Gunnar Biniasch Wing Foil Interview- Blue Planet Show Episode #9

The Blue Planet Show

Aloha friends, it's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show, which I produce right here in my home office, in the garage. On this show I interview Wingfoil athletes, instructors, designers, and thought leaders and ask in-depth questions about Wing Foil equipment and technique.

I'm also trying to get to know my guests a little bit better, their background, how they got into watersports, what inspires them, and how they live their best life. I'm a visual learner myself, so I'm adding visual content that you can watch right here on YouTube, but you can also listen to these long form interviews on the go as a podcast, just search for the blue planet show on your favorite podcast app for the audio only podcast.

These interviews are really long and unrushed, I just take my time and I really don't make them for the 50% of you that stop watching after 30 seconds. These videos are made for those 5% of you that watch all the way to the end. So I appreciate you guys, this show is just for you, if you are as foil brained I am, kick back, relax, and just enjoy the show.

Today's guest is Gunnar Biniasch who lives in Fuerteventura on the Canary islands, which are part of Spain, even though they're off the coast of Africa. He's been creating YouTube videos for many years. He teaches wing foiling and runs the North Shore surf shop in Fuerteventura. We talk about is very international background, go over Wingfoiling tips for beginners, switching your stance on the foil.

And I also asked them to break down the upwind three 360 spin or Flacka for me since I've been struggling to pull it off. The tips he gave in this interview really helped me personally. And I finally pulled off the move after talking to Gunnar. So, I hope you get as much out of it as I did. We also talk in depth about foils boards, wings and living a good life.

So without further ado, please welcome Gunnar Biniasch.

Gunnar, welcome to the Blue Planet show. It's great to have you. I really appreciate you coming on. How are you doing today? I'm great. Thanks for having me on yeah, I'm actually pretty happy. Cause a lot of wind in the last few weeks a lot of time on the water, so I'm happy as can be, great.

Yeah, I've seen some of your videos. Great. So let's start a little bit with your background. Where did you grow up and how did you get into water, sports and so on and how did you get to live in the Canary islands? That's long story. My background is a pretty complicated.

My, my father's German and my mom's Malaysian Chinese I am. Unfortunately, I'm born in Iran, which always causes a slight issues with traveling around specialty to the U S and then I actually grew up most of my life in Indonesia. Wait. So you were born in Iran and wait, your parents are what are they, where are they from your parents?

Again? My dad's German and my mom's Chinese/ Malay. That is so interesting. Okay. And then you grew up in Indonesia, most of your childhood. Okay. Sorry. Keep going. That's very interesting. Yeah. We moved there when I was like six years old and pretty much left when I was 18 to go study in the UK.

And then wait, let's go back again. So how did your parents meet and how did you get born in Iran and how were you in Indonesia? How did you grow up and so on? I want to know more about all that. My, my dad met my mom in Malaysia. I think it called a loan for it. He was there for work. He was a, he was an auditor.

So yeah, they met there had a bit of a long distance relationship for a little while. And then eventually got married and yeah, nine 1978. My dad got a job where he was sent by his company to Tehran. To to basically do the books there for the company. And that's where I was born. I think it was like a couple of months before the revolution there.

So like after that we, my parents like were in Germany for about a year and then we moved to Taiwan for a couple of years. And then, yeah, when I was six, we moved to two. And where did you live in Indonesia? In Jakarta. Oh, okay. That's a big city. So you have a very international background, very international upbringing.

Okay. That's why I'm German. I sound American and studied in the UK. It's yeah, you don't have much of a British accent okay. So you, when you were 18, you went to the UK and. Went to university there, or school or whatever. I went to university, I went there to study computer science and then also accounting later on.

And while I was there I got, I started kite flying kites when I was like 10 years old when I was a kid, like my cousin got me into that. And then I took it a bit more seriously. Once I moved to the UK and got into power, cutting, like kind of buggy and of buggy racing. And through that, I stumbled upon kite surfing in like 99.

And yeah, and then this was, I started kite surfing lost my parents that all went wrong from there. Cause that's when I, I started basically taking, thinking very seriously, started getting first sponsors and then also then moved in 2000. I moved down to Florida Ventura. To basically get more time on the water all year round.

Yeah, I really haven't looked back since then. The law and career in guiding and now it's winging now. And how old are you now? I'm 43. Okay. And you're married, you have kids or? Yeah. And I've been together with Doris for almost 16 years now. We have one daughter she's eight. And you met her Doris in four different to her and or in the canaries, or did you move there?

They met in Germany and we had almost five years of a long distance relationship. And then she eventually decided to move down. I think that was in 2009, I think 2009, 2010. And then how did you get into foiling? Yeah, I mean that, I, first time I got encountered foiling was 2005.

A friend of mine got ahold of an aluminum foil thing, an old rush ramble job. And I tried learning all that and that didn't work very well. That was a horrible experience. It was really windy, really wavy, cold, and so on weather in Holland. Yeah, it didn't work quite well. So snowboard boots and water, it's just, yeah, it wasn't the best.

And it we forgot about it for about five years and actually in 2009 at one of the races, or I just started with 2010 and one of the races I met a guy called mango and he had a bunch of Fort Hill files with him and they were it's called fiberglass, carbon jobs. And yeah, go on that.

And then me and a friend ordered one here for the Ventura and we got riding on that and then pretty much got addicted very quickly. Also, basically both of us were very engineering based and we love building stuff. So we eventually went, wait, we gotta make this better. Also because that I want to travel with this, so we needed to have a foil where I could take the mask off the glider.

So basically get rid of that whole bar system. So we quickly started developing our own foil stuff and I was on, yeah. 2010. In the early days of foiling, when I got into, you already had a lot of videos up on a lot of the foils breaking down the different foils and like your tech talks and stuff like that.

So that was super helpful for me to understand how it works. And I guess you were already foiling before, like Kyla and he posted his downwind foiling video and all that, or, yeah, for me, I was trying, for me, it was good that he did it and all the work that that Alex did.

And so on Alexa guara. Cause I was trying the same stuff just with the wrong equipment because when I basically also, my history has basically eraser, I've been kiteboard racing since the beginning, since 2005, doing the slalom kind of slalom and then the whole racing tour. So for me it was all I was going fast.

So the foils that I was designing in the early days. Yeah, no, it was all the same. Basically all the foils that I was making were more for, going faster and, racing orientated. So when I started basically surf, foiling and winging falling, I was doing this on super fast, super small foils, which yeah, wasn't really great.

There are a lot harder to ride when we first started foiling. Jeff and I, Jeff, my friend, Jeff Chang had a kite foil. That was, yeah, like high-speed super thin, super small. And we're in LA super long mast. And we were trying to learn behind the jet ski and it was like it was hard. I was like, Oh my God, I'm never going to learn this.

So actually now when I look back, I'm amazed that I was actually able to learn half these maneuvers on the equipment that we have. We're on foils a room. They're like a quarter of the size of what we ride now for kites. I think the foil nut that video is a, an in square centimeters. It's something like 400 square centimeters.

It's like nothing you're right now. So yeah, it was not one, not the easiest. So when the surf boiling came around and wherever I was trying to get it to work in the waves was convinced. It has to work. You have to paddle into a wave with a standup paddle with with one of these foils. It w it just was, it worked, but it was so fast.

It's so unstable that, it wasn't fun. And it was, for me, it was great. Then seeing Kai on basically a big fat gold foil back then the stuff from Alex. And I was like, Oh yeah, Yep. That's the way go really big and go a lot slower and that'll make it all work on the waves for surfing and for some of the paddling.

Yeah. And then what was the first kind of more, that kind of a foil, more surf oriented foil that you got and how did you get into that? Yeah, the first thing I did, as soon as I saw that video was basically call Alex and order like to go foils the re the original Kai wings. So they learned on to the Chi wing and now that's considered a small wing for someone, my size.

It's almost kind of foils are those sides now. So yeah, that's the first one I had and then started on huge boards compared to what we use now. Back then I was on a hundred and back to my very first board, I started Sort of foiling on was I think 160 liter, like nine, nine, six stand-up or at CDF, some footage of that on their YouTube channel, beyond the channel.

If you scroll up, like somewhere in the middle of those should go probably to video under videos. Cause there's just so many videos on . Okay. I see the high foil. Let's have a look into this one. Okay. So yeah. So talk about the early days of foiling with the Chi foil was great. For me it opened up like a lot like of options, but when we were trying to surf well with the kite foil was the only time it would work, if you had almost overhead ways, we were on such a small foil.

And obviously that was extremely scary. Like you're in this video, you got nice and let's say small and controlled waves, just a little bit of a bump that makes it fun to surf foil when it's about twice the size of that and the foils. Four or five times the speed. Yeah, it was scary. Plus the foils were a lot shorter.

The kite foils. Yeah. It's very similar to how I started. I put a Kai foil on an eight foot standard paddle board and figured out how to make it go. Yeah. I've been foiling for, I think for seven years by that time. So for me, it was just about actually relearning standup paddling because I had actually started standup having back in 2005, one of the first guys on the Island.

