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FROM THE EDITOR
EXO 2.0
The winter issue is always an interesting time of the year to pull
together a kite magazine, and this year’s issue was no different. As
MADE TO BACK-UP YOUR EVERY MOVE.
we enter the second year of the pandemic it’s striking a bit closer to
home with its as-promised rise in colder climates, newly discovered mutated strains and the patient wait for vaccine distribution. Wrangling
content creators gets harder during the holiday season as many are migrating to warmer places and prancing around three very hectic
celebrations amidst the omnipresent need to find water time amidst increasingly narrowed wind opportunities. Winter might provide
more indoor time to focus on work, yet it challenges us with extra distractions and lower productivity. H A R N E S S
Magazine work offers no exception to these seasonal trends, but despite all the odds, our team put together an impressive issue that
packs a ton of kiteboarding into six long-form feature stories and 10
departments that circle the major themes of our wind-focused lives. Starting the magazine with Vetea Boersma challenging 70-knot gusts reminds me of my early kiteboarding career days where the hunger for water time outweighed caution, often pitting skill (and luck) against
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the unrelenting forces of nature. Then we follow freestyle phenom Maxime Chabloz’s advice on training smarter, not harder, and the
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details of his path from a Swiss mountain town to the international
podium in an amazing array of disciplines on his quest to find the
holy grail atop the kiteboarding freestyle tour. Fred Hope takes us behind the curtain of his super-human foil skills and his recent win at hydrofoilings’ first freestyle event, where he was able to bend the
foil format to his will. We profiled Sam Chilvers, a talented artist in Cabarete, and Robby Stewart, a deaf kiteboarder in Baja who seems to be quietly turning heads wherever he goes. You’ll find more great stuff in these pages, but I’ll let you suss that out. North & Central American Distr. - Bay Area Kitesurf - www.bayareakitesurf.com
There’s a lot of detail in this issue that illustrates how we feel about our sport, our goals, aspirations and limitations. Having lived and
breathed kiteboarding for the past 20 years, my personal litmus test
of a good magazine is that at the end of the tunnel, beyond the pretty pictures, I should have learned something both new and personally
valuable about the people, places and disciplines of kiteboarding. I believe this is the art of the magazine making quest—a subtle middle
©Matt Georges
finger to the infinite shallowness of the hashtag machine and a solid
Discover the new EXO 2.0 on manera.com.
S T A Y
S A L T Y
stab at creating a more focused place to find new truths about a sacred and familiar love.
Best wishes. Let’s make 2021 a spectacular new year!
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Survival Sessions
Vetea Boersma syncs up with professional photographer Richard Hallman on one of Hood River’s windiest days. Amidst power outages and airborne roofs, Vetea braves the Columbia River under the influence of record-setting 70-knot gusts.
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Maxime Chabloz
A master of all trades, Swiss kiter Maxime Chabloz hits his stride on the freestyle world tour while kickstarting a professional freesking career. Dominating just about any sport on a plank, Maxime charges ahead with unreal natural talent hardened by firm discipline and razor-sharp focus.
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Single Skin Ascent
Flysurfer’s Ramon Schoenmaker recounts a backcountry adventure at France’s Col du Lautaret, highlighting the new single skin kite technology and its profound impact on backcountry ski access.
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The Supernatural
Sitting down for an interview with the quiet and understated foil legend, Fred Hope talks about his transition into foilboarding, his recent win at the first freestyle foil event and the future of competitive freestyle foilboarding.
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Life Beyond the Park
Working backwards, snowboard and kite park athlete, Xander Raith, takes a break from the summer lockdowns to master the ropes of big air board-offs and dangle-style freeride to prove that regression can be progression. 10
From the Editor
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Frontside
58
Profile:
Robby Stewart
Taking visual learning to the next level
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Profile:
Samantha Chilvers
Daring to follow the painter’s calling
66 86
Exposed Method
Rocket Air by Chris Bobryk
Kelsick’s Next Chapter
Professional kiteboarder and content creator Jake Kelsick sets off on a new adventure with his fiancée, Megan Grant, to build a destination kiteboarding school that capitalizes on Antigua’s tropical beauty and ideal kiteboarding conditions.
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08
112
Wish List
114
Viewpoint
116
The Intersection of Design and Materials
Roots
In Memory of Curt Caldwell
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On the Map
120
Parting Shot
102 60 76 30
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20 On the Cover
Olivia Jenkins threads the needle at Jaws on opening day in Maui. With a packed lineup of tow, paddle and windsurfers, Olivia scored a couple of bombs in a narrow window of wind at the end of the day. // Photo Brian Solano
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Send It With Blackbeard
Teach’s Kiteboarding North Carolina’s Crystal Coast
Marina Chang, Publisher marina@thekiteboarder.com Brendan Richards, Editor in Chief brendan@thekiteboarder.com
Blackbeard chose these waters and our Barrier Islands for its ever-changing sandbars and strong winds to keep other pirates away. Our treasure and his lie hidden here.
India Stephenson, Designer/Editor india@thekiteboarder.com Alexis Rovira, Editor at Large alexis@thekiteboarder.com Gary Martin, Tkb Ambassador gary@thekiteboarder.com CONTRIBUTORS Ian Hargrove, Ramon Schoenmaker, Joe Winowski, Chris Bobryk, Xander Raith, Ken Winner, Cole Caldwell PHOTOGRAPHERS Ryan Craig, Thomas Burblies, Craig Kolesky, Richard Hallman, Matt Georges, Lukas Stiller, Svetlana Romantsova, Fabien Gattlen, Ramon Schoenmaker, Rich Baum, Josh Messer, James Ropner, Dominik Leitner, Ydwer van der Heide, Chris Rollett, James Boulding, Jake Kelsick, Megan Grant, Maxx Evan, Kaden Sponhauer, Bob Stawicki, Adam Lapierre, Brian Solano, Shabs Kirchner, Gareth Williams, Toby Bromwich, Mario Entero, Jason Wolcott Visit us at: thekiteboarder.com twitter.com/the_kiteboarder • facebook.com/thekiteboardermagazine ADMINISTRATIVE/ADVERTISING OFFICE 1356 16th Street, Los Osos, CA 93402 805.459.2373
Miles of undiscovered kiting territory 5-star spots and instruction. Our instuctors are professionally licensed, CPR certified, carry Captain’s Licenses and PASA certifications.
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FRONTSIDE
According to Keahi de Aboitiz, lining up a good kitesurfing wave at Teahupo’o is harder than you might think. When it’s windy you need your gear to be finely tuned for the conditions and just the right amount of bend in the swell. This one had the right angle; the perfect bend where it throws and all you have to do is enjoy the moment. // Photo Ryan Craig
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FRONTSIDE
Hailing from South Africa, Josh Emanuel puts the GTS6 to the test with this fiery megaloop that layers on extra heat to the one-footed move of kiteboarding’s early days. // Photo Thomas Burblies
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FRONTSIDE
Stijn Mul floats through the upstroke of a giant megaloop, holding a stylish tail grab before coming in hot for a smoking pendulum landing. // Photo Craig Kolesky
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R I D E R: COL IN OU D OT
P H OTO : SA M C A R D E N A S
MINI MONS TER
SL AYER
FOIL SKATE
AI RU SH.C O M
TEAM FOIL
Survival Words by Ian Hardgrove | Photos by Richard Hallman
Sessions 20
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Professional photographer Richard Hallman stepped out of a darkened convenience store into a savage wind tearing through the empty streets of Biggs, Oregon, a one-horse town 40 minutes east of Hood River. With leaves and debris whipped into the frenzy of hurricane caliber winds, the massive low-pressure system presiding over the Columbia River Gorge had damaged the electrical grid, shuttering the lights and businesses of small towns dotted along its shores. The situation escalated as Richard and Vetea Boersma walked toward their vehicle and watched a 30-foot section of roof peel off a motel across the street.
