The Kiteboarder Magazine Vol. 16, No. 2

VAN DIEMEN’S LAND A Road Trip of Commitment

COMING OF THE WING Kiting’s Latest Spinoff

FINE TUNING THE TOUR The New Freestyle Spectacle

FOIL

SPIRIT FOIL RANGE

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J E A N

G U I L L A U M E

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PHOTO: TOBY BROMWICH

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FROM THE EDITOR

One of my favorite aspects of this job is choosing the feature stories, images and ideas that plaster the pages of this magazine. After 19 years in this sport and five years at this magazine, my litmus test has always been whether the story teaches me something or satisfies a curiosity. If the pessimist inside of us sometimes accuses the kitesurfing industry as being static, I’d like to point to the stories in this issue as a classic indicator that you just need to broaden your perspective to see the forward momentum.

That being said, this magazine features a primer on the new sport of wing foiling. While there’s quite a bit of backlash over the new windsport, I’d like to remind everyone that the early pioneers of kitesurfing took an unrefined product with lethal flaws and with no small amount of faith and determination, made something quite spectacular. I got my start in kitesurfing fairly early on, and while I’d love to say that I was a visionary, in fact, I was a reluctant non-believer until my first waterstart and the following tack back to the beach reshaped my life.

In between magazines, Tkb's editor is spotted somewhere in Baja scoring spring winds.

Some have said that wing foiling doesn’t belong in the kitesurfing discussion, yet I think wing foiling chases the purest of feelings we seek as kitesurfers. Remember, we are only watching version 1.0 and the seduction of turning off your kite (wing in this case) and surfing the wave truly as you want, looks like a ton of fun to me. Don’t get me wrong—this current era of high-depower technology is great, but I look forward to a future in which our kites turn on and off and allow us to surf the wave without regard to line tension or crucial kite positioning. Perhaps wing foil version 1.0 isn’t the solution to all problems, but I guarantee it will spin the collective imagination and spur future innovations that will trickle back up to our kites.

J. Boulding

CABRINHAKITES.COM 8

If version 1.0 seems like an unfortunate regression towards windsurfing, perhaps you are right, but I believe the process of building spinoffs (think surf foils and now kite wings) will inevitably lead to the incremental advancements that open up completely new levels in the motherlode game of kitesurfing.

Håkon Mæland

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Kiteboarding’s Latest Spinoff

With the leading kite manufacturers jumping head first into hand-held inflatable wings, some kiters see the new equipment as a substantial step backwards, while others see it opening all kinds of new doors.

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The Way to Work

From the humble kiteboarding beaches of the Great Lakes to Duotone International athlete and now Duotone’s Team Manager, Craig Cunningham’s roadmap for success has been driven by passion, hard work and the ethos of living in the moment.

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Fine Tuning the Tour

3rd Time Charm

Cabrinha’s Matt Elsasser reluctantly abandons his rep duties on the West Coast to revisit Portugal for the third and hopefully final time. Forgetting the underwhelming conditions of trips past, this time Matt scores the Portugal of his dreams.

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RGD’s Creative Independence

Credited for the design of world-renowned kite models, Ralf GrÖsel is a little known yet key player responsible for the well-oiled Duotone machine. The man behind the 4-line program at Duotone steps up to the mic and reveals a seemingly infinite well of innovation across multiple wind-related industries.

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Van Diemen’s Land

Naish’s Ewan Jaspan travels to the former penal colony of Tasmania to explore its raw conditions and endless coastline. With their RV loaded with every tool in the Naish arsenal, Ewan and company discover an endless foil paradise and the insane freestyle potential of Van Diemen’s Land.

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From the Editor

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Frontside

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Profile:

Wes Watts

Tiny Watts’ Infinite Energy

Mallory de la Villemarque discusses the latest format changes to the GKA Freestyle World Championships.

With faster, spectator-friendly action and the controversial discipline blending with big air, Mallory lays out a positive forecast for the future of a broader version of freestyle.

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Profile:

Angely Bouillot

Mistress of the Megaloop

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Exposed

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Method

The Wall Ride by Eric Rienstra

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Wish List

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Viewpoint

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Magic of the Rings

Roots

Towards Humble Ends

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On the Map

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Parting Shot

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110 82 32 70 46 On the Cover

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As a mechanic for the Portuguese Air Force, professional kitesurfer Paulino Pereira has to pick and choose his strike missions. After the firing heats of the GKA Cabo Verde event, Paulino scored one of the best swells of the winter detonating over world-class Ponta Preta. // Photo Ricardo Pinto VAN DIEMEN’S LAND A Road Trip of Commitment

COMING OF THE WING Kiting’s Latest Spinoff

FINE TUNING THE TOUR The New Freestyle Spectacle

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Marina Chang, Publisher marina@thekiteboarder.com Brendan Richards, Editor in Chief brendan@thekiteboarder.com India Stephenson, Designer/Editor india@thekiteboarder.com Seth Warren, Senior Contributor elementsmixedmedia@gmail.com Alexis Rovira, Editor at Large alexis@thekiteboarder.com Gary Martin, Tkb Ambassador gary@thekiteboarder.com CONTRIBUTORS Ewan Jaspan, Eric Rienstra, Daniela Moroz, Joe Winowski, Kirk Robinson PHOTOGRAPHERS Ricardo Pinto, William Pollock, Alex Schwarz, Brian Sprout, Sonia Gaudette, Ken Winner, Fish Bowl Diaries, Flash Austin, Frankie Bees, Xander Raith, Dan Bardos, Toby Bromwich, Vincent Bergeron, Svetlana Romantsova, Craig Kolesky, Danilus, Ben Thouard, Nik Ganderton, Bruno Dubosq, Luke Dawson, Jill Hansen, Xsandra, Andrey Danilovich, Goran Kuzmanovski, Emmanuel Morel, Mo Lelii, Alexander Lewis-Hughes, Fernando Perez, Korbinian Grad Visit us at: thekiteboarder.com twitter.com/the_kiteboarder • facebook.com/thekiteboardermagazine ADMINISTRATIVE/ADVERTISING OFFICE 1356 16th Street, Los Osos, CA 93402 805.459.2373 SUBSCRIPTIONS orders@thekiteboarder.com • store.thekiteboarder.com | 805.459.2373 Have you got an idea for an article you would like to see in The Kiteboarder Magazine? Send your submission to: editor@thekiteboarder.com © 2019 Boardsports Media LLC. All rights reserved.

PROUDLY PRINTED IN THE USA

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FRONTSIDE

You can foilboard the Maui harbor pier all day long, but if you want to capture the jacks with a drone, as Julien Fillion discovered, you have to wait for the occasional day when the perfect north wind direction causes the drone’s pre-programmed no-fly zone to drift south. // Photo William Pollock

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FRONTSIDE

Olly Bridge, the youngest of the Bridge brothers, takes a break from jumping massive sandspits and pioneering ramair megaloops to put Flysurfer’s Stoke through a shakedown wave session in Sal, Cabo Verde. // Photo Alex Schwarz

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he first time I saw a photo of a hand-held kite wing was on a magazine cutout pinned to the wall of a dusty sail loft on the west side of Santa Cruz. It was in the early 2000s and well into the days of my full-blown kitesurfing obsession. The wall of faded magazine clippings represented the crazier artifacts of windsurfing, the most memorable being two rigid spar contraptions going by the names Wind Weapon and Kitewing, both images clearly dated by the sun-bleached magazine ink and the users’ neon outfits.

In an era dominated by windsurfing, these seemingly outlandish wing concepts never took off. Yet, in stark contrast, kitesurfing in its most rudimentary form amassed converts and eventually surpassed windsurfing with its new recruits, mostly due to its larger range, simple inflate and rig setup and quick learning curve. Fast forward 20 years of kitesurfing dominance and we’re now watching the handheld wings reappear on the verge of a renaissance. Almost every kitesurfing brand is racing to shove a version of the fledgling product out the door this summer or for their 2020 collections, yet a large portion of the kiteboarding user-base are scratching their heads—asking the question—how could this possibly be an improvement on kitesurfing?

Kiteboarding's Latest

SPINOFF Words by Brendan Richards

Photo Toby Bromwich

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f windsurfing is a sail that is fastened to the board and a kite is a sail that uses lines and a control bar to fly a canopy remotely in the sky, then the hand-held kite wing is a hybrid apparatus occupying the space somewhere in between. It’s free-floating and detached from the board like a kite, but it’s controlled by the user’s hands on a boom, much like windsurfing. Of course, the first versions of hand-held wings probably go back to early human attempts at aviation, but the most immediate ancestor was developed by Tom Magruder in the Columbia River Gorge in the mid-1980s. Called the Wind Weapon, it was a dihedral wing constructed of windsurfing materials with a long, vertical pole that attached the wing to a windsurfing board. It was a niche product that looked like windsurfing until you jumped in the air and hung from the symmetrical wing. When you look at the early footage, the awkward handling and technical skills did not outweigh the big air performance that pro-caliber windsurfers could already obtain with conventional rigs. The other early hand-held device was the Kitewing which used a completely hand-held windsurfing spar-based construction and found its application in skiing, mountainboarding and ice skating. While both were niche wing products, neither the Wind Weapon nor the Kitewing ever found mainstream acceptance outside of small groups.

“If windsurfing is a sail that is fastened to the board and a kite is a sail that uses lines and a control bar to fly a canopy remotely in the sky, then the hand-held kite wing is a hybrid apparatus occupying the space somewhere in between.”

The inflatable hand-held wing made its earliest appearances in the kiteboarding industry in 2011 when Slingshot’s co-founder and designer Tony Legosz built a hand-held wing using an inflatable kite structure, comprised of an inflated leading edge and inflated boom with webbing loops. Slingshot called it the Slingwing and in that same year, posted a photo of Tony using the wing while riding a 6’0” surfboard in the Columbia River Gorge. The wing concept made another appearance on Legosz’ Instagram feed in 2015, this time flying it with a foilboard beneath his feet, just as foil technology was on the verge of going mainstream within kiteboarding. However, despite these internal efforts, no product was launched.

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TOP LEFT: The original wing concept for modern windsports; the Wind Weapon replaced the windsurf sail with a symmetrical wing and a pivoting pole attached to the board. // Photo Brian Sprout TOP RIGHT: The Kitewing product has remained popular amongst ice sailors, landboarders and skiers. // Photo Sonia Gaudette UPPER MIDDLE LEFT: Slingshot’s Tony Legosz on his first inflatable wing concept in 2011. // Photo @logosz UPPER MIDDLE RIGHT: With the advent of lower aspect surf foils, Tony Legosz revisited the Slingwing concept in 2015. // Photo @logosz LOWER MIDDLE: Ken Winner’s earliest hand-held wing concept circa 2011. // Photo courtesy of Ken Winner BOTTOM: Flash Austin on his homemade wing and SUP surf foil. Ken Winner credits Flash with putting the wing and foil together and making it look sufficiently fun to pursue. // Photo courtesy of Flash Austin RIGHT: Robby Naish has a solid track record of identifying successful windsports at nascent stages and fueling the obsession. // Photo Frankie Bees

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“Flash made it look like fun and had the obvious benefit that all the other hand-held water wings never had: a hydrofoil.”