And I just got bored of it, like in a rich split with a kid because I had also a lot to do with the racing. So I didn't really have a lot of time to go stand up paddling so much. So I'd actually, before I started properly trying to make the whole software, the working and a stand up. And while I'm not counting, Flatwater paddling, but actually in waves, I just, it gets really full here.

So it was just, that's something I've really progressed on as I should have. So with the foiling came along, it allowed me to go in spots where no one else was. So I met, I was allowed to progress a lot faster with with the soft foiling compared to with the normal stand-up paddling. Cause there's the, for example, in that video is actually just the offshoot of of the main sort of way spot in town.

Then on a day like that, if you basically go across to the actual main wave, there's 50, 60 guys in the lineup waiting to catch a wave. So it's not that fun. So foiling made that a lot easier and a lot more fun in general, just to be out there, crash on the rocks. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that's, and that's exactly how I started.

And it was a pretty, pretty long learning curve, but super fun that, sorry, I got addicted to foiling it. But like with the advent of wing foiling, I tell people it's probably easier to learn foiling with a wing than foiling in ways. What do you think? Is that what you definitely.

I'm on the teaching side learning to foil. Immediately in, in waves is probably the worst possible thing you can do. There's so many variables everything's out of control. You have to catch the wave, you have to control your speed, then you have to control the foil. And then if you wipe it about wrong, you're very likely to get pounded by your board or hit by the foil.

Before winging, obviously when we had people who couldn't type or couldn't wind surf, we would teach them behind the boat, towing them, basically getting them to a halfway decent level of control with the foil before going anywhere near the waves with these guys. And now with winging, it's a lot easier.

Cause now we've got a very controlled way of getting people on the water, basically sailing around and especially compared to kiting where the general issue is when people are not doing well, they tend to end up. Just like in the old days of, when you start to learn normal guiding way off, down wind, then you'd have to go and rescue them.

Whereas with winging, you can send people out. And if you taught them how to basically displace up wind, it's just like a good old beginner windsurfing with a daggerboard. You can just, basically, even if you're not flying, you can keep up wind. You can learn slowly and just slowly progress your way onto the foil and get flying and then take it at your speed.

Whereas most other foiling sports you have to get up and flying immediately, or else you end up somewhere else or it just doesn't work or it's no fun. Yeah. I was going to mention that too. Like when you in the early days of wing for the, you, I guess you worked together with ozone to come out with these instructional videos, Yeah.

And like this one here got to over 250,000 views, so are very popular instructional videos. And I think they were very helpful for a lot of people to get into sport. And also I've been sending people to your videos for learning how to do it on a regular standup paddle board or, so can you talk a little bit about that learning first for, some tips for beginners?

If somebody wants to get into Wayne for them, what's the best way to learn it, the most important part. And this is something a lot of people skip is to really learn how to control the wing properly. A lot of people go onto the water a little bit too quickly to just get away in their hand and you just go and they don't tend to learn how the handling works proper base.

So it makes life a lot harder. If you can. Try to get out on a skateboard on land. It will teach you a lot about the dynamics of how the wings work and handle placement, which handles to use to go up when, especially for wind surfers, it's slightly counterintuitive, especially if you're here, like you're going on an SUV without a foil or any daggerboards in it.

You have to be very careful what you're doing with the wing. Windsurfers tend to, for example, always just, open up the wing, shove it back and then hope it will all go up wind, which doesn't quite work. You have to combine it with the kite mentality of, okay, I've got the board pointing up within now.

Not actually have to move the wing forward again. Position it so that the wind can actually still also pull up with once the board's done that and actually skateboarding with the wing will teach you quite a lot of those skills before you get on the water. And it's also quite useful for a standing up and Swan.

If you just have that wing nicely under control, and you're no longer dipping your wing tips into the water. Because for me, that was the most frustrating thing in the beginning. On wing was knowing I could foil and knowing I could stand up paddle, but basically crashing every 20 meters because I dig the wing tips of the way of the wing into the water, just catapulting straight over.

And that's because basically when I started winging I did the mistake of just saying I'm going to go straight on the water and I'm going to be able to do this. And yeah, it wasn't like that. It didn't, it wasn't like a long arduous thing, but for the first half an hour, I just spent a lot of time basically catapulting over the board because when the wing tip drags is for people to try to lift up their backhand to get it out.

And then what happens? Is it just tips forward and makes it worse? So it's like almost you have to lift it up the front hand and pushed down with the backhand to get it, to come back. Learning essentially that, that counter intuitive thing is that if you want to make it go up, you actually have to push down and your backhand and things like that.

And like I said, if you spend a bit more time on land, you'll learn that. And then you'll have a lot less of a hard time on the water, for sure. And like I said, in a really important skill to have is essentially to, when you're not flying is actually still be able to go up when I'm on the board. So I have a lot of people actually still now guys that have been doing it for a year are still, if the wind drops even on a hundred plus leader board, these guys are ending up miles downwind.

Because they just haven't figured out how to actually just sit on, basically sit on the board or stand if it's a big board and just keep the wing open holder the slightly a bit more forward and that you can still sail up wind in five or six knots. Yeah, without too much. And I agree in the last interview, Glenn L said she was mentioning this kind of position here where you hold the wing a little bit sideways and that turns the nose into the wind.

And then, so if you can keep that position where you have the wing a little bit to your side, that's that's a good point, or I think too, to keep your nose kind of pointing a little bit into the wind instead of just letting it pull you down when right. Exactly. And the second part is to actually get rid of that downward pull anyway.

So basically hold it a bit farther forward. This video, the wind is light, but if the wind is stronger I tell most of my guys to hold it more for it's actually grabbed the surf handle and maybe the second handle on the strut to really keep it open. And it helps get much like nicer angles.

You're not going to be going fast, but you're going to keep a nice upwind angle. So trying to basically displace with the least amount of power and not just shut the wing and try to get power to make it go up. Wind. So let's talk a little bit about, more about tips for beginners, because I know a lot of people that are watching are just getting into it too and just need help getting get, figuring it all out.

What, let's start with the equipment. What do you recommend, if I dunno, do you teach other people how to, when foil it all and what would you, what kind of gear would you put them on to get started? Like I said, the first, when I do my courses, the first hour is typically somewhere in a car park or we have a nice hard area behind the beach, just about half an hour, just controlling the wing, like a three or four meter wing learning the basics of control and handling, yeah. It's just standing on the beach or something, no skateboard or anything. Yeah, exactly. And then after that, Get them on a skateboard. We've got these really large longboard skateboards, like dancers. So basically meter long and with really fat skate wheels, it's like all-terrain wheels and yeah.

And then we send them off because of these large wheels, they don't get super fast, but they get moving, which gives them a bit of a parent when, and it gives them a good idea of what, how what's happening. And there, I progressed on to teaching them essentially. Okay. If you hold the wing slightly further forward on the handles is what happens when you hold it farther back.

You also tend to teach basically what happens if you move the wing forward, actively, what happens when you shift it back? Hold it higher. And so on which handles do what? And yeah, so usually at the end of an hour and a half, most people on the skateboards are actually doing their first jibes.

Some are doing their first tacks and around there, they're getting a real good handling for the wing, basically being able to turn around and that's when we go onto the water. And if I have guys who have had some foiling experience beforehand, we will typically then go straight on to a board, was a foil, something like around a hundred, 110 liters, depending on the person's weight and large foil, because pretty much sure that once they take off, they will be more or less be able to handle the foil flying.

If they've got more than a year's worth of foiling experience, if they don't have any funneling experience I'll put them nowadays on an inflatable board with two side fins and send them out of that in flat water and basically get used to getting them used to standing on a board. A lot of the guys would.

Having folded that also have typically no water sports experience or not a lot of it. So getting them some balance on a stand-up paddle is is essential. What do you mean by two fins? Is it like, are they like center fins daggerboard thins or more like just regular fins in the back of the board?

They are about halfway up the board closer to the rails and they're like eight inch like sort of FCS. So that helps with, so you don't drift off, right? That's one of the issues like if people are using the regular stand-up paddleboard to learn is that there's a lot of drifting going on.

And it's hard to stay up wind with a boy that only has fins on the tail of very. Exactly. And what's this type of board it's super easy to stay up when you get actually quite decent speed on those things. And also because they're quite large, it's very good entry for most people into a water sport in general.

So they're learning what the wind is doing on the water and how the board's reacting. They develop a good sense of balance. And then typically once they're okay with that board, that's when we move them on to the foil. And they're again, very large foils in the beginning, around the four liter volume from the front wing.

And then yeah, get them to go on that board. Same thing, teach them with a foil board, how to go up, wind, how to build speed. And then once they have that speed, teach them essentially how to put the board back down again, once it lifts off. So basically just, keeping your way forward using your knees to position your body farther forward by bending your front knee and put the board back down and well, basic foil teaching opened the wing and stop flying.