THE FORECAST FOR MAY 30, 2020, WAS ON TRACK TO RECORD WIND SPEEDS RARELY SEEN ON THE NETWORK OF SENSORS LINING THE HOOD RIVER CORRIDOR.
Leaving Biggs’ single, now non-functioning traffic light behind, Richard turned his van to the east and watched out of the corner of his eye as aerosolized water blew off the tops of the Columbia’s rolling swells and kept pace with the speed of the van, the speedometer pegged around 70mph. Despite the ferocity of the jumbled-up storm winds funneling eastward through the Columbia River Gorge, Vetea studied the thundering river in anticipation of a groundbreaking session.
towards the warmer basin east of the Cascade Mountains as it creates a venturi-influenced wind tunnel of unparalleled strength. Yet the forecast for May 30, 2020, was on track to record wind speeds rarely seen on the network of sensors lining the Hood River corridor. A low-pressure storm was forecasted to produce winds averaging 50mph with gusts to 70mph, accompanied by heavy rain and thunderstorms that showed promise of tapering into clearer skies towards the late afternoon.
As a 27-year veteran of life in the Gorge, Richard has spent the bulk of his adult life witnessing the cold air of Portland accelerating
Having begun his day at the Hatchery, Richard photographed windsurfers at the spot known to collect the Gorge’s larger swells
TOP LEFT: According to professional photographer Richard Hallman, “May 30, 2020, was hands down the windiest day I have experienced in 27 years.” ABOVE: Having grown up in Hood River, Vetea is a master of all disciplines from strapless freestyle to foilboarding, but his true passion is the big air megaloop style of riding showcased at the King of the Air. BELOW: Surrounded by jetty rocks and sharp cobblestones, Arlington’s rudimentary launch requires caution on a normal day, but in 50-plus knot conditions, reaching the water can be a hair-raising experience.
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LEFT: As an aspiring KOTA contestant, Vetea has spent the last year chasing the Gorge’s windiest sessions from Rooster Rock to as far east as Arlington. Addicted to the acceleration of heaving megaloops and late backroll spins, Vetea is climbing the ranks as one of the USA’s top big air riders. RIGHT: A sustained 50-knot day with recorded gusts into the upper 70s makes upwind riding look like a strong man’s tug-o-war contest.
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AS VETEA RIGGED HIS 7M PIVOT, HE COULD FEEL THE ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR AS PERCEPTIBLE TINGLES OF SHOCK RAN THROUGH HIS ARMS.
careening down one of the straighter fetches of the winding river. With rollers ranging in the 10-12’ size, the morning winds were averaging 40mph with gusts to 50mph, yet Richard kept his phone tuned to the high wind advisory for Arlington on the eastern end of the Gorge. After calling signals with megaloop enthusiast Vetea Boersma, they loaded into Richard’s van and headed east as the storm unloaded hail and toppled power poles across the region. Pools of water formed in the streets, textured by a million ripples seduced into micro-whitecaps by the ferocious wind. Vetea brought along his stepbrother Wyatt to help with launching and log some video, but as the van battered its way down the storm-swept highway, Vetea was losing hope as buckets
of rain seemed to cloud his aspirations for a clean, 50-knot session. Having just passed an overturned semi-truck in the center divider, Richard pulled his van off the highway and under the overpass towards Arlington’s beach park with not a single person in sight. The place was empty; no cars were in the gravel lot, and there were no curious windsurfers or kiteboarders—it was just Vetea, his stepbrother and Richard standing in front of thundering waves, howling wind and the chaotic patchwork of a stormy sky. As Vetea rigged his 7m Pivot, he could feel the electricity in the air as perceptible tingles of shock ran through his arms. Huge walls of gust would occasionally upset the rigging process, tangling lines and threatening to blow away the kite or knocking Vetea off balance and then to the ground. As he slipped into his warmest wetsuit, Vetea got a call from a friend that warned him the sensor was topping out at 70-knots—the voice stated facts: “Dude, you are going to die, are you insane?” But Vetea’s mind was set. As a committed big air rider with dreams of competing in The King of the Air, he believed that these are the moments to live for. Vetea reminded his friend, “These are the conditions I have been dreaming of, the windiest conditions the Gorge has ever seen and with huge swell—It’s time!”
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The launch was the part of greatest concern. Arlington’s beach park is rocky and doesn’t provide much room for error. Standing on an outcrop of rocks, with the kite still in Vetea’s stepbrother’s hand, the Pivot was lurching forward while fully sheeted out, clearly exceeding the boundaries of its accepted wind range. Vetea raised his thumb in the air, and as Wyatt let go of the kite, and despite the ample depower built into the Pivot, the 7 meter’s pull was more than his foothold could resist on the sharp rocks. Accelerating across 10 feet of uneven cobblestones with his Monarch twin tip in hand, Vetea improvised five swift and slightly resistive steps before slamming safely into the water. From behind his lens, Richard watched with concern as Vetea’s high stakes solo session promptly kickstarted with a giant airborne send-off from a 15-foot swell. Vetea’s Pivot continued to pull him into the upper atmosphere, gaining serious height while drifting downwind for what seemed like a football field. Richard remarked to Wyatt, “He probably had time to radio the nearest airport tower and submit his flight plan.” Having landed and set his board’s rail upwind, Vetea methodically edged through the chaotic troughs, occasionally losing the fight and slipping into an uncomfortable stutter of hockey stops. Through Richard’s viewfinder, Vetea’s kite looked like a raging bull, harnessing the wind’s turbulent punches as Vetea’s upwind
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efforts resembled a strongman’s tug-o-war contest. Massive swells crashed on the upwind jetty and Vetea fought the wind with unrelenting determination as it raged in the 50-knot plus range. As the sky cleared and the wind persisted, Vetea acknowledged that the 7m was beyond insane—it was pure survival. As he landed his kite and wrapped up his equipment, he reflected, “I should have been on a 4m or 5m,” noting that he didn’t need to sheet the bar to go as a small tug would send him flying through the sky or off his edge. From the safety of the warm van, Vetea was stoked to have made it back alive and in one piece after surviving the upper limits of kiteboarding. With the sun fading behind the Cascade Mountains, Richard steered the van west along Highway 84 directly into a headwind that left the van’s accelerator pedal pegged to the floor. “The van feels like it’s towing a semi-truck trailer without wheels,” laughed Richard as they reflected on the intense session of the day. Later that evening, Richard checked the wind graph and noted Arlington’s wind chart featured wild spikes up to 80mph. Both Richard and Vetea agree that the forces of the Gorge might have won the battle, but Vetea’s survival session will go down in the history books of Hood River kiteboarding.
TOP LEFT: Looking west as the storm descended over the state of Oregon, the ominous skies were replaced with mixed clouds as clearing winds scoured the atmosphere. Overpowered by a couple of kite sizes, Vetea charges upwind on his Pivot, bucking through the turbulent winds like a bull. ABOVE: A pitch perfect high-altitude boogieloop is framed by Arlington’s iconic grain silos in the background.
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Photo Matt Georges
WORDS BY BRENDAN RICHARDS
MAXIME CHABLOZ IN PURSUIT OF THE NEXT TITLE
When Maxime Chabloz originally joined the Next Generation kiteboarding camp at the age of 13, he landed in Tarifa for the first time, relatively confident with a mixed bag of tricks featuring double S-bends, raleys and raleys to blind. At that time, these were fairly advanced moves for a 13-yearold hailing from a small mountain town in the heart of Switzerland, but right off the bat, Maxime noticed two glaring deficiencies. Unlike the other kids, he didn’t know the names of his technical maneuvers, and all of the other kids seemed to be able to do these tricks in both directions. Maxime was shocked—it never occurred to him that tricks could be done to the left, as well as to his right. Having graduated from F-One’s early Next Generation camps, Maxime has been on a tear, and over the past few years, has steadily climbed the leaderboard of the GKA Freestyle World Tour. However, he is not just a master of technical handlepass riding; this year, Maxime competed in foilboarding, big air and wingsurfing events as well as jumpstarted a big mountain extreme skiing career. Having won the first and only tour stop of the 2020 kiteboarding freestyle season, Maxime is reaching the height of his career. Yet, despite his precision technicality for freestyle, he’s a dangerous wildcard of natural talent, unwavering control and targeted focus in just about any discipline he steps into.