While shooting product interviews during the 2018 AWSI event in Hood River, Duotone’s Sky Solbach showed me a private video on his phone of him riding a foil SUP in Maui while holding a hand-held wing. The action looked clunky but Sky seemed to be open-minded about the product that his R&D partner Ken Winner had been working on. According to Sky, Ken had been toying with versions of hand-held wings for regular SUPs as far back as 2011, an activity he enjoyed with his wife. By Ken’s account, the rudimentary wings didn’t work and he identified the board’s drag as the culprit that has doomed all hand-held wings on the water to date. In May of 2018, a video of Flash Austin ripping around Kanaha on a homemade sail batten and ripstop hand-held wing with a SUP foilboard grabbed the attention of the industry. “Flash made it look like fun and had the obvious benefit that all the other hand-held water wings never had: a hydrofoil.” In Ken’s opinion, drag, the downfall of all hand-held water wings, had been “slain,” and Flash Austin was the superhero that reignited interest in the concept. If hand-held wings are low hanging fruit, they just needed the frictionless carving potential of low-aspect surf foils to showcase their potential.

When photos of a Duotone-branded inflatable wing surfaced on Facebook in the spring of 2019, the social media conversations and kiteforum.com discussion threads began heated debates about the purpose, utility and reach of the new equipment. With the veil on the Duotone product lifted, a number of other brands began releasing info on their previously under wraps inflatable wing campaigns. Slingshot had their version, Naish had a fully branded product almost ready to go, and F-One and Ozone each had non-logo’d prototypes in the works. The early videos of Sky, Robby Naish and Slingshot riders featured larger volume foilboards ranging from 90-110 liters with sufficient float to allow awkward waterstarts from the riders’ knees. Amidst the forum frenzy, windsports product guru Robby Naish released a prescient info video that addressed all the head-scratching questions, from basic waterstart technique to sizing.

The pessimist will view the industry’s race into wing foiling as ‘monkey see monkey do’, yet the optimist might view the innovators at these companies as watermen in the pursuit of fun, no matter the form. It’s quite easy to call it a fad, much like the

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TOP LEFT: Sky Solbach with the Duotone Foil Wing, the first product to market or at least to social media. // Photo Toby Bromwich BOTTOM LEFT: Ken Winner, visible through the window, credits his inspiration to a May 2018 video of Flash Austin on his home-made rig. Ken had his first prototype eight days later. // Photo Toby Bromwich RIGHT: Kevin Langeree freely carves this wave’s energy while demonstrating the attractiveness of the Naish Wing Surfer's ‘off mode.’ // Photo Fish Bowl Diaries

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LEFT: From 110 to 90 liters, Sky’s board size started dropping early on in the evolutionary process. The latest dispatches from the worldwide Instagram feed advertises an F-One wing waterstarted on sunken 20 liter foilboard by Micka Fernandez and beach foilstarts to a wing hand-off by Naish athlete Gustavo Arrojo. // Photo Toby Bromwich UPPER RIGHT: The first innovator to go on record back in 2011, Tony Legosz holding version 3.0 of of the Slingwing, featuring a Power Grip Y handle system, mono-strut construction and an inflatable trailing edge for quiet flight and ultimate packability. // Photo Slingshot LOWER RIGHT: Bernd Roediger demonstrating the upwind abilities of the Naish Wing Surfer. // Photo Fish Bowl Diaries

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Wind Weapon, but the true measure of these inflatable wings will be if the equipment solves problems and allows performance that neither a kite nor windsurfer can offer foilboarding.

According to Sky Solbach, he sees the wing as a foilsurfing accessory. One of the biggest problems with foilsurfing waves with a kite is line tension. Unless you have the perfect wind direction and wind speed, you often end up outrunning your kite.

When kitefoiling in waves, you don’t always surf the wave the way you want—you choose the line your kite allows. Since the hand-held wing eliminates lines and allows you to flag out the wing, you can foilsurf at whatever angle you want. Unlike kites, the kite wing is a truly on-demand power source that provides pull when you want it and neutral buoyancy when you don’t.

“Unlike kites, the kite wing is a truly on-demand power source that provides pull when you want it and neutral buoyancy when you don’t.“ If you don’t foilboard, or more particularly foilsurf, there’s a chance you might not understand the application of these inflatable wings. Freeride and speed foilboarders that focus on straight lines and fast speeds likely won’t see the value in this product either. The hand-held wing is rather a product for foilboarders that seek the feeling of carving—the search for harnessing the energy of waves in the water. It’s the hunt for wave energy and constant direction changes where the hand-held wing really proves its worth. Sky is quick to point out that on a good day of waves and wind he would choose kitesurfing, but on small, flat windy days, it’s a foilboard and an inflatable wing that best taps into that surfing feeling.

In April of 2019, the flood of kite wing images on social media created intense speculation about the new wing products, yet the reaction by the online kitesurfing community seemed mixed.

Posts on the forums ranged from “When can I get one?” to “Have fun taking a giant step backward.” The discussions raged about the limitations and practicality of the new sport compared to kitesurfing. Many complained about the wing blocking visual sight, having less range than kites and requiring more technical waterstarts. The diehards flamed the new technology because of its similarity to windsurfing (considered a lesser sport by kitesurfing’s purists). They even went so far as to question whether Kiteforum was the appropriate place for this discussion—insinuating that the wing doesn’t fall in the kiteboarding category. Many users couldn’t wrap their minds around why a kiter would choose this 25

sport when the condition envelope of wing foiling overlaps with that of kitesurfing.

In the early 2000s, a friend once used the term ‘jilted lovers’ to describe the emotional psyche of the windsurfers that stayed behind when kitesurfing took off. Having once shared the adrenaline and communal stoke of obsession around a sport (windsurfing at the time), only to watch as your friends embrace the next best thing, replete with its own tight-knit community, creates varying levels of antagonism and jealousy—the same as you might expect from a jilted lover. If the early responses on Kiteforum suggest lack of acceptance, it also suggests that early adopters for kite wings may include only the most advanced and open-minded athletes of kitesurfing, or more likely those who already prone and/or SUP foilsurf.

Not surprisingly, the kite brands don’t seem to view the handheld wings as a competitor to kitesurfing. According to Slingshot frontman Jeff Legosz, “Kitesurfing solved problems that windsurfing had . . . and kiting is still at the top. Wings don’t deliver better performance, they deliver different performance with simplicity that opens doors, those that we aren’t even thinking of right now.” Duotone’s Ken Winner originally believed the wings were ideal for downwinding, but found they’re really fun for cruising around, going upwind, jibing and tacking. “Surprisingly, it’s easier to learn than windsurfing or kitesurfing—way easier to jibe than windsurf foiling or kite foiling—and it’s the absolute easiest way to get into hydrofoiling.”

“Kitesurfing solved problems that windsurfing had . . . and kiting is still at the top. Wings don’t deliver better performance, they deliver different performance with simplicity that opens doors, those that we aren’t even thinking of right now.”

For those that dream of endless foilsurfing downwinders and infinite loops carving around offshore reefs, the number of kite companies throwing their hats in the ring means substantial diversity in designs and innovation. Duotone’s product features an aluminum boom which creates a stiff interface with the wing.

From Sky’s experience, the boom was one of the game changers that added a rigid feel to the product. The Duotone wing has large windows and through the design process, shifted towards lower aspect ratio wings with accentuated dihedral upsweep, making the design easier to handle.

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TOP LEFT: Ken Winner surveying his finished product. Early tester feedback in Maui encouraged the use of windows to view traffic and target swell, while full length battens combat canopy noise. // Photo Toby Bromwich BOTTOM LEFT: Based out of Montpellier, France, the F-One kite company offers their take on the hand-held wing. // Photo Emmanuel Morel RIGHT: Robby Naish demonstrates the SUP application of wings, a great feeder activity to kiteboarding. // Photo Frankie Bees

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The design team at Slingshot has focused on increasing their wing’s stability through a number of innovations they believe will deliver the best possible user experience. As Jeff Legosz explains, “Unlike kites and windsurfing sails, Slinghshot has designed the Slingwing to be pitch positive. Pitch positive wings want to fly, which means instead of searching for the sweet spot to hold the wing, it will fly regardless of where you hold it, making jibes effortless.” Slingshot is also introducing additional innovations such as a high-pressure inflated trailing edge that prevents highload tacoing/distortion and reduces the flapping sound found in earlier iterations. But most importantly, Slingshot has devised a plan to build off-center webbing attachments that increase stability and leverage against the wingtips. Using their patented split-strut design, the rear handles are moved away from the center of the boom giving the rider extra control over the wing.

“Perhaps one of the biggest impacts of handheld wings is that kiteboarding now has an onboarding product that can propel young children and more risk-adverse users towards kiteboarding without diving straight in.”

Perhaps one of the biggest impacts of hand-held wings is that kiteboarding now has an onboarding product that can propel young children and more risk-averse users towards kiteboarding without diving straight in. How many kitesurfing families inevitably have had to wait to initiate their children into the sport until the kids have reached adolescent age? Now kids can connect with a wing, board and water and work their way up into the safety and power of kiteboarding. Kite wings are not only a great feeder product for kitesurfing, but after watching a recent video of Robby Naish surfing a SUP board (no foil) on a mushy wave, indicators suggest that the casual fun applications of the kite wing make it just another tool in the waterman’s arsenal.

TOP: Tony Legosz explaining the importance of pitch positive wing design in achieving stability and user-friendly handling. // Photo courtesy of Slingshot BOTTOM: According to Robby Naish, you can use the wing to SUP in a couple of knots and depending on the size of your foil wing, you can foilsurf in winds as light as 12 knots. // Photo Frankie Bees

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Whether you call it a spinoff or just the natural evolution of windsports equipment, this is not the first time kiteboarding has helped create a sport. The relatively recent advent of foilsurfing has been directly influenced by the kitesurfing industry’s innovations in design, construction and lower cost of foilboard technology, and the inflatable hand-held wing is the perfect compliment. It’s clear from early responses that the new equipment won’t be for everyone or every scenario, but it will have broad implications for having fun in a wide variety of conditions.

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Photo Xander Raith

Words by Joe Winowski

In the parking lot of Duotone’s Munich headquarters, Craig Cunningham loads a shiny black camper van to its rims with kites, bikes and skateboards. In a new campaign for Mercedes, set up through his connections with the Makulo advertising agency, Craig’s secured the use of a factory-branded luxury camper van to drive across Europe, not as an athlete this time, but in his new role as Duotone’s team manager. The 4-cylinder diesel engine hums as he points the sleek camper south and heads towards the Swiss Alps, starting a week of side trips on the road to the first event of the 2019 GKA Freestyle World Tour in Leucate, France.

Stopping in Laax, Switzerland, host to one of the most famous snowboarding parks in Europe, Craig scores a session in the park before heading to Flims, home of the mecca of pump tracks. After a brief stop at Duotone’s French distribution center in France, Craig heads to the airport to pick up young Columbian hopeful, Valentin Rodriguez, and beelines it to the Mediterranean coast.

Driving a camper van across Europe and working remotely as team manager for one of the industry’s largest brands never figured into Craig’s long term plans, yet it’s the logical outcome of applying hard work to kiteboarding passion while staying true to the ethos of living in the moment—and it’s put Craig exactly where he wants to be.

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rowing up on the Canadian shores of Lake Eerie, Craig was the product of a typical Canadian childhood. Baseball and hockey games took up most of his time until, at the age of 13, he noticed a crew of young skateboarders in his local town. He saved up for his own board and started skateboarding while his brother and the rest of his friends went to hockey practice. Around 2005, Craig saw a few guys kiteboarding at his local beach, Long Point in Ontario, and noticed how kiteboarding looked like an affordable version of wakeboarding. He approached one of the guys on the beach, and the following day, local kiter Doug Ballentyne gave him a lesson and sold him his first kite. Craig rode all summer long at Long Point trying to figure out the basics in sideshore wind. At the time he didn’t understand the concept of staying upwind so he’d take tacks out, hitting the waves like kickers, but after only a couple of tacks, he’d have to make up the ground by walking back up the beach.