And typically, the worst students I've had, they've still learned the foil within two weeks after doing a course, cause at the end of the course, because they can go up wind even without foiling. They're basically independent. So they're confident enough just to go off with their equipment and learn to fly by themselves because they know they can always just sail back without the foil.

Yeah. And that's something I tell people too they spend like thousands of dollars on buying all the equipment, but then they're too cheap to take a lesson, so just by taking some, getting some professional instruction, it'll just make everything so much easier and quicker to learn.

I learned it pretty much by trial and error, but it took me way longer than it would have if I had gotten a few good tips the way. Yeah, exactly. But each to their own and the coolest thing, or let's say for schools, that's a bad thing about winging is that it's a fairly safe sport to teach yourself compared to cutting or wind surfing.

The wing is relatively soft. You're not going to smack your head in like with steering, with the master, the boom. And Yeah. They're not going to fly away like you can with the kite. It lends itself for people to, just take their time and go out by themselves.

Obviously you learn a lot faster, like in any sport, if you've asked somebody knows what they're doing and can basically see your errors and correct you and get rid of the first bad habits and right at the beginning. But I find it's not as necessary with this sport. Yeah. Most of the people learning it are relatively coordinated, but I've also had people start from zero and they've learned fairly quickly.

People have never done any water sports before, and they're still learning quite quickly because it just gives you confidence because you're not scared of the equipment as much as you are with a lot of the other sports. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And it's definitely I think Wayne filing is probably the easiest way to get into foiling.

As I think anyways, do you agree with that? That's probably if somebody wants to learn how to foil, it just gives you so much time, maybe other than towing behind the boat with a professional instructor that might be or in the electric foil maybe, but to really get a lot of time on the foil wing filings is such a good way to do it.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for, I wouldn't say it's like the, as that, if you're a teacher yourself and you're going to give yourself as much time as possible, it's definitely the easiest way to learn how to foil. Obviously both and the teacher is going to be the fastest way always cause it's a very controlled environment, but that always involves having the coach there and, having the boat for that.

And then winging is the next best thing, because once you learn how to control the wing and like I said, stay up wind. You can teach yourself. The foiling, it's not that important compared to the wing skills. Cool. Let's fast forward a little bit to now you're writing obviously a much smaller board and you're on different equipment and I'm pretty impressed that you still it looks like you, you pretty much always switch your stance going either, either way, right?

Yeah. That's ingrained in me from kite foiling and from kindful racing. Yeah. Obviously everybody's going to end up that way anyway. I always find it a bit of an excuse from people with, they tell me, it's no, I need that center strap. That asymmetrical center strap.

I don't need the jive. It was like, eh, Give herself a year you'll figure it out a jive and then you'll either go strapless or you're old. You'll get like a view strap and, go into the more wind surfing side where you just have the advantage of having basically riding your switch and your strong side.

Wow. And so that's something I'm struggling with is switching Stantec. I can do it on a bigger board with the big foil, but when I get on my small board, like small board with straps and the smaller foil and the waves and stuff I don't even attempt to, I don't even think about switching my stance. I just always stay in the same position.

So maybe can you give some pointers on how to switch your stance? How the learning process looking basically rewind a little bit. Cause when I was basically wave riding, like surfing or kiting or standing up, I think I would never basically go on my switch side. Yeah, video this video.

No, actually I don't never have gone around, but essentially you get into this mentality in the sports ah, I can only ride regular and I'm going to ride which from the left and the right back side and I'm going to, I'm going to right front side was weird from the right, but actually when Franklin came around, it wasn't comfortable in a lot of sort of way spots when I was kite wave foiling.

And then I forced myself to, to ride the waves on my switch side. Coming from the racing background, I was able to ride the foil, switch or regular cars. You have to, you're not going to win a race if you're going to go side up the course. So for me, it was just basically just crunching down and saying, look, this next two, three sessions, you're only gonna ride on your weak side.

You're going to ride the waves, basically left foot back, and you're just gonna do it. You're gonna crash a lot, but you're just gonna force yourself to do it because it can't be that hard. And because foiling doesn't involve a lot of strength and having to push really hard on it, black foot it's actually pretty easy to learn decent control on your switch side.

So for me, it was R was already doing that with the and the waves. And so when I started winging, it was normal. It's easier for me to actually ride front side, no matter where the wind's coming from. Okay. It's actually not, like I said, it's not a hard skill to learn. It's just something you have to force yourself to do, because everybody's got a, like a strong and weak side, but you can overcome that fairly easily on the foils.

I think this one shows you switching stance quite a bit. So talk about that a little bit. Yeah. It's talking about just basic switching your feet. You'll see it now. It's most important part is that pump. I keep meaning to make a video on this and just keep having time for it. But when I. And when they almost never see any of the new guys talk about, is that initial pump, before you go into any maneuver, either a jive or attack or almost anything where you want to switch your feet.

So walk us through it. So here at this point, you do a little pump with the boiler, with the wing, bam, I pump it, you see those popping up. That's my sort of pump and what that sort of does it accelerates the board, which gives more stability. But as I move my body weight forward to switch my foot that board is also trying to rise with me so it can take my body weight as I move my back foot forward.

So I pumped, I stepped forward. Did I see the yeah. Moving your whole weight, body weight forward into those straps and those board positions and you quickly switch your feet. Nice. Yeah. And the most important part of that essentially is that pump. And when I'm coaching people mainly for foiling and so on know a little bit more for winging for their jobs is I tell them to do three pumps.

And on the third one, switch your foot. You get into it just to basically count one pump to pump on the third one. That's when you basically stepped forward to switch. But basically before you attempt to do it on up on foil, obviously you want to practice it with a touchdown jive. Like you short earlier with the, on the kite foil, right?

Like touchdown on the water, then switch your feet and then come back up again. I would tend to tell people just to go for it in the beginning, because if you get it wrong, you will touch down and then just don't panic. When you were touchdown. Most boards are good enough now that when you touched down, they don't stop so much.

They'll keep going. So if you go for like your normal air jive, and if you do it correctly, if you move your weight forward, what a lot of people do in the beginning, which is slightly wrong is that they try to pull their front foot back as they're switching their feet. They tried this jump jump switch, which is actually really hard and actually most decent boilers don't do that.

What most people do is actually you're basically, yeah, I brought my back foot forward. I brought my entire body weight over the front straps and I'm standing straight. So the worst thing can happen there. Essentially, if you take too long, you will touch them. Yup. The board one fly away, nothing will happen.

You'll just touch down and then you can just switch your feet on the water. After that, So I would just say go for it. And as long as you keep your body weight forward nothing much can go wrong. Yeah. Because obviously if you put your way too far back then the foil comes out of the, the foil would just shoot up.

Cause you have to be able to, that's typically why most people fail on a foiling, jive or an attack. They sh they shift their weight back because they've moved their foot back and then that board shoots away. It unbalances the board. But if you basically stepped forward or in front of the board, the foil is trying to lift anyway.

So if you're over it yeah, I said, the worst that can happen with is happened as you touched down, it's a fairly safe way of doing it okay. You messed up, you've touched down, switch your foot and then keep going. Yeah. Whereas typically if you screw it up the other way, if you step backwards and you screwed up the oil flies up into your lines or flies in front of you and when you're winging.

So yeah, so switching your foot is not actually not that hard to skill, as long as you as a few key things that you really need to do it. And it gets easy. The biggest thing, which people, when I explain it to them, they're like, Oh my God, why didn't I think of that is that you step forward, it's always stepping forward and not stepping back.

Once you stop yourself from trying to slide your foot back and then slide your front foot forward at the same time, you just stepped forward. And not both your feet on the front of the board, it actually gets pretty easy. Okay. I'll have to practice it some more and it helps if you do it with a big board or longer board.

Cause it's if you touched down, you're more, you're less likely to get stuck. Yeah, for sure. And you don't have to be as accurate with your foot placement and so on too, when you're on a bigger board and the bigger foil to a bigger stable foil helps a lot. Yeah. Like I, yeah, cause I can do it on a bigger board and the bigger foil, but not on my small board on my, yeah.

I mean on small foils is actually, this is where balls come in because you have to do it fast. If you go in, if you actually go into your jive at full speed on a small foil, it'll just, it'll be just as stable as your big fo plus it'll be easier because you can actually correct the small foil better and it has less drag.

So you get, you could keep up your speed easier too. Exactly. So the initial thing is that you just, you don't pussy out and you just go straight into that jive at good speed. And then it's fine. Oh, and another good tip is to jive into the wave because that will give you speed. Yeah. So especially what I do, if I'm out in six, seven nos yeah, the biggest screw up you can possibly do in those wins is the touchdown.

So what I'll typically look for is a nice, like bump or a wave, and I'll jive on that and use that speed I can get from that wave to complete the drive. If I know I'm on a smaller phone, it's just really not enough wind to get going again. Cause a lot of times, if you jive in between the waves, then there's like you lose all your power that you get back winded and then you drop off the foil, right?