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R
aised in the alpine playground of the Swiss Alps, Maxime got an early start with action sports. Born in Engelberg, an iconic mountain town surrounded by high altitude lakes and ample ski resorts, Maxime started skiing at the age of two and consequently spent much of his youth driven by the rigors and discipline of competitive alpine skiing. Maxime was only seven when his dad switched from windsurfing to kiting, but Maxime followed suit and quickly became obsessed with the sport too. Maxime recalls traveling with his dad to Bordeaux on the west coast of France, driving 45 minutes on rutted roads to remote beaches where he would help his father inflate gear, rig up lines and spend hours flying trainer kites on the beach. “Back then, gear wasn’t that great for kids, and it was hard to get into kiting because there were currents, the wind was often too strong or would die unpredictably.” When Maxime was 10, he finally got his chance to take a kite onto the water. Having played with a trainer kite on the beach for years, he landed his first backroll before learning how to stay upwind. While deeply entrenched in the junior alpine racing scene, kiteboarding quickly became Maxime’s passion. Notably, he recalls wanting to be a world champion from an early age. The sport didn’t matter so much—for him, the focus was the drive of competition and the glory of winning. In this respect, kiting has never felt like a hobby to Maxime; from the beginning, he has wanted to be the best kiter in the world. Over the next few years, he built some solid kiteboarding skills at his home lake, and a friend in his dad’s kiteboarding network set him up with the Swiss importer for F-One, who granted him a partial equipment sponsorship at the age of 11. Two years later, in 2014, Maxime joined his first F-One Next Generation camp in Tarifa, where under the coaching of Etienne L’Hote, a group of aspiring young kiteboarders learned the fundamentals of freestyle competition. Having opened up Maxime’s world to the basics of competition and executing tricks in both directions, at the age of 13, Maxime entered his first competition, the French Junior European
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LEFT: Posing with his no-wind board of choice under his feet in a quaint French town, Maxime spent the pandemic lockdowns navigating Europe’s oceanside hamlets while waiting for his chance to take on the international freestyle tour. // Photo Matt Georges RIGHT: Transitioning seamlessly from the freestyle tour to park riding, Maxime’s first rail session is caught on camera with this boned out back board stale grab executed like a seasoned park veteran. // Photo Lukas Stiller
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LEFT: At the top of the hunt for this year’s freestyle world championship, Maxime lands all his technical tricks with unrivaled precision and style that incorporates perfectly timed grabs. // Photo Matt Georges RIGHT: Captured in Corsica on an F-One team photo trip, Maxime is not only one of F-One’s top athletes but a longstanding member of the F-One family going back to his first F-One Next Generation kite camp in 2014. // Photo Matt Georges
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Championships in Saint-Pierre-la-Mer. For the next two years, bounded by the constraints of school, Maxime’s focus remained on alpine ski racing in the winter with intermittent summer afternoon kite sessions on the crystal blue waters of Lake Uri by his house, or the occasional long weekend to Leucate with his dad. The highlight of his kiteboarding year continued to be the week-long training camp with F-One’s Next Generation team. Maxime was getting significantly less water time than the other kids at the camp, so in 2015 he dropped conventional schooling and spent three months in Brazil, where he began focusing on his goals. Coming from a background in ski racing, Maxime was accustomed to physical training sessions five times a week and the guided training format of coaching. While kiteboarding represented a well-needed change from the confines of alpine racing, Maxime structured his time in Brazil for competitive success and connected with Fabio Ingrosso, one of kiteboarding’s first professional tour coaches. “I needed a babysitter,” recalls Maxime. “It’s really hard to be so young, to travel and stay disciplined on training, and not just go for fun.” Looking back, Maxime was probably one of the first of his generation to have a kiteboarding coach on tour, yet for him, he was so used to the structure that coaching provided, it just seemed normal. Over time, others would join in the training, like Italy’s Gianmaria Coccoluto, but for the most part, Fabio remained focused on Maxime and the young up and coming female world champion, Mikaili Sol.
For most kiteboarding athletes, the Brazilian training season is an informal routine of hanging out at the lagoon and socializing before and after casual riding sessions. While there’s progression in this open environment, it doesn’t reflect the mental, temporal and physical pressures of competition. With Fabio, Maxime acknowledges that he and Mika would train in ways that they would never do independently. For instance, they would go to the lagoon with a set start time for a heat. From the moment they arrived, they’d have to watch the clock, moving through a set routine of rigging and mental preparations before their heat window and then perform tricks within the format of a regular contest. The three would then score each session, tearing apart everything from the trick list, order of tricks and the exhausting details of execution. As Maxime explains, “Going to the lagoon with friends, riding a bit and crashing a million times—that’s not training—that’s just going to a lagoon to kite.” Typically in the pre-season, Maxime gears his training regimen to improvisation, learning new tricks and integrating new grabs because there’s more time for creative riding with more repetition, but in the run-up to competitions, his training sessions are shorter with lower reps. “Before a competition, I’ll do five set tricks, and if I don’t land them on the first try, then that means I’m not ready for the comp.” In his experience, if he spends another three hours on the water crashing, that’s not going to help him perform in the contest. Leading up to his first event win of this year at the Ilha Do Guajiru competition in Brazil, Maxime’s training sessions typically lasted 15 to 20 minutes, and everyone seemed to notice.