That winter, the obsessive upstart watched every action kiteboarding video available and devoured magazines—because in the dark days before internet videos and Facebook, that is what you did. Looking back, Craig chuckles because his first purchase was the Triple-S video when instead he should have bought Real’s instructional series Zero to Hero. When spring came, he traveled to Hatteras and took a lesson from Real Watersport’s Sam Bell and finally mastered staying upwind before putting some boots on his board. He spent his college years chasing sessions, exploring different spots around the Great Lakes and eventually connected with young kiters Sam Medysky and David Drinkwater. Sam was already sponsored and was scoring paid trips while Craig hunkered down, finished his degree in power engineering and got a real job.

Six months into Craig’s first stab at a professional 12-hour shift schedule, his direction changed radically. Medysky was looking for a travel partner to go to Brazil with in the winter. Sam’s lobbying was relentless and eventually Craig was convinced to take a threemonth leave of absence to spend his winter in Taiba. Riding with Sam, Brandon Scheid, Eric Rienstra and Jon van Malsen, Craig’s level of riding increased significantly, but even as his skills approached those of his new friends, he fully intended to return to work when he got back to Canada. However, after meeting Jason ‘Sleazy’ Slezak and Liquid Force’s kite designer Julien Fillion, Craig was offered an opportunity that most kids dream of, a kite sponsorship. Since Craig had some money saved up, he told himself he’d give it a year and see where it went.

Craig had never really planned on being a pro kiteboarder, yet it’s also not something he just fell into—it was a passion of his that required hard work and a huge commitment. Fortuitously, his efforts

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FAR LEFT: Membership with Makulo has its privileges; a free Benz and a gas card for a European workcation. // Photo Dan Bardos CENTER: Craig entered his first Triple-S contest in 2008 on a wildcard ticket and exited with Rookie of the Year. // Photo Toby Bromwich UPPER RIGHT: The ‘NA Blend’ was a tight-knit group of North American riders pushing the slider scene circa 2013. // Photo Vincent Bergeron LOWER RIGHT: The park scene is as much about building something with the boys as it is about riding features. Brazil circa 2012. // Photo Vincent Bergeron

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Finding feature hits in maritime disaster, Craig scores a park session in Rodanthe on Hatteras Island. The difference between contest and content athletes is that the latter is always “looking to ride new spots or spots that others wouldn’t even think to pump up at.” // Photo Toby Bromwich

UPPER LEFT: Knowledge transfer during a morning session at the Duotone house in Brazil; one of the first trips geared completely towards athlete development. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova LOWER LEFT: Testing with Till, Ken, Sky and Toni in the days before Duotone’s massive rebranding campaign. // Photo Craig Kolesky. CENTER: Having worked with Makulo to build a platform to manage the multi-dimmensional relationship between micro influencers and corporate advertisers, Craig gives the new Marco Polo Mercedes camper van a spin. // Photo Xander Raith FAR RIGHT: One of his special projects, Craig brought this fun box to reality in Puerto Rico. // Photo Toby Bromwich

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kept opening doors with the ball gaining momentum at each stage.

Craig set up a SUP and kite lesson business with a friend at home to earn some additional cash, and with travel money from Liquid Force, he focused on pushing his riding and eventually scored a wildcard entry into the 2008 Triple-S contest. He earned himself the Rookie of the Year award at the famed freestyle/park contest, yet, despite these highlights, he kept thinking about hanging up his pro kiteboarding ambitions and returning to work in ‘in the real world.’ With the thought that it would be his last contest, Craig put everything on the line at the 2012 Ro-Sham contest in Hood River. Rather than riding smart, he threw his most challenging tricks and it paid off because Danny Schwartz from Duotone (then branded as North) offered Craig a contract that made the athlete track worth staying the course.

Seven years later Craig is still riding for the European-based company, although dual ankle injuries sustained last year helped cement his role on the management side. With a fracture in his left ankle and bone fragments surgically removed from his right, Craig has spent the past year rehabbing and focusing on low-impact activities like foiling and surfing as well as special creative projects for Duotone. Planning freestyle photoshoots and acting as the informal middleman between the team and R&D department for the twin tip line as well as freestyle products like the Vegas, Gambler and control bar accessories, Craig’s recent transition to a more formal role managing the team and spearheading creative projects has been a natural move, accelerated only by the extra downtime his ankle injuries have afforded.

Having put together an athlete house in Brazil earlier this season where Duotone’s expansive team could come together, Craig’s mission has been to educate and guide team riders and help Duotone get the most productivity out of their team. For a number of years, Craig has been working closely with Makulo, a German-based sports talent agency, in an effort to connect small-scale athletes with big name brands. Large corporate advertisers like Mercedes-Benz, Nivea and Lufthansa typically use big advertising agency content which doesn’t really plug and play in the new world of social media influencing.

As eyeballs spend more time glued to social media rather than TV commercials, big brands are seeking out ways to infiltrate this organic world of social sharing and Makulo has been working to facilitate that relationship for both sides.

Craig first hooked up with Makulo in 2012 when they set up a house in Cumbuco, Brazil. The idea was to outfit 12 professional kiteboarders with products from corporate advertisers like Philips, Nivea and Mercedes-Benz and have them create content to post to

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FLETCHER CHOUIN Master of a Humble ARD Kite Craft

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RICHMAN ’S The Persever REMEDY ance Plan 1

their social media accounts in an attempt to influence their audience.

Craig stepped up to create content, helped direct the social media output amongst his friends and ended up managing additional houses down the line. Eventually, Makulo pivoted from arranging athlete houses to a software platform that connects the influencer/ athlete with the advertiser and also manages the productivity of the influencer.

At the same time, Duotone has become a prime client of Makulo.

Having undergone a major rebranding campaign, Duotone has one of the largest international teams with rosters that are stacked three or four talented riders deep in each discipline. According to Craig, each Duotone athlete has a Makulo account that allows marketing managers to follow the complete media ecosystem of each athlete, from Instagram to Twitter, Facebook and magazine coverage. This eliminates the unruly practice of compiling excel spreadsheets and tracking posts, followers and impressions. Athletes can sign up for a Mercedes-Benz campaign that gives them a gas card and some wheels for a week along with compensation rates that are based on the athlete’s social reach and influence. On the brand side, the Duotone marketing team can bring up a map that plots all of Duotone’s social media productivity historically and in real time.

For Craig, this software is incredibly important because it tracks the impact of a freeride athlete and allows him to compare the performance of a content athlete to the performance of a contest athlete. Craig recalls that while growing up, the riders winning contests were never his favorite riders—rather, it was the guy getting covers and making stylish video edits. Craig’s own riding career has focused on park riding, which is much more freeride-oriented than the freestyle discipline currently dominating the World Tour. While Craig has done his fair share of contests and respects the level of competition riding, he points out that “all you have to do is change a member of the judging panel and it changes the outcome of the event.” Craig considers himself lucky that his career spanned one of the first generations where social media content became king—a 40

UPPER LEFT: The spoils of hard work, talent and lots of travel, Craig has had his share of coverage. RIGHT: In the run up to fall 2018, the Duotone rebrand and Craig’s riding was on a roll until a major trajectory change. An impact with a slider fractured his left ankle in five places and was accompanied with a follow-up surgery on his right ankle to remove bone chips. A winter of light surf, foil and skate rehab sessions and a long list of Duotone special marketing projects have kept his head in the game. // Photo Toby Bromwich

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new reality where video and photo productivity can give you the same longevity and significance within a kite brand that comes with staying in the top-five positions on a world tour.

In his new role at Duotone, Craig has started working on special projects like Duotone’s Grom Search, video projects that focus on character storytelling, as well as running athlete houses. Traditionally, trips were focused around structured photoshoots with small, invited teams. However, Craig switched things up at the recent Brazil house.

Opening it up to all team members, the house brought athletes together to talk about content creation, marketing, general riding style and how to interact with dealers and people at the beach.

Craig’s intensity and work ethic combined with his background as a globe-traveling athlete have put him in a strong position to influence the Duotone team.

Aside from managing the team, the role of coach has been a natural evolution for an accomplished athlete like Craig. When he learned that young riders on the tour today don’t have proper grab styles because the scoring rewards an extra handlepass or a spin over a grab, he was struck by disbelief. Craig recalls asking young athletes, “So you can land double heart attacks but not a simple back roll with a grab?” The knee-jerk answer was that a grab might screw up deeply ingrained contest muscle memory. Excuses aside, Craig worries these young athletes are limited by a fear of not being good at something for 10 minutes. It’s as if the younger generations often skip the basics in their hurried approach to get to the top, yet Craig is quick to point out that riders like himself and Brandon Scheid, “have more fun doing stuff we’re really bad at because we’re learning.

Even if our goal is to get to the highest level of freeriding, we might as well learn everything along the way.” Craig is old enough to know that learning is gratifying and the willingness to struggle requires confidence that comes with experience. Looking back, he laughs because after 20 minutes of grab practice, Craig watches the kids execute perfect unhooked roast beefs in front of the camera.

There’s never a perfect time for injury in the career of an athlete, but 10-months post ankle surgery, Craig is finding his balance is better than it’s ever been. This last year’s downtime has allowed Craig to reinvest his energy into a more formal role on the brand side of kiteboarding. Instead of rushing through physical therapy to get back to riding, he’s worked harder on his connection with Makulo as well as special projects for Duotone that have refocused his passion for kiteboarding. At a time when Craig’s major sponsor has navigated a ground-up rebranding, he himself has undergone a similar transition while following a tried and tested formula: working hard, living in the moment and moving through the doors of opportunity as they open.

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UPPER LEFT: Lewis Crathern and Craig shaka in the announcing structure at the GKA freestyle event in Leucate. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova LOWER LEFT: Milling about Brazil with the Duotone team, Craig directs character-focused marketing campaigns to highlight the personality of the team. // Photo Toby Bromwich RIGHT: Taking a break from injury, Craig demonstrates the basics of grabs to the rotation-focused members of the Duotone team. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova

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Fine Tuning the Tour An Interview with GKA Head Judge Mallory de la Villemarque Photos by Svetlana Romantsova

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aving competed on the PKRA Freestyle Tour for five years and worked tirelessly as a judge on the WKC Freestyle Tour before it was folded into the GKA organization, Mallory de la Villemarque is now the head judge for the Freestyle discipline on the GKA Kite World Tour and working to fine tune the tour for success. This year the GKA is introducing a number of format changes aimed at raising the level of competition and increasing spectatorship at each of the six tour stops. We caught up with Mallory to get his insider’s perspective.

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One of the biggest changes to this year’s tour is the combination of the existing GKA Air Games and the WKC Freestyle formats under one World Cup championship. How do you balance these two disciplines under one title?

Mallory We plan to run at least six events in 2019, and there will be two event discards available. Four

tour stops will be pure freestyle—like this past event in Leucate—and two will have more of a big air/mixed format that will adjust depending on the wind strength. During those mixed/big air events, as the wind goes over 30 knots, the format and judging will move more towards a big air style to include tricks like kiteloops. Marc Jacobs is the perfect example of this type of riding because he can do tricks like megaloop board-offs but still kills it in powered freestyle. Liam Whaley has done really well in the King of the Air for the last two years too, so I’d expect him to do well at these mixed events too.

The mixed events will run at locations like Vargas in Gran Canaria where we can expect really strong winds over 30 knots. The windier it is, the more the format will move towards big air and increase the wow factor, further broadening the appeal of a freestyle world tour. We hope to see really complete riders emerge from this year’s GKA Freestyle World Cup events.

