The Kiteboarder Magazine Vol. 18, No. 2 by The Kiteboarder Magazine

J U I C E

F R E E R I D E

L I G H T W I N D

F O I L

O U R W AY T O M A K E T H E W OR L D A B ETTER P L ACE.

DU OTO NESPORTS.COM

FO L LOW U S

D E D I C AT E D T O KITEBOARDING SINCE 2001

DRIFTER SURF / FREESTYLE SURF

4m / 5m / 6m / 7m / 8m / 9m / 10m / 11m / 12m / 13m

Keahi de Aboitiz Chuck Harlan

WWW.CABRINHA.COM

EASIER THAN EVER The latest front wing design is 950cm². It has been refined from the previous versions to extend the range of use. With more lift, the IC6 V3 is easier than ever to learn on and have fun whatever your foiling level. Using careful design, it can fly at very low speed but it can also accelerate with great maneuverability and a fantastic carving potential. The IC6 950 V3 is designed for anyone looking for a first foil purchase or simply for a versatile setup able to deliver tons of fun on the water.

North & Central American Distr. / Bay Area Kitesurf

INST. @fonekites

www.bayareakitesurf.com

FB.

@fonekites

KITE FOIL COLLECTION

Photo - YDWER

Rider - LIAM WHALEY

Spot -CORSICA

WWW.F-ONE.WORLD

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME Through extensive research and development in our home waters of the Hawaiian Islands, we’ve designed a kite foil range for anyone. The versatility of our modular foil range enables you to customize your riding experience. Our modular system allows you to easily interchange foils, fuselages, and mast lengths. Drawing from decades of board riding experience and foiling since the beginning, Naish has the gear you need to take your kite foiling to the next level. Pacific Boardsports LLC . pbs@naishsails.com . (509) 493-0043 Frankiebees

•

Tim Walshi: Hover 97, 810 Kite Foil

NaishKiteboarding

Naish_Kiteboarding

Naish.com

KITE FOILS SIZES: 650 | 810 | 960

©Matt Georges

FROM THE EDITOR “School's out for summer,” Alice Cooper screams in my head. Every high school class since 72’ has blared this rock anthem as they slammed their locker door one last time and strutted out the front door with a single middle finger punked up to pomp and circumstance. Nothing beats the feeling of crossing the finish line after a long week, a tough year, or in this case, a big magazine project. With the final emails sent and the print proofs back in the mail, it’s time to let loose a little anarchy, blow off some steam, drop the clutch (if you’re cool enough to have one) and lay some rubber as you turn the corner on obligation and set your sights on the newfound freedom just around the bend. With any luck, a ripping kiteboarding session is your destination.

E C L I P S E H A R N E S S 20

North & Central American Distr. - Bay Area Kitesurf - www.bayareakitesurf.com

I imagine this moment embodies some of the mixed emotions Tkb’s Publisher, Marina Chang, is feeling as she celebrates 16 years steering the direction of this magazine. With this issue, our fearless leader is stepping aside to spend more time with her family and reprioritize where her time and resources are best invested. As she hands the reigns to the current editorial staff, you will now find familiar but different hands arranging magazine shipments, designing gear giveaways and getting new faces signed up for our gear testing trips. By mashing the creative and administrative departments into one lean, motivated organization, we hope to embark on a new chapter in Tkb’s commitment to fan the passionate flames of kiteboarding.

K M

HERE IS THE ECLIPSE, A CLEVER BALANCE BETWEEN RIGIDITY AND FLEXIBILITY THAT PROVIDES SUPPORT WHERE IT IS NEEDED, WHILE GUARANTEEING SUFFICIENT FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT.

D i s co v e r t h e E C L P I S E h a r n e s s o n m a n e ra . co m .

Technically, Marina missed the founding boat by three months, but let’s be honest, founders are often overvalued (Robby & Pete excluded). After launching its first issue, Marina signed on to the magazine in 2004 and became the administrative glue that kept Tkb’s creative minds in line and projects always on deadline. There’s been a series of editors that have worked on The Kiteboarder over the past 16 years, and somehow, beyond my ability to explain, seven of those years belong to me. During my tenure, Marina has always been fair and operated with integrity while demonstrating an uncompromising commitment to furthering the interests of the sport. A strong voice within kiteboarding, she has managed to earn the respect of nearly all the industry’s most influential characters. Marina is known by many for her supreme event whispering abilities, capably orchestrating demo events, expos and competitions out of thin air and with minimal sleep. Marina has always had a keen skill of bringing people together—a feat not always easy in condition-based sports such as ours. If my sense of Marina’s love of kiteboarding is correct, the changes afoot here at Tkb are merely a farewell, but certainly not a goodbye. You can read more about Marina’s favorite memories at the magazine on PG 116.

slingshotsports.com

RPX V1

The Park in Flux

In uncertain times, Xander Raith, Noè Font and Colleen Carroll converge on the southeast shores of Baja to reinforce kiteboarding’s status as a core boardsport and keep the momentum of park riding alive.

In a Snap

Brian Dennis has been just about everywhere. The head of Naish kite design talks about the designer’s conscience, line tech and taking the quick release in a new direction.

Released and Reloaded

Having ridden a culinary degree into surf paradise, Ben Wilson pivoted into kitesurfing and forever changed the direction of the sport. After a decade on his own, Ben is back with Slingshot to write the next chapter.

Slightly Matt

Hampered by pandemic restrictions, Matt Maxwell and friends take their video project up and down the lesser known parts South Africa’s coast only to find that things don’t always go as planned.

Frontside

Profile:

Robert Netsch

Programming a life around the wind

Profile:

Shannon Gowan

Nursing the need to kite

Exposed

Method

The Bonk Approach by Eric Riensta

Newfound Freedom

Cabrinha CEO Kent Marinkovic partners with Estuary Brewing Company and goes all in on adaptive kiteboarding with a three-phase plan to make kiting more accessible to adrenaline hungry athletes with mental and physical challenges.

From the Editor

The 40-Hour Kite Week

For many of us, kiteboarding is often a distracting force, a seductive call to disassemble and reprioritize our lives around the wind. Luke McGillewie swims against the stream in reverse, building a life dedicated to kiteboarding’s constant pull.

110

Printed

Alex Fox’s Iconic Kiteboard Print

112

Viewpoint

Acting on Climate Change

114

Wish List

116

Roots

Marina Chang: 16 Years in Print

118

On the Map

120

Parting Shot

46 60 72 84 36 24 98

On the Cover

Ben Wilson spent the last round

of pandemic lockdowns slinging

buckets into the channel at Cloudbreak. Read more about

his return to Slingshot on PG 84. // Photo Mitch Stubbs

RELEASED & RELOADED Ben’s Return to Slingshot

THE PARK IN FLUX Fighting for Legitimacy

NEWFOUND FREEDOM Opening the Access Door

Brendan Richards, Editor in Chief brendan@thekiteboarder.com India Stephenson, Designer / Editor india@thekiteboarder.com Alexis Rovira, Editor at Large alexis@thekiteboarder.com Gary Martin, Tkb Ambassador gary@thekiteboarder.com Marina Chang, Publisher Emeritus CONTRIBUTORS Xander Raith, Luke McGillewie, Eric Rienstra, Joe Winowski, Alex Fox, Laurel Eastman, Marina Chang PHOTOGRAPHERS Mitch Stubbs, Ricardo Pinto, Chris Rollett, Lucas Arsenault, Colin Porter, Xander Raith, Noè Font, Jennica Lowell, Ben Savage, Frankie Bees, Seth Warren, Miriam Joanna, Crystal Veness, Valerie Netsch, Mimi Mahlik, Barton Decker, Lukas Pitsch, David Pou, Bruce Wotherspoon, Shelby Ring, Becca Healy, Gwen Le Tutour, Scott Winer, Stu Gibson, John Bilderback, Bill Crang, Brendan Richards, Mark Bialek, Michael Phaneuf, Nicholas Spilsbury, Irene Fox, Daniel Holmes, Toni Krall, Hilarey Ball, Danny Fuentes, Mo Lelii, Patri McLaughlin Visit us at: thekiteboarder.com twitter.com/the_kiteboarder • facebook.com/thekiteboardermagazine • instagram.com/the_kiteboarder ADMINISTRATIVE/ADVERTISING OFFICE 849 Almar Ave, Ste C131 Santa Cruz, CA 95060 SUBSCRIPTIONS orders@thekiteboarder.com • store.thekiteboarder.com Have you got an idea for an article you would like to see in The Kiteboarder Magazine? Send your submission to: editor@thekiteboarder.com © 2021 Tkb Media LLC. All rights reserved. PROUDLY PRINTED IN THE USA

PHOTO: MIRIAM JOANNA | RIDER: THEO DE RAMECOURT

SESSIONS THAT FILL YOUR SOUL

SOUL THE ULTIMATE ALLROUNDER SIZES: 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 15 / 18 / 21

WWW.FLYSURFER.COM

FRONTSIDE

Seven hours of white-knuckle driving and two speeding tickets later, James Carew arrived in Portugal just in time to meet this swell. In between horizontal sheets of rain, this closeout-prone sandbar turned into a 4-turn dream machine for 40 priceless minutes, marking one of James’ better European surf sessions. // Photo Ricardo Pinto

FRONTSIDE

When you combine a featherweight singlestrut kite like the Ultra with a zero-friction glide-craft, you can comfortably explore just about anywhere. With Stawamus Chief’s granite faces towering above, Sam Medysky takes a high-speed rip through a mill storage yard in the Howe Sound. // Photo Chris Rollett

FRONTSIDE

Kit Griffiths gaps a healthy mangrove thicket in an area known to Turks and Caicos locals as ‘Donna’s Cut.’ The takeoff and landing channels were formed when Hurricane Donna ripped through the island back in 1960. Combining the spot’s high tide needs with shifting winds and fluctuating lighting, after nabbing his first successful sequence, Kit wisely called it a day. // Photo Lucas Arsenault

FRONTSIDE

“An indie tuck knee sure stretches you out in the morning,” Chris Bobryk says having scored an early start at Miami’s Crandon Park. Normally loaded with 50 plus kiters and a host of lessons, Bobryk gets Key Biscayne all to himself. // Photo Colin Porter

Rider: Arthur Guillebert Picture: Patrick Schneider

� Delta hybrid five-strut design for a serious Big Air adrenaline boost � Explosive lift and extra long hangtime � Massive grunt in all wind conditions for freeride versatility � Bomb proof construction provides ultra durability with maximum stability � Rapid yet controllable flight characteristics with direct feedback Sizes: 07 / 08 / 09 / 10 / 12 / 14

W W W. E L E V E I G H T K I T E S . C O M

THE

PARK

Photo Noè Font

Words by Xander Raith

FLUX

midst one of Baja’s most pristine cardon forests, Noè stabbed a short yellow-handled shovel into the estuary bank of Choco Lake, displacing a healthy payload of sand and muck in an attempt to actualize our mental concept of an untapped potential within kiteboarding. Moving sand like an underfunded Army Corp of Engineers in a foreign country, we shoveled endlessly, our wetsuits peeled down halfway as our vision for a transition pool took form. What could have taken minutes with a backhoe took us a full day of hard digging in the blistering heat, accentuating the calluses on our hands caused by weeks of clinging onto our kite bars. Through it all, our only sustenance was two desert-warm beers graciously donated by an interested or perhaps sympathetic passerby. Anyone who has ever been involved in the construction of a kite park will tell you it doesn’t come easy, especially when your primary material is sand. The power of water, wind and long, tireless sessions keep the grains in flux and the park features on the move. Each morning, we began reconstructing our sand-based park, sometimes by the day and sometimes by the hour. Although frustrating at times, this impermanence is what helped sear constant change and innovation into our Choco sessions.

" Some people ride their board, and others hang off their kite.”

Down a sandy, rutted jeep track outside of La Ventana, there’s a remote estuary that, in the dry months of Baja’s winter, becomes isolated from the Sea of Cortez, forming a shallow body of water with immaculate surface tension. Even on the windiest of days, the water remains unbroken, elegantly mirroring the dunes and infinite sea of cacti that fortify this muddy puddle and sustain its buttery flat conditions. During Baja’s notoriously windy winter, this small lagoon has slowly gained a quiet yet solid reputation as an uncharted freestyle playground. The Sea of Cortez and its sandy shoreline became our home for a month-long stint of manual excavation and structural manipulation. Like aspirational kids in a sandlot, Noè and I rolled back the clock and embraced the fascination of our youth, excavating, sculpting and rearranging in an attempt to dispute the fact that sand does not innately possess properties of structural integrity. However, the malleability and erosive composition of Baja’s ethereal desert sand did not deter our feverish commitment to build and exploit our wildest creations. We scavenged the small Mexican town like two decrepit pirates; our galleon was a midlevel rental car, and our glimmering treasures were objects that possessed structural promise—which coincidentally, most locals considered trash. Exploring back alleys and the outer edges of town, our eager and easily excitable eyes delivered us victors of our explorations, securing plunder of worn-out truck tires and heavy logs of Durango pine. We combined our scavenges with a plastic culvert provided by the local park riding crew, and grain by grain,

ABOVE: Sequential tire hits are much smoother with lots of speed and a bit of Mexi dish detergent. // Photo Noè Font LEFT: Tempered by vertical shadows and the Sea of Cortez’s cool onshore wind, Noè pauses the build and poses with his stubby shovel amidst the heat of the midday sun. // Photo Xander Raith

The muted colors of Baja’s coastal landscape come alive in Choco’s blossoming beds of Salicornia. With a medium to hard flex pattern, Xander lays his might into a high-speed tail press, pushing the Gambler up against its limits. // Photo Noè Font

we transformed the petite estuary of Choco Lake into a diverse kite park that reflected our elaborate visions. Having my foot in both kiteboarding and snowboarding, building features surrounded by dunes and towering green cardon cacti turned out to parallel long days shoveling snow in the backcountry for the promise of an immaculate white cheese wedge with a soft powdery landing. Moving truckloads of material like snow or sand for the sake of creating faux terrain to hit with our boards is an extensive commitment, but this is the kind of creativity that pushes progression and introduces a new dimension to what we can do with a kite and a plank of Paulownia wrapped in fiberglass. In many ways, we are merely following in the footsteps of those who came before us. It’s a narrow path, hard-worn by only the legends of our sport—those who spent their youthful years pushing kiteboarding in a specific direction and injecting the early kite scene with the fundamental values of core boardsports. Guided by unspoken principles, skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding have sustained the purity of their cultures through multiple generations. The concept of legitimacy survives as an ongoing recognition of particular techniques, attitudes and styles that guide the continuation of progression and dismantle that which undermines this undying pulse. For this reason, localism thrives in surfing while aggression and angst are pumped through the veins of each subsequent generation of skaters and snowboarders without apology. Without a quiver of hesitation, these three boardsports are driven by their fiery culture of legitimacy. On the other hand, a sport like kiteboarding has been guided by its roots in windsurfing and sailing, historically, both cultures that have never obsessed over the purity of style, form and the authenticity of grabs; fundamental components of other boardsports which are written in stone. Kiteboarding has never truly been guided by those same central principles of legitimacy until a youthful movement lead by a modest group of luminaries laid a small but solid foundation for kiteboarding’s place as a core boardsport. The humble origins of park riding got started with Andre Phillip, Jason Slezak and Mauricio Abreu, just to name a few. Small pipes gave way to large and dangerous wood structures, but those earliest attempts curated the foundation for the second wave of riders to build upon, those of which shaped my inspiration and redefined the standards of their predecessors. This second wave of riders influenced the direction of kiting’s boardsports progression and did so as a collective power—they were known throughout the industry as the Freeride Project in the UK and the NA Blend crew here in the Americas. This elite group of riders deviated from kiting’s association as a sailing sport and brought kiteboarding into parity alongside the iconic boardsports of skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding. When the world came to an abrupt halt in

TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Colorful mugshots of Colleen, Noè and Xander. // Photos The Flux Crew BOTTOM LEFT: Trailblazing across a homegrown tire feature; lots of digging and a helping dose of suds keep the rubber side up and slippery. // Photo Noè Font ABOVE: Colleen Carroll sets into a styled frontside boardslide using the park’s existing corrugated up tube. It’s best to mind the ridges and your rail. // Photo Xander Raith

the spring of 2020, isolation became the standard and facilitated many of kiteboarding’s park riding pioneers to reset their focus and enter the business side of the industry. These days, riders such as Aaron Hadlow, Brandon Scheid, Craig Cunningham, Sam Light, Sam Medysky, Alex Fox, Tom Court and James Boulding help sew the threads that keep the industry operative. These are the riders who helped materialize the existence of slider parks and seared park riding and its core boardsports association into the archives of what will be recognized as kiteboarding history. The combination of travel bans and the revised career roles of these park heroes created what we saw as a void in the kiteboarding industry and introduced the opportunity to regroup and organize a targeted trip to sustain the momentum, proudly stepping up to ensure the survival of the park movement. In an effort to reinforce kiteboarding’s status as a core boardsport, Noè Font, Colleen Carroll, Lucas Arsenault and I began to circulate idealistic plans for a long-awaited trip. Typically, a trip with high-minded goals requires its riders to travel to the far reaches

of the globe and claim their stakes in a new, unfamiliar location. However, amidst a global pandemic, such a fantasy quickly proved to be a delusion as our group had to find a location feasible of convergence from three different countries; Noè was departing from Spain, Lucas from Canada, and Colleen and myself from the United States. After weeks of planning and assessing the constantly changing global travel restrictions and guidelines, La Ventana, Mexico, became our most viable option. As a premier kiteboarding destination during North America’s winter offseason, La Ventana’s backdrop has been thoroughly exploited in visual media by mainstream kiteboarding, but for this trip, we fixated on the small estuary outside of town, a misplaced corner that hasn’t been over-saturated with coverage. Unfortunately, a week before departure, Canada revised its pandemic travel guidelines, forcing Lucas to file for reimbursement and make the most of riding in Canada’s frigid waters. For Noè and myself, it was our first time in Mexico and upon arrival, we both quickly succumbed to the allure of Baja’s deliciously

affordable Mexican cuisine and local hospitality. We were further dumbfounded by the fields of cacti that covered the mountains with mixed desert scrub extending as far as the eye could see. While Noè and I blissfully supported the town’s tourism by renting quads for sightseeing and exploring, Colleen, having visited La Ventana a handful of times, watched our curious wanderings from afar with the experience of a seasoned veteran. Prior to arriving in Mexico, Colleen kindly warned Noè and me of the possibility that La Ventana could bare light wind and that we should be prepared by packing our largest kites. Coincidentally, the famed ‘El Norte,’ a pressure system that circulates wind through the region, began blowing when we arrived and its momentum continued through the entirety of the trip. The only kites to come out of our bags were two trusty 9m Vegas models for Noè and me and an 8m Dice for Colleen. For those who have yet to experience La Ventana, the wind is consistent, the bay is turquoise blue and it is a quintessential wintertime destination for any watersport enthusiast. That being said, Noè, Colleen and I were not particularly interested in mowing laps out front with the herd. Instead, we found ourselves spending nearly every day in the small lagoon known as Choco Lake. However, a more accurate description may be a stagnant muddy puddle. This shallow mud pit was certainly not a turquoise paradise, but it did provide us with the exact conditions we were hoping for. The lagoon offered flat water, and because it was only a few inches deep, it was the perfect location for building features and constructing a park-inspired playground. Thanks to the dedication of local riders before our arrival, the lagoon was already home to a few round PVC pipes and a long, corrugated tube. During the first few days, we enjoyed the preexisting rail setup, rode with the local crew and filmed as much as possible, acting collectively as a one-man band and swapping hats between riders, park builders and media personnel. We found ourselves conjuring up more elaborate features that would bring distinction to Choco’s existing layout. As we sat on the edge of the lagoon, fantasizing and pitching ideas that we hoped would pacify our ambition, we both settled on the erection of a transition pool, utilizing two shovels and the resources at hand. In the days that followed, Noè and I became human excavators, moving and rearranging enough sand to seemingly fill every pothole in all of Baja. Unlike factory-built park features that are smooth, our garbage-inspired setups were largely primitive and anything but slick. Objects like tires are not celebrated for their slipperiness, so we improvised. The secret ingredient to our success was none other than the Mexican equivalent of Dawn dish soap, whose ocean-safe suds acted as a lubricant for the grippy rubber tires and the rough bark of the Durango logs. Although Duotone’s

"Noè and I became human excavators, moving and rearranging enough sand to seemingly fill every pothole in all of Baja."

TOP LEFT: A view of South Beach; the once quaint fishing town turned windsports mecca of La Ventana sits at the foothills of the Cacachilas Mountains. Noè Font slips into the bay for a few passes and grabs. With a month of incredibly consistent winds, his 9m Vegas was the only kite to come out of its bag. // Photo Xander Raith BOTTOM LEFT: Xander and Noè take a break from their transition pool project to snap a high-altitude self-portrait of one configuration before moving the pieces of the park puzzle. // Photo Noè Font ABOVE: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure; framed by a worn-out tire scrounged from a La Ventana back alley, Noè slots a clean line over the Baja Kite Park’s culvert. // Photo Xander Raith 35

ABOVE: As a means to an end, Xander uses the kite’s horizontal pull to frontside boardslide the twin Durango logs on his way out of the transition pool. // Photo Noè Font

standard-issue Gambler deck comes with a renowned grind base designed for the beating, Noè and I took our fair share of abuse, becoming victims to the brutality of our own creations. Sliding sideways across all-terrain radials or leaning into a nose press on a corrugated pipe with deep ridges is no easy feat, and we both became very familiar with the poundings that were inflicted by the shallow water despite our most thought-out and intricate calculations. While every setup we constructed dealt us its own unique complexities, jumping over mounds of sand, sliding across bushes, tires, logs and pipes was worth every ounce of effort we poured into the process. The rewards of our vision paid off in full and embodied our attempt to keep the flame burning and help secure the standards of park

riding as a core boardsport. Noè put it plain and simple, nailing the legitimacy problem in kiteboarding on the head: “Some people ride their board, and others hang off their kite.” While I acknowledge that the kite-focused disciplines in the sport draw crowds and spark the interest of a large array of enthusiasts, it is our goal as park riders to bring awareness to this distinction and promote a technical niche that is vital to progression and the attraction of younger generations into the sport. Like the shifting sands of our Choco Lake features, the fate of kiteboarding’s recognition as a boardsport continues to transmute and will only be determined by those who help direct the industry and inspire the next generation of riders. In an effort to turn sand into stone, our intention is to carry the torch, share our perspectives and keep the momentum of park riding alive.

Rider-Eric Rienstra, Photo-Mike Phaneuf

Keep your eyes on the prize. Keep your eyes on iKitesurf! Exclusive Content The best Weather Stations and Forecasts available anywhere!

in a snap. A n i n t e r v i e w w i t h N a i sh D e si g n e r Br i a n D e n n i s

Brian Dennis emerged from the poison oak-lined path and waded across the shallow creek mouth. “What a small world,” I thought to myself as Brian introduced himself and I folded up the Naish Triad kite I had just finished testing. Brian Dennis is the head kite designer at Naish Kiteboarding, and while he’s based out of Maui, by way of many years in Hood River, Brian is no stranger to the unnamed beaches of Santa Cruz’s north coast. With his laid-back but animated excitement for kiteboarding, Brian’s long hair and constant five-day shadow belie his technical confidence and fierce obsession with the small engineering details that permeate every aspect of Naish’s new equipment. Brian has the scholarly precision required of a kite designer, quietly assessing the field, the players and the obstacles, yet his demeanor is down-to-earth, such that he could quite possibly, and oftentimes does, pass for the run-of-the-mill wind addict lining up the set wave in front of you.

Triangle, stranded far from the herd, but upon investigation, he found a longtime Santa Cruz local (think founder of a flying car company) self-rescuing with about a half-mile left on the odometer to safety.

Later that day, with two sessions under his belt, Brian spotted an orange kite down on the cold, windswept horizon. From the looks of things, his first thought framed a helpless beginner, deep within the Red

A few months later, I reconnected with Brian to talk about his rise to designer fame, the Naish R&D process and the evolution of the one quick release design that offers a true one-handed reset.

After assisting with the rescue, back on the beach, Brian learned that the quick release in question had accidentally triggered at the worst moment conceivable and reassembly was not possible. Conveniently, Brian began to show off Naish’s new SnapLock quick release design and proudly demonstrated how its ergonomics prevents unintentional releases and, more importantly, how the seat belt-style mechanism reconnects easily with one hand—even when you are swimming over deep, shark-infested waters. It’s safe to assume that the kind of person that builds flying cars knows a good technical solution when he sees one, and after studying the Naish quick release with great interest, he asked Brian if he ‘knew a guy’ who could get him one.

Photo Jennica Lowell

Interview by Brendan Richards

You seem to do a little bit of everything from kiteboarding to snowkiting and now wingsurfing. What was your background before your time at Naish and how did you land one of the top jobs in the industry?

My background has always been in engineering. I started my career in the snowboard industry designing boots, working with factories in Korea and China with a focus on material development and manufacturing methods—that work was probably the most relevant work to what I do now. Over the years, I had tried to find an opportunity at Naish, but the timing was never right. I had been living in the Gorge and was working in the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) industry, dealing with composites, patterning, layups and molds when Naish put the word out that they were looking for an engineer. They wanted to redesign their control bar and modify their hydrofoil hardware, and I signed up immediately. Just as I began working on a new foil mast and a beginner kite foil wing, their previous kite designer left—that opened up an opportunity to shift into kite design. Naish is one of those iconic workplaces in the kiteboarding industry that mixes laid-back water culture with high-pressure performance expectations. What’s it like interviewing for a job in the hot seat of innovation?

Probably the biggest question during my Naish interview was whether the company and I matched in terms of personality. It seemed to me like I was meeting likeminded people that loved to be in the water all the time, having fun while being creative with it. They had this project on their list that wasn’t getting done—they wanted to design an extra-large size in the twin tip binding and asked me if I could do it. I said sure; I could knock it out because I had a laptop and the right

software. It ended up being a surfaceheavy modeling job, and I stayed up all night to get it done, then handed it back to them the next day. They said, “Good, glad you can get it done so fast,” and that was the beginning of my career at Naish. It’s actually quite funny—all my work life, I’d be the guy slinking out the back door, and people would always be asking me where I was yesterday. There are only so many good excuses out there, but now I love every aspect of the work I’m doing, and this is the first time that people have to pry me away from my computer and remind me when it’s time to go to the beach.

This is the first time that people have to pry me away from my computer and remind me when it's time to go to the beach. What’s the biggest difference between your UAV work in the Gorge and building windsports products in Maui?

When I lived in Hood River, I loved to travel and I’d go on a ton of kite trips, especially in the winter. Now that I live on Maui, I have good conditions right out the front door and I don’t feel like I have to travel so much. The other part is how meaningful it is to build good products. At Naish, I feel like I’m doing some good in the world. I often think about the fifty or more of my kite friends in the Gorge as my guiding principle. I ask myself what would ‘so and so’ think of this product. A lot of the conversations with my friends tend to end up as mental notes; it might be a complaint or something like a wishlist,

TOP RIGHT: Brian Dennis at work surrounded by the essentials: a laptop, a spool of line and in the background, a 3D printer station. // Photo Jennica Lowell BOTTOM RIGHT: Ewan Jaspan bones out a stylish nose grab on Naish’s streamlined S26 Dash kite. // Photo Ben Savage

These are the people we serve; they’re kind of like the designer’s social conscience.

but much of this informal dialogue ends up steering our goals. All the people I’ve met along the way, friends old and new, these are the people we serve; they’re kind of like the designer’s social conscience. For the individual having just survived a mile-long swim of shame, the new Torque 2 bar with the SnapLock release has got to be intriguing. What was the inspiration and the process behind developing the new bar technology?

TOP LEFT: Tailored for big moves, Vetea Boersma throws a mammoth kite loop taking technical advantage of shorter and thicker line sets. // Photo Frankie Bees LOWER LEFT: The Boss of kite bosses, Robby Naish proves the all-terrain carving capabilities of the Triad and his new carbon Global. // Photo Frankie Bees

We knew we wanted to design a new quick release because we had been using the same mechanism for five years. We also knew a quick release could be easier to use and seamless with the new style of seat belt mechanism that had recently come out. Both of those things go hand in hand with safety and reliability, and those were our biggest design goals. If you’ve ever tried to coach someone through reassembling a standard quick release, it always takes two hands, and they don’t always get it in real-world conditions. Taking a step back, the seat belt mechanism makes the reconnection process easier because you don’t have to hold or cock the quick release handle, but the dexterity it takes to close the open-loop designs that are the most common on the market are still very much a two-handed process. This is why we turned to a closed-loop system that remains connected to your harness. With

the chicken loop fixed to your harness, you can guide the quick release to your chicken loop with one hand and make that connection. Sure, two hands make it even easier, but one hand will get the job done. After a high-profile incident with a video on the internet highlighting how another brand's quick release was accidentally tripped in the middle of a big air, we knew there was room for improvements in the industry. We specifically designed our handle to prevent this kind of situation from occurring. The time kiters spend on land, near hard objects and boosting big airs is crucial in terms of kite control, and the accidental release is a danger that always needs to be addressed. What was the R&D process like for coming up with a completely new quick release design?