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“People were looking at me weird, saying ‘he isn’t training.’” Contrary to appearances, Maxime was training, teaching himself to perform flawless heats in which he nailed every trick on the first try. Having steadily climbed the GKA freestyle rankings over the last few years, Maxime’s investment in kiteboarding has finally put him in contention for the world championship seat. Yet, during the years when skiing took a backseat to kiteboarding, he began to miss the world of competitive winter sports. In 2019, his final year of eligibility for the Freeride Junior World Championships, Maxime saw an opportunity to get back into big mountain skiing and signed up for a series of qualifying events where he racked up enough podium finishes to get an invitation to the Junior World Championship event in Kappl, Austria. Having skipped one qualifier event due to a scheduled training session in Dakhla, Maxime came close to getting knocked out of contention, but with some luck, his points were sufficient to keep his seat. While many of his fellow competitors knew his name from kiteboarding, pretty much out of nowhere, Maxime surpassed the top junior skiers in the world with a winning run that showcased big, high-speed mountain carves, 360 airs, massive cliff-drops and perfectly stomped landings that claimed him the winning run. Having added skiing to his list of kiteboarding junior world titles, Maxime fully intends to continue his freeride skiing career. With his earlier years split between his two passions, the freeride ski season now fits nicely into his kiteboarding schedule, and he’s achieved a level in both sports that doesn’t force him to choose. Maxime’s success has as much to do with his drive and discipline as it does his natural talent. Scrolling through his Instagram, you’ll see Maxime is wired for success in a wide array of boardsports. Beyond skiing and freestyle kiteboarding, Maxime has displayed an instinctive talent for wingfoiling, foilsurfing and foilkiting. With the launch of the new GKA SuperFoil division this fall, Maxime entered the freeride foil and wing contests, taking the podium in the wingfoil division and squaring off head to head in a kitefoil semi-final with ‘foil Jedi’, Fred Hope. Maxime’s freestyle approach to foiling turned heads, landing a perfectly executed foil handlepass that sowed temporary doubt in Fred’s eventual climb to the win. According to friend, competitor and filmmaker, Noe Font, Maxime deserves extra credit for his quick rise to the top of competitive kiteboarding. “He is probably one of the most multi-talented guys I know; obviously, he’s very good at kiting and skiing (having gained junior world champion titles at both)
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TOP LEFT: At a time when his kiteboarding career was hitting its stride, Maxime got the itch to return to his skiing roots with a successful last minute attempt to win the Junior Freeride World Championship. // Photo courtesy of Freeride World Tour UPPER MIDDLE: Master of many trades, Maxime takes a serious swing at freestyle foilboarding and places third at the recent SuperFoil event in Fortaleza, Brazil. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova UPPER RIGHT: The combination of cliff drops with 360 rotations and hard carving lines on big mountain slopes earned Maxime an instant reputation in the freeskiing world. // Photo courtesy of Freeride World Tour BOTTOM LEFT: Fearlessly charging fully-inverted backrolls on a wingsurfer, Maxime approaches every sport full-tilt with a freakish level that leaves his own friends shaking their heads in awe. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova BOTTOM RIGHT: Maxime’s recent wins are part of a carefully orchestrated training regime that limits water time but ensures every session strategically puts Maxime one step closer to becoming world champion. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova
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and everything else he does.” Whether it’s playing tennis, skating or even surfing, Noe gives Maxime credit for picking these things up super quick despite coming from a landlocked country like Switzerland. “It’s almost annoying how many things he does at such a high level.” With the pandemic putting a halt to last year’s freestyle tour schedule, Maxime started the 2020 competition season with a win at the GKA Distance Battle, a virtual video contest with prefilmed heats from each athlete’s home waters. With extremely fluid tricks, Maxime performed perfect rotations with solid amplitude and super clean landings that gave him the win over Adeuri Corniel. Shortly after the Distance Battle, the GKA announced its first real event in Ilha do Guajiru, Brazil, putting Maxime on track towards his ultimate goal, the Freestyle World Title. With a candid assessment of the playing field, Maxime acknowledges that changes in the judging format have turned in his favor. “Last year, it was hard for me to compete because it was all about power—the biggest backside 7 would get the points. You didn’t need to be technical, you just needed power, and I’ve never been the most powerful rider on the water.” The old scoring favored athletes like Gianmaria Coccoluto, who took aim at speed, height and extra rotations, which also translated to knee-snapping landings. “We were just destroying ourselves,” says Maxime, who fears that having to go that big for a championship makes for short competitive careers. This year’s shift in judging rewards more technical riding and that has played to Maxime’s advantage. Instead of going extra big or adding an extra rotation, grabs and more precision in technical moves are encouraged. Maxime acknowledges the groundbreaking days when Carlos Mario landed a triple handlepass but celebrates that the focus on spinning to win has finally passed. “These days, people would rather see a KGB 7 with a stylish grab than a backside 10,”
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LOWER LEFT: Competing in a time of pandemic, Maxime takes first place during the tour’s only inperson event during 2020. He also walked away with the top spot on the pre-filmed, socially-distanced heat format that the GKA dubbed the Distance Battle. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova RIGHT: Last year, Maxime struggled to score the additional points the judges were awarding for extra power and amplitude. Citing athlete health and longevity, the GKA shifted points towards grab style, precision and technicality—all characteristics that play to Maxime’s strengths. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova
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UPPER LEFT: A young Maxime Chabloz getting his competitive start at his first F-One Next Generation camp in Tarifa. // Photo courtesy of F-One UPPER MIDDLE LEFT: Sampling a little bit of everything including sedimentary jib hits. // Photo Matt Georges UPPER RIGHT: Hampered by the pandemic, Maxime revisits the French countryside and the early spots he shared with his father. // Photo Matt Georges UPPER RIGHT: Maxime is no stranger to horsing around near home at Lake Silvaplana. // Photo Fabien Gattlen RIGHT CENTER: A younger Maxime and training partner Mikaili Sol posing with coach Fabio Ingrosso. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova REMAINING PHOTOS: Maxime exploring new terrain and mixing it up to keep the quest alive. // Photo Matt Georges 41
says Maxime as this is just another logical step in the freestyle evolution. Maxime also welcomes the other modifications to the freestyle format, like the hybrid big air component that shifts the scoring to big air tricks rather than handlepass freestyle when the wind goes over a certain threshold. “Some of the riders don’t want to learn big air tricks, but my opinion is that it’s good for the spectators and good for the sport.” Despite Maxime’s hyper-focus and success in the freestyle category, he’s proven to be a very talented contender in all windsport disciplines. Part of that he attributes to his careerlong sponsor F-One, which makes high-quality performance equipment in every category, from freestyle to surf, foil and now wingsurfing. “Without F-One, I wouldn’t be able to do what I am doing.” Maxime credits his early success to the F-One Next Generation camp because it was the perfect format for a 13-yearold to get a leg up into the competition world. From day one, F-One has continuously supported Maxime’s rise with advanced products, amazing travel opportunities and above all else, a family vibe that prizes tight relationships and loyalty. The goal for this next year is to win the World Championship, but when asked about his biggest obstacle, the confidence in his Swiss accent takes a pause, and he admits the challenge is his mental strength over a longer season. Maxime acknowledges that a shorter season would play to his favor, but a more extended season allows for setbacks and missteps against close rivals that could unwind his mental confidence. “I told myself at the end of last season that I just want to ride my best and have fun competing.” Part of that is taking a strategic and measured approach to training and mixing it up as much as possible. Indeed, Maxime is mixing up 2021 with the freeskiing season underway and a quiver of surfboards, wings and foilboards in his kiteboarding travel bags. From all appearances, it seems Maxime has all the tools to keep himself motivated, inspired and at the top of his game.
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BOTTOM LEFT: Hailing from a landlocked town in the Swiss Alps, with a razor focus on ski racing and freestyle kiteboarding, Maxime displays a natural talent for just about everything under the sun. // Photo Matt Georges RIGHT: Maxime’s goals for the next year are to work on adding stylish grabs to all his tricks, avoid the misstep of over-training by mixing his sessions up with other disciplines and above all else, have fun on his way to win the world tour. // Photo Matt Georges
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PHOT OGRAPHER: FRANCK BERT HUOT | RI DER: J ESSE RI CHMAN
All air, no care.
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This is Surf. It Calls. NORTHKB.COM
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SINGLEA SSKIN CENT Words and photos by Ramon Schoenmaker
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Last year, the Flysurfer snowkite team spent a week in Alpe d’Huez for the annual IFKO Snowkite Masters competition, one of the biggest French events of the season. This contest crowns the IFKO world champions in the disciplines of both Snowkite Freestyle and Snowkite Race. Located in the central portion of the Western Alps, Alpe d’Huez is an incredibly beautiful ski town at the top of a mountain. However, it’s quite a difficult location for snowkiting because it requires the wind to blow from one specific direction and must come directly up the valley in order to be able to snowkite its primary ski slopes. As it turns out, the Snowkite Masters was very unlucky with wind during the event week. There’s another snowkiting venue on the backside of the mountain that sometimes gets windy, but from below, you have no idea if there is wind up there. You can look at the cloud system and watch the mountaintops closely for snow blowing off the peak, but you can never be sure; the only way to find out is to use the lifts to get to the top, then ride down and check the spot for yourself. The valley behind is a nightmare for an event organizer, so it’s not an option to use as a secondary event site. As the contest window opened to just a couple of 30-minute cycles of wind, the struggling weather system seemed to only stir everyone’s frustration. The Flysurfer team had planned some high mountain sessions outside of the contest, but team members Benoit Miquel and Laurent Guyot needed to stay at the event site for the competition
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in case the wind picked up. As a result, only cameraman Bas Meerwijk and I were able to focus our attention on the locations in the surrounding mountains. The French snowkite spots are very diverse, filled with woody ascents, steep traverses, flat high-alpine meadows and craggy mountain peaks with amazing scenery in every direction. Bas and I spent our evenings looking at wind forecasts and checking with locals to determine where to explore next. Much of the system requires the presence of the sun, which strengthens the forecasted winds. With some options on the table, we contacted French snowkiters Alex Robin and Jeremie Arache, who are both extremely fit mountaineers as well as very experienced snowkiters and snowkite instructors who spend their winters in the Serre Chevalier valley near Briancon. They were just returning from an overnight trip in the mountains and were excited to meet up. It looked like we had a two-hour window where the forecasted winds for Col du Lautaret’s north face might work to launch our little side adventure. At the top of Lautaret Pass there was almost no wind, but for a light two to three knots. We had to hike up the mountain towards a small face that had a gentle slope located directly in line with the wind direction, and from there, Alex and Jeremie launched 11m Peak kites and began working their way up the mountain. One of the biggest advantages of snowkiting is that you have such low friction compared to kitesurfing on the water, so the power required to get going on snow, especially when you choose to use skis, is significantly less. In snowkiting (and hydrofoiling on water), the basic principle is that if there is enough wind to launch your kite, fly it up to the zenith and keep it in the air, then you have enough wind to snowkite and begin ascending mountains, depending on the terrain. Because it was light, Alex and Jeremie began looping their kites to build power, working their way up to the first peak of Col de Côté Plaine. There’s a bit of technique that comes into play—you have to actively fly the kite and keep it kitelooping to create a steady pull to gain altitude. One of the most recent innovations in backcountry snowkiting is the development of single skin foil
UPPER LEFT: Located in the central portion of France’s Western Alps, the staging area at Alpe d’Huez had plenty of snow but little in the way of wind. ABOVE: French snowkiters, Alex Robin and Jeremie Arache, use their single skin Peak kites to ascend the first pitch of their climb at Lautaret Pass.