The GKA is well known for its Kite-Surf World Championship, but what will be the GKA’s approach to freestyle competition?

Mallory This year the freestyle competition format will be the same as last year on the WKC tour.

We plan on running heats with four riders, and each rider takes a turn doing one trick. Every rider is allowed seven trick attempts in their heat and their four highest scoring tricks from four different trick families count towards their score. We have a screen on the shoreline that shows the score for their trick and then shows the score the next rider needs to win. This format will also run for the big air/mixed events—something not seen before.

There is one big change: last year the rider was allowed to take four tacks to do each trick.

Some riders were doing long tacks and taking up a lot of time, so now we’ve reduced the time that each rider has to do their trick to one minute and the timer shows the time left on the screen at the beach. It was an innovation suggested by Alex Pastor and is similar to some formats used in skateboarding competitions. It was first used in kiteboarding at the WKL event in Cabarete in 2017 and as we saw at our recent event in Leucate, it really sped up the flow of competition. Some heats were 10-12 minutes shorter and it made the action much better and more stimulating to watch.

Compared to seven-minute heats with four riders doing their tricks at the same time, the athletes can fully focus on one trick. The really exciting thing is that there’s no room for error as there’s a strict limit on attempts. As all judges are watching just one rider, there’s also less chance that we will miss a trick. As a judge, I really like this format because it’s really fair, especially for such a technically high-level discipline. We also run a dingle format, so after round two, when you’re out, you’re out; no double elimination, so it’s easy for people to understand. The audience loves it because it’s easy to follow on the live stream and when a perfect 10 score goes up on the screen, the crowd screams and there’s so much energy on the shore, especially when we reach the finals. The pressure builds and it can all come down to one rider landing their final trick to win the event; it’s a huge and really clear moment.

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Can you explain the dingle elimination bracket system in better detail for the layman?

Mallory The dingle elimination is an elimination ladder that combines the single and double elimination

into one bracket. The advantage of running the single and double elimination is that each competitor has a second chance to advance if we have time to complete both ladders. The double elimination format is nicer for riders who traveled around the world to attend the competition and had a bad first heat; they can still win the competition with that second chance in the double elimination ladder. But it’s confusing to have two podiums, one after each elimination, and it takes too long to complete with our new, longer competition format.

The dingle elimination gives a second chance to only some riders. For example, the winners of heats in the first round have the benefit of advancing directly to heats in round 3; basically, they skip round 2, whereas the second and third competitors have another chance in round 2.

The fourth place rider in round 1 is out of the competition, and from the second round on, the first and second riders of each heat advance to the next round, while third and fourth place finishers do not move on. Basically, we run only one bracket, but it becomes more selective as you move through rounds.

Is there a score for variety or overall impression?

Mallory We don’t give a score for variety, but the scores come from the best four tricks from four

different categories. Believe it or not, there are 25 trick categories, so although it’s hard to see for the untrained eye, there is a lot of variety in handlepasses. For example, some of the families are KGBs, slim chances, heart attacks, 313s, crow mobes, front blind mobes, and many more, which depend on the direction of spin, inversion angles and more.

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What is the purpose of having ‘trick families’ and do they get different scoring weights—does the judge’s scoring rubric for each family have the technical level of the family weighted into the ultimate score?

Mallory Each trick has a different technical base score. Then depending on the execution of that trick, the judge’s perception and scoring ability come into play and alter the score based on how the trick was performed in the given conditions. Trick families are generally used to group tricks and their evolution. If the scoring wasn’t comprised of scores for four different trick families, then the riders would focus on a single trick or evolutions of the same trick. If you know a bit of freestyle, imagine a rider landing a 313, then he tries a 317 but only gets a 315 (313 with an extra 180), and then on his third attempt he gets the 317 (313 with an extra 360 handlepass). The 315 and 317 are an evolution on the 313 and therefore all fall in the same 313 family. If we didn’t count only the best trick per family, those three tricks could count towards the rider’s final score and it would not be fair if his or her opponent went for three tricks from different families, but didn’t score as many points for landing more variety.

At the same time, isn’t winning all about double handlepasses?

Mallory Well, you won’t reach the podium in the men’s competition if three out of your four best

tricks aren’t double handlepasses. In the women’s category, we’ve yet to see a double pass, but Mikaili Sol, in particular, is getting close and hoping to score them this season.

However, we want to be able to reward super stylish single handlepass tricks if they’re done with the power, amplitude, speed and the kite positioning that we’re looking for. For example, Stefan Spiessberger’s grabbed s-mobe 5 looks insane. Liam Whaley also has a massive front blind mobe with a double grab that looks beautiful. Although we see these tricks in videos, a lot of riders haven’t been doing these really visual and stylish tricks in competition because they see them as a wasted low score when there are only seven trick attempts allowed in a heat. However, it’s not just spin to win. We want to give an opportunity for riders to show us their character. For example, we rarely see the rewind tricks now (spinning one way, then back the other, rather than just continuing to a double handlepass in the same direction (317 for example). If you’re familiar with snowboarding, you know that a backside 180 looks simple, but if done big and with control, there are few more beautiful tricks.

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How do you structure the mechanism for rewarding athletes with ‘super stylish’ single tricks, or for instance, encourage more legitimate grabs into highly technical tricks?

Mallory During the riders’ meetings, we verbally communicate that we, the judges, will reward those

very well executed grabs or simply ‘out of the norm’ tricks. It doesn’t always have to be a grab. For example in Leucate, Posito Martinez went for a massive one-handed front blind mobe off of a kicker with his kite nearly touching the water during the whole trick and at one point he was above his kite. We reward those tricks with so much wow factor when they are technical, and the great thing is that all riders can see that by watching the scores coming up on the big screen.

Who should we be looking out for in the coming months?

Mallory Carlos Mario from Brazil is the three-time World Champion and always a favorite. He’s also

getting really close to bringing in the more stylish grabs on his double handlepasses. However, Adeuri Corniel from the DR has been getting super close to him and Valentin Rodriguez from Colombia is also very capable but hasn’t proved his mindset over a long period at this very top level. Maxime Chabloz from Switzerland should also make podiums this season and I’m curious to see how Liam Whaley does coming back from injury. Brazilian Erick Anderson could also be a threat now that he’s throwing in stylish grabs on his doubles—even more so than Carlos at the moment.

Yet, anything can happen. In Leucate we saw a huge shakeup in the women’s division. The wind was so strong for the girls that it was a battle just to see who could land their four scored tricks, which was what clinched it. Francesca Bagnoli was the most consistent rider and took the win over Mikaili Sol and Bruna Kajiya, who both struggled to land all the tricks they needed. However, in lighter wind conditions, it might have been different. Bruna was riding super solid before her injury but has a lot to overcome after a long time out of the water.

Mikaili has been training very hard all winter and is hungry for more wins, but Francesca is a smart competitor and has also plenty of style and power. It will be a tough fight for the women this year and I am looking forward to it.

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Wes Watts and Savana (soon to be Watts) Rose, pose in the back of their ‘land yacht’ with the tools of their trade. Bringing the skills of an electrical engineer to van living, the two are releasing their first turn-key product to the expanding DIY market. // Words and photo by Brendan Richards

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PROFILED

WES WATTS Santa Cruz, California

Tiny watts’ infinite energy The first time I encountered the indelible energy of Wes Watts I was doing a small favor for an old friend. My task was to teach this wide-grinning, red-headed high schooler the basics of kitesurfing, and as advertised, he was a quick learner. Wes mastered the trainer kite in five minutes, twin tip riding in about an hour and by the end of his first week, he was already piecing together the rudimentary skills of surfing waves with a kite. With athletic skills second to none, it is ultimately Wes’s supernatural people skills that seamlessly turns strangers into mentors and friends into partners in crime that has left the greatest impression upon me.

The seduction of entrepreneurial life took hold after Wes and Savana attended a tiny home fair where one would expect the mini homes to be economical and environmentally self-sufficient, yet they discovered that most of the tiny homes were powered by gas generators rather than solar powered systems. Wes quit his day job designing utility scale storage facilities and quickly began building their mobile solar install business, Tiny Watts Solar, from the ground up. The two doubled down by selling their first van for a healthy profit and purchased a shiny new 4x4 Sprinter they called Bella—a moving, living showcase of their work.

It became very clear early on that this semi-pro skateboarder and surfer had the aptitude and potential of a world-class kitesurfing instructor.

Wes was teaching land lessons in a week and kite shadowed water lessons at Waddell by the following summer (think IKO teaching standards on steroids). His first winter he kitesurfed the infamous Steamer Lane (he’ll show you the scars) and eventually became one of the most successful instructors in Santa Cruz—measured both in smiles and miles of beginner kitesurfing strokes.

That first year was touch and go—both had quit their jobs, and with just a few projects trickling in, they alternated between states of optimism and self-doubt. In the slack moments, the two had time to travel. Somewhere in between Hawaii, South Africa and California, Wes became a pro-caliber foilsurfer in just a matter of days and Savana got her wings too. But eventually, the duo’s hard work along with their Instagram and social media marketing skills created a non-stop schedule of projects that have taken them along the West Coast from San Diego to Oregon, and as far east as NYC to install solar and radiant floor heating systems in vans, boats and all things tiny.

After a couple of summers of kitesurfing, it was clear that life as an instructor was just a waypoint on a larger trajectory of professional aspirations. Armed with an associate’s degree from the local community college, Wes followed a cute girl he met at a party in Hawaii clear north to Portland, Oregon, where he studied electrical engineering at Oregon Tech. Spending summers between semesters in Hood River, Wes and Savana took odd jobs. Savana got her first kiteboarding rides on the Sandspit and worked evening shifts at Solstice while Wes’s employment was as diverse as running a food concession at the Hood River event site, working as an ‘abrasive reduction engineer’ at a high-end carbon shop and more notably, as a project coordinator for solar install outfits.

When housesitting and paying rent got old, the young kids (along with their pet hedgehog) purchased an old Sprinter van in order to cash in on rent-free living and outfitted it themselves with the basic DIY amenities: heat, water and solar. As Wes likes to point out, Savana spent the first six years of her life traveling the world’s oceans on a boat with her two parents and younger sister, thus making van life a natural fit. Ahead of the curve, Wes and Savana lived in their van full time on the streets of Portland as they finished college and obtained proper office jobs.

One of their key goals along the way was to build a sustainable business model that combined their passion for van living with the financial freedom and autonomy to travel, explore, kite and surf. Aside from doing complete installs, the two sought to provide help and guidance to the ‘do-it-yourself ’ types. According to Wes, “So many people get lost in the forums or on YouTube and end up wasting time and money trying to figure out the electrical portion of their project.” This summer they began shipping their first turn-key product that takes a plug and play approach to DIY solar projects.

Having traded 5-day corporate work weeks for the 7-day small business grind, Wes and Savana are nonetheless working out the details of unconventional but highly rewarding lifestyle of renewable enterprise.

Follow Wes and Savana’s adventures on Instagram: @our_landyacht and @tinywattssolar or visit their website www.tinywattssolar.com.

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Angely Bouillot commits to the megaloop. Inspired by her brother, Angely is driven to face her biggest fears and experience life in the present moment. // Words by Joe Winowski | Photo by Danulis

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PROFILED

ANGELY BOUILLOT Leucate, France

Mistress of the Megaloop There are moments in sports that are often spoken of long after the competitive dust has settled. One of this year’s most notable occasions was when female French rider Angely Bouillot battled the Netherlands’ Pippa van Iersel in Cape Town’s nuclear conditions during a makeshift big air event dubbed the ‘Queen is Born.’When all was said and done, Angely’s explosive megaloops owned the podium and made a clear impression on the unofficial contest crowd—moves that would have stood out on their own in the King of the Air, had Angely been allowed to compete with the boys.

