Foiled

Interview and photography Damien Van Der Vlist

Riders: Juan Cumar (JC) Aaron Candy & Mike Cann

‘Flying’ above the water at speed on a hydrofoil surfboard. JC enlightens us on the elite new sport of foiling.

Thanks for inviting me along to your last few foil surf sessions. It’s certainly a bit of a challenge for me to be on the back of a bloody jet ski, holding a camera in big surf! I’m glad to be here.

Pretty brave of you to come out and entrust your life to us. Haha.

What’s your background in watersports and tell us how you got into foiling?

On the weekends, I’m a water sports fanatic. I grew up in a house on a lake in Chile. My family was really sporty so I was fortunate enough to do all sorts of watersports. When I moved to NZ, I found kiteboarding and really got into it. I couldn’t stop dreaming about it for like 3 years. Foiling made its way into the kiteboarding scene, and I was like “that looks slow and boring,” but once I gave it a go it was absolutely epic. One day we decided to go to Muriwai beach with some friends who have a lot of experience jet ski towing, and one of them took me out on a foil.

Had you been out on a jet ski before in big waves?

I had been on jet skis a lot in my life, but not in big waves. It was still pretty scary stuff but amazing fun: the adrenaline, the smile on my face wouldn’t fade for days. Did you start towing on flat water then? No, not really. I mean we did a bit of training on flat water on how to rescue each other, but once we decided to start towing, we set up our own jet ski and started going out on the foil boards on 3 - 4 foot days in the surf to get use to it. But now the really good fun is on the 10 - 12 foot days. You really go fast and it gets pretty interesting.

................... read more in the first issue.