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kites. Flysurfer’s Peak is basically a foil kite where the bottom surface has been cut out, and the canopy is connected to the bridle by an open configuration of triangular-shaped walls that help maintain the kite’s shape. The tips of the Peak still have some closed cells to improve its flying characteristics. But if a 10-meter inflatable weighs around five and a half pounds and a similarlysized closed-cell foil kite weighs about four and a half pounds, a comparable single-skin foil kite weighs approximately three pounds. This weight savings leads to an enormous difference in performance in the lower wind range and in the way the kite flies. The airframe also features a flatter profile which allows it to generate more power in the lower and medium wind ranges. Depower is achieved by changing the angle of attack on the kite and releasing tension on its trailing edge, so the Peak can cover an exceptionally large wind range. Big mountain snowkiting doesn’t require the most high-performance kite out there. Instead, you need a kite that gives you an extensive wind range as well as confidence and control in gusty mountain conditions. Having passed Col de Cote Plaine, Alex and Jeremie positioned themselves towards the prominent peak of Rif de Ruillas. Taking a break from the ascent, they started carving downhill through pockets of fresh snow, leaving big S-tracks down the mountain, only to stop again and use their kites to climb up to the next plateau and on to the ridgetop beyond. When you start in the valley, the wind is often light, but when you arrive at the top of the mountain where the terrain is steep and technical, riders often find themselves grossly overpowered, as the wind can often increase two or three times the wind strength from when they started. For this reason, Flysurfer has the new B-Safe safety system that folds the kite together like an accordion, which instantly kills the power and lands the kite in front of you. As we explored the terrain around Col du Lautaret, we learned the importance of watching the day’s wind and weather forecast. We kept an eye on the clouds and paid attention to the mountain peaks surrounding us. When you see snow blowing away, you can estimate the wind direction, and it also gives you a good indication of stronger winds at the top of the mountains, which should alert you to adjust your kite sizes and gear. Riding up the mountain is not hard work and can be done by almost any snowkiter, but changing winds and challenging terrain at higher elevations are essential to monitor. If the wind strength and direction are right, for smaller pitches, you can descend with your
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Snowkiting has many different disciplines, but for big mountain alpinists, the major draw is its access to remote terrain and the option to ascend mountains for the purpose of skiing down. Some terrain is ideal for laps, ascending and descending with the kite, while other more technical areas require the rider to pack up the kite and freeski down.
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Carving lines amongst the ski tracks of ascent and descent, the depowered trailing edge of the Peak4 allows this rider to find a pocket of wind-blown powder.
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kite using its depower and safety system to carve your way down, but you have to be careful not to accidentally enter into glide phase. This is the scenario where your kite creates enough lift to pluck you off the ground, and you begin flying at increasing altitudes off the descending face of the mountain. Inadvertently getting caught in glide phase is something every snowkiter needs to watch out for, particularly in steeper mountain terrain. Usually, snowkiters place their kite at the side of the window to prevent getting lifted, while experienced snowkiters will kiteloop to manage their altitude and reduce their ground speed to land on the closest slope below. Typically, the mountaineering snowkiter has a different approach; he has already decided his downhill lines while getting ready for his session in the valley, along with which peak he wants to climb. When he summits, he uses his safety system to quickly collect and pack down his lightweight kite and stows his bar and canopy in his backpack. At this point, the rider enjoys virgin alpine carves while skiing down the mountain. The thrill of high mountain snowkiting is not jumping or spinning freestyle moves—it is the thrill of finding new snowkite terrain, enjoying the beauty of Mother Nature and reaching a summit you spotted from your basecamp. As we learned during our time in the French Alps, always do your homework in advance and don’t hesitate to ask local snowkiters for advice on terrain and conditions. Make sure to travel with a partner who is up for the challenge and equally versed in the area you are going to. Snowkiting is three dimensional; you have to know not just about how the wind and your equipment works but also about the snow conditions and the hazards of the terrain. You have to anticipate what the wind does when it hits a steep hill and bends upwards as well as understand the effect that it has on your kite and the power it generates. The variables are always subject to change, so you must make sure to be aware of the forecast and the weather pattern. As the conditions at the Snowkite Masters contest demonstrated to Benoit and Laurent, mountain winds will not always be favorable, and you need to be patient for not just any window, but the right window. Be prepared and think rationally; keep an eye out on the other snowkiters and make sure you can communicate to your kite buddy and the outside world if necessary. Above all else, just know you will not be the first snowkiter to become disorientated because of clouds or fog, or even worse, spend a night in a self-made igloo when your day adventure turns into night.
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While just about any kiter can master the basics of backcountry snowkiting, the interaction of wind and steep terrain can be hazardous to the inexperienced. Kites can take you into remote locations that require specific skillsets to get out of. Just in case, always come prepared to spend the night.
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Š 2020 Patagonia, Inc.
Whether Moona Whyte and Keahi de Aboitiz are laughing about their radically different wetsuit choices or how pumping the waves have been, we’ll never know. James Boulding
Our Yulex® natural rubber* wetsuits are here to make oil- and limestone-based neoprene suits a chapter of your dark past. If you knew the dangers of petroleum- and limestone-based neoprene wetsuit manufacturing, would you buy them? Would you let your children wear them in the lineup? (Hopefully) no. Which is why we’ve tapped into alternative methods to construct our wetsuits since we started making them. Our Yulex® natural rubber wetsuits* come from the hevea tree, are made for the sea and leave a lighter footprint on the environment than ever before. It’s time to take a stand against the dirty neoprene peddler and do what’s best for the natural world. Demand more from your wetsuits. Your choice can change the way wetsuits are made. *85% Yulex natural rubber/15% synthetic rubber by polymer content. The natural rubber is from sources that are Forest Stewardship Council® certified by the Rainforest Alliance.