The seat belt concept was on everyone’s minds here at Naish, and for us, the closest analogy was how the compressor in the shop uses air hoses with interchangeable fittings that operate with a sliding collar and a simple but mechanical click-toreengage design. We ended up cutting one of those air hose fittings in half to play around with the idea, and while it was an interesting exercise, it became clear that the existing design’s use of ball bearings wouldn’t stand up to the challenges of sand, saltwater and corrosion that a quick release typically encounters. We took the concept and started to come up with similar designs on our computers and then used the plastic 3D printer in the office to mock up and visualize all of the parts. Following that with 3D metal printed parts, we were able to test a working prototype on the water within 43

TOP: Brian brings Maui to the mountains. Spiffed out in a Hawaiian shirt, Brian carries the stoke wherever he goes, particularly when snowkiting in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. // Photo Seth Warren BOTTOM: Brian skirts a crevasse, reinforcing the argument that the Triad will take you just about anywhere. // Photo Seth Warren

a month of the initial concept, which is a really fast turnaround for getting a rough working model. Once we were convinced that the design had merit, we started bench testing. Kiteboarding now has ISO standards for quick releases, and that defines what ‘strong enough’ truly means. The first test focuses on the strength of the quick release, and the second part of the ISO certification tests the device’s ability to trigger while under extreme loads. Say the kite is spiraling out of control and you’re half underwater with massive pulling power loaded into your safety system. We have to make sure the quick release triggers just as easily when you’re in that situation as when you’re on the beach with no load. After completing the ISO certification, you’ve got to move towards production, lining up suppliers, materials and surface finishes—there are a million details to get right and then once you’ve reached actual production, you’ve got to have well-monitored quality control measures in place. The Torque 2 has several other innovative changes that redefine the user’s experience, like the new Micro Loop with the L-shaped chicken finger. What are the features that are most important to you?

We had a list of things that people wanted to see with the new bars beyond the basics of making the release low profile to prevent accidental releases and ergonomically easy to grab when you need it. We wanted to make the quick release compact which brings the bar’s throw closer to your body so that the bar has a better fit for all riders, especially those with shorter arms. Part of that is designing the quick release body but also creating a smaller loop that brings everything closer to you. There are four different loops to fit different riding styles, but for most riders out there, the Micro Loop will be the best option. The Micro Loop’s design integrates a new

RIGHT: The crew that makes things tick at Naish headquarters. Left to right: Brian Dennis, Robby Naish, Jeff Urfer, Ewan Jaspan, Des Walsh and Tom Seager. // Photo Jennica Lowell

L-shaped chicken finger; internally, we like to call this guy ‘Mr. Happy.’ This new finger lock gives you an incredibly secure connection between the quick release and your harness bar. However, we learned through the R&D process that it doesn’t work right on the bigger loops, so you’ll only find the L-shaped chicken finger on the Micro Loop. There are other subtle changes that we’ve made that might get by the average user. For instance, our professional athletes obsess over line length, thickness and stretch qualities, yet there seems to be a lot of misinformation, or maybe more accurately, misdirection, that puts all the attention on strength as the key quality. Fixating on line strength is pretty much a waste of time because all kite lines end up much stronger than they need to be. If each line can handle 1000lbs, and you

spread that across four lines, then you’ve got lines that could theoretically suspend a 4000lb car in the air. That’s overkill. We’ve put a lot more energy into studying other qualities like stiffness, which affects the feel of how you’re connected to your kite. Basically, all lines behave somewhat like a rubber band. Thicker lines have less stretch, yet they add more wind resistance which results in more bow between the bar and kite. You could go super thin and get more line stretch but minimize the resistance and the bow. Depending on which way you go, you can end up in roughly the same place concerning the feel of stretchiness. It’s a complicated debate that affects all manners of kite performance, but there doesn’t seem to be one obvious answer. Disciplines like big air or freestyle may go with thicker lines, while lower load

and more efficiency-oriented riders like hydrofoilers, freeriders and surfers will want thinner line sets. For the moment, our Torque 2 bar comes with a thinner line set that suits most riders, and for top-end riders, there’s a stiffer line set available as an accessory option. Since most users want variable-length lines, our bars come in 24m lengths with 22m and 2m extensions, but extensions have historically added windage and friction. We’ve removed the sleeving at the extension junction, and some of our riders have questioned this from a durability standpoint. Since sleeves put extra needle holes in the lines and lower the strength while adding friction, instead, we’ve opted to increase performance and strength. We can nerd out endlessly on these details, but all these design decisions affect performance and feel, and that’s where we are making some bigger changes. Having inherited an impressive range of kite models, what’s your approach going forward as the market changes with evolving disciplines and new equipment trends?

If you look at the history of Naish’s kites and step back to assess where we are now, we have six different kite models; each one is marketed as a specialty design, but they all work really well for the average consumer, with the single exception of the 5-line Torch which is very specific to freestyle. There’s been this convergence of design where the innovations in bridle layout and 3-strut design have narrowed the differences between these specialist platforms. If you look at what most people are doing, maybe 75% are mowing the freeride lawn, while some people are obsessed with big jumps and others only care about waves. Regardless, few kiters are mixing their quiver between the purpose-built products. Basically, riders are buying the kite that targets their interest, yet banking on enough userfriendly handling to allow them to cross 46

over into another range of conditions or discipline of riding. In terms of specific model evolution, recently, we’ve put a lot of energy into building the ultimate big air kite that allows you to sheet in and hang on, which is targeted for those that just want to pursue big, lofty airs. The Triad, which is our entry-level kite, has turned out to be a surprisingly fun jumping kite and is really good in the drift department, so now more people are choosing that for surf. With the categories kind of nailed down and the design momentum focused on tweaking and fine-tuning, we are paying a lot of attention to innovation in materials and making our existing platforms even lighter. While lighter materials are key for performance, we never push that at the expense of durability. For the customer setting out on his or her big kiteboarding trip of the year, if the product fails and they can’t go kiting on day two, that’s not acceptable. Part of my job is studying the warranty claims that get filed all around the world. Long after we’ve tested and released the products, we’re constantly looking at what breaks and why. With two years in the trenches of the Naish R&D department, what’s the biggest lesson learned so far in your kiteboarding design career?

We spend a lot of time on the water here at Naish, and it’s not just me. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that there is no substitute for back-to-back testing and using a lot of different testers. You have to spend your time at the beach, testing multiple days with different conditions and swap kites over and over again so that you can remove the subjectivity in the process. We rely on feedback from a big group of riders that spans every level from beginners to pros—you always have to keep your eyes open for data points and be able to observe through multiple lenses.

Vetea Boersma framed by the classic Maui setup: trades on the horizon, offshore reefs and colorful kites with Naish logos. // Photo Frankie Bees

Photo Miriam Joanna

The

40-hour

Kite Week W O R D S BY LU K E M C G I L L E W I E

Let’s face it, addiction is a very real thing, and as the late Robin Williams put it, “Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.” The drug I’m referring to is kiteboarding, and as wind-addicted subjects, we all know very well the constant pull of our kites. It happens in our minds when we are not at the beach— the countless hours we spend checking forecasts and dreaming of the next moment we can reconnect to the balancing force of four lines and a big piece of ripstop. Think of the otherwise productive time spent gazing out the window, trying to guess wind strength based on the infinite movements of individual leaves or losing yourself in the visual replay of a massive big air.

Your mind is stuck in a loop, like a bio-based machine-learning algorithm on repeat, solving the big mystery of how to stick the landing on that boogey loop. There’s no cure, and good luck finding an anonymous meeting or rehab center that will help you kick the habit. Addicted kitesurfers with otherwise stable and productive lives, even those with big jobs, powerful titles and mounds of responsibility, fantasize about leaving it all behind, selling the four-bedroom Tudor and moving the kids into a shack just down the street from a windy beach. Kiters routinely shatter the status quo and reprioritize their lives around the wind and waves. This is not an anomaly, it’s an addiction—can you handle it?

With a history that runs deeper than his surf chops might lead you to believe, Luke can pass the handle as well as any freestyle athlete. // Photo Miriam Joanna

IF 50

If addiction tends to disassemble the lives we have built before kiting, it all happened in reverse for me. I started young with the wind, and I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life surviving as a professional kiter, jumping from one lifeline to the next. There’s nature, and then there’s nurture, and it’s fair to say that my mom taught me to shake things up at the early age of five. With three kids and no partner to help out, life as a working mother in the UK looked pretty bleak. On a visit to see my aunt and uncle in Cape Town, my mom was blown away with the opportunities that South Africa seemed to offer, not to mention the appealing climate and its proximity to the sea. She met my stepdad while she was here and uprooted the entire family. We went from pretty low on the financial totem pole in the UK to somewhere square in the middle of it in South Africa. My mom made this voyage with three bull-headed children in tow, and I can’t thank her enough.

If addiction tends to disassemble the lives we have built before kiting, it all happened in reverse for me.

My introduction to kiting was unlikely, and perhaps against the odds. When I wasn’t in school and my mom wasn’t at work, we’d often visit friends and family around the Blouberg area. I was the youngest and always needed the most supervision, so my mom would usually take me with her wherever she’d go. A friend of hers owned a guest house that was marketed towards kitesurfers, so I’d wander around and entertain myself while they caught up. One day, a kite instructor staying in the house sensed my boredom and helped me find an outlet by giving me my first introduction to kiting. My parents didn’t have the means to purchase kite gear, so I had to earn my own way if I wanted to get out on the water. Having tasted the power of kites, I became a dog fixated on a bone—I would do whatever it took to get another session. I began hanging out at the old Cabrinha shop on Blaauwberg Road in Tableview and it became

ABOVE: Armed with a new quiver of Stokes, Luke wraps up a long day on the water. // Photos Crystal Veness BELOW: Luke lines up a small inside nugget with short lines on a 6m Stoke. // Photo Crystal Veness

my home away from home. I would set up boards, unbox freight and spend hours sitting on the floor untangling customers’ lines. Grant and Donovan became my mentors, and they taught me all the stuff that I couldn’t learn at home or in school. Of course, you have to attend school to make good use of it, but kiting coincided with a sharp decline in my school attendance. My mom would drop me at the front gate, and I’d walk out the back. The guys at the shop tried their best to discourage me from skipping school when it was windy, but they also pushed me to find my way into the kite community and helped me get my first sponsorship with Cabrinha. Maybe it’s payback for all those days of school I missed, but after all these years, my family has never gotten into kiting, and I’m still the black sheep that skips family dinner when the waves are firing. When I was 15, I got my first international sponsorship, switched to online school and headed out on the Kite Surf Pro World Tour. 51

Luke throttles into the lip on a giant section at Scarborough. Cape Town’s status as a destination is cemented by its diverse range of riding conditions. // Photo Crystal Veness

Unfortunately, my parents didn’t have the funds to help me join the KSP. Instead, my participation was funded by RRD, my sponsor at the time, and it was 100% performance-based. If I wasn’t landing in the top 10, I would lose my travel budget and it would be all done. In classic fashion, I totally screwed up my first stop on the tour in Portugal. After training every day for a month in Guincho, I rode for 15 minutes in my first heat and came in dead last. Destroyed by the certainty that my dream was over before it had begun, Mitu came up to me and delivered some comforting words of advice. He could see the pressure I was under and told me that I should ignore the other guy in a heat and focus on having my best, most fun session ever. I was able to sweet-talk RRD into letting me continue to the next stop of the tour in Mauritius. Under the tall rock in Le Morne, I drew an early heat against Mitu. I already knew I had lost, but with the glass half full, I was surfing One Eye on a red flag day with only one other rider on the water, and that in itself felt like the best 15 minutes of my life. Back on the beach, I discovered that two high-scoring waves at the beginning of the heat bumped me into the next round. Testing myself against a legend like Mitu gave me the confidence and momentum I needed to perform well on the rest of the tour. This was one of the highlights of my career as a young pro rider. Mitu has, and always will be, the GOAT (greatest of all time) of wave kiting, and going to battle against him is a feeling that I will remember for the rest of time. Along the way, I’ve met friends and teammates that have become my extended family. I would have been lost if it weren’t for Jalou. She was like my big sister, taking it upon herself to make sure I had a crew, helping me with accommodations, even making sure I had my groceries sorted and I was able to get to and from the kite spots. From Mitu and Airton to Paulino Pereira, Inês Correia and rooming with characters like Jon Modica, the people I met during that period of my life taught me a lot. I spent most of my time away from home, traveling to tour spots or finding windy surf locations to train. Experiencing spots in Ireland, Maui and Morocco, I saw places I would have never otherwise seen. I was a poor South African teenager on my own in foreign countries. Since most of the other riders were older than me and headed out on the town, I’d often find myself alone in an apartment eating butter pasta (which, if you’ve never tried it, is actually delicious) and doing homework, mindful to keep my grades up to be allowed to stay out on tour.

Perhaps I should consider myself lucky that my pro kite career ended before I had the chance to take it for granted or lose the love for it forever.

TOP LEFT: Luke examines bridles on the Soul V2 for a light wind session at Shark Bay. // Photo Miriam Joanna TOP RIGHT: Luke applies his sixth sense for kites and tuning to the foil kite realm. // Photo Miriam Joanna BOTTOM LEFT: At a spot on South Africa’s east coast, Crystal Veness joins Luke and the Flysurfer crew on the long hike back to the parking lot. // Photo Miriam Joanna

But it wasn’t always about wave riding; I did the freestyle thing until I realized that I wasn’t willing to sign up for the long-term effects of buggered knees. I even competed in the King of the Air and the Megaloop Challenge a few times. While I didn’t get too far, I always felt it was important to keep up a respectable riding level across all disciplines. Having transitioned to Liquid Force in 2015, I enjoyed five more years of athlete life filled with competitions, promoting myself in magazines and on social media as well as testing products. All in all, life as a professional kiteboarder was pretty fantastic. My to-do list was hard to beat. It looked something like: Wake up, kite, lunch, social media, kite, after-kite beer, maybe one more kite, and, more often than not, a braai with the kite

With whitecaps stretching all the way to Cape Town’s empty horizon, Luke prepares for a hot landing on a powered strapless kiteloop. // Photo Miriam Joanna

crew and, you guessed it, talk about kiting. There were lots of laughs, lots of beers and nothing but stoke! But when stoke is always in steady supply, you stop appreciating the sunset sessions, the days when the wind and waves line up perfectly and the awesome people you share them with. Perhaps I should consider myself lucky that my pro kite career ended before I had the chance to take it for granted or lose my love for it forever. In June of 2020, the LF train went off the tracks. I’d had the mentorship and support of some of the best guys in the industry: Gary Siskar, Rich Sabo, Julien Fillion, Jason Slezak and Brandon Scheid, but the news came out of nowhere, and it was as if my world had been turned upside down.