Born and raised in the windy town of Leucate on the southeastern shores along the Mediterranean, Angely followed her brother’s footsteps into skiing from the early age of three and then attended a competitive skiing school throughout her teens. Kiteboarding entered Angely’s life at the age of 15 when her family traveled to the seaside town of Lacanau on France’s southwestern Atlantic coast.

Angely started with windsurfing lessons along with her mother and brother but at the insistence of the instructor, they gave body dragging with a kite a go. Although Angely would return to learn kiteboarding, her competitive skiing career transitioned to an allconsuming pursuit of artistic studies in fashion—and kiteboarding was left as a side sport relegated to vacations just a couple of times per year. Deeply involved in costume and set design for big theater productions, it wasn’t until she moved back to Leucate in her 20s that she pursued kiteboarding more extensively.

Encouraged to train harder by some friends at a local kite school, Angely found her way into speed racing, a natural direction in the strong offshore winds and flat ponds of Leucate. With her ski racing pedigree, she loved the sensation of going fast and challenging herself in extreme conditions. She recalls the rush of struggling to keep her legs from cramping and collapsing at the end of a long speed run. Eventually, Angely became the female Kitespeed World Champion in Martha’s Vineyard in 2016.

Angely recalls her first kiteloop attempt. Her friends held an informal event in Leucate to see who could crash the biggest. Although no one had ever explained to her how to do it, Angely made up her mind to try the all intimidating kiteloop. In Leucate’s Tramontane winds, she committed her kite to the loop. Fully powered and high in the air, Angely didn’t push the bar out, so the kite never completed

the loop and she plummeted to the water. “It was like crashing into a wall,” she recalls, having knocked the air out of her lungs and suffered bruised, or possibly broken ribs. Apparently, catastrophic failure was not a deterrent but an opening salvo for her attraction to high stakes kiteboarding. Having obtained the highest honor in speed kiting, she turned her attention to big air, thinking there would be more opportunity and sponsorship potential due to the sport’s biggest contest, the Red Bull King of the Air. After a bit of training with kiteloops, board-offs and deadmans, she put together a wildcard entry video and submitted it to the all men’s Red Bull King of the Air, but did not receive an invite. Back when the event was staged in Ho’okipa, a women’s division was run alongside the men for the first three years. After a seven-year hiatus, the King of the Air was resurrected in 2013 in Cape Town except only with an all men’s division. To Angely’s disappointment, she was not accepted in 2017, yet she trained harder for 2018, only to receive the same disappointing result. In light of Angely’s aggressive riding, the curious absence of women in the event eventually found its way to Facebook, where social media pressure began to weigh in on the side of gender equality.

After a number of female wildcard entries in 2019, Red Bull added a women’s expression session to the event, but the women wouldn’t receive a podium spot or prize money. As a result, Angely worked with her friends Tereza Simonova, Aniek Duyverman and Jasmin Wukitsevitsto along with her main sponsor Aneo to put on a grassroots version, and the ‘Queen is Born’ was held a few days prior. Staged just up the road from the Red Bull event site, the Cape Town kite community gathered along with top athletes to help stage heats, judge and spectate as the girls duked it out for the crown. The kiteloop and big air action was solid, but it was Angely’s gutsy megaloops that clearly stood out at the end of the day, putting her at the top of the podium.

While Angely is a strong supporter of grassroots competition and hopes to work collectively to stage more women’s events, she is the first to point out how hard it is to support a dedicated training schedule without high-visibility events and the corresponding sponsorships.The ‘Queen is Born’ was a great grassroots step in the right direction, yet the future of female big air riding continues to remain uncertain as Angely looks for more ways to push women’s kiteboarding to the extreme.

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EXPOSED

If you haven't seen Fred Hope's physicsdefying kite foil antics, a summer pilgrimage to Hood River might be in order just to watch the kid who wrote the book on technical freeride kite foiling. // Photo Mo Lelii

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EXPOSED

Reo Stevens threads the needle at Tahiti’s famed Teahupo’o with photographer Ben Thouard in a precarious position. Flying direct form Hawaii with Keahi de Aboitiz, the two sat in the rain for three days until the skies finally opened up and delivered.

According to Reo, “You just never know until you go.” // Photo Ben Thouard

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EXPOSED

As Evan Netsch will tell you, getting the stereotypical Brazil shot isn’t always that easy. Lining up the photographer in front of a yellow rental buggy with his favorite travel partner atop, Evan rigged short lines to stay below the chaotic rotor coming off the turbines before boosting out of the hot, tiny, scum-filled cow pond lagoon to nail this well-staged shot. // Photo Nik Ganderton

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EXPOSED

There are very few places in the world that contrast Tahiti’s deep blue waters with the intense shades of a tropical canopy.

Charlotte Consorti explores the infinite beauty of Moorea on a trade wind-fueled breeze. // Photo Bruno Dubosq

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ABOVE: Giving Portugal a third chance, Matt Elsasser chases side-off wind while feeling out a slightly hollower section on one of his first waves near Super Tubos. // Photo Luke Dawson

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3rd TIME CHARM Words by Matt Elsasser

There’s no doubt that I sounded a bit like a stuck-up asshole while telling my friend that I wasn’t overly excited for my upcoming trip to Portugal. I had been on the road for a month doing Cabrinha demos throughout California and the thought of parking my van at LAX just to fly halfway across the world to a place I had already been twice before wasn’t exactly getting me fired up. The odd part is that Portugal seems to be one of the hottest spots in Europe right now—everywhere I go I bump into someone that only has great

things to say about Portugal. “It’s cheap, the surf is good, the food is good, the nightlife is good, the wind is good, the girls are good, the guys are good, the beer is good, etc.” To be honest, there are places I would have chosen to revisit long before Portugal because the conditions from my previous two trips were no better than what I could find at home in Oregon or down Highway 1 in California. I wouldn’t say it happens often, but occasionally I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, and this last trip to Portugal changed my mind completely.

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hen the invite for this trip appeared in my email, I quickly glanced at the CC line to find that I only recognized two names: Alex Maes and Therese Taabbel. After a bit of googling I was able to figure out that the other people on this trip were windsurfers. I had never traveled with windsurfers before and I quickly began to question how this photoshoot was going to work. Usually photoshoots are discipline specific. Wave riders at wave spots and freestylers at flat water spots, but this trip attempted to combine a surf kiter, two twin tip kiters and bunch of windsurfers in just a 10-day period.

On my previous trips to Portugal, most of the conditions I had encountered were side onshore winds, similar conditions to what the California coast provides. For strapless kitesurfing, side onshore wind is totally manageable and provides ample opportunities for big airs and one-hit-wonder lip smashing. Yet, for twin tip freestyle kiting, side onshore wind and waves are pretty bad, and although I didn’t know much about windsurfing, I knew enough to know that side-on is even worse for windsurfing than for freestyle. So to say my thoughts on this arrangement as I parked my van in long term parking were questionable at best is an understatement.

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Landing in Lisbon after a multi-stop 18-hour flight from LAX, I was picked up at the airport and dropped off at our rental house, an old Portuguese mansion located 45 minutes outside of the city. We weren’t located directly on the beach like you’d imagine for a brand photoshoot, but instead we were 15 minutes inland, which turned out to be a very central point of attack for hitting every spot from Guincho to the south, to the famous Peniche in the north. As I walked into the house I met German professional windsurfer Leon Jamaer. I’m pretty certain Germany is probably the only country left where you can actually make a decent living windsurfing, and after only five minutes around the kitchen table with Leon, I knew we were in good hands. Over the years, he’s spent months at a time in Portugal patiently tracking down surf with a few Lisbon-based windsurfers.

Leon then introduced me to Luke Dawson who was slated to be our water photographer during the shoot. Now living in Lisbon while getting his master’s degree, the 25-year-old Californian confessed that he had scored so much surf on his first trip to Portugal that he had to find a way to return and live there, higher education being his best excuse. I admitted to Luke that I’d had

LEFT: In the unstable weather patterns of the first few days, Matt and Leon sign up for surf check duty. // Photo Jill Hansen RIGHT: The hodgepodge of cliff dwellings at Peniche exhibit the colors of the standard Portugese fishing village. // Photo Xsandra LOWER RIGHT: Alex Maes setting up for freestyle in the slack between waves. // Photo Luke Dawson

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the opposite experience. He promptly asked what time of the year I had previously been to Portugal. When I responded “summer, both times,” he started laughing and explained that although Portugal’s winds rage in the summer, the surf primarily fires during the winter months. Luke opened his Instagram and began scrolling through pictures of endless waves. My jaw dropped. Like so many places in the world, the windy season doesn’t always line up with the best season for waves, but as I’ve seen elsewhere, if you hit these destinations in transition seasons, you can often end up with both perfect surf and wind.

The next couple of days were smeared with torrential rain and turbulent seas, so we took advantage of these down days by shooting product shots on the beach. Along with the others, I continued to be unimpressed, as none of us had signed up for this

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trip to be lifestyle models. Later in the week, the forecast looked to be promising and we gambled on an hour drive north to Peniche.

After driving through the patchwork of small farm fields and euro-style roundabouts, we pulled up to the beach to see that it was fully kiteable. The setup at Peniche features a small headland that acts as a wind shadow, but it’s low enough that your kite is able to stay fully powered in the sky above it. The waves wrap around the headland and this setup creates glassy faces with solid side to side-on wind. The further you head south down the beach from the town of Peniche, the smaller the wind shadow becomes and the wind turns more onshore.

Alex and Therese worked the kickers on the inside while I hunted for clean faces to crack off the tops, taking advantage of the cleaner waves up by downtown Peniche on the headland. Just

LEFT: Alex Maes tweaks out a seatbelt grab with Peniche’s terracotta roofs in the background. // Photo Jill Hansen TOP RIGHT: The rocky peninsulas and sandy bays of southern Portugal offer endless exploration. // Photo Andrey Danilovich MIDDLE LEFT: Alex Maes launches in Guincho’s strong winds. A Belgian with a great sense of humor and a wild side, Alex is one of the most up and coming heavy hitters in the Kite Park League. // Photo Jill Hansen MIDDLE RIGHT: According to Matt, Therese Taabbel is a soft spoken shredder who has carved her way to the top of Danish freestyle and consistently lands top-five finishes on the freestyle world tour. // Photo Jill Hansen LOWER RIGHT: Matt and Therese model the latest Neil Pryde neoprene during the down days. // Photo Jill Hansen

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TOP PHOTOS: Therese practices her kicker game in between sets while Matt makes quick work out of the side-on conditions. // Photos Jill Hansen LOWER LEFT: Elsasser annihilates a mushburger with the city streets of Peniche in the background. // Photo Jill Hansen

downwind I watched Alex launch off wave kickers like it was a boat wake, except these waves were about three times the size of anything a boat would produce. With his kite parked below 45°, he rotated through flat handlepasses which made my knees hurt just watching him stick hard landings in the flats.

While the kiters scored at Peniche, Leon and Antoine Martin set off to find more suitable windsurfing conditions. There was plenty of wind at Peniche to windsurf, and I called them ‘soft’ when they opted out of the session to go find another spot. At the time, I was hung up on the whole ‘don’t leave wind for wind’ theory, but when they headed around the corner just south of Super Tubos, I had to eat my words when they called us with a solid report. We quickly packed up from Peniche and headed about 10 minutes south to join them. As I walked up to the beach I began to realize the diversity Portugal had to offer. Just 10 minutes from a wave with side onshore wind lays a 3-mile-long stretch of beach with perfect side offshore winds.