La Ventana’s Robby Stewart can be spotted a mile away with his trademark bucket hat, big smile and friendly shakas. Deaf since birth, Robby is a resourceful communicator with a hard-charging style on the water. // Photo Rich Baum
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PROFILED
ROBBY STEWART San Bartolo, Baja
Taking Visual Learning to the next Level Language takes many different forms and nowhere is that more evident than in the quiet but enigmatic kiteboarding abilities of Baja’s Robby Stewart. Highly skilled in all kite disciplines, Robby is a force of nature; often surrounded by close friends, Robby’s interactions with the world thrive without the use of his auditory senses. His experience is in many aspects exceptional—growing up in a small southern Baja mountain town, he never learned the basics of reading or writing, or more importantly for someone without the ability to hear, no awareness of a universal sign language. Instead, he invented his own home language to communicate with friends and family. Having been born deaf in Whiterock, Canada, at a very young age, Robby moved with his father to San Bartolo, Baja, a small mountain pueblo perched upon the road between La Ventana and Los Barriles. His dad was a blacksmith by trade, and Robby grew up playing in the dusty streets, working on cars and riding dirtbikes until he discovered kiteboarding in 2014. Robby began learning the basics of kiteboarding from childhood friend and Los Barriles kite instructor, Ernesto Lucero, in part through the basic hand language they had used to communicate as kids. According to Ernesto, “Language has never been a barrier for us. Robby is very smart in that way.” Looking back with a laugh, to teach the safety side of kiting, sometimes Ernesto would have to put himself at risk in order to demonstrate what not to do. The following year, Robby, along with three friends, moved into a single person tent in an arroyo in La Ventana. He ran ‘beach patrol’ chasing lost kiters, picking up people on his 4-wheeler, and swept local shaper Ando Flores’ shaping bay all while “having a lot of fun and trying to survive,” as Ernesto puts it. Delaney Overstreet, the owner of La Ventana Beach Resort in South Beach, recalls meeting Robby and immediately sizing him up as a smart kid with some very useful skills. From bartending to baking pizza, helping with spearfishing tours and wrenching on cars, Robby excelled at just about any task that was handed to him.
With a mastery of twin tip riding, megaloops, strapless freestyle on surfboards, and now his most recent passion, foilboarding, Robby became infamous for his hard-charging style on the water that impressed friends like professional kite foiler Fred Hope and has led to equipment deals and support from Slingshot and Ride Engine. “Robby rides hard and breaks a lot of stuff because he really throws himself at the sport,” says Fred. To compensate for the lack of auditory information, Robby’s head is on a swivel, constantly looking around. “If you’re in trouble, he’s the one that will see you a mile away and come help.” When asked how he excelled in kiteboarding, Robby pulls up a shot of Matchu Lopez on Instagram; as an incredibly visual learner, he attributes his success in kiting to watching others as well as countless videos and Instagram clips. Having created his own intuitive language in which he uses to communicate, Robby is credited with being very skilled at connecting with his friends beyond spoken and written words. According to Robby, being deaf doesn’t hold him back on the water, but his biggest challenge is communicating with people on the beach and in social settings. If you manage to get his attention on the beach, Robby often flashes a big smile and a shaka, but communicating in situations outside his work and peer group can go awry. Sometimes strangers ask for a launch, but without making eye contact, many times, people impatiently assume they are being snubbed. However, about three years ago, Robby met La Ventana resident Bev Brits, a retired sign-language instructor, and together, they’ve been working to teach Robby as well as his friends American Sign Language. While sign language awareness is steadily growing among Robby’s circle, kiteboarding’s common bonds have become a language for him to relate to a larger community. These days you will find Robby skillfully carving around on a foilboard or catching waves with a wingsurfer, making good on his immediate goal of progressing in windsports and pursuing a lifestyle that provides him as much time on the water as possible.
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Having accidentally stumbled into the international kiteboarding hub of Cabarete, artist Samantha Chilvers has made kiteboarding her life while pursuing her childhood dreams of producing fine art. // Photo Josh Messer
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PROFILED
SAMANTHA CHILVERS Cabarete, Dominican Republic
Daring to follow the Painter’s Calling “I was born to paint; it was in my blood,” says Samantha Chilvers when speaking about her two passions. However, stumbling into her second love, kiteboarding, she attributes this to the serendipitous nature of dumb luck. Having grown up in London, Ontario, a landlocked suburban town planted in the flatlands between Toronto and Detroit, Sam describes her childhood as the typical uneventful North American upbringing. Born into a lineage of artists, Samantha’s father taught her the basics of paint at a young age and as far back as she can remember, “there was never a question that I would do anything else.” Having graduated with a fine arts degree, she pursued her calling funded by local grants, struggling through the early beginnings of an art career, having never traveled the world or seen the ocean. In her early 20’s, she received an inheritance of $15,000. This nest egg was supposed to be a down payment on a house or maybe an incentive to settle down and start having babies, but instead, she took off on a whim to the Dominican Republic to experience a life of art reinvented by completely unfamiliar surroundings. Searching the local towns for a beachside apartment to rent, she stumbled upon a small bungalow just off Kite Beach in Cabarete. Having never seen the ocean or the niche culture of kiteboarding, she asked a passerby about the sport, and he insisted she would have to take a lesson. Like any good tourist, she signed up with a local kite school, and although self-admittedly, she lacked natural athletic talent, she made up for it in tenacity, throwing good money after bad to master the challenging sport. It took her a year to learn the basics of riding upwind, but the more advanced tricks seemed to click as she spent her days at La Boca, hanging with the pros and working her way towards her first equipment sponsorship. In those early days, Sam would never share the details of her modest inheritance—the small sum was a chance to be whoever she wanted to be, and in Cabarete, she was a self-proclaimed artist. The money allowed her to learn to kiteboard, network with people from all over the kite scene and most importantly, granted her the freedom to experiment with her painting style and subjects. When the money ran out, she entered a starving artist phase that
alternated between boom and bust. Some days she’d struggle to buy food, ending up with a banana for lunch and thoughts of throwing in the towel and succumbing to her career of last resort, taking the IKO instructor’s course. Other days she would sell a painting for $10,000 at a Mai Tai event or paint a portrait of someone’s dog to keep the dream alive. Half-jokingly, she admits, “You’d be blown away at how many people will pay $500 for a painting of their dog,” yet slowly, Sam began to see her art take hold in the world. Sam started producing a series of wave paintings that were finding their way into people’s homes. A cross between Jackson Pollocks’ fine art and Clark Little’s shore pound photography, Sam’s wave studies became a more dependable source of revenue. If the aim of every artist is to land larger galleries and sophisticated big-ticket clients, wave paintings are a tough vehicle to make that jump since the upper echelon of fine art galleries often regard the subject matter as cliché and overdone. As an artist with greater ambitions, Sam used to regard her wave paintings as an economic imperative rather than a greater artistic calling, but after receiving a letter from a woman in palliative care, who related how the warmth of Sam’s wave painting on her wall brought a smile to her every morning, Sam began to recognize the value of her art’s impact beyond the explicit value of its sales price or fine art status. The feedback from her beach scenes have ignited a belief in the deeper energy transactions of her work. Sam’s paintings transcend a wide array of subjects from nature and simple portraiture to expressive and figurative scenes that utilize an impressive range of stylistic techniques. To this day, she often calls upon the very techniques taught to her by her father when she was a young girl. In addition to her personal experimentations with paint, she manages her own gallery at the Millenium, one of Cabarete’s high-end beachfront resorts, where she curates shows for her work as well as for other artists. Looking back at her suburban roots, there’s no roadmap for the bohemian life she lives in Cabarete, but Sam’s story is proof that with ample amounts of persistence, passion and a bit of spontaneity, a healthy and successful kite life balance is within everyone’s reach.
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Hotel & Villas La Ventana, BCS
Need
QuickTime™ and a decompressor
hoteltodobien.com
Things always look better from the front row.
• Epic Baja La Ventana location in the center of the kiting action, and the best low-stress spot for beginners. • Quiet, cozy rooms just steps from the beach. • Onsite Kite/Foil/ SUP/Mt. Bike center; rentals & lessons. •Waterfront dining; delicious food; Breakfast & Lunch comes w/your room! • Yoga and massage available. • Giant beachfront hot tub, too!