As everyone was getting ‘adopted’ into new homes inside and out of the kite industry, I had a bit of an internal, and sometimes external crisis. It felt as if I had lost my family, not just my sponsorship. I was on the street looking for a new kite family, but I was afraid of what that meant. I hadn’t become the best in the world at anything at this point, other than kitesurfing’s best braai master, so figuring out what to do next was terrifying. I wrote out two columns in my notebook. What do I want from a brand and what unique value can I offer a kite company? Being realistic about how average you are can be depressing, but I was also able to find a range of unique personal skills like living half a block away from one of the best kite beaches in South Africa, maybe even the world. I listed my dual passport status that allowed me to travel pretty freely and my full media arsenal of cameras, drones

LEFT: Framed by the shimmers of glittering water, Luke McGillewie bones out a strapless nose grab over the impact zone. // Photo Miriam Joanna TOP RIGHT: Armed with a new job title, life is anything but all play. Luke catches up on emails in between testing sessions. // Photo Miriam Joanna BOTTOM RIGHT: The Boost is generally a high-altitude machine, but Luke keeps it low and powered on kicker hits. // Photo Miriam Joanna

Working as a tester and apprentice product developer on the inflatable kite line has been the most epic and most stressful adventure of my life. Plugging away behind a computer, it’s been more intense than the times I competed in the KOTA or raced down the line of a closeout section at One Eye.

and gimbals that I use to produce content of myself and other riders. I jotted down my deep ties to the local kite community that raised me and I noted my sixth sense about kite gear and tuning. I was excited when a few brands approached me, but I wanted to find a company that would value my skills and make space for me in their testing and development process. I had the list narrowed down to three brands when my close friend, Marie-Eve Mayrand, came to Cape Town for a visit. She’d been contemplating making a move over to Flysurfer and was impressed with their high level of organization, highlighting their respect for women within the company and their commitment to the quality of their products.

I did a lot of research on the brand and tested their products, finding in my conversations with managers that the underlying values of the brand matched my own pure love of kitesurfing. As I boarded a flight to Germany to meet the team, I was a bundle of nerves; I had no idea what I was signing up for. Was this a job interview? I’d never done one before, or better yet, a contract signing? But for what? It had all been so informal and mysterious up until that point. Yet at the same time, it really didn’t matter. I’d already made the decision, and I was ready to dive off the deep end with Flysurfer. I only hoped I’d get through the interview process without them realizing that I’m a bit of a weird guy.

While kitesurfing is often a disruptive force in most kiter's lives, in the end, its irresistible forces are what have helped me compose a rewarding balance in mine. LEFT: On his way up. After a long career as a professional athlete, Luke lands himself on the development team working with Flysurfer’s inflatable R&D projects. // Photo Miriam Joanna MIDDLE: With their van packed to the gills, Luke and Thèo de Ramecourt head to the beach on a R&D mission. // Photo Miriam Joanna

Six months down the line, Flysurfer has finally realized I’m a weirdo, but they’re still keeping me around. Working as a tester and apprentice product developer on the inflatable kite line has been the most epic and stressful adventure of my life. Plugging away behind a computer, it’s been more intense than the times I competed in the KOTA or raced down the line of a closeout section at One Eye. Being based in South Africa while the rest of the design team is in Germany has been pretty interesting, but with technology the way it is, it oftentimes feels like we’re in the same office. Last week, I spent 28 hours on video calls with my supervisor, Maxi, who has been teaching me the basics of design software and introducing me to Flysurfer’s unique development

With more pressure and responsibilities than ever before, Luke’s new job is the prototypical swan song of kiteboarding careers. // Photo Miriam Joanna

process. It’s not all serious; there’s the usual office chit-chat and inside jokes over coffee, but I’m absorbing a lot of information and taking on a lot more responsibility than I’d ever had as an athlete. My new 40-hour workweek is scary in a lot of ways. There are new pressures that I haven’t experienced before, but most of them are self-inflicted. I want to do a good job and prove my worth through discipline and hard work, yet I also know enough to trust my own instincts—they’ve gotten me here this far. Shifting to a structured work environment requires balance, but I’m excited to play a part for a brand that thinks big and puts performance

and precision at the top of its list. Having gotten an early start in kiteboarding with a life shaped by the lure of the wind, this transition validates my handling of the chronic addiction of windsports while carefully building a career around the pulling forces of kiteboarding. The life of a professional athlete can’t go on forever, but hey, I landed my dream job five years earlier than expected and I love it. I’m excited to step back from the pro rider role and surround myself with talented people that are having an impact on the kiteboarding experience. While kitesurfing is often a disruptive force in most kiter’s lives, in the end, its irresistible forces are what have helped me compose a rewarding balance in mine.

PROFILED

When asked about the success of onboarding two kids into windsports, Robert recalls, “When Evan was five, he asked, ‘Dad why is windsurfing so important,’ and I said, ‘I’m not sure that it’s that important in the bigger scheme of things, but it’s a big part of our lives.’” Rather than pressuring the kids into something, Robert and his family were surrounded by friends and the stoke of windsports and says it was just a natural thing for the kids to share in that excitement. // Photo Valerie Netsch 60

ROBERT NETSCH PROGRAMMING A LIFE AROUND THE WIND Nags Head, North Carolina

ast year, on an ocean downwinder from Rodanthe to Salvo, Robert Netsch noticed a beachgoer struggling in the water just 30 feet off the beach. “The waves weren’t big by any means,” Robert recalls, “Nothing you and I would glance twice at, but this guy was taking them on the head.” Robert read the early signs of panic in the man’s eyes and offered to help by body dragging him back to safety. After a 30-year career in the Coast Guard working behind a desk on Search and Rescue logistics, in the waters off of Hatteras, he was able to experience his life’s work in real-time. Robert can tell you better than anyone else, as you read these words, somewhere in American waters, there is a fisherman or a small family whose boat is going into distress. Having answered a newspaper ad fresh out of college, he began a Coast Guard career programming the models that predict where to find troubled boaters in an ocean environment that is constantly changing. According to Robert, the search models are based on high-level mathematics using probability and statistics that factor in the distress info you have, whether that’s an EPIRB, radio SOS or a reported failure to return. Using modern computing power, distributed architecture and now cloud services, Robert’s models compute object drift using complex weather forecasts and generate probability distribution maps that are used to coordinate the most effective way to perform searches with aircraft and cutters. Robert explains, “If a helicopter has the range to conduct a 90-minute search pattern—it’s important they spend that 90 minutes looking in the right place.”

Having grown up and started his career with the Coast Guard in Cape May, New Jersey, watersports like surfing and sailing have always been a part of Robert’s lifestyle. After marrying his college sweetheart and starting a family by the age of 27, for his first Father’s Day present, his wife Valerie surprised him with a F2 windsurfer, a gift that would steer their family’s trajectory for the rest of their lives. When his job with the Coast Guard required them to move, Robert and Valerie happily relocated their family to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. From then on, “We became a windsurfing family.” Robert, Valerie and their kids, Evan and Hilarey, would ritually drive south from Nags Head after workdays and on weekends to windsurf out front of Hatteras Island Sail Shop. In 2001, his son wanted to learn how to kite. “I was 100% against it,” Robert explained, “We finally had everyone set up with windsurfing gear and they could all do their own thing.” Having been brainwashed with windsurfing videos as an infant, Evan was already an accomplished windsurfer with heli tacks and other advanced moves under his belt. “At first, I went through the stages of grief, denial and anger. I spent a lot of time walking him upwind so he could figure the kite out, but the southwest wind and shallow, waistdeep water behind Hatteras Island Sail Shop was the perfect place for a 12-year-old to learn.” Evan and his sister Hilarey joined the Hatteras Island Sail Shop rat pack, learning with other local kids, Reider and Vela Decker, and Morgan and Brock Skiperdene. Equally capable in the waves as well as sliding big features in the Real Watersports slider park, Evan scored a sponsorship with Cabrinha

and quickly became one of the most diversely talented riders on the East Coast. Soon enough, Robert followed suit, trading his windsurfer for a kite. Robert remembers first getting heavily into the twin tip flatwater scene, but kitesurfing in the ocean followed because it was easier to get out through the shorebreak than windsurfing. When Evan was old enough to drive himself to the beach, Robert and Valerie revisited their bicycle racing days—Robert scored some prized wins like the Virginia State Championship in Cyclocross, but after a significant crash, Robert returned to kitesurfing. Surprised by advances in kite technology, he found himself once again in the grips of the kitesurfing obsession. This past summer, Robert officially retired from the Coast Guard with 30 years on the books, though for the moment, he has kept one hand in maritime search modeling with a part-time consulting gig. Beyond regular SUP surfing and wingsurfing sessions, in his free time, Robert can be found restoring a rare Hobie 21, crewing on a 38’ catamaran charter and working towards his captain’s license. When asked about his greatest accomplishment, he points to his two kids, “who both grew up into well-balanced, quality citizens.” Watching Evan navigate the perfect career path with Cabrinha, Robert jokes with his wife, “Evan is either a complete workaholic or never working. Either way, he’s always planning his day around the wind and waves.” Having spent his entire life within a stone’s throw of the Atlantic, Robert is a classic role model for balancing the demands of work, family and water time.

PROFILED

With Ocean Beach at her front doorstep and quick jaunts inland to Sherman Island or south to Waddell, Shannon’s riding style is wildly diverse; “My friends tell me I have the attention span of a concussed fish,” she laughs. Having traveled to Cape Town and witnessed the amazing power of big air riding firsthand, Shannon imitates her inspiration, Angely Bouillot, often swapping out her surfboard for a twin tip with straps and short lines for massive kiteloops. // Photo Mimi Mahlik

S H A N N O N G O WA N NURSING THE NEED TO KITE Ocean Beach, California

hannon Gowan’s introduction to kiteboarding started with one very long drive—2,328 miles from Bellingham, Washington to La Ventana, Mexico, with only two stops in between. Hooked from her first lesson, Shannon went in ‘halvsies’ on kite gear with her childhood best friend and new kite partner in crime. Not long after learning, Shannon’s friend chose true love over kiting, so Shannon inherited their shared quiver and resolved to explore the Pacific Northwest kiteboarding terrain on her own. With the flame of kiteboarding ignited, she explored the Jetty and Bellingham’s other kite spots before discovering Hood River’s consistent westerly winds and huge kiteboarding scene. A four-hour drive one way, Shannon’s early obsession kicked off solo day trip missions, even if that meant two hours of water time sandwiched between eight hours of driving. When Shannon graduated with a nursing degree, she signed on for a lifestyle career as a travel nurse. Having spent most of her life within a 2.5-hour radius of where she grew up, Shannon latched onto the exciting mobility of moving from hospital to hospital as a way to explore the greater US. With three-month contracts, travel nurses experience a wide variety of hospital settings and workplace protocols, but when the three-month contract is up, you are expected to move on to the next destination. Shannon’s first travel gig landed her south of San Francisco at Stanford Medical Center. With no awareness of the Bay Area’s status

as a world-class region for kiteboarding, and still stuck in the middle of the doeeyed obsessive stages, she was amazed by the coastal kitesurfing conditions at Ocean Beach and the large number of kite spots in the bay, all within close proximity. Fanatical in the hunt for wind, Shannon once drove two hours north to Bodega Bay, only to get skunked before turning around and driving four hours south to Waddell for an evening session. Looking back at her first career choice, Shannon laughs, “I’m just about the worst travel nurse in the world,” noting how she immediately fell in love with the Bay Area. When her three-month stint was up, she hesitated to move on but was not quite ready to give up on travel just yet. Amidst Hurricane Harvey and the aftermath of the 2016 election, Shannon landed her next assignment in Houston and was pleasantly surprised when she began work in the oncology ward at a top cancer center during Texas’s windy season. Quickly falling in with a tight-knit kiteboarding community, she scored sessions at Houston’s levy spot, Corpus Christi and South Padre Island. Shannon’s time in Houston exceeded her expectations, but after her next assignment dropped her in LA, she canceled her travel contract and secured a permanent staff position at Stanford, finally returning to the familiar Bay Area kiteboarding community. Pointing to the emotional challenges of her day job, “Healthcare doesn’t allow for much

creative license,” she jokes, “With nursing, you’re working towards the goal of curing people, but every day you are starting at ground zero.” Having experienced sticker shock on some surf ponchos, Shannon and a friend began making them out of terrycloth in her friend’s mom’s living room. “It’s not an inventing the wheel story by any means,” quips Shannon, but she began making ponchos for friends and dubbed the cottage apparel adventure ‘Apres Way.’ It became a fun project that gives a cheeky nod to the after-session après culture in the ski and snowboard world and ties it to the kiteboarding way of life. Shannon brought on friend and fellow kiter Alex Fox to help with branding and began working with a textile manufacturing company in LA to build surf-inspired ponchos and hats. “Our hats ended up being very practical, and it’s cool to see big-name kiters like Fred Hope and Robby Stewart take it and run with it as an integral part of their session.” She jokes, “We try not to take ourselves too seriously, and nothing says that like a bucket hat.” With plenty on her plate, most of Shannon’s time is split between Standford’s oncology ward and scoring kite sessions around the Bay Area. With no intention of turning her side hustle into a full-time gig, she’s excited to expand her Apres Way line in the years to come and share her products with the tight-knitted community of the Bay Area and the bigger windsports industry beyond.

R E B E L

H I G H

P E R F O R M A N C E

F R E E R I D E

B I G

A I R

O U R W AY T O M A K E T H E WO R L D A BETTER PL ACE.

D U OTONE SPORTS.C OM

FO LLOW U S

D E D I C AT E D T O KITEBOARDING SINCE 2001

EXPOSED

With swells marching on the horizon, Outer Banks local Reider Decker takes a break from putting a lift kit on his house to harvest a surprise side-off morning session just across the street. // Photo Barton Decker

EXPOSED

Short days, long nights and sessions so cold you need booties and a windbreaker; Willow-River Tonkin shakes down Core’s new 720 surfboard amidst Ireland’s novel landscape. Despite the bone-chilling temperatures, Willow regards this trip as one of his best to date. // Photo Lukas Pitsch

EXPOSED

Sometimes reaching your goals seems like a distant dream. 21-year-old Cabarete local Adeuri Corniel proves that with hard work and determination, rising to the top is just a hop, skip and a jump away. // Photo David Pou / Red Bull Content Pool

KB4C 2021

AUGUST 27-29 SCAN TO REGISTER:

HOOD RIVER EVENT SITE OR VIRTUALLY WITH STRAVA

BENEFITTING

EXPOSED

If you haven’t yet booted a kicker-induced send-up backed by the infamous Table Mountain, you should follow Arthur Guillebert, make the journey to Cape Town and start ticking the essential items off the cliché yet imperative kiteboarding bucket list. // Photo Bruce Wotherspoon

EXPOSED

With silence in the water and music in the hills, Matthias Larsen jumps the gun on Lake Silvaplana’s summer season, demonstrating picture perfect finesse with precision-tuned equipment and a little bit of imagination. // Photo Lukas Pitsch

R ID E R : O SWA LD SM IT H

P H O TO : C R AI G KO L E S K Y

100% FREESURF THE SESSION N ever commi t yoursel f to one st yl e. Al ways ma i nta i n a n open mi nd. Ri de ever y thi ng.