The beauty of kiting is that nearly any wind direction besides directly offshore is kiteable for surf, but to really rip at windsurfing, side-off wind is pretty much mandatory. This direction is often the rarest direction to find, but when it blows side-off, you get hollower wave faces and park and ride hero conditions that allow you to just ignore your kite and crank turns as the kite effortlessly drifts down the line. However, as we rigged our kites on the beach, I could tell the conditions were borderline too offshore for kiting; the kind of wind that rips you out the back of each wave and makes it difficult to get back upwind to the beach. In this case, if I couldn’t make it back upwind, the next stop would be somewhere in Brazil, about 4,000 miles across the Atlantic.

The windsurfers were launching mental airs on the closeout sections, ripping apart the clean walls and proving the versatility of their sails in side-off conditions. Despite my previous suspicion about wind direction, as soon as I got a wave under

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my belt I knew that we were in for an epic session. Even Alex Maes came out on a surfboard for his first time out without his boots and a twin tip in a long time. His session ended on a high note when he pulled into his first kite barrel ever. As I rode past him on the inside—his kite was down, his board was gone but he had a ginormous ear to ear grin while taking set waves on the head in 3 feet of water. We had a few sunset beers before heading back to the house and of course followed that up with a few more celebratory beers at home; I dubbed this time of day Super Bock o’clock after the local beer Super Bock. In the fog of beers, Alex had a revelation that he actually pulled into a left going right, and claimed the light was coming from behind him. I almost spit out my beer in laughter as I listened to his tale of getting ‘pitted.’ His stoke was no joke.

Over the next few days the crew split up to attack different spots.

I stuck with the windsurfers chasing stronger winds and waves at Guincho while Alex and Therese headed to Setubal to ride and shoot the lagoon in butter flat water. I don’t know much

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about what went down at the lagoon but both Therese and Alex claimed the conditions were world-class. They have both traveled the world in search of perfect freestyle conditions, so for them to claim this spot so heavily, it must have been next level. Luke must have also been serving Alex some of his Kool-Aid as Alex began spouting off about abandoning his home in Belgium and moving to Portugal permanently.

As two guys weighing in at nearly 200 pounds each and regularly in search of strong winds, the next day I kited Guincho beach while Leon windsurfed it, but we were both nearly blown off the water on our smallest setups. I’m going to officially label Guincho as one of the windiest places I have ever been. You can chill against the cliffs on the north edge of the beach where you are sheltered from the wind and can drink a beer in peace, but the second you step on the water, you’d better be ready to get absolutely lit up.

With its side-on conditions and powerful beach and reef break, Guicho reminded me of an insane spot in California that I will definitely get in trouble for mentioning… so let’s leave it at that.

UPPER LEFT: Alex Maes switches modes and gives strapless surfing a go. Rocketing into a closeout, Alex scores his first and most memorable tube ride. // Photo Jill Hansen UPPER RIGHT: Matt tucks into a tight lip along with his cameraman. // Photo Luke Dawson ABOVE: Matt Elsasser breaks the fins out and stalls just under the lip. // Photo Jill Hansen

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ABOVE: Trimming for the coverup with expat Luke Dawson behind the waterhousing, Elsasser sets up for the hollow section. Having finally experienced Portugal in the month of April when wind and surf fires simultaneously on all six cylinders, Matt vows to return again. // Photo Jill Hansen

When it came to packing my bags for the return trip to LAX, I felt as if I was just starting to get a proper taste of the Portuguese west coast. Having finally experienced Portugal with a solid winter swell and strong winds, my eyes were opened to the potential of this country. The offering of hollow side offshore right-handers and side onshore aerial waves, along with perfect flat water for freestylers, all without crowds, makes Portugal a prime destination for all levels of kiteboarders. Just a little bit of local knowledge goes a long way and I owe a lot to Leon and our photographers Luke and Diogo, for putting us in the right spots at the right time.

After this trip I’m not afraid to admit that I had Portugal all wrong. I’m usually not one to judge a book by its cover, but apparently you can’t judge it by the first couple of chapters either.

My mind is forever changed on Portugal and although I’m not ready to give up on the California and Oregon coastlines, I can’t wait to get back for more action next winter.

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L E A R N M O R E AT R I D E E N G I N E .C O M

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RGD’S CREATIVE INDEPENDENCE

AN INTERVIEW WITH RALF GRÖSEL PHOTOS BY GORAN KUZMANOVSKI

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ased out of the Munich area, Duotone kite designer Ralf GrĂśsel is the architect behind the widely acclaimed Evo, Vegas, Dice and Juice kite lines. With a testing regimen that ranges from Cape Town in the winter months to the north of Germany, Holland and the very southernmost points of Italy in the summer, Ralf also oversees the company's manufacturing and material innovation. In addition to his successes in kiteboarding, Ralf has also introduced a number of technical products to the paragliding and yachting industries along with consumer inflatable products, and most recently, he developed small-business efficiency software that helps him keep all of his projects on track. When Ralf is not imagining new products he likes to renovate classic cars, known as ‘old timers’ from the 60s, fine tune his BMW race car and push limits as a partner in the Gybe Racing Team. We caught up with Ralf in the few spare moments between his many enterprises.

The first chapter of your design career started at a relatively early age and revolved around wings for flight. How did this come about?

RG

I remember sitting on the beach watching paragliders launch from a little dune, trying to use the small updraft area to stay in the air as long as possible. This was 1993; I was 14 and paragliders had just started to look like proper wings instead of an advanced version of a parachute. I was instantly hooked on the idea of flying a self-inflating, stitched, lightweight material wing. Ever since I was a young kid, I have been deeply interested in building and designing model airplanes. Even back then, the general rules of physics in terms of aerodynamics were already well known to me. But it was the combination of flexible material, lightness in weight and the obvious fun that the pilots were having that motivated me to look into this matter way deeper. I quickly found myself behind a sewing machine and building my first scaled paraglider. Once I had grasped the manufacturing side, I took it to the next level by scraping together all of the money I had, as well as borrowing some from my mother, to buy my first computer.

At the age of 15, I was highly allergic to books, yet I still managed to read the entire 600 pages of Autocad for Beginners in four days. In 1994 the internet did not capture an ounce of the information available today, so there was no such thing as downloading a profile or a 3D model wing. Forced to be an autodidact, I had to figure it all out by myself. Reading and studying every book about aerodynamic profiles from NACA to Eppler, I quickly advanced from two-dimensional CAD designs to 3D models. The result was the B-Wing (birds-wing) which I developed in 1997. This model was the start of my career; I got in touch with a paragliding brand and started to work as a paragliding test pilot.

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Based just outside of Munich, Ralf spends his summers chasing light wind sessions on the mountain lakes out his back door with frequent trips to a secret spot in the Baltic Sea that he finds ideal for testing, while in the winters, he spends a couple of months in Cape Town for its strong wind testing potential.

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LEFTMOST: The Parasailor’s innovative lifting wing allows the sail to operate without a spinnaker pole and adds vertical lift to the sail for better pulling performance. CENTER LEFT: Inspired by Chris Tronolone’s High kiteboarding movie, Ralf’s early move away from ram-air kites was highly influenced by his wakeboard and boots. CENTER RIGHT: Ralf’s childhood innovations in paragliding continue today with his paragliding brand ICARO. FAR RIGHT: As the developer of the Evo, Vegas and Juice kites as well as being responsible for material and construction technology, Ralf has a direct hand on the future of kiteboarding.

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How did you transition from paragliding R&D to kiteboarding and where did you stand on the early debates about soft/ram-air wings versus leading edge inflatable designs?

RG

I was very much into paragliding, but one day I saw the video High from Chris Tronolone and became totally hooked.

Together with Armin Harich, a paragliding pilot, we decided that kitesurfing was so much cooler than flying paragliders and founded the company Flysurfer in 2001. I had just finished civilian service and started to develop all of our products while simultaneously searching for a production facility which I ultimately found in China. I started in 2001 with the belief that soft kites were going to be the future of the sport. While I have kited on all kinds of boards, in the early years, I was quite focused on riding with boots and a wakeboard. After two years with Flysurfer, it was clear to me that soft kites weren’t going to be the future of the sport and I went to Naish Kiteboarding, the market leader back in 2004, for a couple of months. Don Montague, Naish’s kite designer at the time, was also very curious about the idea of a hybrid kite, as it made—at least theoretically—sense to try it out. I had the chance to go crazy on complex hybrid ideas during this period. We tried literally everything: Inflatable LE with double layer profiles, ARC-shaped hybrids with flap systems, tube kites with flaps and so on. However, after four months, we realized that all these concepts had their downsides and that the easiest and smartest way of making kitesurfing commercially attractive would be the tube kite, or as we all know it today, the leading edge inflatable.

You have been designing some of the staple kite models in the Duotone line for a number of years now. How were you introduced to Duotone and what was the first kite you designed for them?

RG

After my time at Naish in Maui I returned to Germany and continued to work on the realization of a special spinnaker sail for sailboats called Parasailor. Based on the patent of Hartmut Schädlich, I developed the entire product portfolio for the newly-founded company ISTEC, which purchased the rights for this sail. Within this company I met Christian Wenger, who established a production facility in Sri Lanka for North Windsurfing. He was basically the link who introduced me to Till Eberle at Boards and More GmbH, the parent company behind Duotone. The Husky snowkite was the first kite I developed, working together with snowkite world-champion Fabio Ingrosso back in 2004. The Evo, however, was my first LEI kite, which was developed in 2007, and today I’m in charge of the Evo, Dice, Vegas and Juice lines of kites.

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The Duotone freestyle team displaying the newly re-branded Vegas line of kites in Puerto Rico. With the old North branding left in Duotone’s dust, Ralf looks forward to a strong future with his high quality mangement team, athletes and designs. // Photo Toby Bromwich

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What is one of the largest performance gains that you have discovered over the course of your kite designing career?

RG

That is certainly an interesting question, which isn’t easy to answer. For me, kitesurfing is not all about performance, it’s more about accessibility, safety, durability, handling and intuitive kite control. Performance characteristics such as upwind or jumping abilities are the result of many variables and there hasn’t been only one parameter that makes the difference—depending on the required flight characteristics, many different parameters make the difference. For example, the design features of an Evo vary completely from the Vegas.

Performance has two different meanings for these two kite models. The Vegas has to create unhooked pop and slack, while the Evo is all about high, lifty jumps, easy kite control and upwind performance. I would claim that the sum of many little improvements over the last decade has ultimately made the difference.

Most kite companies have a single designer, yet because Duotone has invested in a deep product offering for every segment of kiteboarding, it employs two designers. How much collaboration is there between you and Ken Winner, or do you have very separate practices?

RG

I think a big benefit for Duotone is that Ken and I have very different ways to achieve our goals. Each designer is able to develop his models with his personal trademark. But generally, the product portfolio and differentiations between the models are defined by the head office. If no third party guided Ken and me, we would create too many overlapping models. At this point, I have to mention that the business relationship between Ken and I has been absolutely superb during all these years and yes, we do share information about our designs. However, our job descriptions do vary a bit, as I am in charge of product and production-related matters, material developments and new production techniques. This part of my job goes hand in hand with Hannes Knolz, the production manager of our manufacturing partner, Global Sports Lanka (GSL).