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VentanaWindsports.com
A B E A C H F R O N T W AT E R S P O R T S R E S O R T KITEBOARDING • FOILING • WINDSURFING from our private beach location
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EXPOSED
If you’re willing to hunt, the industrial character of the Columbia River offers up a steady supply of jib hits. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wave or a wall of concrete, Eric Riensta will try to smack that lip. // Photo James Ropner
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EXPOSED
Ollie Bridge likes his darkslides dry and with a healthy sprinkling of sand. One of Flysurfer’s most versatile athletes, Ollie is no stranger to big air, freeride and wave riding nor is he scared of gapping big swaths of dry land and tall structures. // Photo Dominik Leitner
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EXPOSED
After a long day on the jet ski retrieval team at the Squamish spit, Jack Reider finally hits the water to nail this Slim 9 for the first time. Empty sunset progression sessions with friends are the stuff legends are made of. // Photo Chris Rollett
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EXPOSED
With perfect kicker style, Alby Rondina ‘aces’ the grab with his Switchblade super low against Fuerteventura’s sandstone backdrop. // Photo James Boulding
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EXPOSED
Celebrating his first year as both an athlete and a brand co-owner, Kevin Langeree spins into the new year with Reedin’s second product collection on the horizon. // Photo Ydwer van der Heide
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Over 40 years of experience combined
Imagine kiteboarding #beyond... www.reedinkitesusa.com @reedin.usa
KELSICK’S WORDS BY JOE WINOW SKI | PHO T OS BY JAKE KEL SICK AND MEGAN GRANT
NEXT CHAPTER
F R O M C R E AT I N G C O N T E N T T O C R E AT I N G K I T E R S
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JAKE IS NOW SETTING OFF ON A NEW KITEBOARDING ADVENTURE WITH HIS FIANCÉ, MEGAN GRANT, TO BUILD A DESTINATION KITE SCHOOL THAT CAPITALIZES ON ANTIGUA’S UNFETTERED BEAUTY AND IDEAL KITEBOARDING CONDITIONS.
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ack in 2004, a young 11-year-old Jake Kelsick followed his father’s transition into kiteboarding on the island of Antigua in the lesser Antilles on the eastern edge of the Caribbean. Having climbed the ranks of the small Antiguan kiteboarding scene and launched a successful career
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as a professional park rider and content creator, 16 years later, Jake is now setting off on a new kiteboarding adventure with his fiancé, Megan Grant, to build a destination kite school that capitalizes on Antigua’s unfettered beauty and ideal kiteboarding conditions.
FAR LEFT: Jake settles into his new role as kite school owner while sharing the island stoke and his lifelong love of kiteboarding. CENTER: The setup of Jabberwock Beach on the north side of the island delivers perfect side-on wind with a long, bending beach for learning laps. TOP RIGHT: Megan compliments Jake with tight riding skills and a background in kite instruction and the service industry. LOWER RIGHT: Having proposed in the middle of a session, the newly-engaged Jake and Megan celebrate the beginning of a new start.
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UPPER LEFT: Jake Kelsick sits with friend, mentor and legendary kiter Andre Phillipp. // Photo Shabs Kirchner UPPER MIDDLE LEFT: Andre Phillipp with a stylish indy air shows off his Tona line of boards. // Photo Gareth Williams UPPER RIGHT: A young Jake Kelsick dressed in his school uniform poses with kite icon Andre Phillipp. // Photo Tracy Kraft Leboe LOWER RIGHT: From GoPros to a Sony compact camera, Jake has been a prodigious content creator from the beginning. LOWER LEFT: Jake finds himself at home on his new North kiteboarding gear.
JAKE PIONEERED THE GENRE OF KITEBOARDING LIFESTYLE VLOGS WITH A KNACK FOR CATCHING EYEBALLS AND DOCUMENTING THE CARIBBEAN KITEBOARDING EXPERIENCE. As a pioneer of the wakestyle boot movement and one of the most famous professional kiteboarders in the early years, fellow Antiguan, Andre Phillip, helped shape the riding of a young Jake Kelsick, pushing him onto the international kite stage as well helping him land sponsors and opportunities for travel. Jake never wanted to be a competition kiteboarder, and under Andre’s guidance, he was able to avoid that route. By focusing on creating videos showcasing the epic waters of Antiqua and freestyle-oriented riding, Jake became well-known for his park videos, travel photos and trick tutorials. Taking content creation to the next level, Jake pioneered the genre of kiteboarding lifestyle vlogs with a knack for catching eyeballs and documenting the Caribbean kiteboarding experience.
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CARGO TRAILERS ARE ALMOST NON-EXISTENT IN ANTIGUA, SO JAKE AND MEGAN PURCHASED A BOAT TRAILER AND BUILT THEIR OWN MOBILE HEADQUARTERS—AN EQUIPMENT/OFFICE THEY LIKE TO CALL THE ‘SHREDSHED.’
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Joining ranks with his girlfriend, now fiancé Megan Grant, the two came up with a plan to capitalize on their combined kiteboarding experience and build their own kite school. With tons of yacht-life traffic moving through the Antiguan bays, there’s always a fresh pool of clients looking for a piece of the kiteboarding experience. Jabberwock is the main spot and best beach for teaching with side-on wind, but because it is considered
a national park, any school setup must be mobile. Cargo trailers are almost non-existent in Antigua, so Jake and Megan purchased a boat trailer and built their own mobile headquarters—an equipment/office they like to call the ‘Shredshed.’ Partnering with North and Mystic, the couple have all the high-quality equipment they need to create, as Jake puts it, “that kid in the candy store experience.” 83
WE HAVE SPENT NEARLY TWO DECADES CRASHING, DESTROYING KITES, AND GETTING DRAGGED DOWN THE BEACH SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO!
Building up a professional reputation and then wrapping that notoriety around a destination kite experience is not a new trick. Yet, Jake brings a unique career of coaching experience and video tutorials to Antigua’s picture-perfect beginner spot. Megan’s instructional background, organizational skills and experience in the service industry compliment Jake’s professional skills to ensure that every customer gets top-notch instruction both on and off the water. Kelsick Kiteboarding is the next step for Jake and Megan’s sustainable island lifestyle, and together, they remain rooted in the stoke and passion of the Antiguan kiteboarding scene.
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METHOD
THE ROCKET AIR GRAB WO R D S BY C H R I S B O B RY K | P H O T O S BY M A X X E VA N
During the rocket air grab, both your hands release from the bar and grab the nose of your board at the same time for a stylish and technical trick. Before attempting this trick, if you have a stopper ball, it’s best to pull it halfway down your throw line. Since I do not have a stopper ball on my bar, I tend to free-fall faster when I let go of the bar, but I like it this way because it forces me to get more amplitude on the launch. This grab is best done with your kite parked at a 45° angle while relying on your pop rather than the vertical sending power of your kite. Once your board has left the water, wait until you reach your peak height before letting go of the bar and grabbing the nose of your board with both hands. If you let go too soon, you will drop from the sky before you can go for the grab. To make the grab work, it helps to bone (aka extend) your rear leg out downwards while bending the front leg in so that the tip of the board is as close as possible to your chest. Grab your board with both hands. Just before landing, try to quickly grab the bar with your backhand and pull in to ride away with speed. The challenging part about this grab is maintaining your posture since releasing the bar eliminates the kite’s pull. During most tricks, the rider can balance or even swing like a monkey from the bar, but what makes this grab so satisfying is that the rider’s hands are completely removed from the bar—this shifts your attention from the kite and highlights the style of the grab. The kite is often used as a crutch that offers stability during jumps, but the rocket air will give you a sense of freedom as if you don’t have a kite at all, which is a very wild feeling for most kiteboarders.
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THE KITE IS OFTEN USED AS A CRUTC H THAT OFFERS STABILIT Y DURING JUMPS, BUT THE RO C K E T A I R W I L L G I V E YO U A S E N S E O F F R E E D O M A S I F YO U D O N ’ T H AV E A K I T E AT A L L .