A IRU S H . C OM 75

Words by Brendan Richards

Everyone deserves their adrenaline fix, Kent says as he palms a six-pack of Drifter beer and explains how the Cabrinha partnership with Estuary Brewing is a vehicle for expanding kiteboarding access to individuals that might never encounter the life-altering stoke of kiting. For Cabrinha CEO Kent Marinkovic and the rest of the Cabrinha team, creating an adaptive program for kiteboarding from scratch would not be easy; in fact, it would take hundreds of man-hours and wads of cash, but the lofty ambitions of the Newfound Freedom project’s first phase have generated incredible progress for opening up kiteboarding to an entirely new group of users who face either physical or mental challenges. From day one, kiteboarding has always had an access problem. When the first production kites hit the market in 1998—with only two lines, zero depower, and no quick release—kiting was an extreme undertaking built specifically for risk-taking thrill-seekers. In the following two decades, brands like Cabrinha have chiseled away at the safety issues, with improved release systems and groundbreaking designs like the first supported leading-edge high-depower kite that revolutionized the entire industry. Today’s state of kiteboarding safety allows everyone, from young kids to your adventurous grandma, to take a lesson and give the pull of kites a go. Despite the broadening market, until recently, kiteboarding has offered little progress in the way of adaptive programs like the ones you might find in skiing or snowboarding. While other sports have invested in pathways for onboarding those with athletic challenges, kiteboarding has yet to direct its attention to those who have the desire to learn but need assistance and specialized equipment. Having worked with Brazilian paraplegic Fernando Fernandes to build a custom sit-board, Cabrinha was at the forefront of oneoff adaptive innovations, but for Kent Marinkovic, supporting a single athlete wasn’t moving fast or far enough.

Photos Shelby Ring

ne of the fundamental truths of kiteboarding is that it brings people together and inspires them to make changes in their lives. When Florida businessman, retired Navy Seal and obsessed kiteboarder Mike Noell invited Kent on a Bahamas boat trip, the seeds of Newfound Freedom were all but sewn. As a successful entrepreneur, Noell has a knack for pulling people together, and on this excursion, he invited Scott Harrison, a decorated retired member of the US Army Special Forces and owner of Estuary Brewing Company. Fresh off the stoke of his first kiteboarding experience, Scott fixated on the endorphin hit of gliding over the water with the pull of a kite. Over beers on the open waters, Scott shared with Kent his personal struggle to find a positive activity that replaced the adrenaline rush of serving in the armed forces. Having attached himself to sailing, Scott now fixated on the potential of kiteboarding to help other veterans, wounded or healthy, transition to civilian life. Together they sketched out an idea to bring the magnetic and stabilizing forces of kiteboarding to individuals going through some of life’s most challenging hurdles. Scott and Kent imagined a program UPPER LEFT: Fernando Fernandes ripping his custom Cabrinha sit-board. // Photo James Boulding TOP RIGHT: Newfound freeriders use their arms to locate the wind. // Photo Shelby Ring UPPER MIDDLE: Cabrinha’s export manager, Frances Osorio Rivera, shares the stoke. // Photo Shelby Ring SPLIT MIDDLE: NFP instigators: Estuary Owner Scott Harrison on the left and Cabrinha CEO Kent Marinkovic on the right. // Photos Shelby Ring BOTTOM: Estuary Beans and Barley headquarters in Charleston, SC; slinging caffeine at dawn and microbrews before dusk. // Photo Shelby Ring

that would combine and leverage their organizations’ strengths and resources and open up kiteboarding to a broader group, not just to those in the military, but to anyone confronting physical and mental challenges. In the months that followed, Scott circled back with Kent and they began to piece together the Newfound Freedom project. As a longtime force in the Cabrinha family, Kent has always wanted to build grassroots outreach programs that spread kiting to groups outside its core demographic. Last year, after having been acquired from a foreign-based large portfolio of action sports companies, Cabrinha gained its own ‘newfound freedom’ and is now owned and operated by core investors that are deeply committed to the culture of kiteboarding. With its new priorities in place, the Cabrinha staff now has the ability to pursue meaningful projects that complement the company’s longstanding commitment and roots in the industry. The goal of the Newfound Freedom project was to share the life-changing therapeutic experience of kiteboarding with individuals navigating physical or mental challenges. The events would take a lot of human capital to get off the ground, but more importantly, they would need money. Although both Cabrinha and Estuary Brewing were financially committed to the endeavor, they needed a charitable source of revenue that would sustain the project. This is where the Drifter beer concept was born. Estuary began brewing a small batch of beer featuring Keahi smacking the lip on its label and the proceeds from each can sold would go towards funding the Newfound Freedom project. “The Drifter is an easy-drinking lager,” says Cabrinha’s Sales Manager Brendan Healy, “You can put down a bunch of them, and they’re really refreshing on a hot day.” With distribution on its way, kiters can support the Newfound Freedom project by purchasing Drifter beer as far east as Boston, Miami and Charleston and as far west as Hood River and Southern California. With no overhead or salaries penciled into the program, Scott and Kent have been very clear that proceeds from the sales of the Drifter beer will go directly to funding outreach to challenged individuals. The Newfound Freedom project wasn’t created as a single event, but as a broader ongoing program aimed at helping to initiate and support the ongoing participation of individuals with disabilities in the sport. Tying together the strengths of Cabrinha’s dedicated staff, athletes and equipment engineers along with looping in the popularity of Estuary Brewing’s small-batch brewing model, the two companies devised a three-phase plan to reach these goals.

TOP: Keahi is getting shipped around the world again, this time on the label of a beer can. // Photo Shelby Ring MIDDLE: Drifter Coast to Coast Lager: light, easy and perfect for a warm day at the beach. // Photo Becca Healy BOTTOM: Frances helps participants with their first highly-anticipated body drags. // Photo Shelby Ring

The first phase consists of hosting a series of events that invite challenged individuals to experience kiteboarding. Participants apply to attend the programs, and Newfound Freedom puts them up and uses each event as a vehicle to provide basic learning skills. From Kent’s point of view, the events are a valuable tool to learn about adaptive kiteboarding techniques and the equipment needed to expand the sport to a broader audience. Phase two, as Kent imagines, will take Cabrinha’s equipment innovation team and use it to create adaptive products based on what they learn in phase one. The third phase will plug the new equipment and teaching methods into Cabrinha’s kite centers around the world to create destinations for adaptive kiteboarders. According to Kent, “Selfishly, this is a good move for Cabrinha; we want to make more customers,” he laughs, but Kent knows that when you convert one person into kiteboarding, you get the chance to bring in the kids, husbands, wives and other family members. Kiteboarding is, by its nature, an addictive force, and it has the potential to be a family affair. The three-phase plan ensures that participants get more than just a taste of kiteboarding—it’s designed to create a pathway of support to onboard and convert those with challenges into dedicated and obsessed kiteboarders.

The Goal of Cabrinha's collaborative program is to share the life-changing therapeutic experience of kiteboarding with individuals navigating physical or mental challenges. The first Newfound Freedom event kicked off in Charleston, South Carolina, the hometown of Estuary Brewing’s headquarters. Cabrinha brought in its top athletes, Keahi de Aboitiz, Evan Netsch, Damien Leroy, Kit Griffiths and Lucas Arsenault, to teach the participants along with vital support staff from the Florida office. Cabrinha’s export manager, Frances Osorio Rivera, was one of the biggest inspirations for Newfound Freedom. As an amputee herself, she absolutely rips on the water with backroll hand drags and big airs and has a passion for helping others find their way into the sport. Having been told she’d never kite again after her accident, Frances broke the barrier, and with determination, relearned to kite with one leg, a feat she hopes to help others overcome. Frances is a cornerstone of the project, TOP LEFT: Evan Netsch explains the basic concepts. // Photo Shelby Ring MIDDLE LEFT: Keahi watches as Todd Berrios gets a feel for flying the Mantis wing. // Photo Shelby Ring BOTTOM LEFT: Bradley Johnson learns the trick for uncrossing lines. // Photo Shelby Ring

TOP: Bringing all the toys, the Crosswing gave participants an immediate feel for the wind. // Photo Shelby Ring BOTTOM LEFT: Frances helps Bradley Johnson into a wing downwinder. // Photo Shelby Ring BOTTOM RIGHT: Kit Griffiths makes the most of the glass and a small wake with the Fusion foil and super slim Special Agent deck. // Photo Shelby Ring

LEFT: With a background in sailing, Bradley Johnson prepares for his first body drag. // Photo Gwen Le Tutour TOP RIGHT: Safety first with CG approved life vests and helmets. // Photo Shelby Ring MIDDLE: Back at Estuary, camaraderie from the shared learning experience is off the charts. // Photo Shelby Ring BOTTOM: Donated to the cause, Cabrinha had use of one of the Stiltsville houses offshore of Miami. // Photo Gwen Le Tutour

bringing substantial experience with instruction to the events as well as her extensive connections to the amputee community. In Charleston, Frances shared her kiteboarding passion with Bradley Johnson, one of the program’s most eager members, who lost both his legs in a tragic car accident but has gone on to become a talented Paralympic sailor. With his long dreads and big, bright smile, Bradley first dialed in his kite control with the trainer kite. He was all geared up for his first body drag when the wind faded, and instead, he gave hydrofoiling behind a boat a try.

Having worked with Brazilian Fernando Fernandes to build a custom sit-board, Cabrinha was at the forefront of one-off adaptive innovations, but for CEO Kent Marinkovic, supporting a single athlete wasn’t moving fast or far enough. Evan Netsch had the chance to work with military veteran Todd Berrios, who mastered the trainer kite in just a couple of hours. Having suffered multiple gunshot wounds, Todd had lost some mobility in one arm and hand which caused some issues with swimming during his body drag. Evan recalls, “I pushed him pretty hard, but given his personality, I think he appreciated that.” Todd recounted to Evan his background in an elite squadron that handled intense combat situations, constantly pushing limits and confronting fear. Feeling the power in the kite and body dragging brought back that challenge and rush of adrenaline since Todd had not been able to push himself outside his comfort zone since the injury. “Some of us are injured and we can’t find that adrenaline rush anymore. Getting pulled in the water by the kite . . . made me feel like this was something I could absolutely do to find that challenge in life again.” According to Evan, “He’s committed to continuing the learning process, and that is what’s cool about kiteboarding; you can push your limits on your first day, and even after decades of riding, it always gives you the ability to challenge yourself and learn something new.” If Cabrinha had initial worries about finding participants for the Newfound Freedom events, that immediately resolved itself with a flood of applications from both the military and TOP RIGHT: Frances assists with proper technique and muscle memory to get participants ready for the water. // Photo Shelby Ring MIDDLE RIGHT: Evan Netsch hands the controls to Keahi for a light wind spin. // Photo Shelby Ring BOTTOM RIGHT: Keahi demonstrates proper techniques using the new Mantis model that comes with or without windows. // Photo Shelby Ring

TOP LEFT: The Cabrinha crew knows how to have a good time even when the wind doesn’t show. // Photo Becca Healy MIDDLE LEFT: Everyone pulled together to get Steven Ruiz safely into the water—it was all about friends helping friends. // Photo Becca Healy BOTTOM LEFT: Kent goes the extra mile to help Steven stay balanced on the eFoil. // Photo Becca Healy TOP RIGHT: Bradley Johnson’s prosthesis borrows tech from a number of sources that might be equally helpful to adaptive kiteboarding. // Photo Shelby Ring BOTTOM RIGHT: Showing more signs of fun than fear, Bradley Johnson guns the eFoil. // Photo Becca Healy

civilian worlds. The second event held in Miami was planned around light wind, but the Cabrinha crew came prepared with a towboat, eFoils and a donated house in Stiltsville to stage the event. Kent was amazed at what he learned from Steven Ruiz, a local paraplegic. Bound to a wheelchair, using adaptive hand gloves, Steven was able to fly a trainer kite as well as ride an eFoil with Kent and Damo stabilizing the board. Kent laughs when recalling how Steven saw people jumping off the deck of the Stiltsville house and asked to try. “His first jump wasn’t pretty— it was a full faceplant, and he was underwater for half a second longer than I would have preferred, but he came up so damn happy.” Sometimes adaptive programs can feel really formal and technical, but Kent’s goal was to make Newfound Freedom feel like friends teaching friends and sharing the camaraderie of the authentic kiteboarding experience together. After just two events, Cabrinha’s staff has already identified several equipment development goals. With every participant experiencing different and unique challenges within kiteboarding, the Cabrinha staffers were able to highlight problems for the engineering team to solve. Witnessing some of the prosthetic equipment firsthand, Kent saw how bicycle components like shocks and clipless pedals could be used to solve control and connection issues. Designers like Lars Moltrop and Brodie Sutherland have worked on developing custom sit-boards for Fernando Fernandes, but the Newfound Freedom project offers a whole new bucket of novel ideas to explore.

Kent saw how bicycle components like shocks and clipless pedals could be used to solve control and connection issues. Kent recently received a call from a Cabrinha store that sold a large package of hydrofoiling gear to a customer building a tandem hydrofoil board. In the process of tracking that down, Kent is finding a lot of outside sources of inspiration for creating a more formal adaptive kiteboarding segment. With Cabrinha’s design resources and its newly acquired Dakine windsports partnership, it has the people-power to make everything from proper harnesses and accessories to the actual equipment that will expand the kiteboarding experience far and wide. There is also a shared optimism among the staff that the lessons learned in catered adaptive gear will undoubtedly prove useful in building gear for the broader kiteboarding market.

TOP RIGHT: Miami local paraplegic Steven Ruiz was able to use adaptive hand gloves to fly a trainer kite as well as ride an eFoil. // Photo Becca Healy BOTTOM RIGHT: Frances and Kent help Steven get ready to tap into the power of a trainer kite. // Photo Becca Healy

LEFT: The Estuary Brewing staff shows off the Drifter Coast to Coast Lager, soon to be available outside of Charleston in select locations around Boston and Miami and as far west as Hood River and Southern California. // Photo Shelby Ring RIGHT: The Newfound Freedom instigators, Estuary Brewing owner Scott Harrison and Cabrinha CEO Kent Marinkovic, celebrate after two successful events. // Photo Becca Healy

Scott and Kent are excited to take the Newfound Freedom to the west with a Hood River clinic tentatively scheduled for September 8-10th, while a fourth event in Maui is also in the works. With Drifter beer production ramping up and distribution landing the lager in new spots across the country, Estuary has created a convenient way for people to channel their drinking money back into kiteboarding. Not satisfied by single-serve experiences, Cabrinha has created a pipeline that expands the reach of kiteboarding to people with challenges. As a pioneer in the realm of kite racing, Kent is known as an incredibly competitive person, and in that regard, he hopes that Cabrinha’s investment in adaptive kiteboarding will encourage other brands to get into the game. Newfound Freedom ups the ante beyond single athlete sponsorships and puts the spotlight on building effective programs that broaden the sport’s reach and spreads the adrenaline stoke to the people that need it the most. Newfound Freedom is bottling something that most kiters know well; kiteboarding is a great fix for anyone willing to experiment with the therapeutic pulling power of the wind.

From well-executed dives and high-speed swerves to wind-assisted tubes, Crystal Thornburg-Homcy, Paige Alms and Moona Whyte do their warm-water thing. JIANCA LAZARUS, BENJAMIN ONO, AND BEAU PILGRIM © 2021 Patagonia, Inc.