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Where do you see kite design evolution taking us in the next two to five years?

RG

There is quite a clear tendency, like in many other sports, that the products will get lighter and/or more durable. I design paragliders as well for the brand ICARO and the paragliding industry is literally all about going light. That does not always only generate benefits, but in general, it widens the product and user spectrum. Saying this, we do have some very interesting ultra-lightweight projects currently going on. To be honest, we have been developing those ideas for a couple of years already. This goes from bladderless kite technologies to seamless ultra-sonic welding. So far it has been a very complex topic and not easy to handle on a production level, but someday we will make it work.

It’s tricky to predict future innovations, but one thing is for sure, kitesurfing will progress towards a wider range of special interest markets. Foiling is such a great innovation and addition to the sport, which will automatically lead to new inventions.

As mentioned before, an ultra-light wind kite will surely play a big part in this game and we already have protos which are fully operational in 5 knots of wind. Foiling is also opening a door for other wind-powered applications; just take an IRIG (inflatable windsurf sail) and mount it to a SUP foil board and you will be able to go in 2-3 knots, opening up a huge mass market which will automatically reflect back to the kitesurfing industry.

Also, the whole Olympic development will affect kitesurfing in one way or another and will force us to go more and more into details. One of the best examples is the TU-Berlin project which I have attended for the last three years. It’s an automated test-bench designed to validate kite-related flight parameters. This is just the next level of development and I am proud to be a part of it.

What is your overall outlook of technology patents in the kite industry? Are patents important as a tool to protect and motivate innovation, or are patent enforcement schemes a profit-motivated barrier that prevents widespread implementation and serial innovation?

RG

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Unfortunately, it’s not black and white in regards to patents.

I have been involved in writing several patents by myself and surely it has been a struggle to overcome existing ones. Let’s take the special downwind sail Parasailor, which I designed for ISTEC based on the patent of Hartmut Schädlich in 2004. The product idea is simple, smart and has been highly honored by renowned sailors. However, ISTEC has never shared the patent with other sailmakers. This automatically

FAR LEFT: A diverse background in wing, sail and kite design is a shining example of taking a multi-disciplinary approach to innovation. CENTER: According to Ralf, “Designing gliders is like playing three-dimensional chess as you have to be able to reach the intended flight characteristics, while also passing the safety certification criterias.� RIGHT: As the designer of the Juice, Ralf is constantly pushing the limits of light wind kiteboarding. // Photo Toby Bromwich

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LEFT: With his many pursuits, downtime is almost non-existent, yet “Driving in circles as fast as possible is a fantastic way to get fully concentrated on a single all-encompassing event which is, in the end, very relaxing for me.” CENTER: Using his kite building know-how, Ralf’s GYBE-Design company produces van-specific tents for Mercedes and Volkswagen vehicles. FAR RIGHT: Maneuvers like a partial frontal collapse are a crucial part of product testing in paragliding and the certification safety process.

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leads to a situation where the market refuses the product because it can only be distributed through a niche company.

The situation is changing, and at the moment, the product is available to everyone. However, the question is which strategy is commercially more successful for the patent holder. Another example is the Duotone Iron Heart safety system which is available for other brands. This is clearly a huge benefit for smaller brands which do not have the financial power to develop and produce such a complex component. By purchasing the patent and the final product from Duotone, a smaller brand can add a big safety advantage to their bar system, which is generally positive for the kite market and the development of the sport itself in terms of safety and performance.

In addition to your work at Duotone, you have spearheaded a number of independent businesses that include a diverse range of paragliding products, high-tech yacht sails, inflatable structures and computer software. What is this all about?

RG

RGD (Ralf Groesel Design) is the owner of the Adventure Design GmbH which operates three brands: OXLEYSails, GYBE-Design and ICARO-Paragliders. In 2011, I founded GYBE-Design, a company dedicated to inflatable structures such as event tents, event equipment and rescue tents. I have also been developing inflatable camping tents for the Volkswagen T5/T6 and Mercedes V-Class vans.

OXLEY-Sails is based on two main products which were invented by Hartmut Schädlich 20 years ago and I tweaked them to a commercial state 15 years ago. It’s a very special fusion between Spinnaker and Gennaker, combined with a lifting wing. These wings, also known as Parasailor and Parasail, are very successful products and the foundation for a surrounding portfolio. ICARO Paragliding has been in the industry for 17 years and was recently rebranded and added to the Adventure Design GmbH. Several years ago, I realized that the grade of complexity within these businesses was too high to have it be operated by humans only. This was the starting point for my personally biggest project called PicaSix. This project is a single page, server-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application which handles the entire product chain and every sales-related matter. It’s the heart of all my brands and I could not do so many projects in parallel without it. In Germany we have a saying: “Viele Wege führen nach Rom” (all roads lead to Rome), which means there are a lot of different ways to approach one goal, but I’m not particularly fond of the adage as, mathematically, there is only one fast/best way. My goal is therefore not to find a way, but to find the best and fastest way to solve each of my problems.

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Separation anxiety.

Squall winds bring the squalls. Jason Slezak packs it in after a stormy session in the Philippines. SCOTT SOENS Š 2019 Patagonia, Inc.

Travel-ready bags that separate wet from dry.

When you’re chasing waves off the grid, the last thing you need is a bag full of waterlogged gear. Hauling all your essentials while easily separating wet gear from dry, our new Planing Roll Top Pack offers streamlined functionality for all-day surf missions far past the end of the road.

Words by Ewan Jaspan Only an hour’s flight away from Melbourne, Australia lies the island of Tasmania, or as it was originally named, ‘Van Diemen’s Land.’ Having only visited once before as a kid, all I knew of it was that its rough, weather-beaten coastlines would have to be home to some adventurous kite conditions.

Our trip started in the island’s capital city, Hobart, where we rented an RV and drove straight to the opposite side of the island in the northwest, close to Cape Grim—the windiest place in Australia. Arriving at Stanley, the only kite spot we knew of for sure, we were greeted with a large lagoon, 20 knots of wind and a classic Tasmanian cloudy sky. After scoring some solid conditions our crew loaded up the RV and followed Google Maps along 3,100 miles of coastline in search of new kite locations.

We ended up kiting every day, shooting some great locations and had conditions ranging from sunny foiling and prime freestyle to one of the windiest and gustiest sessions of our lives. This trip reinforced the value of exploring the unknown rather than repeating the standard kite spots; it delivered exactly what we were after and broadened our minds as to the expansive reach of the open road.

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Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes

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ABOVE LEFT: Somewhere outside of Hobart, Ewan and company found this picturesque freestyle spot. // Photo Fernando Perez ABOVE RIGHT: Waiting out one of the 50-plus knot gusts before putting Antoine’s kite in the air on Tasmania’s north coast. // Photo Alexander LewisHughes LOWER RIGHT: The best way to explore Tasmania is with the complete freedom of an RV packed with all of your friends. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes LOWER LEFT: Hazarding the route to the beach amidst barbed wire fences and shotgun shells; Tasmania is not for the abashed. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes

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FAR LEFT: Tasmania’s economy is dominated by fishing and farming, and the driving mostly occurs on the left. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes TOP CENTER: Antoine Mermet wondering what happened to the warm waters of New Caledonia. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes ABOVE RIGHT: Recently nabbing the Australian Junior title, Leo Verrecchia styles out a tweaked indy grab in his first photoshoot with Naish. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes LOWER RIGHT: This uncharted lake by Wineglass Bay ended up being one of the best sessions of the trip. After driving from the north coast around Port Sorrell, the team struggled to find a spot that would work with SW wind, but just as the they were about to give up, they stumbled upon this vast body of water. // Photo Fernando Perez

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TOP LEFT: According to Ewan, “this session in the northwest was the strongest day of the trip, and possibly all of our lives.” // Photo Fernando Perez FAR RIGHT: Ewan poking a front to blind while making good use of the steady wind near Wineglass Bay. // Photo Alexander LewisHughes CENTER: Tasmania is just big enough for a single highway that runs through the center of the land. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes LOWER LEFT: With 30-55 knots out of the southwest, Ewan swore the wind, coming straight out of Antarctica, was the angriest he’d ever felt. There were times where he couldn’t hold an edge on an 8m Torch. // Photo Alexander Lewis-Hughes

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FAR LEFT: Katie Potter grabs nose at the lake by Wineglass Bay. ABOVE CENTER: Pre-session with the all new Torch. // Photo Fernando Perez TOP RIGHT: Sarcasm at its finest; Ewan throws a shaka for the camera after burying his board in eel grass.

BOTTOM RIGHT: At first glance this spot looked way too shallow to foil, but it turned out that the water was just really clear. // Photo Fernando Perez

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JEAN-GUILLAUME RIVAUD ON THE SPIRIT GT AVAILABLE AT DUOTONESPORTS.COM

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METHOD

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THE WALL RIDE

WORDS BY ERIC RIENSTRA | PHOTO BY ALEXANDER LEWIS-HUGHES

Wall rides are a unique department within park riding that make use of vertical or banked features. Since you can't really ride onto a wall (like you would a slider), it is a more technical move than a regular feature hit. The transition onto the wall often requires you to be able to ollie on, so it’s best to practice ollying onto normal features before trying your first wall ride.

Much like riding a wave or skating a bowl, a rider uses momentum to create horizontal G-forces that stick both the board and the rider to the wall. As a result, the technique for approaching a wall is a bit different than for a normal feature.

First, a wall needs to be set up a bit more downwind than a normal feature so you can get a more perpendicular approach. If your entry angle to the wall is not direct enough you will not have the G-forces needed to climb and stay connected to the wall. Unlike a traditional feature where you let up on your edge just before hitting it, with a wall ride, you want to edge all the way to the obstacle because you need speed to maintain your momentum and height as you ride across the wall.

As you connect with the wall, bring your legs up and absorb the impact with your knees, making sure your upper body shifts to a more horizontal position.

The steeper or more vertical the wall, the more you will want to shift your weight back, otherwise, you won’t be centered over your new artificial center of gravity and you will slip out and roll over the front.

At some point on your way up the wall, you’ll use up all your G-forces and start to come back down. As you near the water, be sure to extend your legs, push away from the wall and get your board back underneath you. If you don't jump off the wall then your board will just follow the wall straight into the water and you will catch an edge during the transition. It’s a good idea to remain hookedin until you gain confidence; when you eventually try an unhooked wall ride it's better to unhook as late as possible so that your kite stays farther forward in the wind window.