Yeah. So basically just go straight into that face and it'll actually be a lot easier than if you did it in the flats.

Cool. So let's talk a little bit about. How you ended up in Fuerteventura, I guess you were studying like computers, computer science or engineering type of stuff. So what, yeah. What made you decide to give up a career in that and and be a beach bum in Ventura? I learned to cut surf.

That was the biggest problem. As soon as I learned to kitesurf, it was like it combined everything. I like, like speed and water, and being able to jump on land without killing myself. If you look at power cutting back then, and the pre two thousands, it was extremely dangerous. We were up, six, seven meter, foil kites jumping on land.

And a lot of my friends got seriously injured. And so on. So for us, like water was like, Oh, great. Yeah, we can jump and if we screw up, it doesn't kill us and it doesn't hurt. So I got really addicted to kite surfing really fast. And then what's started as essentially my winter job here in Fordham, Ventura working for the flag beach center.

Eventually the year later it was like, I'm just going to stay here. It's nice and warm. We've got good ways. And it's basically still Europe. Yeah. And I can kind here every day. And so how do you, so yeah, obviously you're just living the dream, this decided, okay, screw, screw that. And I'm going to live in a beautiful place.

I'm very similar to you in that regards, but yeah. So how did you make it work? How did he make, how do you make a living? How can you make it all work? In the beginning, like I said, I was working for the flag beach center was like the main kind instructor there for a good number of years.

And. Around it was, I started competing in 2000, like seriously, in 2003, I already had done some competitions in the UK, like 2002. And then in 2003, I started competing in the first peak DRA events. And then I think the German championships, I actually met some guys from Peter did kiteboarding like that.

They were the first guys to offer me a proper deal as a rider. And so pretty much a year later I quit my job at flight beaches and instructor, and basically turned sort of full-time pro back then. And luckily within the designers, probably one of my best friends still he basically took me under his wing also.

And, I was giving him the feedback on his kites, but he was also teaching me how to cue and these kites, how they're made. He pretty much taught me everything about the backend of the industry, supply chains, how cards are actually made, how serve plan works, everything the prepared me for what I do know.

So yeah, so I was with Peter Lynn until 2009 writing for them and also helping them in the development for quite some time. And then, and in 2010 I decided to join . Initially that started up the fact that I just, I was sick of losing races to those guys with 19 meter kites. I was just basically wanted to see, plus I'm the boss army.

And it was basically from the same home, Ty Tom design, and Germany's from Frankfurt. So we got along quite well. And then yeah, I was racing for them and I was team manager for them until 2013. And then yeah, I decided to say follow the money. And I went and did a year with gastro, which was not the most successful year.

So also the time where everyone finally believed, Oh, great photo cards we'll win races. And I actually went to a tube cried brand, which was probably not the greatest idea. But after that I pretty much went to ozone after that pretty good five, six years with those guys. So it's a very interesting company to work with.

But by the time I joined ozone, I had already opened my own kite shop basically here on the Island. Yeah. And also we, I had my own sort of foiled brand sort of the magma foils, which we tried to get working back then, which is a bit difficult from the islands here. And we had a bit of a bad luck when the production but also like in 2016, I started doing a bit of freelance design for foils, for for brands.

So yeah, and now the way I earn my living is I have my shop. I actually took go over last year. I took over the North shore surf shop here. On the Island, he used to belong to probably the most famous German wind surfer around his old Shaw. Oh yeah. So yeah, I been doing that, but besides that I've been basically freelance designing boards.

Most of them you've probably seen from Indiana and I'm doing a lot of basically testing work for a lot of brands where their wings and their foibles. So some I can talk about some I can or NDAs, but and then also last year I decided to work with the guys from North, basically as a team rider on an R and D writer also.

Cool. So pretty pretty interesting background there. So how many languages do you speak? Three and a half. Okay. English, German Spanish Indonesian sort of hangs on, but just don't practice it enough. So if you go there, you could probably speak home properly. Do you have any cool stuff? I see so many interesting toys behind you and your man-cave slip, but anything you can these are just some other flaws.

All right. I typically tend to switch foils every day, but the one cool thing I have here is a mass from a guy called Kyle in the us, which basically when I'm testing allows me to not have a different mask for every foil company I ride. So basically it's a custom carbon mask and you can basically put different adapters on here.

For example, this is the Moses adapter. And then if I want to ride a Northwell with it I just put a North adapter on it and if I want to write an Indiana foil, I put in Indiana doctor, I want, wanted to write an access book for the nexus adapter. So when I'm testing them and trying to figure stuff out, I basically removed the mask.

This is the variable, ah, interesting. All foils, right differently, depending on their masks. Cause you've got so many different mask designs and I also like it cause it's a lot lighter than almost all the other carbon masks I have. Huh. Interesting. Quite like it, maybe send me that link and I'll put it in the description down below.

If anyone's interested in getting a custom mass email or they sent me a proper, like he's got a new sort of stronger mask now for waiting you between too much freestyle and freestyle is never good for foils or for the boards when you land badly. So nicely, like stronger reinforced plate and so on.

So for for the North kites, I'm not really familiar. North foils, the, what do you use for winging? What's your most, your favorite foil that you're using right now for foil? Okay. It depends if I'm either in the waves or if I'm freestyling, I have two favorites. This is the one where people are gonna freak out at me.

So basically my favorite big wave foil is this low aspect, little aspect, super old school. But the coolest thing about the North one is the fuselage is only 60 centimeters. So it's short, right? And this thing's not slow. So it's actually, this is a 1500, but this works in everything. I've had this in super horrible trivial and really currently big waves.

And I survived a lot better than I have with the high aspect wings of this. And I actually have a lot of fun. I have less, I ride this most of the time. If the waves are actually really good, cause it just really works. And I know it's completely contrary to where everyone else is going at the moment and it's designed as a beginner wing, but for waves.

Yep. How well it works. There's definitely a lot of merit to having a lower aspects foils for I guess just control and like you said, like going through whitewater, certain things that they just don't drop off as easily, too. They're easier to, it's just a lot less scary when you've got basically an overhead wave breaking behind you and just, yeah, you hit a bit of turbulence and I don't care.

Whereas with the high aspect, when you're like, Oh, I'm wobbling you to, so what am I freestyling? So for freestyling, my main way, I'm using it at the moment. It's actually two different ones for like lighter winds. I use the North, the it's basically it's called the high aspect lane. But how much can you show the curve of the foil?

It's your typical sort of downward going. Oh, as a little bit up turn on the tips, huh? Yeah. Sort of twist. Yeah. But works really good. I tend to ride this on the long fuselage. Actually, this is the 700, the 70 centimeter fuselage. I quite like it for freestyle because it just got a bit more acceleration and pop and pumps out of like the jumps a bit better.

So if you landed slightly wrong and you still get up and pump it out with the performance, it has quite a bit, and it works really nice and normal wave conditions. You've got nice and clean conditions. But I tend to, I don't know if he said already, but how many square centimeters is the surface?

Normal surface area. It's 1250 and it's projected 1230. Okay, cool. It's actually pull up the screen sharing again, is that the one you're using and And the most recent way video. Yeah. Part of it sometime in that video. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's the one I'm using. Yes. So yeah, I actually wanted to ask you this is the move I've been trying to pull off and struggling with the last names they keep.

I don't know what, like the wing, I can't get the wing right on the landing. So can you kinda maybe walk us through this move? Step-by-step the Flocker or the upwind three 60, again the most important crux of this move initially is that you keep the wing low off the one side and really opened.

A lot of people, tried to bring up the wing over their head way too early, and that's, what's involves you then turning it into a push loop and then crashing. And the other part is just after takeoff. What you really need to do is like when you you kick up, you need to twist the board first.

You're trying to one 80 the board first, and then you look over your shoulder and the board will follow. If you try to rotate your body without twisting the board first, it's a, it doesn't allow you to rotate around far enough. Yeah. This right here, like right before you jump, you go down with the nose.

And I think that's what a lot of people miss when they're trying to jump is like doing a little downward push. And then you really want to pop that for up at a steep angle, upwards, right? To get some air. That's foil jumping one Oh one. That's this, regardless if it's wind foiling, wing, foiling, or kind foiling any foil jump, you got to use the foil as a ramp.

So you need to, if you want a nice big jump, you have to use a big ramp, which means get that nose low to the water. And then pointed up that's what's going to get you launched. If you if you don't do that, you'll just get into a flat it'll jump. It's if you've taken off a small piece of chocolate as compared to hitting like a two meter round so that's just your normal jumping.

You should do that. Any foil jump you do is try to get as low as possible and then try to point out as aggressively as you can. The second part of the flux essentially is that twists is everything over it's like when you're up in the air, you need to basically flip the board over.