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RELEASED AND RELOADED

Ben Wilson’s Return to Slingshot

WORDS BY BRENDAN RICHARDS

89 Photo Mitch Stubbs

Ben Wilson bends the will of offshore winds to carve a hefty backside cutback in the shoulder of Cloudbreak. // Photo Scott Winer

Turning

the career dial back to an early rung on the professional ladder might be a second act typically unthinkable for most of us, but for kitesurfing icon Ben Wilson, a return to his role as a high-profile surf ambassador is one he couldn’t talk himself out of. While the Sunshine Coast kitesurfer is best known for his BWSurf brand and coaching clinics, Ben’s pedigree as one of the biggest icons in the legitimate kitesurfing movement cemented itself under the Slingshot banner back in the mid-2000s. Ben has charged some of the biggest waves and challenged the status quo of kitesurfing within the industry, but as the dust settles on the BWSurf decade, Ben is at a split in the road, and the gravity of team Slingshot is pulling him down a path already traveled. To understand the iconic achievements of Ben Wilson, you have to look back into Ben’s history. Before the BWSurf kite brand and his decade-long run as a team rider at Slingshot, the pivotal moment in Ben’s lifelong career as a waterman rests with his humble beginnings as a culinary chef. Straight out of high school, a young Ben Wilson entered cooking school with the hopes of gaining a universal skillset that would allow him the

mobility to slip in and out of the best surf locations the world had to offer. In 1998, at the critical stage when he was emerging from school, iconic Aussie pro windsurfer and close family friend Scott O’Conner had just bought the lease to a small island in Fiji for $225,000. Determined to create the ultimate windsurfing and surf destination, O’Conner set out to build the legendary Namotu Island Resort and recruited young Ben Wilson to fly out and help the outfit get up to speed. Namotu and its nearby neighbor, Tavarua, brought surfers from all over the world, and back then, the tow surfers that were pioneering Jaws on Maui would drop in during their off-season. According to Ben, “Guys like Dave Kalama, Robby Naish, Pete Cabrinha, Rush Randall and Mike Walsh weren’t just tow surfing, they brought kites and early hydrofoils on their travels. It was their off-season training, and they did everything.” Of the Maui tow surfing crew, it was Brett Lickle who took the time to show Ben the basics of kiteboarding, improvising on the small beaches of Namotu. When the chaos of the early learning curve cleared, Brett left Ben with a 5m Wipika Classic that Ben combined with an old surfboard with footstraps drilled into the deck—because

that’s all they had back then. When Robby Naish came through, Ben upgraded to a Naish 7m AR3.5, “the one with the roll-up tips,” and eventually converted to a twin tip board like the rest of the early kiteboarding world. It’d been four years since he arrived and the small Fijian island had long become Ben’s home. He would have never left Namotu had it not been for his growing ambitions to become a professional kite athlete. In 2000, Ben traveled back to Australia to compete in the legendary Merimbula Classic, which was introducing its first kiteboarding title. Landing on the podium in second place, Ben caught the attention of Slingshot’s team manager, Chris Wyman, who was based out of Hood River. A legendary athlete in the windsurfing industry, Wyman invited Ben to tag along on an Aussie road trip that doubled as a mission to set up Slingshot’s Australian distribution channels. Scouring the east coast for kiteboarding opportunities, Wyman helped Ben kickstart his professional kiteboarding career as a Slingshot athlete. In those early days, the focus of the kiteboarding industry was on freestyle riding with some surf mixed in, but the limited

TOP RIGHT: With BWSurf in the rearview, Ben’s new ride features an upgraded Sentry control bar and the next generation of harness tech with Ride Engine’s Unity connection system. // Photo Mitch Stubbs MIDDLE RIGHT: Ben launching a shorebreak aerial in Indonesian waters. Before GoPros, Ben and his mate, Beaver, improvised with a small POV video camera. // Photo courtesy of Ben Wilson BOTTOM RIGHT:From kitesurfing and foilboarding to jet ski assisted foil tow-ins, this Fijian spec on the map is the ultimate waterman’s destination. // Photo Mitch Stubbs

depower in early kites kept wave riders saddled to sharp-edged, low-volume twin tips. In today’s kitesurfing world, Ben Wilson is an icon of core kitesurfing culture, but few people remember Ben’s early days hucking big spins and handlepasses on a twin tip. Despite his surf pedigree from growing up in the waters of Australia’s southeast coast and his super-charged surf resume from guiding trips on Namotu and Tavarua, Ben scored early freestyle contest podiums with the likes of Jeff Tobias and Martin Vari. As one of Slingshot’s prominent athletes, Ben was gaining notoriety throughout the world, and sometime in 2005, he got a call from longtime friend Mauricio Abreu. Having traveled and surfed together, Mauricio was stoked to share how he’d been kiting waves with his conventional surfboard: “You’ve got to try this—it’s a thing,” Mauricio exclaimed over the phone. That call kicked off a new chapter for Ben, not only riding waves with a surfboard but riding waves without straps. Ben stopped chasing the twin tip tour and began traveling the world in search of the best kitesurfing waves, and with that, Slingshot became one of the first brands to support a freeride athlete. Instead of chasing contests and podium bragging rights, Slingshot encouraged Ben to showcase the new surfing side of the sport

ABOVE: Having mastered going backside left on his surfboard, this session at Micronesia’s P-Pass was the first time he surfed a proper right. The offshore wind allowed Ben to completely let go of the bar. Since it felt exactly like surfing, grabbing the chicken loop for ultimate depower became the go-to method when the wind was more offshore. // Photo Stu Gibson MIDDLE LEFT: Photos from the first Zoo session with Jeff Tobias were printed on just about every kiteboarding magazine cover across the planet. A few years later, Ben returned with photographer John Bilderback and to this day, still can’t forget the ugly steps and heavy rinse job he took on this wave. // Photo John Bilderback TOP LEFT: Two hours from Ben’s place on the Sunshine Coast, Rainbow Beach, with its side to side-on conditions and a fun punchy beach break, is perfect for unhooking. // Photo Bill Crang 92

RIGHT: Ben perfected the art of barrel riding during his visits to this iconic Indonesian break. On a low tide, you could walk out to the end of the reef into the middle of the action. Going from the occasional flirtation to the master of the dark arts of tube riding, Ben considers this a pivotal time in his kitesurfing career. // Photo courtesy of Ben Wilson

in the best conditions possible. Ben started pumping out films from his travels: The Unkown Road, The Dirty South and Shades of Green—and quickly began setting the standards of a purist form of kitesurfing. While Ben wasn’t the only athlete pushing kitesurfing’s progression, he had become one of the earliest and most vocal advocates of a version of kitesurfing that treats the kite as a tow-in vehicle, taking the focus off of the kite and emphasizing the core variables of the surfboard and the wave. In those early years, Ben became the poster boy of unhooked riding, which he imparts the roots of this movement back to Mauricio Abreu. As a pioneer in the early wake-influenced Maui days, “Mauricio did everything unhooked. If you did the trick hooked-in, it didn’t count,” Ben explains. When Ben started unhooking and riding waves with a surfboard, he took the same approach—every wave had to be ridden with the pull of the kite transferring through your front hand. “This style of riding opened up your whole body and felt the most like surfing. This is what I wanted kitesurfing to feel like,” said Ben, “I began to think of the kite as

a vehicle to get into the waves, and once you had the power of the wave, you’d kill the power of the kite and rip the wave like you were surfing, completely open and free.” Looking back at his committed unhooked days, Ben acknowledges that his outlook was narrow-minded. When he filmed his movie The Unknown Road, he recalls having lots of good hooked-in footage from when the conditions weren’t ripe for unhooking; after all, “you need good conditions to make unhooked kitesurfing look right.” Ben’s purist commitment to principle required that everything had to be unhooked, so all the hooked-in footage, no matter its merit, was cut from the movie. When kites with supported leading edges and greater depower arrived in 2006 and were refined over the following years, Ben’s views on hooked-in riding adapted. “With C-kites, it wasn’t a huge advantage to be hooked-in because you didn’t have the depower or sheeting, but with the new kites, the equation changed.” For Ben, it was the art of surf aerials that softened his views. “It was super hard to do airs unhooked, and aerials were the pinnacle of everything you could possibly do in the surf.” Ben

watched as Martin Vari completed his transition from freestyle to hooked-in kitesurfing while punting massive airs. “If Vari was making 10 airs hooked-in, I was making one while unhooked, and this started to open my mind.” Having come to terms with the reality that surfing isn’t always about down-the-line wave riding, Ben’s vision for doing in-the-wave aerials required depower to successfully stomp them in all kinds of conditions. “Once you nailed a new type of air, it was sick, and the transition happened quickly. With unhooked riding having been so technical, after hooking back in, airs felt so easy.” On the broader question of legitimacy, the kiteboarding industry has always faced an imperceptible barrier when it comes to converting surfers into kitesurfers. Some believe it to be an optics issue while others think it has more to do with the technicality of the equipment. From the moment he started riding surfboards, Ben became determined to break this barrier. In 2010, Ben started his coaching clinics to spread his passion for kitesurfing, connect with people and share his knowledge. Having traveled the world tirelessly for 10 years as Slingshot’s frontman in the surf, he also chose this time to part ways with the brand and launch BWSurf with the intention of building surf-specific equipment that would open up kitesurfing to mainstream surfers. “All I wanted with BWSurf was to create a great kitesurfing

experience, knowing that people could grab a kite, have a safe session with no issues and love what they were riding.” The early years at BWSurf were driven by Ben’s passion for surf-specific products and innovation, but the challenges of maintaining a small business were omnipresent. Having forged itself as a niche brand with a loyal following, BWSurf ’s revenues were bounded by its narrow focus on surf products that banked on the idea that the mainstream surf world would finally let go of its resistance to kitesurfing. No matter how far the surf side of kiting had come, the technical gear and the lesson-based learning curve were just a step too far from surfing’s minimalist approach, and the soul of surfing would not broaden its horizons. As BWSurf rolled into survival mode, the pandemic dealt the company its final blow, and in July of 2020, Ben recorded a goodbye video that announced BWSurf ’s plans to stop producing products. After shedding the logistics and financial pressures of running a kite brand, Ben shifted his attention to his coaching weeks. “Having been burned out on the business side, all I wanted to do was get back to the feeling I had in the first few years, where it was all exciting.” Since taking over the General Manager position of Namotu in 2018, Ben was situated in the perfect position to double down on his clinics and keep life simple. As news of BWSurf ’s closure circulated the globe, he began receiving

Aerials were the pinnacle of everything you could possibly do in the surf . . . If Vari was making 10 airs hooked-in, I was making one while unhooked, and this started to open my mind.

LEFT PHOTOS: A visual comparison of Ben under the lip with Cloudbreak operating in two different modes. Ben illustrates the point; surfing with a kite is still very much surfing, the kite is just a vehicle to get into the wave. // Photos Scott Winer ABOVE: According to Ben, aerials are the pinnacle of surfing and his road back to hooked-in riding was inspired by the versatility of punting big airs in a broader range of conditions. // Photo Scott Winer

While in today’s kitesurfing world, Ben Wilson is an icon of core kitesurfing culture, few people remember Ben’s early days hucking big spins and handlepasses on a twin tip.

messages from several prominent brands that were interested in working with him. “It was good for the ego, but at that point, I just wasn’t thinking of getting back into the brand game.” After multiple conversations with friends in the industry, there was this consistent opinion that Ben’s talent and notoriety would go to waste if he wasn’t connected to a brand. Ben’s old friend Mauricio set up a meeting with Slingshot’s Brand Manager Alex Fox, and Ben touched base with old contacts from his early days that were still working at the Hood River headquarters. “I had been trying to find a reason not to join forces with a brand, but everything at Slingshot felt so right.” After using some of the products and talking with Slingshot’s CEO, Jeff Legosz, the Slingshot surf program seemed to be the perfect fit for both Ben’s personal riding and product development goals as well as his coaching clinics. Having worked hard to bring Ben back, Brand Manager Alex Fox celebrated the move. “I can’t say anything about Ben’s riding that the world doesn’t already know. His name is synonymous with progression, and we couldn’t be more honored to welcome him home. His input and direction on product development as well as his experience and knowledge of the industry will prove invaluable to the Slingshot brand.”

Looking back, Ben recalls those days in the early 2000s when Slingshot began changing the kite industry with groundbreaking designs like its one-pump system and split strut canopy construction. With a front-row seat to past innovations coming out of Tony Legosz’s R&D department, Ben reckons Tony to be the kite industry’s shining source for off-the-wall inventions. “Tony’s like a mad scientist; so innovative, so forward-thinking— there are so many crazy ideas that he is playing with at one time.” When asked to compare Slingshot’s R&D back then to now, Ben points out, “In the early days, Tony was a one-man team, but now the Slingshot R&D department has a full staff of engineers and testers that handle the day-to-day deliverables.” Ben laughs, “The new Slingshot design department must be a really scary thing for other brands because Tony is in his element working on crazy creative concepts—and when he nails something, he’s got a full team that can refine ideas and reliably push products to the market.” Having managed the BWSurf design pipeline, Ben intimately understands the gauntlet between concept, implementation and production. Upon returning to Slingshot, he has taken particular

TOP LEFT: Ben presides over surf platforms big and small. Namotu is the perfect testing ground for all kinds of watercraft. // Photo Scott Winer TOP RIGHT: Pictured with the new SST before launching from the channel, Ben is amped to be assisting with new upgrades to Slingshot’s surf program. // Photo Scott Winer MIDDLE RIGHT: The wizard behind Slingshot’s R&D curtain; Tony Legosz whips up some custom foil parts in Slingshot’s basement lab. // Photo Brendan Richards BOTTOM RIGHT: Free from the daily email grind of stomping out manufacturing and distribution fires, Ben has more bandwidth to refine his kitesurfing clinics and clock more Cloudbreak time. // Photo Scott Winer 97

You always learn the most in the middle of your biggest challenges. note of the refinements made to the company’s design, testing and production process that produce a platform like the SST surf kite. At the same time, Ben has signed on with Ride Engine as his harness and accessory source. Having introduced the first hardshell harnesses to the industry circa 2012, Ride Engine is embarking on a new phase of growth and innovation in its product lines. “Ride Engine makes insane products, and they’re building everything I use across all disciplines—from surf traction pads to leashes, each product is perfectly dialed.” As hard as he may have tried, Ben Wilson couldn’t resist the natural gravity of brand life, particularly because it was Slingshot that was calling. Spinning clichés of poetic full circles, Ben’s step back from BWSurf is actually a giant stab forward for the Australian kitesurf icon. Having spent 10 years earning a crash course master’s degree in brand mechanics at the controls of BWSurf, Ben doesn’t regret his time away from Slingshot. “The life lessons during those years have brought a lot of value for me; you always learn the most in the middle of your biggest challenges,” he says. While much has changed for Ben, now a husband and father of three, his passion for creating kite products and connecting with people is still his calling. Back on the Slingshot team, Ben has lined up all the perks of product innovation and support without the distractions of day-to-day operations, which opens up more time to get back to the lifestyle of kitesurfing. As a surf ambassador, Ben’s perch on Namotu is the ideal testing ground for a company like Slingshot that has its hands in so many watersports, whether that’s surfing with a kite, foilsurfing or the early days of wingsurfing. “I’m grateful to be in this position—the timing couldn’t be better,” says Ben. With Slingshot at his side, Ben has been released from his past and has reloaded for the next chapter in the kitesurfing history books. ABOVE: The future of Slingshot surf is back in good hands. With straight onshore wind gluing Slingshot’s Tyrant to his feet, Ben Wilson punts a highaltitude air at Mooloolaba Beach. // Photo Mark Bialek

The “Set it and forget it” spreader bar system. The “Set it and forget it” spreader bar system. The Unity Spreader Bar system has an ingenious design utilizing The Unity Spreader Bar system has an ingenious utilizing custom-molded, ladder-lock straps that eliminatedesign the use of custom-molded, ladder-lock straps that eliminate the use traditional webbing andprovide an unrivaled locked-in ﬁt. of traditional webbing andprovide an unrivaled locked-in ﬁt. Unity Spreader Bar with Direct Connect.Exclusively available on Unity Spreader Bar with Direct available on Ride Engine Carbon EliteConnect.Exclusively and Saber harnesses. Ride Engine Carbon Elite and Saber harnesses.

