rang me last week. They saw me on us on Instagram and they, now we've got someone in Singapore and it's it's cool.

It's just growing like that at the moment. So yeah, we're getting about two more, two international sales a month at the moment. So nice. Yeah. Before it gets too busy, I'll probably cap it. Yeah. So I always wanted to ask you that too. What is your vision for PPC? Like how do you see it?

Like in five years? Like what's your company gonna be like? And what's your vision for that? Yeah, it's seriously a good question. I've sat down with a bunch of, few people who've done a three, five year plan. And to me, cuz I'm still the sole owner of this company. Don't ask me why or how, but it, I've got to a point where it's definitely almost out outgrown me especially having the shop and the brand.

And it's, it made me realize maybe I focus on one or the other, keep both have one managed, fo my, my love is product development. So to me I'll certainly focus on the brand and PBC for me is just about coming up with products, which makes sense. And like our term is optimize your forwarding experience.

So every product that we design it, it needs to optimize your forwarding experience. If it doesn't, then there's no point doing it to me. I re so I really wanna, yeah, just keep slowly adding products where I see fit to just, better the experience of the rider who's foiling and whatever they're doing.

These little UFO to boards are pretty, they're tiny little things, I didn't think we'd sell them. But we're selling them internationally, which is crazy. And people actually laughed at me when I was doing the downwind board. They said why are you doing that?

Like down? I don't know what, such a small market, but I don't know. just, when I get onto something I just love designing things. Who knows how big paddle down winding's gonna get, but, it's there certainly, and I think people are gonna get into it and we're gonna see all these categories of foiling expand and foiling is definitely a sport where it's sticking around.

It's like surfing, it's its own thing now. Surfing's still growing, I think globally, like five, 5% a year. Foiling, it's pretty cool that we're in that it's a it's its own thing. Yeah. Cool. But it sounds like you're not focused just on growth. It's more like you wanna provide cool products for the market and just relevant and have innovative designs and things like that.

Yeah. It's cool. Cause I don't have anyone to answer to and it's I'm my own boss. Like you it's yeah, I a hundred percent just wanna do products. That makes sense. And that I want to do and you know that I see fit that fit into it and yeah, it's I, I think, it's funny cuz we've got boards, we've got wings, we've got, accessories, foot straps.

Everything's coming in, but we don't have a foil. sorry. So yeah. So we talked about wings and boards. So let's talk about foils a little bit. You mentioned that you are working on a foil design now your own foil design, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, it's correct. It's funny cuz I've had, I've actually had a foil on file for five, five and a half years now.

Like I designed a foil with the free and Christchurch five years ago. It's been on file. I just. Didn't want to make it, cuz I felt like it wouldn't compete with the top brands. So it just sat there. So yeah, lately I wasn't even gonna say on the show that I was gonna, we're gonna do a floor, but yeah, we're working on a foil.

We're quite a few months into it. Working with a team of engineers in Auckland and a couple of design hydrodynamics guys in the us. So yeah we're just, we're slowly working through it and it's yeah, it's a really fun project. It's almost like I want it to be slow because it's so much fun.

Yeah. And it's tricky. It's tricky because the, my expectations for myself is really high with the foil. It's gotta be good. It's gotta be able to compete with the best. And luckily I've seen every, a lot of foils on the market. I've been on them.

I've seen how I've seen their weaknesses. I've seen their strands. I've seen things that annoy me even, things down to different. Tools that you need two different tools for the same foil. It's just little things like that. I think, I'm confident we can iron out and yeah, we're gonna have a good foil a hundred percent.

Yeah. I found the big, one of the biggest challenges of building foil was that the con you know, having a good manufacturer to do it, and I like, and just, yeah the production issues and the manufacturing and construction issues were like almost more, yeah, like it's one thing to design a really good fo, but then to build it and have it consistently and all the specs be right.

That's and that's where saying like communicating with the manufacturers and stuff it takes a lot of time and effort. And for B plant, I decided that with, for us, it's hard to. On that, with the grinds, that focus just on foils Armstrong or access that they're so focused on their foils and their foil design for me, it's just I pretty much said I'm just gonna let them do that.