You want to point that nose down so that you've done half the rotation already so that when you let your, the rest of your body follow that that rotation, that sort of the board is already around. So if you don't go around far enough, you tend to land off center. So here, the nose is up and then see, I've twisted the nose around before the rest of my body's come around.

I've already gone 180 degrees with the board. And then as the board touches down, I've already gone, three quarters at least of the way around with the board.

And the next sort of important part is that, again, as you're in the air, as you're rotating, you need to keep that wing stable off to the side. You don't try to lift it up. When you see people learning. The first mistake they do is they try to get jumped and then they lift up the wing over their head as they're trying to spin.

And that actually does two things. It stops your rotation and also the wing will then try to lead that rotation. Which is a new trick in itself. If you're high enough, it'll turn into a push loop. It's it's like a kite loop with the weight. But that's not something you want to do when you're learning.

This was scary. Yeah. And you don't like too that you don't want to jump too high to do it. Yeah. Actually height will help you, but it's important that you, if you keep that wing off to the side, so you could keep the wing more or less hot head level. Yeah. As you go around, you'll laugh and then you can just basically rotate the wing over it over your head.

Once you've landed. If you try to rotate the wing over your head, when you're in the air, that's when it will slam you because the wing will go behind you and then dive straight down. And that's the most scary part. It, I broke three different carbon maps before I learned that. Because I'd just be landing like super hard, because I basically lead with the wing and turn it into a Porsche loop and then slammed the foil sideways onto the water.

It looks easy here, but there's a few things, like I said, the most important part. If you keep your wing low, there did this slightly wrong. You saw that wind just hit that water quite hard. Yeah. The only ones I've pulled off where actually, where I hit the water, it seems to seem to help me. When I was able to pull them off, it gives you a bit of balance, but it's just, it means that you've raised up your hands before you rotated.

Yeah. And in the end, it's not good for your foil or for your wing when you constantly whack it. Cause here you hit it almost like flat onto the water here. I just, I had it rotated too early. Like I tried to bring the wing around too early. See there's over my head instead of lower to the side.

And that's what basically causes it to go into that loop. Interesting. And yeah, so the way to prevent it from going to loops you keep it off to the side and you really, you keep your back hand low, you try to push actually that back handled down as you're trying to bring that around that again is remember, like when you push down on that back handle, it causes the wing to go up.

Okay. The reason that typically tends to drop down is because you've also then lifted your hand up as you've tried to bring it around. You probably see it there that I actually, as a, went around my, my, my backhand Rose up on that crash basically to watch my back hand. And now it's going to go up, you see how it's up and over.

So you catch the wind basically the wrong way or exactly. So what remember, like when you're just controlling the wing on the beach, if you want the, the tip to come up, you push down and if you raise your bad count, the wind goes down. It's the same thing that applies here. So if you forget to keep your hand low and basically push that backhand away from you in that trick.

And so she, my backend should extend out and it's hard to see behind. You can see they're pushing it down hard and then it just comes around. All right. Cool. Thanks for the tips. So good. Good move. I see a lot of guys, but I dunno, like I was watching balls. Mueller was probably the first to do that.

Yeah. I like watching his videos too. I spent too much time on this one because I actually unlearned some of the other cooler stuff. Cause it's actually, this is a fairly safe one because you don't tend to hit the board when you screw it up. Whereas actually the first rotation I learned, which is don't have any videos of, and I'm actually at the moment gotten scared of doing it is basically the backside rotation to that.

So basically jump up and you rotate the other way. Yeah. That's the hamstring killer. It's if you screw it up, you hit the rail of the board. Oh, all the time. And yeah. And what we've been doing too many of these blockers and like now I've gotten scared of doing the other one. So my, my goal for the next month, essentially just relearn all the backside tricks now.

Cause they're actually harder. Yeah. Then in terms of the board you're using, do you have that in your man-cave as well? No, I'm the boss of the problem is I've had a bit of a nightmare last week. I've been trashed three boards, so they're all in repair. Yeah, rocks. The downside of when you ride without Alicia is that sometimes you forget the are conditions where you should have Alicia.

So ended up with boards and the reef. But essentially I, I ride a lot of different boards. It's part of the job anyway, just to test as much as possible and also just trying to figure out what works and doesn't, but I tried to write a smallest possible as soon as the wind goes down, especially for wave riding.

A lot of the videos will see me, like on the 33 liter, it's a four, four. Yeah. But then for freestyle, if I'm trying to take it more serious, I'll use actually larger board, like a 60 liter 65 liter board. Cause it's just a lot easier if you land that don't sink down to your waist immediately.

What's your body weight. Can you share 87 kilos? So he's seven kilos, 60 liters is what you'd like to use. Okay. So if you could order a new board exactly the way you wanted it, but what dimensions in volume would you get? So if we're talking freestyle yeah, 60, 65 liters something like four, eight, four, seven.

I've got the luxury of got guys like Indiana, which were pretty much, let me do whatever I want with my boards. So I basically here's the design make it and they're like, okay, And they'll do it and then we'll release it next year. So I have that luxury. So that's the freestyle board. You probate in that one video where I'm one, that's 65.

That's the prototype for next year. So that's my freestyle thing. No gimmicks. No, concaves no cocktails. Just purely designed for performance to get off the water and then for wave riding. Yeah. I'll use anything that's small. At the moment, I'm just basically trying to get the North boards to work and figure out how are we going to improve those this sort of work.

And they're very similar to the KT type style boards. You've got the cutouts in the back and the kick tails, which personally not a big fan of on caves on boards. I tend to like a board to not break when it hits the water. I wanted to glance off, which I know was not the most comfortable for the knees, but I just.

I like the fact that boards don't try to stick to the water when they touched on after Jones. Just seeing. Yeah. I was talking to the wild about that too. He, and he says, yeah, he likes the boards that have more of a soft, softer bottom, a little bit convex, or just but yeah, when you touched down on the water, they just handled more, they're more neutral than having like hard rails and sharp edges and concaves and things like that.

Yeah. I, sharp edges I think, are quite useful for winging cause they prevent this, the side slip of the board. Depends where you put the hard rail, like on my boards, I tend to like to have that transition from the bottom onto the bevel, quite sharp because essentially if you're out in six, seven knots, that sharpness allows you to stop that sideways, drift a bit and still allow you to displace back.

Whereas you have a very round shape, which actually lends itself better for freestyle. Cause actually the easiest board you can possibly learn, like the three sixties art is an inflatable cause they bought the fat round nose with basically no sharpness in that reel whatsoever. And those you can get almost completely wrong landings on and you can still slide it around really easily if Congress forgiving.

But the bad side of that is in those conditions where you need that board to display soft wind. It's not going to do that with, without some sharpness on the rail. So when you're taking off it, like in light wind, Do you think you're like, that's something I've been wondering. Do you use the speed of the board to get planing and then lift off?

Or do you lift off with the foil before you even get up to planning speed? No. The biggest revelation to me was actually, it was the beginning of last year is taking one of my old Kifle race boards and those big 90 liter tankers, 70 centimeters wide. I took that and I took a wind surfing foil and a bottle of that.

And then that got going so much better than anything else I had. And down to the fact that those boards is designed for acceleration, because the problem with, if you take like an sup board, sure. They pump up easily on the kick tail. They allow the board to rise up, but as you have no apparent wind.

The wings we have are just not as efficient as a kite or windsurfing sail. So you'll pop yourself up and essentially immediately back wind your wing because there's just not enough apparent wind on the wing to work. Whereas if you get a board that can actually pick up speed with very little resistance, by the time you get up on onto the foil, there's enough apparent wind for your wing to actually start engaging in pulling.

So like six, seven knots having a board that when you pumped it once would basically lurch forward on the water, like a meter and a half. He did that three times you'd cover like almost a 10 meter distance, and then you'd have almost five knots of apparent wind. And all of a sudden the wing is up and you're going, and you're going with no wind whatsoever.

So that's why on my own boards that I prefer. You won't see any concaves or any kick tails or any cutouts or anything. Cause I like the, having that maximum acceleration at the beginning to get the foil and the wing to work together quickly. Do you have a video of that on your channel session?

Log number four, a wind falling old race sports. Okay.

Okay. So tell us about this board that you're saying planes and really light wins, right? Yeah. I, in like the one I'm on here on this video is an as a team event, this was probably the best, most expensive race board you could buy back in 2012. Is this for kite racing or tide racing before foiling started?

And I basically have, I think it's the Moses wind foil set up at the bottom of this here, it's fairly windy when I, first time I tried it, but these boards are designed to actually have a V more of a V-shape in the back. So it slightly convex in that sense and really play and yeah, they have virtually no resistance in the water.

So when you pump, they just basically start planning. They just lurch forward, which if you put a foil on the bottom of it is great because they'll get the foil up to it's essentially flying speed very quickly with very little resistance. So that's a good tip. So basically if you want to get going and really light, wind, get a board that, that just planes easily and obviously a little bit longer.