THE BONK APPROACH WORDS BY ERIC RIENSTRA | PHOTO BY MICHAEL PHANEUF

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B "Another key to reducing risk

is to ride with more kite power."

onking solid features is not very hard in the technical sense, but the risk can be high depending on the circumstances and the conditions. Before you make your first attempt, you always want to scout the scene and ask the important questions. Is the wind clean? Are there any objects in the area or dangers lurking under the water? Are there sharp points on the feature that you should avoid hitting? You have to identify all the possible ways in which it could go wrong and ease your way into the bonk in order to control your risks. One of the biggest mistakes is coming in fast and slamming into the feature itself with too much force. To err on the safe side, I intentionally come up short on most of my first bonk attempts. Conservatively, I’d estimate that seven out of 10 times, I don’t even touch the feature. Another key to reducing risk is to ride with more kite power. Any time you are jumping with a kite, you are using a combination of board speed and kite lift. If you are low on kite power and don’t have as much canopy lift, then you need more speed, and this tends to add risk. If the setup isn’t providing clean wind, then your lift will be more variable, and that should flash the warning lights on your internal dashboard. Once you have sussed out all the logistics, then it’s time to decide if you want to do the bonk as a transition or as a stall in the middle of a conventional air. Transitional bonks tend to be safer because you will be using the kite to stop your forward momentum by redirecting it back in its path to pull yourself away from the feature after the bonk. Once you have some experience, you can keep some forward momentum and continue the kite through the window like a regular jump, assuming the feature allows it. Bonks can offer an extra degree of challenge and build technical skills, but they should also be approached with care and awareness for the dangers of kiting near fixed objects. You should always be sure to know your limitations and be respectful of the terrain around you. 101

Slightly Matt Words by Joe Winowski | Photos by Nicholas Spilsbury

Slightly Off

The cameras are rolling, but they’re not pointed at Matt Maxwell. Just down the beach, a mob of local news crews trails the police as they haul a dejected kiteboarder away in handcuffs. There’s a politician in a black suit strutting at the front of the parade, attempting to make some kind of point while proving his strong-arm power: Welcome to mid-pandemic kiteboarding in South Africa. Watching the episode from just upwind, Matt hustled off the water to join Nicholas Spilsbury and Dylan Osborne, his close friends, trusted cameramen and partners in crime. Filming a kiteboarding movie in the middle of a lockdown requires equal parts skilled subterfuge and dumb luck, but the latter is oftentimes fickle in nature and not to be relied upon. One moment lady luck’s got your back and you’re free and clear, and the next your day is unraveling—the car keys are lost, the police are breathing down your neck and your knee is swollen, refusing to endure one more pass in front of the camera. Slightly Off is the name that stuck to Matt’s recent video project. In some respects, it’s a nod to Matt’s unconventional status as a professional kitesurfing athlete, having come to the sport via the SUP world while harboring greater aspirations to be a product engineer. In other respects, the video title is also a thinly veiled ode to the misfortune and bittersweet outcomes of Matt’s freewheeling adventures along the southern coast of South Africa.

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- The Lost Sessions Kitesurfing is a huge part of Matt’s life, and to start his video project off, he headed up South Africa’s west coast, where the terrain becomes a bit more rugged, the water turns cold and sharky, and the surf breaks trend towards world-class. Having spent the morning at a hidden wave to the north, Matt and his friends spot-checked Elands Bay to find a once-in-alifetime collision of variables. With beach access restricted due to the pandemic, the typically crowded lineup of surfers was surprisingly empty. Matt and company watched as perfect lefts reeled off the point with an unusual 20 knots of southeast wind pumping over the headland and filling in over the hollow, glassy break. With no surfers to clog up the lineup, Matt was able to set up deep, tucking into barrels for repeated coverups while the two cameramen logged footage from both the water and the land. Having properly kicked the trip off with a rare score, they reconvened on the beach and quickly packed up before the police made their rounds. Celebrating the collision of perfect timing and serendipitous conditions, their luck quickly changed when the hard drive storing all of the footage from Elands Bay fell out of a backpack, damaging the internal disks and erasing all the data. No amount of money could bring the footage back, and worse yet, their insurance policy, a second backup hard drive, was formatted incorrectly and equally useless. The visual proof of the Elands session was gone forever—its perfection recorded only in their minds.

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The kitesurfing scene in Cape Town is dependable and plenty, but if you’re looking for hollow A-frames, venturing up the west coast can open the door to world-class surf, that is, if you don’t mind cold water and apex predators. Recently, Matt’s been spending more time paddling into waves to build a better foundation to push his kitesurfing technique with less reliance on the kite.

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The historical state of strapless freestyle has been low-altitude technical tricks with rotations integrating various types of board-offs. Airton Cozzolino’s entry into the King of the Air contest last year with a strapless surfboard raised the ante and inspired a whole new direction for the freestyle side of surf.

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- Super Strapless On the verge of the next frontier in strapless freestyle, Matt’s been focused on fusing big, powered airs with the technical tricks of strapless surfboard riding. As the home of the King of the Air, Cape Town is the natural place for the combo, and Matt has been gunning to come out on top when the new discipline gets an official venue. One of the key equipment innovations pushing this new discipline is the second generation of F-One’s Magnet surfboard. Matt swears by the board’s new Slimtech formula and how it brings insane durability while maintaining its incredibly lightweight and high-performance. Matt’s only complaint is its seemingly uncanny ability to accelerate the learning curve. “It’s frustrating watching people learn how to stick a strapless front roll in two weeks when it took me 12,” he jokes. The shift towards high-altitude strapless maneuvers has also steered Matt back to F-One’s traditional Bandit model—the Bandit-S is still his hands down choice on a pure surf trip, but for more powered big air riding, the regular Bandit can whip him higher and sweep a lot lower during big loops.

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- Bracing For Action Venturing off the beaten path, Matt steered his black and white mini box van up the east coast where the water is warmer and the sharks are slightly smaller but nonetheless omnipresent. Finding wind had been a challenge, but about four hours up the coast at Witsands, they happened upon a butter-flat lagoon at the Breede River. With the wind blowing over a sand spit, the water was perfectly smooth and Matt unleashed his pent-up energy for the camera. Shortly into the session, Matt initiated a big kite loop with a high-altitude front rotation, attempting to spin the board into a tic-tack on his way down, but instead, landed on his board fin side up. With his leg folded between his fins—his calf between the side fin and his quad between the two other fins—his knee contorted into a sickening angle. Barely able to explain the awkwardness of the injury, the pain seared into his brain. Since filming-time was of the essence, Matt borrowed Nick’s knee brace (many of Matt’s South African friends have been tearing through ACLs) and reinforced his unstable knee to finish the day and stack some more footage.

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Most strapless injuries come from nailing your fins, but hard landings and knee issues are a combination that can be just as painful. Injury prevention has been on Matt’s mind this year. With a tangled line incident and a tweaked knee at Witsands, Matt has turned to cross-training on his surfboard and has worked strengthening exercises into his routine to get ready for the next season.

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Nine times out of 10, it’s best not to imperil kiteboarding access by bending the rules. Yet, South Africa’s pandemic restrictions often seemed inconsistent and arbitrary. As the science behind Covid transmission became better understood, it was clear that outdoor sports like kiteboarding, where social distancing is woven into the fabric of the activity, were never a threat to society’s health.

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- Evasive Maneuvers On the second to last day of their trip, Matt and his friends ended back at the buttery flat sandbar at Witsands. Most of the spots they kited came with an evasion plan, but at Witsands, they had descended through a forest and had no view of the parking lot to monitor the arrival of the cops. At the end of the day, everyone was on the water kiting when they spotted the uniforms trudging over the sand. The group gathered up and decided to head across the big open bay. The crossing from Witsands to Infanta via the Breede River was just shy of a mile on the water, but by car, it would take the police at least an hour to drive around and catch them. The river is known as a bull shark feeding ground, but the risk of crossing seemed reasonable only because they didn’t know what the police had in store for them. From the safety of a beach on the far side, Matt, Nick and Dylan waited clear into the evening before crossing the channel again to get back to their cars.

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- The Home Stetch Finishing the trip back at home in Cape Town, Matt highlights the diversity of conditions that make it a world-class destination for kitesurfers and part of the reason he doesn’t often venture too far from home. In their film project, Matt and his friends did their best to showcase everything South Africa has to offer, yet at every step of their adventure, things never quite seemed to line up. Despite the one-off kitesurfing footage from Elands disappearing along with their B-roll and trip dialogue, Dylan Osborne was able to pull the edit together. Haunted by the knowledge of what they could have accomplished, Matt is comforted by the experience of traveling with his friends and photographing the spirit of adventure that thrived while everything else remained slightly off.

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Having grown up with his feet firmly planted in competitive SUP surfing, Matt has always embraced alternative forms of surf craft. With unshakable talent in the zen art of foilsurfing and as a semi-closet wingsurfer, Matt is much more than just a Jedi master of surfing with a kite and strapless freestyle.

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ICONIC KITEBOARD PRINT WORDS BY ALEX FOX

ver the years I have amassed a respectable collection of kiteboards. The obsession really kicked off during my years as a pro rider. As a sponsored athlete, you get access to many boards and for free, and I ended up keeping a lot of them for sentimental reasons. When I started designing board graphics for Slingshot, my collection grew significantly in size. I made it a mission early on to try to keep at least one of each of these boards to show my kids one day. However, there have always been boards that I wished I could have gotten my hands on and simply couldn’t; they were either scarce and impossible to find or I was unwilling to shell out $800 for a board I would never ride and one that’s value lay in collecting dust along with the rest of the catalog in my garage. I always had it in the back of my mind to make a print of all of the boards I wish I could have owned. If I made a poster, I could honor my ‘ideal collection’ of boards and pay homage to the history of a sport that has played such a massive part in my life. It wasn’t difficult to come up with a list of iconic boards. To be completely honest, I

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have had this list of boards loosely floating in my head for the past five years. The hard part was narrowing the list down to 32 boards and finding old images of each deck that would allow me to draw the shapes with authenticity. Obviously, other people will probably have a different list of iconic boards; someone might suggest a board I’ve overlooked, and maybe in the future I’ll do a second edition, but for now, this is the list. The boards that found their way into the print landed there because they featured either iconic shapes or graphics, or they were culturally significant due to the rider who promoted them. The Liquid Force Picklefork is a polarizing example of this. I have only seen a couple of pickleforks in my 17 or so years of kiteboarding. They are so crazy-looking but these were ridden by all the early pros and the concept was ripped off by many of the competing brands. I look at the Picklefork and can’t help but fixate on its sick shape, it’s such a standout in the lineup. The list also had to include the Naish Mutant because Robby Naish and Adam Koch cemented it as one of the classic ‘old school’

boards. It’s hard to picture Robby Naish doing a table top air without also picturing the inverted outline of the Mutant. Lots of the boards on the list are just personal favorites of mine. When I first started kiteboarding, I was 13 years old and weighed 90lbs, so I was always drawn to smaller boards. Some of my favorite small boards were the Naish Stubby and the Naish Thorn. The Thorn had a killer graphic and Jesse Richman absolutely killed it on this board. Hands down, the most iconic board in the print is the Liquid Force Element. This board pretty much defined an era of kiteboarding. Nearly every single big-name pro rider that I followed rode that board. It was Moehau Goold’s pro model board on LF, but everyone rode it. Perhaps the most legendary board on the print is the Jimmy Lewis Myth. This was the run of Lou Wainman pro models that were both tiny and finless. I really can’t imagine that these boards sold very well because they were super expensive, but wow, they were incredible looking. I was always such a Lou fan—he rode with a

style that was different from everyone else and in every respect. Lou seemed to always be kind of everywhere yet nowhere at the same time, and this really only added to his lore. There are also quite a few boards on this list tied to iconic athletes. Having a pro model board in any other boardsport is a monumental feat and tends to be one of the highlights of an action sports career. This hallmark achievement is incredibly overlooked inside kiteboarding and is also

extremely difficult to achieve and maintain. Mauricio and Dre both have two pro models on the list, and they both have their second models with a brand different than the first. Brandon Scheid, Youri Zoon, Martin Vari, Jake Kelsick, Alexander James Lewis-Hughes, Billy Parker, Jason Slezak, Aaron Hadlow and Ruben Lenten also have models in the print that I felt were incredibly significant. Kiteboarding is a very technically progressive sport. Every year brands strive to make

the equipment lighter, stronger and faster. There are hundreds of brands at this point, and every year there is a new product that replaces the last. This print was created to honor the sport’s history so that these boards don’t go forgotten. Countless people had a hand in the creation of these boards— from the artists and graphic designers to engineers and design teams, as well as the people who bought them and loved (or hated) them. The list is a tribute not only to these boards, but to the sport that we all love so much.