And I, we focus more on the boards and the wings, but yeah. I was honestly gonna, sorry. I was thinking the same thing and honestly I, we weren't gonna do a foil. I was really happy with our boards, our wings and accessories. But yeah, you're right. You start with the factory, you almost start with the factory and work backwards.

Our board factory's pretty good. So our foils are gonna be main in the same factory. And I'm confident now that we can yeah, that we can develop a good foil. Like we've learned a hell of a lot about connections and, in my opinion the most crucial part of a foil is the connection.

All the connection points. Foil like foils are so complicated. But then we're talking about just a few connection points. Those just have to be absolutely. Robust and, no, no weaknesses, no movement. And yeah, there's been a lot of mass talk lately, a lot of, foils high aspect, men aspect, low aspect.

So yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be an interesting process for the next year or so, but yeah, hopefully we have a fall for the next podcast. excellent. That's exciting. So let's talk a little bit about and I was gonna say too just being able to test all the different foils that you use, like D from different brands and so on.

That's so helpful in designing your own too, because if you can try, I think some different manufacturers, different designers and stuff like that really helps you figure out what, what works for you and what you want in your own design. So I think sometimes like team riders or whatever that are used to only riding one foil or one manufacturer, they don't really understand like the differences between let's say between a really stiff mass and the softer mass or whatever, you don't really understand it until you try it, so you can talk about it, but unless you try it and feel it's yeah, but anyways, I like. That also is a question. Another question from Dan, the challenges of global shipping and production over the last two COVID years. How is this gonna impact our market in the coming year? Let's talk a little bit about the challenges you had in New Zealand and then how do you think it's gonna affect us in the going forward?

Yeah. As shipping's increased I don't know, by 5, 5, 5 times the amount, maybe four years ago. So you gotta really think about what you're putting in that container. I think that's the main thing. So it's like, it's actually made me think, more critically about product development because of shipping costs in a roundabout way.

You've got to ensure that what you put in that container or what you ship is the best thing that you can put in it. Yeah. It's so you've, for me, it's, we've just, I've just invested way more than usual in production. So production with board swings. I've just, we've just gone like four times as much as usual.

So we just ensure that we've got stock on hand stock here. Yeah. When the pandemic happened, the factory in Vietnam, they shut down for four months. And that, that caused probably a delayed 12 month, 12 month delay on production. Yeah it's planning and it's just ensuring that you've got like such, the best product you can put in that container.

And ensure you, we're getting a B2B system set up now on the website for our sellers, which is gonna help out a, hell of a lot. But yeah it's like a learning process, we didn't know that shipping would, I don't know. I don't know how expensive it's gonna get.

Is it gonna come back? yeah, I it seems to be leveling off and I think like some of the frosty really crazy prices don't, it's come back down to more normal, but yeah, it's, I think it's just gonna be elevated cuz of the higher fuel costs and all that. I But yeah, I was gonna mention too, like those, so boards that we ordered they were ready to ship, I think in December and then we actually didn't get them until like early July, I think.

Yeah. So something like that. So it took six or seven months for us to get boards from Vietnam to Hawaii, which is crazy, but yeah, that's ridiculous. I'm very frustrating. Yeah. We've got two 40 footer, 2, 2 40 footers coming to New Zealand this summer. So we have a lot of stock in New Zealand.

I think the key is, a lot of brands obviously have access to, three PLS and, setting up a, the goal would be to set up three PLS in us, Europe in our busier locations. And that's probably where we'll go. So yeah, third party logistics is probably the answer. And, but they all, they also take a margin.

It's just what you have. You've gotta do to get out there though, I think. And I think, I really believe in our products, so I think that's the way to go, unless you wanna order six containers and be three P , right? Yeah. But it's a difficult one. It's a diff yeah, it's a difficult one.

Yeah, I keep definitely it's a challenge. The logistics is definitely a big challenge right now. Talk a little bit about hood river. You said that you're going to hood river right this summer or our summer. Yeah. I'm looking at flights now at school holidays and flights from New Zealand are like 7,000 returns.