Good, good. The is not that long. It's a six foot board for theaters, but Because I remember this is 2019. This was actually pretty small for most people right back then. And I think the standard back then was like people in 120 liter boards when they were starting. But the concept scales down quite nicely.

My, my 60 liter board is basically based on the exact same concept. Your maximum volume distribution is right onto your front foot slalom, solemn type rocker lines go broker line. Yeah. And like I said, the most important part is to not have any, anything that drags on the bottom of the hole.

It's like probably the worst culprit for Reedy light wind winging is probably the cut-out

cut out, works really well on a planing board. Typically over 10 50 knots where it actually starts basically, creating some air bubbles. But for those just displacing speeds that we're at to actually drags quite a bit until you get up to a certain amount of speed. So it just costs more energy to get a board like that.

So if you extend your rail along by not having anything cut out of the bag or any sort of kick tail, it basically allows the board to just get onto that sort of acceleration very quickly without a lot of resistance. Yeah. I've noticed too, like when you have a flat tail, it allows you to push off the tail a little bit to lift off, right?

Like you get like actually forces the board forward more. Whereas if we have like our standard sub kick tail thing, when you kick the back, the board rolls up right. And pump up on the phone a little bit earlier, it seems like great. Yeah. It does essentially is engage the foil.

And then for example, that works okay on like really big files. But especially now that we're on high aspect, foils, actually real high aspect foils where you got fun, not a lot of surface area and quite it'll they'll stall. If they, if you put them at a too high angle of attack, they'll stall out.

So it doesn't help you. If your board allows you to get it at this angle and a shove it up in the water, as soon as you can flat things going to go, I don't have enough speed and you drop off again. Whereas a flat tail board, but it does as soon. Yeah. You'd actually over kick the back and it goes forward.

The fact that tail is now blocked, it will actually force the board down. So any energy you've put downwards is actually going to be converted energy. Intercise you're pumping you accelerate forward. So all your energy is actually going into forward momentum rather than getting you up. But especially high aspect foils.

They like this. So they'll get to speed. They'll engage. And then by the time you rise up, they are at a decent amount of speed to fly. Interesting. Yeah. No, that makes sense. I like that concept. And then you don't think that gift flat tail gets in the way sometimes like just drags in the water. I guess it depends if you're on waves or just, that's not my experience.

Yeah. I ride waves with flat back boards. The only thing that sort of does drag, if you don't have a very wide board, but if I take my 60 liter or 70 liter board on it, two waves, I can't carve as hard because I've got almost, yeah. 15 inches of tail and that'll drag 60 liters. So if I try to Carhartt that rail is going to touch, but the back I've typically not touched, it's got to realize if you don't have a kick tail, you don't have all that extra tail in the back.

You can position the foil a lot farther back towards the tail. So that. Essentially geometry where your foils flying and you've got something behind your foil that could touch the wave. It's not really an issue there. Okay. So actually, let's talk about that a little bit. Obviously having the wider square tail is as good for beginners because it's more stable and so on, but then yeah.

Having like a more like a pin tail type shape, it just really makes it easier to carve through tighter turns or be on the way it's being more in the pocket without touching. Yeah. Or essentially the future will go and like more of a dynamic level of shape where we won't have a lot of bevel in the front of the board, but they'll tightened out towards the back where we've got quite a lot of bevel in the back, and that will allow hard carving over the tail and you still have enough flatness or around us in the nose that, if you do a jump or something that it doesn't attach, it just bounces off the water and allowing for easier recovery.

I actually, I think I saw something from day from Dave Kalama. That looked pretty interesting. I think one of his downwind boards he's got like that type of tail shape where it's completely flat. There's no more Tictail, but his bevel radius cut SIM quite harsh towards the back. So if we start specializing more into sort of, this is our wave boards for winging, they'll start, tend to end to look like that sort of like that various sort of sharp.

Bevel towards the back where you're taking all that area out where you don't really need it for wave riding. And then for freestyle, you will still need that wider back. It's essentially like in windsurfing where it will essentially have specialized wave wing boards and freestyle wing boards and speed wing boards and whatever else.

Yeah. One thing is I find that board design Ferber design is constrained a little bit by the plate Mount because you got that those two flat boxes that basically force you to have a flat section in the back of the board. Whereas if you had a Tuttle or whatever you could have like you said, you could bring that thing right up to the very point of the, exactly you have to get out of the V.

That would be for me personally, that would probably be the best interesting thing, but not another issue is actually you do lose a lot more if you don't have the tracks. It's having that adjustability between foils goes the biggest issue for, for me, if I didn't have, if I had like only a Tuttle box would be, I wouldn't be able to write as many files as I do.

And there's a huge spread. For example, actually my favorite of all times, like this thing here, which is the Moses thousands, actual high aspect, wing aspect, ratio of 10, but it's also got like a, more of a K-12 geometry. So the mass is actually really far forward. It's close to the front wing and I have to ride this at least five or six centimeters farther forward than I ride all my other foils.

And then not being able to move that around would be like, I have to have a different board for every different style of a foil that I ride, which is just not practical. Yeah. Cause if it was too far back, you basically can't put your back foot back far enough on the board to, to control it, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Also, the boards all work, with the rocker lines we have at a certain foot placement and there's no point of moving around too much or else the borderline leader, if you're too far forward, it will start breaking. If it's too far back, it'll always tend to do early. So yeah, having the tracks is good.

The actual thing is there, isn't a huge amount of gains from having a little bit of Wii or having just a tunnel the actual sort of drag effect or the Quanta effect doesn't scale as as aggressively as most people think. Cause I've raced with. Huge adopter pedestals, like total box to play adopters, for sure.

Like massive. And you would think they dragged like tremendously, but compared to a normal Tuttle, it drags a little bit, but not at a really noticeable level. So for me, for example, when I started using the gophers, that's how I did it. I, my guys are all had that big, massive aluminum adapter on there, and I still got going on small waves.

It didn't drag enough to actually have a big detrimental effect. So most plates don't really drag that much more. And yeah, you do lose a bit of that option of having a bit of a V in the board, but I don't think, at the moment you look at what's on the market, there's so many boards on there which are essentially just, there's so much stuff on there and drags that I don't think people would.

Notice if there was a Tuttle or a plate. So what do you on your boards, do you have a bottom handle and what's your opinion on having a bottom handle? And this is where I, this is where I argue with in Ghana, for example, the handles we have on the boards this year, I love them because they're super low key.

They have a really sharp they see release, they just go straight into the board. There's no cavity and they're all round or anything. So there's very little drag from the water just tends to flow over it because there's nothing to go. But all the customers, they want big fat handle where you can get all your fingers in.

And I just know that, and it's also because it's not clean, it's not a clean cutoff. So to the bottom, it's going to drag, I've done, I did the testing with those and they do drag, but people want to carry their boards a bit more comfortably. Best case you don't want anything like that on the bottom?

Yeah. Yeah. You shouldn't hire wing for boards. I didn't put handles on the bottom just because I don't want that extra drag and so on and adds weight to and so on. And I find it pretty easy to carry it with just the wing against the board on the deck. So I carry it on the shoulder. I use the tray on the floor.

Yeah. But I've learned over the years, you have to deal with the customers. Want a little bit. Yeah. It seems like that's one of the main features that people are looking for in a Wingfield where does carry handle and it makes sense. You want to make it as easy as possible. Became comfortable too. Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. That, but as long as they let me keep my flat bottoms in my efficient sort of easy planning, like fast foiling shapes, I'll. I'll give him the handle. Yeah. Okay. So let's next. Let's talk about wings and what wings you've used and what do you look for in the wings and so on? I go back to the, your YouTube channel.

Is there, maybe we can, do you have anything that over the years you'll see I've used quite a lot, especially since the time I went away from ozone. I pretty much, I've tried. There's very few things I actually haven't tried. So you'll see quite a lot of variation of the wings I'm using. And the videos.

So things you like or dislike about different, the different wings you've tried and would you change anything? If you could design your own wing, what would you do? Yeah. The thing that sort of you, you learn pretty quickly with all winging is stiffness is key. Having a wing that sort of, flaps around is too flexible, just cost power, and it adds instability when you're riding on the waves.

Yeah. So stiffness is paramount. That's the first thing, the way in whatever way I have it. If I want it to be good, it has to be rock solid in the air. And then the second thing, actually, and this is a bit of a contention I need, why handles? I need those. Why handles on those wings?

It's so much easier to jump, to wave, ride, to do tricks. I tend to like if I have Y handles on a wing, I tend to not use the front handles on the Stripe. Yeah. Caroline was like, that's actually an old prototype in that video for, from North that doesn't have any white handles. If you look at any of the recent ones where I have the production wings, they all have white handles now almost only ever on the white handle.

Oh, there's one with the white handle. Was that your influence on their design that they always did? I was quite vocal that I wanted those. Yeah. I know we tried both, so they put them in, so they must've heard, but I'm pretty, pretty sure I'm not the only person who's told them. Look, these are great.