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LiP FLO Watersports Shades Designed for foiling and other light wind watersports, LiP’s all new FLO watersports shades are unsinkable, strapless and lightweight. Styled on an 8-base frame giving unlimited peripheral vision and packed with technology, perhaps it’s time to go with the FLO. Lenses are the heart of sunglass protection and LiP makes no compromises—all their lenses are developed and produced under rigorous quality control and applied with a variety of special performance coatings in order to enhance visibility, repel water and dirt and increase scratch resistance and durability. Rx lenses are available as well. $78- $198 // www.lip-sunglasses.com

DAKINE JJF Daylight Surfboard Bag Protect your deck with this lightweight and portable surfboard day bag featuring 8mm closed-cell foam and vented, heat-reflective tech shelters that shield your board from the heat of the day. Built in collaboration with Hawaii-raised professional surfer John John Florence, it’s perfect for daily transport to your favorite kitesurfing spot or for storage in your garage. The bag offers superior quality and has a semi-dry, splash-proof pocket for your keys and phone. Six sizes offer a tailored fit for boards from 5’4” to 6’10”. $85 - $110 // www.dakine.com

UNDERWATER AUDIO Delphin Water Tablet Here at the magazine, we all use Spotify, but until now there’s been no safe and convenient way to bring your streaming playlists on the water with you. The Delphin Waterpoof Micro Tablet by Underwater Audio uses the Android operating system and allows you to download and sync all your favorite audio apps (Spotify, Pandora, Audible, Podcasts) to the waterproof player. Now its time to hit the water for hours of musical entertainment brought to you by your favorite Spotify playlists. $220-$260 // www.underwateraudio.com

HOT LOGIC Mini Deluxe Say hello to the Hot Logic Mini 3-in-1 personal, portable oven. This product allows you to cook a meal from scratch or re-heat your favorite leftovers at home, at work or on the road. The Mini can cook chicken breasts, a nice salmon fillet and most meats from scratch in about 2 hours; fresh or frozen veggies take a little less time. The Mini Deluxe includes a Pyrex dish and car adapter, and will hold your food at the perfect serving temperature of around 165°F for hours without overcooking, burning or drying out your meal. If you get hung up at work and can’t find time for lunch, don’t worry; your meal will be hot, juicy and delicious whenever you’re ready. $69.95 // www.hotlogicmini.com

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PLATINUM SUN Adventure Dry Bag When your day on the water involves extreme sports, you need an extremely durable dry bag to protect your valuables. Platinum Sun’s Adventure Dry Bag is up to any challenge and ideal when you’re on the water with gear that must stay dry. Created by people who know and love extreme watersports, this roomy, 30L roll-top backpack keeps your cellphone, camera, keys and other necessities safe, dry and organized. Sturdy, stylish, comfortable and capable of floating, it eliminates worries about your vulnerable valuables so that you can concentrate on having fun in the sun. $59 // www.platinum-sun.com

PATAGONIA Stretch Terre Planing Hoody Super light, slightly stretchy and surprisingly tough with a DWR (durable water repellent) finish and 50+ UPF sun protection, Patagonia’s Stretch Terre Planing Hoody is an incredibly versatile full-zip hoody designed to protect you from the elements both in and out of the water. Made from fast-drying 100% recycled polyester, it offers excellent sun and wind protection and even has a hidden entry detail for kite harness compatibility so you can hook in from either underneath or over the jacket. $119 // www.patagonia.com

CREATURES OF LEISURE FinPuller Save your hands, fins and finboxes with this patent-pending fin removal and installation system. Designed in California, FinPuller works with virtually any fin system. It’s small, compact and the removal and installation process is effortless and smooth. On top of it all, FinPuller is made with recycled plastic and the company also donates 1% of all profits to ocean conservancy. $22 // www.finpuller.com

CABRINHA Hi:Rise Varial Medium From your first steps in kite foiling to freeriding and waves, the Cabrinha Hi-Rise Medium wing is an incredibly versatile multi-sport wing set for both kiting and prone foiling. When you pump the wing it generates incredible forward momentum which helps you glide through wind lulls; at high speeds the lean profile remains incredibly stable while at low speeds it’s playful and ‘carvey.’ The rear wing position is adjustable to suit your style of riding. Sold separately wing only $349, tail only $140.99 or complete for $949 // www.cabrinhakites.com

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VIEWPOINT

THE MAGIC OF THE RINGS Words by Daniela Moroz

Kiting is slated for the 2024 Paris Olympics and it’s a very exciting time for our sport. The proposed kite racing format is brand new and represents the best efforts to evolve new technology, attract more people into the sport and promote gender equality in kiteboarding and sports as a whole. The politics of the decision can be distracting with some people from the freestyle side of kiteboarding arguing that racing doesn’t properly represent kiteboarding and others from mainstream sailing who don’t consider kiteboarding as part of sailing.

However, I don’t think the question should be “is kiteboarding sailing,” but rather how can both sports complement each other to maximize the potential from the entrance of kiteboarding into the Olympics as a sailing discipline. It is a massive step forward for the sport of kiteboarding as we will earn Olympic caliber recognition.

When the IOCC approved kite racing for the 2024 Olympics, it allotted a single set of medals for both men and women, meaning that the event must somehow combine women and men in the same race for gold. The racing format that has since evolved is a relay race in which a man and a woman from each country compete together as a team. For example, each race starts with the man completing the course, and once crossing the finish line, the woman from that country starts and completes the same course. For the next race, the order flip-flops and the women start first, and the men go second.

This is a brand-new concept that has never been done before.

At the recent Formula Kite World Championships at Lake Garda, Italy, we got to race the mixed team relay format for the first time.

The relay handoff is going to be challenging because you have to get the timing right. However, it is a challenge that will become easier with practice. I was proud to take the win for the US with my teammate Evan Heffernan.

Call it the magic of the rings, but at the Lake Garda event, there were over 30 girls competing for the individual Formula Kite World

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Title—the most women at any foil kite racing competition so far.

Additionally, some countries have already invested in building a national team; the French and English have funded coaches that are already attending races and supporting national riders.

However, there’s a lot of details that remain to be worked out, like how countries will run their trials to select the man and woman for each team as well as alternates. From what we saw at the World Championships, each country had its own ranking event prior to the Worlds, and the top guy got paired with the top girl finisher.

The mechanics are up to each country and qualifiers are probably four to five years away so there is still much to be worked out.

The new Olympic class will also use the box rule as opposed to the One Design method where everyone races the same piece of equipment. The box rule allows manufacturers to register their gear for use in a window of time—this keeps the cost of racing down as the gear choices are standardized for a fixed period. Our current gear has been standardized for three years, and it’s still pretty good, but this box will end next year and a new window for this next Olympic cycle will open. Innovation in racing equipment is still happening because the Kite Foil Gold Cup tour has no equipment limitations and allows prototyping and testing. It’s a good compromise that keeps the technology evolving while helping those athletes that have to fund their own equipment stay competitive and motivated.

I have always dreamed of being an Olympic athlete, and the simple fact that this could be a reality in 2024 is incredible. Next year, we should see US Sailing begin to organize its program with coaches, chase boats and general support for Olympic hopefuls. The Olympics will bring much-needed professionalism and funding to kite racing that will help raise the level of competition and create opportunities for aspiring athletes. While the Olympics is still quite a ways off, I’m excited to begin training for that goal and see how this all plays out.

Daniela Moroz working her way towards the top of the podium at the Formula Kite World Championships at Lake Garda, Italy. Kiteboarders seem to love or hate the idea of entering the Olympics, but for American kite racers such as Daniela, it will bring much needed support and funding. \\ Photo Alex Schwarz

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TOWARDS HUMBLE ENDS Words by Kirk Robinson

After working for corporate America in a suit and tie for 15 years and surviving two divorces, in 1992 I had what you might call an ‘early mid-life crisis.’ This inspired the idea to start my own business doing something that I loved. An important part of my thinking at the time was that I didn’t like wearing a business suit, so maybe I was also attracting the wrong partner—and that I would likely have better luck finding Ms. Right if I devoted my work to something I was passionate about.

I had loved windsurfing since I learned in 1978, so I decided to buy a bankrupt storefront in Los Angeles and give windsurfing retail and lessons a try. That first winter, I soon realized that there was little or no activity in the business during those cold and rainy months in California, and while doing yoga and meditating one morning a lightbulb went off: La Ventana!

The new Captain Kirk’s shop manager had previously worked for a guy named Pete Beagle at Sailboards West, and during the winters for the past couple of years, Pete had been driving a station wagon back and forth from La Paz to La Ventana with windsurfers, so I decided to give it a shot too.

We printed up some brochures, hosted a La Ventana kickoff party and purchased ‘The Shred Bus,’ along with a big cargo trailer we named ‘The Galileo.’ The final step was leasing a large house in La Paz that we called ‘The Shred Palace,’ and we were off to the races. We’d pick up guests at the La Paz airport in The Shred Bus and shuttle them out to La Ventana where we left The Galileo parked under the biggest palm tree in the campground. In those days, we’d joke that if we got pulled over by the police and were not drinking beer, we might get arrested.

It was there that I met Kitty Notmeijer while I was rigging sails for some guests and we have been together ever since. Soon after, we heard that land was going up for sale all over La Ventana for

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the first time (due to NAFTA) and I bragged to Kitty that I was going to buy land and build a resort. Upon further investigation, there were no titles to the land and no infrastructure of any kind, and on top of all that, I didn’t have the money to buy property due to my previous divorces.

It was put up or shut up time, so I kited credit cards (before ‘kiting’ as we know it was invented), bought the land—and the rest is history. We bootstrapped the property, bringing in old RV trailers and building multiple palapas as well as our own bathhouse. The prime directive in my vision was always to leave the land and native plants as they were wherever possible—and that is the key to why Captain Kirk’s looks so beautiful today.

This summer Kitty and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary and 25 years of hospitality in La Ventana. Everything took a lot longer than planned, but with a good dose of patience and keeping the old eye on the ball, it all came together.

But like Agent 86, Maxwell Smart from the movies once said to his partner, “(Agent) 99, life isn’t all gravy.” In 2011, I had the misfortune of contracting Lyme disease while visiting family in New Jersey. A bad relapse in 2016 left Kitty and me with an uncertain future health-wise. In light of this change, we are pleased to pass the torch to our nextdoor neighbor. In a win-win deal, the Captain Kirk’s experience will continue under the umbrella of Pelican Reef, headed by the new 10 Amigos management group that includes two of Captain Kirks’ oldest partners, Doug Frank and Jim DeMarco, and also new general manager Ingrid Button.

We’d like to thank all of the former Captain Kirk’s and Pelican Reef partners for a most excellent retirement party, and consider ourselves very lucky to have developed such a beautiful piece of paradise. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to share it with so many great people over the years. Best of luck…

Captain Kirk’s has long been one of the staple destinations of the La Ventana kiteboarding experience. The humble origins of this iconic resort started with a school bus and a trailer driving over the hill from La Paz and transitioned into a beachside kite paradise. // Photos courtesy of Kirk and Kitty Robinson

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When kiteboarding meets purpose...

incredible things happen.

Benefitting:

There’s a reason KB4C is kiters’ favorite event every year.

Come be a part of the KB4C magic.

Bridge of the Gods Presents

The Blowout 2019 July 19th-21st, 2019 Stevenson, wa

botgkitefest.com www.facebook.com/botgkitefestival

ON THE MAP

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Craig Cunningham // Europe

GKA reformat // Leucate, France

Ralf Grรถsel // Munich, Germany

Sky Solbach // Maui, Hawaii

Alex Maes // Peniche, Portugal

Ewan Jaspan // Tasmania

open your eyes and the windows to your soul

l i p-S U N G L A S S E S . C O M #LiPsoulmates

Strung out after a long, cold winter? It’s time to check your equipment, invest in that new set of lines, cover those pin holes with some kite repair tape and glass that ding you’ve been smothering with surf wax. Pull the trigger, let’s go! // Photo Korbinian Grad

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NEW

H20

Multi Adjustment Premium Binding

CABRINHAKITES.COM

P. Sobolev & J. Boulding

James Boulding

SWITCHBLADE

Performance Freeride / Big Air Sizes: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14

LIVE FREE. RIDE FREE.

9th Annual TKB BAJA FREERIDE TEST January 11-19, 2020

Come join the Tkb crew in La Ventana, Mexico, for a fun week of riding, downwinders, an island crossing and more as we test all the new 2020 gear. Kites, twin tips, directionals, foils and maybe even a new wingsurfer or two will be all yours to personally demo at one of the most consistently windy winter destinations in North America.

See www.thekiteboarder.com/9th-annual-tkb-freeride-test-week-2020 for info and to apply.