So I'm just keeping an eye on it for the next few weeks, school holidays finish in two weeks. I'll look at it after that. So we've got our, my friend George is over there. She's a, quite a well known photographer in this up sort of wing world. And she's over there now staying with, I think she's staying with Fiona and Aiden.

So that's Fiona wilds and Aiden her partner. So there's a kind of a Kiwi crew over there. So yeah, I'm just looking at that river and just going, yeah. I definitely need to get in there and meet up with some people. And we've seen some of our gear over to aid and he's trying it and yeah.

And then it's OB, so hopefully I make hood river and then to the, to Hawaii. And then back. Be good to catch up with you and go for a w with you and the guys. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I'll have to make a little video about that. That was talking my I actually spoke to my friend, Jason yesterday.

I said I was, there was a some flights to Hawaii for 400 bucks. I was gonna surprise you. And I just imagine if I'd just turned up to Hawaii and, knocked on Rob store at the start of the interview. Yeah, we, it would've been kinda cool. Yeah. yeah, no, that, that would be cool. Yeah. Come visit.

Are you gonna go to. Are you gonna go to hood river? Are you what plans have you got? I don't really have plans to go. Cuz I, I just went to Europe. I was in Germany for a couple weeks and then I'm also going to Florida and September. So that's I'm going to the surf expo in, in Orlando.

I already had that plan and I have some friends that live there and they help me out and stuff. So it's always a fun trip for me, but I've been wanting to I lived in hood river for a summer, three four months. And I really love that place. When, back in the windsurf day, that was before I winged, before foiling was around.

But I, I can see how that's such a good place, especially for down wind foiling. You got like this almost like standing waves, and and the wind blowing against the current of the river and stuff like that. It's like a perfect setup for down winding and those kind of things.

So definitely wanna do that. But probably not gonna happen this year, next year. Yeah, maybe I'll yeah. Yeah. It looks like the place to kind of test gear, I think. And, looking, I've seen a few videos from the side. Yeah. You get that perfect kind of clean standing wave, which, which is pretty unique, I think.

Yeah. It's yeah. It looks incredible. And the wind is incre yeah. When it's on it's like that new and wind, it's like you even a two meter win can be too big. Probably. Yeah. It's so strong. The win, but some days, but yeah, what's your smallest one.

You're doing what's in the in the alien wing, we have a three meter. Which is, it seems to be too small for most days. Like for most people here on Oahu, we're actually, and I'm that one? Yeah. I'm working on a 3.5 right now. I think that's gonna be a good size for windy day here on Oahu.

Cuz three is almost too small for us for, I think on Maui, it's a good size, but here it's almost too small for most people. Yeah. It's funny cuz yeah, we've been using like a two point. I did a 2.3, but we're just using it in down windows. But I think we'll just change that one to, to a paddle. If you are using a wing that small, I guess you can, yeah.

You probably should be, have a paddle. Yeah. But for us like the, I think our wing sizes too are. I don't know why, but they're, they measure, the square meters are from the computer program, but our wings are so compact. Like the size of the frame is smaller. If you put it put one of our five meters over a 4.8 PPC, like it's so much more narrow and compact, and I'm not sure why that is, but I you still get the same amount of power out of it.

I think there's a lot of size variance and that, that's one of the things that I've been talking to with that new designer. And and I'm just going, we've just this almost there should be like some sort of industry standard with sizing. It's like the computer spits on the out, but it, yeah.

When you pile the wing on another wing, it could be completely different. So I'm gonna pay more attention to that. I don't know. Yeah. It's yeah, I guess it's also if you measure the curved fabric or if it's just the flat projected surface area or whatever I'm not really sure how, if there's different ways of measure, but there, it does seem to vary quite a bit between wings, the actual size and how powerful it is.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Anything else you wanna leave people with? Meaningful community. I don't think so. I think just I think just keep it fun is the main thing for me. Although all these things are emerging, like racing, we're seeing GW and all this really awesome sort of stuff.