Yeah. Yeah. What else? On the wing design having I've forgotten the English word for this for on basically pretension on the first third of the camber in the way like a profile shape, a tight basically from tip to tip the best way to serve the easiest test of this. If you look at a wing, that's just sitting on the beach, I'm struck down if you see the profile collapsing in on itself.

So if you've got like most cut wings have that center skin now above the straw, if you see that collapsing in it doesn't have any pretension in that area. Decent wings. They're all, when they're sitting there, that profile is pretty much perfect it's out there. And that pretension, it allows the wings to basically generate up wind power a lot better.

They let's say they fly more like windsurf sails or kites, if you compare it to something that's Woody floppy and dragging mainly a lot of unbranded stuff from China it just drags down wind. And this was as tried to go up when the profile's trying to collapse in on itself.

Yeah. It's like you get back winded when you're going. Exactly what you said on some of the older designs from last year or some. Yeah, actually some also some of the newer ones, but I'm not going to talk about that. But essentially if your wing is trying to back, when you, for example, you get on a wave on side shore, wind, and you're going to go hard up waiting on that wave.

And that wing is trying to always collapse back on you that's cause it doesn't have enough pretension on the front. Yeah. Or two or too much profile if it's too deep too. I think it can be competent if the tension is there, it doesn't do that. It keeps that profile basically taught that it stops the wind from back windy.

Yeah. I've had wings, I've tried wings, which I've had super thin profiles, but have just not had enough tension and they've had four, they've been horrible upwind. And just trying to ride up with that speed without the wave. You still feel that profile compressing. But when, once you de power it, when, if it has like a deep profile, even if it has tension or I guess, especially if it has tension with the deep profile of when you deep powered on a wave, I feel like it's not as easy to handle as a flatter wing with less profile.

I don't know. Have you had that? Okay. Again, it depends. Cause it's it's one variable of so many. But what I tend to see that the fat profile wings, they, they do okay. On down the line conditions, but it's just one of your sort of heading back into the wind basically off shore conditions.

So on you have a lot more drag from the wing as the profile sticker. Yup. And that will slow you down and it makes it a lot less easy you handle that however is not as bad as for example, what you see a lot of wings have a tendency to flip over when you're in that type of conditions, when you've let it go on surf handle and then they'll flip over.

And that has more to do with not having enough tension in the back one on the trailing edge, or if got too much dihedral on that upward V like from the strength of the tips, makes me want to tip over. As it's probably outdated, for example, you look at the original wing, the wing boiler and the echo.

From duotone yeah. That thing was terrible when slipping over and stuff, it's got way too much. Dihedral. So as soon as he got into the wave, it was, it started shaking back and forth. Cause it's trying to the wings, the tapes was trying to center themselves and I mentioned it to just flip over.

Yeah. And those are fairly thin profiled wings, so that this a lot of other factors, which will cause instability when wave writing. So let's talk a little bit about windows and window placement. I've noticed yeah, obviously some manufacturers like Armstrong and ozone too, they have a window right above the strut.

And and I think when you like fully powered and you have the wing really vertical to the water, you can actually see through those windows. But most of the time. The w the window is more, or the wing is more angled. So you can't really look over the strut. Do you have that experience?

Yeah, I, that's why, when I talk about it, I divide the window category into two. I've got what I call passive windows and I've got active windows. So for me, like an active window, which is, for example, any window that's near the strut, is that where you have to move the wing to look through the window.

So you can't just sound naturally. So you actually have to do some kind of movement to look through it. For example, the Armstrong and the ozones, you have to sail really low down. You have to actually pull the wing down, which it's not an issue if you're on a three meter, but if you're on a five or six meter, you're very likely if you do that to bury the tip on the water, whereas for example airbrush or North or Harlem the new slick, the windows are passive, where if you just sailing and you, you're looking through the window, like on this video, you can see right here, I'm just sailing in a normal position.

You can see the kite or in front of me, and that's from a mouse camera. Ha have you compared tested like the identical wings with and without windows. And can you tell the difference in performance or do you have a personal preference to using windows or no windows? From the testing they make virtually no difference.

I know a lot of people like saying that, okay, that extra weight, it makes a huge amount of difference, but we're talking about like 150 grams at worst for having those windows in there. And if you look at how they're placed with most modern wings, they're placed in areas where they're not affecting the profile that much.

If you look at the North here, they're quite far towards the wingtips. So they're more of a flat area, so it's not in a profile area. So the performance effect is virtually not there at all. There's many other factors which can cause a wing to have less power. And it's not the windows. Actually some of the most powerful wings I've used had windows and some of the least powered wings I've had not had windows.

I was thinking maybe having the little windows we'll actually have if you place them in the right place, maybe have a positive effect on the profile and stuff like that. But a lot of times I see Crinkles in the windows. I don't understand this picture here. I just noticed yeah, it's not, but like the window crinkling a lot.

And it seems like that comes down to the materials we're using at the moment. We're using fairly old school materials here. We're using vinyl for the windows. That will probably change in the next years. Some brands have already started going to explai more laminate materials for their windows or even for the entire week.

So we'll probably eventually get proper laminate material, which we no longer have a crinkling issue, but then they will help or make it harder to pack. Yeah. Cause then you can't really, you have to roll it up without any crinkling. So that, I don't know if that's a good solution either. I know, but we already are.

Okay. Most brands still don't have bags that allow that, but. North is an example. It's a long bag. So all you do is double the wing. So the windows never folded. And if you roll it properly, you're also not crinkling up the window. So it's not hard to pack away or wing. If you have a decent bag for it, same thing on the dual tones, they have the long bags so that you don't have to fall across the window.

So it's possible. I don't think it's a big issue. It's more of a, how you decide to pack up your wing. I've been using a wing without windows. Like the PPC wings don't have windows and I actually really like it. You don't have to worry about, I just roll it up and crunch it together and push it in the bag.

And it's no, you don't have to worry about rolling it up a certain way. And then I don't really find it hard to look under either under the wing when I'm, when I want to see what's going on. But. If you want your wing to last a long time, just like with your kite, you should pack it away. Carefully.

Want to make it last. A lot of brands also having solved the bladder twisting issue yet. So it's always a good idea to roll it tightly and cleanly. But one mistake I've seen people make is trying to fold it in like the same location. Like they fold the four and half in half before they roll it up, things like that.

And then if you have a say the same fold, that's always in the same location that can damage the shell material. And also the bladders, if you always have those folds in the same place and roll it up too tight, like I actually liked to not roll pack my wing up too tightly, because then I feel like it's better for the wing to be a little bit loose, that said I've done the longevity tests, the, the North wing is pack that way. If I get tight and that packet basically folded in half off that one that's in that video is now reaching about 200 hours. There is no crease and there is no issue with the bladders. Actually, this is the only, only wing I haven't had a bladder issue yet.

All other wings I've tried, there's been some sometime where the bladder has had holes or it's twisted, like falling out and exploded when you've pumped it up again. I don't really crush it down and pack it, but I folded in half. Cause that's the way it's designed to do so you don't, but I've not had any issues with anything, any creases forming on the strut or any still material.

Nice. All right. Thanks so much. That's great information. I haven't bought, I only have about 10 more minutes cause I have an appointment and I have to go to, but let's talk a little bit about I always ask people this question, like during the pandemic, obviously there's a lot of change happening and a lot of people were, are affected by it.

Feeling lonely, anxious, or depressed and so on. So did you experience any of those kinds of how, what do you do to stay positive and I'm going to make it a little bit harder. So you can't say I'm just going to go wing foiling or get on the water because that's too easy. We all know that works, but yeah.

How do you keep a positive outlook and how do you make the best of your situation? For us, it's a bit different here. We only had our lockdown last year for three months. They shot us in for pretty much three months straight. And that was pretty hard. But I'm lucky.

Doris is great and my kids grapes, so it's pretty easy to get along with them. Plus I have a bunch of other hobbies other than watersports. I'm a musician. I played drums, I play guitar and stuff I had around with electronics and bunch of drones and everything back there. I've got stuff to keep me busy and so on.

And and funnily at the time, the sort of backend part of the industry was going off because in mainland Europe, everyone was buying winging equipment and people couldn't get enough. So I had quite a lot of work to do designing boards and foils for people. So that kept me busy. The what I found later, like now it's progressed on, cause it's a bit of a drag, especially with the shop is just, you got to try to stay above all the BS that you read online and, the, all the garbage that people bring to you.

Like when they, we've had incidents where people come to the beach, they've been stressed and they're not doing that great with the whole situation. And, they'd take it with them onto the water and that's just to try to calm them down and have conversations and so on. And, but, it's your job to try to we're on the water.

We keep that side away. You wanna talk about business, not going well, or, whatever theories you have, like just when we're having fun on the water. And so we just leave that out and I don't, she don't yell at people don't cause any problems and so on. Cause it's just. As the water Island, we're trying to keep everybody happy, so yeah, we try to do that, but we've been lucky in the fact that after those three months of being locked in completely, we we've been fairly good here.