ABOVE: Hanging on the wall of Alex’s office, 32 of the most influential kiteboards of all time are now forever immortalized in this limited-edition piece of art. // Photo Irene Fox F E A T U R E D B O A R D S : L I Q U I D F O R C E P I C K L E F O R K / S L I N G S H O T S X / N A I S H M U TA N T / N A I S H S T U B B Y / U N D E R G R O U N D WAV E T R AY / C A B R I N H A I C O N / SLINGSHOT MISFIT / JIMMY LEWIS MYTH / LIQUID FORCE ELEMENT / WIPIKA MAURICIO PRO / LIQUID FORCE MLF / LIQUID FORCE CONCEPT / C A B R I N H A C U S T O M / S L I N G S H O T L U N A C Y / C A B R I N H A WA K E S K AT E / B R U N O T T I Y O U R I P R O / F L E X I F O I L H A D L O W P R O / T O N A D R I F T W O O D / N A I S H A R C A D E / S L I N G S H O T R E F R A C T I O N / T O N A P O P / T O N A F L O W / L I Q U I D F O R C E E C H O / A X I S B O O T L E G , PA R K E R , T R A N Q / C A B R I N H A VA R I P R O / NAISH THORN / LIQUID FORCE DROP / UNDERGROUND FLX / SLINGSHOT DARKSIDE / AGGRESSION TT / DUOTONE GAMBLER / SLINGSHOT ASYLUM

W W W. F O X A L E X . C O M / G O O D S / P / I C O N I C - K I T E B O A R D - P R I N T

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Before it's too late Lauren Holman confronts fading winds on a warm Vancouver evening. Will light wind sessions be the new normal? // Photo Daniel Holmes

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A C T I N G O N C L I M AT E C H A N G E WORDS BY LAUREL EASTMAN

utdoor sports as an industry faces many dangers due to climate change. The ski industry has been a vocal advocate for climate action for years, and now that we see climate change happening before our very eyes, it’s time for the watersports industry to officially get in the game. Many of us are already experiencing the effects of climate change on our kiteboarding spots and businesses. I’ll never forget waking up to the news that the pounding waves from Hurricane Maria had broken the door to the equipment room at my kiteboarding school in the Dominican Republic. Thankfully, a neighbor heroically braved the rough conditions, covered the hole in the wooden door with a heavy piece of beach furniture, and luckily, tens of thousands of dollars worth of kite gear was not washed into the sea. When I think about kite schools in Hood River, Oregon and their short summer teaching seasons too often plagued with smoke from fires and poor air quality, I know this affects their visitor numbers and annual revenue. From domestic kiteboarding paradises like the Outer Banks in North Carolina to far-flung dream kite holiday destinations on South Pacific islands, many of the places we love to travel to are facing a very real future of literally being underwater. Another consequence of climate change that we’re not talking about in the action sports industry is the threat to public health. When people are unhealthy, they’re not showing up to participate in sports like kiteboarding. And then there’s the biggest question mark of all—will rising planetary temperatures

kill our global wind patterns? Just as it has begun to impact the ski industry with warmer temperatures and lower snowfalls, will the natural basis to practice our sport be gone? The wind is generated largely by the temperature differentials between the sea and air, and when that balance changes, it’s possible that our wind patterns may no longer be reliable. Our sport connects us deeply with nature. We rely on clean water, clean air and a delicate balance of temperature to bring us wind. Personally, I prefer a future where conditions still exist for us to kite and snowkite, and that’s why it’s time to start talking about climate change, and as a kiteboarding industry, to take action. Brands including Ozone, Airush, Cabrinha and Duotone are already thinking about ways to address climate change as companies. They have started reducing their carbon footprint by investing in solar manufacturing facilities, carbon-neutral products, postconsumer polyester kite bags and have begun implementing new and creative ways to pack and ship without plastic packaging. Similarly, small operators like Exoitkite, Sensi Swim and Adrenajen Clinics are also taking steps to address climate change. It’s great to ride our bikes to the beach, drive electric vehicles, drink out of a reusable water bottle and recycle. These are necessary actions to reduce our carbon and environmental footprints, but advocacy on behalf of the climate is far more impactful. We cannot hope to tackle a problem as global in nature as the climate crisis simply by acting on an individual basis. To catalyze change on a powerful level, we need to

advocate for the systemic transformation of our energy economy. As athletes and industry leaders, we have the power to inspire our elected representatives to act. There’s a massive opportunity here to leverage our voices and apply compassion and reason to the most pressing challenge that humanity has ever faced. Effectiveness matters now more than ever: What can we do that will have the most significant impact? How can we use our time (or money) to save human lives, reduce suffering and mitigate the risk of future death due to climate change? The most powerful thing we can do is help to build the political will for our elected representatives to enact policies that will provide businesses with effective incentives, encourage innovation and significantly lower CO2 and methane emissions. The overwhelming consensus of leading economists and business leaders is that the most powerful action to take on climate change is to put a price on carbon. That’s why as a 20-year veteran of this industry and founding Board Member of the Women’s Kiteboarding Collective, with the support of our Board of Directors, I’ve endorsed The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act and I’m asking my colleagues and contemporaries to join me. For more information, visit the link below and please don’t be surprised when I knock on your door asking to talk about climate change, what it means for our industry and what we in the kiteboarding industry can do about it.

W W W. B U S I N E S S C L I M AT E L E A D E R S . O R G / WAT E R S P O R T S D E C L A R AT I O N

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PATAGONIA R2 Yulex Front-Zip Full Suit

Neoprene-free is the way to be. Patagonia’s Yulex® natural rubber wetsuits are here to make oil and limestone-based neoprene suits a chapter of your dark past. Patagonia has elevated the performance and comfort of their men’s and women’s wetuits while further reducing their environmental footprint. With updated patterning across the back-shoulder seam for ease of motion, new recycled spandex and a soft recycled lining that repurposes 18 plastic bottles per suit, the new wider, lower profile internal seam tape is more comfortable and the women’s wetsuit features a redesigned entry for easy on and off. Patagonia’s R2 suits are ideal for summer kiting and surfing sessions in cooler waters. $459 // www.patagonia.com

PLATINUM SUN Unisex Fleece Rashguard

Made with EcoGreen recycled polyester, Platinum Sun’s Fleece Rashguard is windproof, quick drying and delivers maximum breathability to keep you warm and comfortable for those longer kiteboarding sessions. The extremely breathable fabric blocks the wind yet allows vapor to escape. This combination of protection and breathability minimizes the wind’s chilling effect while reducing the risk of overheating when you’re trying to get the most out of your time on the water. $65 // www.platinumsun.com

F-ONE Carbon Flow Fins

Designed specifically for surfing with a kite, F-One’s Carbon Flow Fins were developed to optimize the efficiency of F-One’s surfboards. Developed for versatility and high performance over a wide range of conditions, the Carbon Flow Fins generate more speed and deliver controlled flex with improved stiffness in the base. Previously only available in XS, F-One now offers the Flow Fin in a medium size for recommended use with the 5’6, 5’8 and 5’10 Mitu Pro models. $119 // www.f-one.world

AK Ether Harness + AeroBar

For the purist kitesurfers out there, AK’s Ether features a minimalist, lightweight approach that prioritizes comfort and durability. By removing all unnecessary padding, seams and reinforcement, AK has created an ultralight harness ideal for riders who travel and have an affinity for minimalism. Pair it with AK’s new, unique one-piece molded composite carbon Aerobar for a lighter-than-air setup. Ether Harness $199, AeroBar $269 // www.akdurablesupplyco.com

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RIDE ENGINE Spirit Vest

Confidence is what drives your progress forward. The Spirit Impact vest gives you supportive floatation and protection from falls and foils. It delivers the confidence you need to take your on-water performance to the next level. Its unique dual-zip closure and shoulder adjustment provides a perfect fit across many body shapes and sizes. With its purpose-placed padding, the Spirit integrates seamlessly with any waist or seat harness. $158 // www.rideengine.com

CABRINHA Drifter Beer

Brewed by Estuary Brewing Company in Charleston, South Carolina, the Drifter beer is an easy drinking lager that’s perfect for kicking back with your friends after a kite session. Proceeds from each can sold help fund the Newfound Freedom project that introduces kiteboarding to those who face unique physical and mental challenges. // www.estuarybeansandbarley.com

ION Spectre Bar

The Sprectre Bar features side flaps made out of Ion’s CURV material which helps integrate the bar into the main body of the harness and ensures it moves as one solid unit so the bar does not twist upwards from the kite’s vertical pulling forces. Ion’s modular hook system lets you swap between an aluminum hook, Quicklock hook or the webbing slider. The Spectre comes stock on the Select line of 2021 harnesses and it’s compatible with many older models. $139.95 including hook // www.ionproducts.com

DELTA HYDROFOILS 1500 Reflex

Brought to you by one of kitefoiling’s early innovators, Delta Hydrofoils presents the 1500 Reflex foil with carbon base plate and your choice of interchangeable carbon or aluminum masts. The 1500 handles like a much smaller wing and is both fast and maneuverable while providing plenty of lift. Stable enough for riders of any size to learn how to foil, the 1500 Reflex is also a great cross-over wing that can be used for kite, wing or surf. $1299 aluminum mast, $1699 carbon mast // www.deltahydrofoil.com

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16 YEARS IN PRINT A PUBLISHER'S MEMOIR WORDS BY MARINA CHANG

hat looks so . . . NOT fun,” I remarked to a friend as we watched Kinsley ThomasWong get dragged through the reeds at Laguna Lake, out of control on his two-line Wipika kite. Having absolutely no interest as we rigged and launched our paragliders, we watched from above as Kinsley self-taught himself the new sport for lunatics—it was called kiteboarding. My first impression of the sport couldn’t have been more wrong. I quickly followed Kinsley over the edge and learned to kite during the early days before diving headfirst into a kite school partnership in Cabarete and ultimately taking over as publisher and co-owner of this magazine 16 years ago. The pace of this adventure has been fast, and the momentum intense. I can hardly believe that I’m reflecting on over two decades of kiteboarding, but here I am, still having fun. In the first few years of kiting, tight-knit communities sprouted worldwide from necessity. We were all just learning, and while you could certainly risk teaching yourself and frequently, this was the only choice, for others, there was safety in numbers as we navigated the new sport and its inherent dangers like unrefined quick releases and almost non-existent relaunch-ability. Our lives depended on each other—and the camaraderie that grew amongst early adopters resulted in many good times and lifelong friendships. As kiteboarding grew, so did events, and rain or shine, the industry, pros and everyday riders showed up to share the stoke, meet like-minded enthusiasts and marvel over new and improved gear. Amateurs and pros competed together and apart, all in the spirit of fun, and I quickly learned that

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bringing people together at events was the biggest perk of my publishing role. The Pismo Kitexpo ran for 16 years, and the La Ventana Classic for 10—organizing these two events and watching them grow are the main highlights of my career in the industry. Working with legends like Kinsley ThomasWong in Pismo and Tim Hatler in La Ventana, I’m proud to have helped build them into the most anticipated events on the West Coast while supporting non-profits and collegiate kiters along with creating good memories for so many. I also have the dubious claim of hosting the most miserable demo event, perhaps in kite history, when a freak Arctic front converged on South Padre Island. Brand reps alternated between the warmth of their cars and manning their tents in the frigid exhibition space that was flooded with ankle-deep water. Carol Bolstad rushed to Walmart and bought us all rubber boots, scarves and gloves, and I will never forget Slingshot rep Neil Hutchinson begging in a somewhat pitiful voice, “Marina, please don’t make us go stand in the puddle again.” Thanks to the visiting LAKAWA crew from Minnesota, who showed us how to have a good time in cold weather, the event was not a complete failure. After 16 years as Tkb’s publisher, personal matters have led me to a hard decision: It’s time to redirect my focus and I couldn’t be happier to leave Tkb in the hands of former pro athlete and Tkb’s current Editor-inChief, Brendan Richards. Since coming on board, Brendan has built upon the legacy of his predecessor, Paul Lang, and expanded Tkb’s editorial and testing efforts to new dimensions. Because of Brendan’s passion

for the sport, I’m excited to watch as the magazine enters its next chapter under his direction. I want to heartfully thank the industry, pro riders, photographers, contributors and kiteboarders from the world over for your support during all of these years. I am thankful for the connections I have made during my adventure with Tkb and for the kiteboarding lifestyle it has allowed me to enjoy. There’s a special place in my heart and a profound appreciation for the Tkb crews, past and present, who helped get me to where I am today, specifically with the support of Paul Lang, Neil Hutchinson, Maui Mike, Kinsley ThomasWong, JamieThomasWong, Holt Alden, Kurt Friedmann, Brendan Richards, India Stephenson, Gary Martin, Alexis Rovira, Jen Jones, Jim Semlor, James Brown and Shana Gorondy. Most importantly, I thank my amazing mother who told me to go for it when the opportunity presented itself. You all gave me the strength to continue, made me laugh when needed and gave me a shoulder to cry on when times were tough and my spirits were down. As it turns out, standing on top of that hill 22 years ago, I was wrong—kiteboarding changed the direction of my life. It ended up being amazingly fun, incredibly rewarding and introduced me to some extraordinary friends, whom I will continue to cherish as we all move forward. See you at the beach,

Marina Chang Tkb Publisher/Owner Emeritus

Marina Chang pictured with Kinsley ThomasWong and Ken Krall in Pismo Beach, California. Kinsley and good friend Scott Metzger spent the better part of 1998 teaching themselves how to kite before they traveled to the Dominican Republic in 1999 for their KISS certification, the first kitesurfing instructor training program created by Wipika and its founder Bruno Legaignoux. Upon Kinsley’s return, Marina was curious enough to give it a try and by 2000 she was enduring endless walks of shame with Ken Krall before her breakthrough session. // Photo Toni Krall

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ON THE MAP

NAGS HEAD, NORTH CAROLINA

OCEAN BEACH, SAN FRANCISCO

Astunt self-kite ascribed nerd from an early age, Shannon Gowan spends her -nursing days non chasing wind around the San Francisco . Photo Bay Area Danny Fuentes

RoberttheNetsch making SUP :most ofsurfing, retirement restoring Hobieaway Catsatanda chiseling s captain ' license. Photo Hilarey Ball //

CANADA

UNITED STATES MAUI, HAWAII

Brian Dennis gets around. From Hood River BajathisandMaui theBig toHorns, based Naish designer hasalla locals cardspots for. the best Photo Stu Gibson //

HAWAII

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

LA VENTANA, MEXICO

BRAZIL

The Cabrinha crew gathers in South Carolina for the first event of their Newfound Photo FreedomShelby Project Ring.

Xander Raith joins forces with Noe Font and Colleen Carroll build aparadise naturaltoinpark the heart of . Southern Photo NoeBajaFont

HOURS TRAVEL BY KITE S 5

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NAMOTU ISLAND, FIJI

Locked down in Fiji, Ben WilsonNamotu presides over Surf the exclusive Island . Having shut down Resort BWSurf this year,runBen is back.earlier for another at Photo Scott Winer Slingshot

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

AlexonFoxthegrabs tail Slingshot Asylum, one of the boards to make it Kiteboard into his Iconic . Photo MoPrint Lelii

RUSSIA

GERMANY

FRANCE

SPAIN

CHINA ALGERIA

INDIA

NAMIBIA

AUSTRALIA SOUTH AFRICA

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Out of his Covid comfortlockdowns, zone and amidst Matt Maxwell ventures up the coast in search of freestyle hollow waves and perfect sandspits. Photo Nicholas Spilsbury

Setting up for aMcGillewie new chaptertrades with Flysurfer, Luketicket injobhisin athlete for a desk . the kitePhoto designCrystal department movingonup Veness

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Framed under the lip, Olivia Jenkins marks an end to the Maui season with one last surprise swell. Having spent the winter charging Ho’okipa and Jaws, Olivia is contstantly pushing the boundaries of her big wave game. // Photo Patri McLaughlin

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