Like I've been watching quite a bit of it. It's incredible. I just think to me just keeping it fun for me is it, and just, I formed a good bunch of mates here. We'd just go for a wing and have a few beers afterwards. And that's what it is for me. I wanna see more women in this sport.

That, that is something that we're gonna try and build this summer here. With Annabelle down in the south island, just getting more females into the sport. It's, I'm just seeing it's definitely men orientated, dominated. So more women, more fun, more kids Yeah, I wanna win more places around the world.

So they're my kind of goals. And then just, yeah. Work on this foil, cause it's gonna be a pretty, pretty full on year, the next year, prototyping and back and forthing and testing different foil sections. And I'm learning a lot already about everything to do with foils. It's ridiculous. Got a lot of foil brain fog at the moment, but it's all good.

awesome. Yeah. I It's amazing how much the equipment has improved. You were, you, we were talking about like how the small changes, but if you compare like first generation wings that we started on to. What's available now. It's like a huge jump in, in improvement and performance of w especially the wings, I think.

And then of course the boards and the foils too. Everything, the foils actually are way more efficient now than what we started on. Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting. Yeah, I, yeah. Yeah. Just efficient, more efficiency. Yeah it's gonna be interesting where we end up at with the foil, but I can tell you that it's gonna be a more simplified foil.

We'll probably only have around four wings. I'm just gonna run to the door cause there's a courier. Okay. And it's, I think it's a prototype. Oh, cool. Maybe you can show us still. Good. Just leave it the door cheer. Sorry. It's embarra. No worries. The is here. all. People can see what's happening.

Yeah. Awesome. Cheer.

Oh, you sure enough? yeah. That's for me, that's cool. right on. Awesome. One thing you mentioned that I wanted to touch on is hanging out with the buddies afterwards and it's a social thing too. And yeah, I was talking about that with someone like, a lot of team sports, like part of the experience is not just the doing the sport together, but then also afterwards, having a few beers together and hanging out and socializing and stuff like that the community experience of it.

And and I've been winging a lot at this spot, which is really close to my house. It can launch from super easy from my place. And but I'm like the only one out there because it's hard, there's a shallow reef, you have to go over and nobody really goes out there.

So I'm always the only one. And it just changed the whole experience. If you don't like you don't push yourself as hard. I just but it's more so soulful, I really enjoy it now, but. I do miss that, the whole social aspect of it. So I try to go, every now and then I just pack all my stuff in and go somewhere just to, I have that experience.

But yeah. So do you have a close community and you, that always meets at the same spots and hangs out together and stuff like that? Yeah. We've got a few of these like WhatsApp little groups. I'm sure it's sent me all over the world, but that kind of, it's awesome. They're kind building up and someone says, yeah, it's on here.

So we all meet there. And there's a bunch of guys, like 10 guys, they literally have a van, they pack it full of gear and they do these little down wind runs. So they'll just drive up and down pretty much all down. I know what they do for a living, but it's pretty funny. I'll tap in for a few runs.

I'm not gonna do it all day. I've got too much on, but to tap in for a few end, runs with them and have a beer afterwards is like probably one of the coolest things, and then, we're all talking about gear. It's, there's a lot of frost. Like we're, everyone's really frost on gear and talking about the techy side of it, the foil, what they're using different brands.

I think that's all part of it. And yeah, I hope that just keeps going and. Like for a long time. I hope we don't end. I think that, we've got years and years of the sport and, development and, so I think, yeah, that's just gonna go and go forever.

I don't know if we're gonna get to a point where it slows down that's gonna be pretty interesting. I don't know what that is, but how do you get a foil or I Don. It's interesting, but yeah, I'm definitely enjoying the social side of it and the fun side of it. And yeah, wing winging with people is pretty awesome.

Yeah. And it's just like a really welcoming community too. It's not like sometimes when you surf or whatever, it's a lot more competitive or almost like aggressive or, not as friendly and open, but wing. It is just everybody's welcoming new people and stuff like that.