We've not had any other lockdowns. We've been allowed to do sports all the time now. Now we're good. So I can't really say I've had to deal with so much of in a depression or anything like that. That's good. Good to hear. Yeah, you just touched on it, like being in the wrong state of mind when you're on the water.

Obviously he knows. And I don't, and I'm sure the feeling, but sometimes we get into that state where everything's just clicks and you just feel in tune with everything, with your gear, with with nature, with the waves and the wind. And it feels like you can't do any wrong, you're pulling off stuff and everything, but how do you get into that state of mind? And do you have any pointers on getting into that zone? For me, for example, if I'm trying to learn something new and trick, I tried to basically try to remove any sort of barriers I have.

So if I know I want to have fun session, I want to learn something new. I will prepare my equipment as such. I will take an easier foil, slightly bigger board. I'm trying to make the most of it. I'm not going to try to, push the level. I'm just going to go out, have fun, make it easy. So I'll take a bigger foil, a little bit bigger board is the wind a bit light.

I'll take a bigger wing, even though I could take a smaller one just to not have to deal with any of the issues there. So I can just concentrate on one thing. And most of the time that actually then works out because I'm not having to worry about not having enough power in the way my board being too small or the fall not working.

So just go out everything. My equipment is working fine, and I can just work on myself. It's what am I doing wrong? How can I improve? And then when you, after about a hundred tries, you do learn the trick and you're like,

Yeah. Sometimes I find that, you try it a hundred times and then you never make it. And then the next time you go out and you're like fresh, and maybe you thought about it while you took a little break and then you go back and the first time he tried to pull it off perfectly. Yeah. So you also have to know when, to when to stop.

A lot of people in the training, like I said, your body needs time to internalize, if I'm out there and I'm not getting the I've done, like 50 tries, and I know I'm not closer to it, I took the sail back to the beach and just sit down, like calm down.

What am I doing wrong? What could possibly going or just stop and then come back the next day. And then usually the next day, all of a sudden it's boom, first drop. And you're like, wow, Yeah, just the body needs time to do it. So if you get frustrated, you just do it over and over again, it might not work on that date.

So I have to accept that this is going to happen, try it the next day, and then it might work better. And now you're, you're super into foiling and I don't know, I always call myself a foil addict. But would you say, has it changed for you over the years? How passionate you are about foiling and is there a dark side to being a foil addict?

The cool side of foiling is that it's been evolving so fast and so much. Every time I saw, I think I'm getting bored of a certain thing. Like when it started, kite foil, freestyle, or kindful racing since like a board of that, something else has come along. When I started getting a bit bored of normal kite foiling surf foiling came along.

And then when I got really sick of racing, like two years ago, waiting for Julian came along. So it's always been like something new and I'm always fairly earlier adopter with things. So if I find something that's cool, I get really into it. So it just keeps the whole thing alive for me. Cause you know, I'm really interested in progress in general.

So I don't have any preconceptions of bots new I've done doesn't work. I don't want to do that. I'm typically cool. How do I do that? So in foiling is so versatile that you can do it almost anything, so you never get bored. So yeah. And then your wife is pretty accepting that you're out on the water till dark, if it's good or stuff like that.

Yeah. Ashley knew where she got into when she got together with me, like back then with the kiting. So yeah, I'm not as fanatic as I used to be to get on the water. She spend some time with the family a little bit. And I try also not to get the blinds on too much because I like play music and other things too.

Yeah. So she's very accepting. She kites too, and she wants to learn to wing. Now. Also, I also spend quite a lot of time, like now with my daughter yet trying to teach her to wing at the cave and get her into water sports a lot more. Cause she really loves being in the water. He's only eight years old and you're already getting it.

Awesome. So where do you think what's the next cool thing, like you were talking about how filing keeps progressing. Do you have any ideas on what's, what comes next or you have any crazy concepts or ideas, do you think? Not recently. I just see that as going to be quiet, a lot of evolution in materials in the next few years, especially for the wings.

So there's a lot of cool, exciting things that we can try and do get basically a stuff's going to get lighter, more powerful and. And I probably see it through, so that's going to be really cool. And yeah, the foils the same, there's a lot of progression on the foils, what we call high aspect now, or what most bronze call aspect foils now are just not, and it'd be interesting to see how far we can push that aspect of things.

Also the pumps. We're just thinking just now figuring out how they got like the dock starting hunting, get no foils that anybody can pump that's also the new frontier. It's not just like super fit guys, basically doing dock storks and pumping and being able to go 500, 600, yeah. Meters under their own power.

We're designing foils now where anybody can do it. You put 150 kilo guy on this thing and he will also manage to do it. That's a new sort of sport that's, especially for a lot of the no wind areas, which is also going to be exploding in the next couple of years, too, for pumping. Yeah. I agree with him.

That's a good, that's a good, interesting area too, to expand. Is that something to where you don't even need when you just need a water? Exactly. That's the one thing I don't have here. I don't have a doctor start off, actually. I've been trying it. It's damn hard. It looks pretty easy. That actually that comes down to foil full use.

Yeah. I think I have a good foil for it. The axis. What is it? 1150 or something like that, but yeah, it's a good, it's a, I think people don't learn it on a high aspect for them. What they do take a bit more takeoff speed and they're not forgiving. I've tried it on the app.

I've tried it on the Armstrong 2,400. And that was hard too. I don't know what you want. I actually cheap ass gong or from Indiana the thousand 100, it's got it's a super thick sort of lifter profile. Even if you're stopped, you can still push it forward. Whereas most of the higher aspect and more performance spoils, a thinner profile falls is that when you've messed up and you've stalled, all you can do is shoot it up and you fall off the back.

Whereas on these things, they may be slow, but when you jump on it, you can get the angle totally wrong and you can still recover. You can stop and you can keep pumping. That's a good point. That makes a huge difference when you're learning. So yeah, if you can get something that's super fat and inefficient in that sense, but forgiving.

Yeah. That'll actually make that doc starting things so much easier. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks too much performance that not easy. Cool. There's a bunch more questions I wanted to ask you about being a YouTuber and staying motivated to make new videos and so on. But I guess we'll have to, we'll have to set up another interview in the future, for sure.

Maybe in, in like in half a year or something like that. When you have some more stuff to talk about, we'll do it again, but I can just keep going. Like I always go way over anyways, but thanks so much for your time gunner. Really appreciate it. The chat. Yeah. And then, yeah, we'll get back together in the future.

All right, have a good one. Hello. Hi, have a good day. You too. All right. Congratulations. You made it to the end and that means you are officially part of the full crazy 5% club that watches the whole damn thing. So thanks for being here still. And I do have a couple of special announcements just for you guys.

First of all, next week's interview is with the legendary Mark Rapa horse. I just finished my interview with him super long, super interesting stuff. He is the mastermind behind the SAC brand and now makes the flying Dutch man foil boards, amazing stuff. He's just a master at his craft. So very interesting interview and I hope you can catch that on the next plutonic show.

Second of all, next month for the month of June and planning to post a new video every day, every single day of the month. So 30 new videos in one month. So I'm committed to posting a new video every day. And I want to also post some videos from the viewers like you. So I'm not going to have a video contest.

And I just wanted to show you this. Yeah. You know what? This is, it's $2,000 in cash, and I'm going to hand that out to whoever post the best video. So I'm going to announce those rules later on, but basically any video between 30 seconds long and up to three minutes long just send it to me, send a link that I can download the video from or whatnot.

And I'll pick a video of the day, every day of the month. Posted on YouTube. So the winter's not necessarily going to be the most popular one or the one with the most gums up, although that is important. So basically you will be judged by a panel of one, which is me on a bunch of different categories. So I'll announce that later on what I'm looking for in the videos, but just fun stuff.

Whatever videos that are mostly Wingfield related will be great. And I'll be sharing those on a daily basis next month. So you can start submitting them as soon as you can. The sooner you submitted, the more chances you have of it getting posted and a chance to win the $2,000 in cash and going back.

We've been posting videos on YouTube since 2008. So that's been a long time ago. I just went back to the very first video we posted, which was a C4 Waterman demo day back in September, 2008. And my son who is 15 years old now was a toddler and he fell asleep on my board. It's a nice video about the demo day and it starts Tia Carrera, Brian Carolina, bunch of legends.

The only downside of that video it's made for a tiny phone screen, it was made for the old school cell phones and a very compressed file that you can watch on a tiny cell phone. So you have to watch it on a smaller screen, but it's a cool little video. And I realized it only got about 200 views and only two thumbs up.

So I'm going to put the link to low and appear as well. So please click on it, check it out, give it a thumbs up if you like it and give it some love. All right. And of course this interview too. If you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're not as subscribed already, please subscribe to the blue diamond surf YouTube channel.

And don't miss our daily videos in June. Okay. Thanks again for watching. Thanks for your time. And we'll see you next time on the blue prime show. Aloha, see you on the water.