And that's the message I'm trying to send to with this, with this show, that, we're open to people getting into the sport. We want, we wanna see more people doing it. I do anyways, but yeah, hundred percent I think a good point is that winging it, it actually brings us away from the surf breaks.

So it actually crowds them if anything. So if any of you shore boarders out there are listening It's taken the foils away from the crowded surf breaks into these awesome locations, where we can get to with a wing or with a jet ski or whatever. Yeah. It's funny, cuz I've got a bunch of team riders for the shop up here.

Some of them are like pretty well known ex-pro surfers and stuff who are absolutely ripping on the prone foil down here now, but they're getting into winging too. So you're getting these like ex-pro surfers that are now loving the wing. It's just, it's a cool thing. Yeah. John Florence, I here in the north shore.

He is he's into winging too and stuff like that. So it's oh really? They love seeing that kinda stuff him now. Can you give can you try my wing? no, that's awesome. So is he's actually w. Yeah. I saw some video of him. I think it was him. Yeah. Pretty sure it was John dun, so yeah. And he's pretty good too.

So that's, I haven't seen him with a wing. That's cool. I don't know if we're gonna see lid with a wing, but that'd be my sort of call out lid, if you're listening. Yeah. A little wing video would be cool right on, but yeah, I was gonna say too like Dan, actually I was talking about he's on our WhatsApp group here in Hawaii and he is do some of these people even have jobs?

Like how are they just winging every day and become a fulltime job for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. Full time job. Yeah. And you just some people just kinda. Arrange their lives around winging, basically they work when they don't wanna wing. Totally it is possible, but yeah, but yeah, it's our lifestyle for sure.

We'll get there, Rob. You and I know you've, I know you've opened another store in the north shore. I hope that's going well. I don't know how you do it. I don't know how there, there are not enough hours in the day. But yeah, how's your new store going? I was gonna. It's Evolv. It's going well, especially like the the rental business is just great, it's like a, such a good business model.

And, for me, it's I just rely on having good people, like the, I have a great staff out there. And at first I went out there two times a week and now I've more, it's more like once a week I go out there and and same thing with everything else. If you have a good team, that's that makes all the difference, that I don't try to do everything anymore.

You can't. Yeah. That's what I do at the moment. Try to do everything, but I, it just, it never works. So yeah, seeing some seen some over, because I think you've got good people over there. Oh man. It's so hard to get good people for, especially right now. It's like the job market is so tight. Nobody is really looking for work.

So yeah, I think that's been one of the things that I've noticed lately. I don't know what's going on there, but yeah it's seriously hard to find people I think people that's true. People are, I don't know what they're doing, but they're not wanting to work. some. Yeah. They just haven't heard a wing foiling yet, so we'll keep trying, we need a couple.

So if you want fly them over. Okay. Send them lions. I know that it's operating now, so yeah. And if anyone, any of your people over there want to come to Hawaii? We got jobs here too. , that'll be me. That'll be me. all right. Yeah. Hopefully you'll come visit soon. Yeah. I think we gotta wrap it up, okay, cool. Happy birthday. Can I ask how old you are? 37, 37. You're still very young. So that's great. You've already built that much of a business at that age. You have a long way to go, so that's great. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel older, but yeah, definitely. Definitely a long way to go.

So I'll just pace myself, have fun along the way. Yeah, exactly. I think. Thanks. Thanks. It's been good. Start to the day already chatting to you over there in Hawaii and it's always a pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Sam, take care. I will have your birthday enjoy the rest of your day. Cheers. All right.

Thanks Rob. Thank you so much for watching another full episode of the blue planet show. You are the ones I'm making this show for the ones who listened all the way to the end. Really appreciate it. I know you're out there. I love all the comments we're getting for the blue planet show. So thanks so much to all the listeners and to Sam loader, of course.

And once again, this show is made possible by blue planet customers, just like you. I really appreciate everyone that supports their business. So next time you're looking for new wing fo equipment. Check out blue planet surf.com. We got lots of good stuff from lots of different brands. At good prices and we offer free shipping on boards in the us.

So definitely worth checking out. Thanks everyone for watching. See you on the water. Ah, Loha.