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Photo Svetlana Romantsova
Supernatural THE
INTERVIEW BY BRENDAN RICHARDS
BEHIND THE CLOAK WITH FRED H O P E
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Preface to our conversation with Fred Hope
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ypically, the athletic field is populated with a group of individuals that roughly resemble one another and use the same basic approach with small stylistic tweaks to climb the ladder of sponsorship and competition. But every once in a while, an outlier comes along that completely breaks the mold and changes the game, and in Fred Hope’s case, skillfully taunts the boundaries of physics and the basic laws of nature. With a laidback and low-key style that is metered by analytical precision, Fred Hope has a good-natured outlook and a general commitment to pushing foilboarding’s boundaries with the baseline goal of having fun. Now midway through a marine biology degree at the University of Washington and fresh off his win at SuperFoil, kiteboarding’s first world-caliber freestyle foil competition, Hope’s Jedi version of freeride foiling is not only setting the tone for the hoards flocking to the foil’s magic carpet ride but he is also commanding the direction of competition foiling. We caught up with Fred between his university exams to learn a bit more about the foiling line he’s taken.
LOWER LEFT: If Fred Hope didn’t invent sit-down foilboarding he certainly perfected it with insane balance and casual style. // Photo Kaden Sponhauer RIGHT: With his trademark bucket hat, wiry limbs and freakishly talented knack for riding foils, when Fred is on the water he can be spotted from a mile away. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova 90
HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START WITH KITEFOILING SPECIFICALLY? I grew up living in Baja, Mexico, during the winters, and one of the days when it wasn’t windy enough to kite, I went out on a rowboat with a friend. While we were out there, Gabor Vagi zoomed right by us on one of the first foils. I immediately wanted to try it, so I put an ad in the La Ventana View, the town’s email newsletter chain, to see if I could borrow someone’s foil to give it a try. I was 16 at the time, and Dan Koff emailed me back saying he had one I could use. It had one of the original Carafino wings on the front, a homemade mast and a weird
custom wing on the back, all bolted to a Wam surfboard. I weighed about 130lbs and the contraption weighed something like 45lbs so it was super awkward to get into the water. It took me a couple of times to get the hang of it—I kept finding myself way upwind, and the only way to get back downwind was to sit on the board and taxi it back down to where I started. It was awkward and unstable, but I immediately latched onto it because the foil was a great way to get more time on the water on those light wind days.
HOW DID YOU TRANSITION FROM AN OBSESSION WITH STRAPLESS SURFBOARDS TO THE EARLY MAKINGS OF A FOIL PRODIGY? I don’t think I ever really decided to pursue foilboarding; it was mostly about choosing the right equipment for the conditions. Although I split my time between strapless surfboards and foilboarding, I think relative to other people, I excelled at foilboarding and started putting more time into it just to get the most days on the water. During my first season foilboarding, I came back that summer to Hood River and got some gear from LP Foils, a custom foil house started by Peter Lederer in the Gorge. I spent a lot of time on the water and started experimenting with strapped jumping. At some point, Tony Logosz from Slingshot gave me a red and grey deck to check out and I decided to try it
without straps. That was the first time I rode a foilboard strapless and at first, I wasn’t really hooked, partly because it was hard and I was still really into jumping. But, at some point, I got bored with jumping and at about that same time I became interested in more technical riding. I started thinking about how to use the kite differently and that’s where footstraps became a problem. When you use straps, you are locked into one place on the board, but by going strapless you can dial in your stance for different speeds and angles to achieve the greatest efficiency. As soon as I took the straps off, the board became a stage to dance around on without the risk of tripping up. 91
EARLY ON YOU BEGAN TO TURN HEADS AT THE BEACH. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE INITIAL INNOVATIONS YOU BROUGHT TO FOILING? I began to start thinking about experimenting with stuff that you couldn’t do on any other kind of board. Jumping and backrolls were possible on a surfboard, so the search began for tricks that were unique to the foilboard. I started experimenting with the kite upwind of me, and I remember one of my friends asking me, “What is the plan with that?” At that point, I had no idea. I just wanted to see how far upwind of me I could get the kite. At first, there was no plan to get the kite around me—I was just messing with the wind. Eventually, I would go so far that
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the kite would fall out of the sky, land in the water, and I would still be foiling. I began pumping when the kite would fall on the water, getting closer and closer to going all the way around the kite. Then I tried shorter, 10-meter lines on a homemade bar and that instantly changed the equation. I could foil around the kite while keeping the lines tensioned, and that became the around the world trick. When I transitioned back to regular 20-meter lines, I couldn’t maintain the tension, but I could position the kite just perfectly so that it would glide downwind while I went around the world. These became the two forms of the around the world that I have today.
I BEGAN TO START THINKING ABOUT EXPERIMENTING WITH STUFF THAT YOU COULDN’T DO ON ANY OTHER KIND OF BOARD. JUMPING AND BACKROLLS WERE POSSIBLE ON A SURFBOARD, SO THE SEARCH BEGAN FOR TRICKS THAT WERE UNIQUE TO THE FOILBOARD.
LEFT: Famous for his pro-level kitefoiling, Fred is also no slouch when it comes to strapless freestyle. // Photo Bob Stawicki MIDDLE: Fred’s style integrates high speeds with razor-precise board control through aggressive maneuvers that are both smooth yet extreme at the same time. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova RIGHT: Early in his progression, Fred chose to stop using straps and has paved the way for strapless foil airs through the use of grabs and technique. // Photo Adam Lapierre
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PEOPLE END UP MESMERIZED WHEN THEY WATCH YOU FROM THE BEACH. YOUR RIDING SEEMS TO BE FAST, INCREDIBLY PRECISE AND TENUOUS. WHAT ALLOWS YOU TO PUSH THE LIMITS OF FINESSE AND SETS YOUR STYLE APART? I’ve always been focused on efficiency—it’s been a big thing growing up. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I’ve thought about how systems are balanced, how things can be super connected and trying not to waste power. Perhaps it’s tied to environmentalism, or maybe it’s a fundamental principle of wind-based sports. When you’re propelled by nature, you’re really trying not to waste energy, and that becomes more apparent in light wind foilboarding. For instance, when you’re transferring through a foil tack, if you position and tune the kite just right and keep your board and weight working together, you can come out of the tack going faster. If you’re really attentive, you can use the lift of the foil and your body’s weight to propel you through the move, but this requires that everything in the equation is connected.
Fred slacks his lines and carves through his around the world trick at the SuperFoil event in Brazil where he took the podium. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova
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Part of it is also knowing exactly what the wind is doing, keeping an eye on the water, watching gusts move across the water as well as constantly tuning your body position and the trim of the bar. The consistency in my riding comes from hours on the foil. I don’t think of myself as a natural athlete—I can’t do a frontflip or a backflip on a trampoline—but because I’ve spent a ton of time on a foil, I can do things that are equally technical. Once I went to college, I began only kiting during breaks or sometimes on the weekends. I wasn’t expecting the positive impact this would have on my foiling. I’d go on these kiting breaks and figure out tricks I’d never thought of, likely due to the time away from the sport. I’d also spend a decent amount of time sitting in class thinking about new tricks to try.
Caught on camera with the 633 freeride foil, Fred typically defaults to the Phantasm 657 for his high octane style of riding. // Photo Kaden Sponhauer
FOILBOARDING EQUIPMENT HAS EVOLVED A GREAT DEAL SINCE YOUR INITIAL SESSION WITH THE HOMEMADE LOANER YOU LEARNED ON. WHAT IS THE IDEAL GEAR FOR WHAT YOU DO NOW? The equipment has evolved for the different disciplines in kitefoiling. Traditionally, you have low-aspect foils for surf/ beginner, freeride equipment for the average rider and faster high-aspect wings for racing. What I’m doing is in between the freeride equipment and the race equipment. Carves, airs, speed and maneuvers are things I focus on. What’s nice about the new Phantasm 657 is how versatile it is. You can easily hit 30mph on it then go ride some swell up at the Hatch going 12mph. This paired with its insane maneuverability and stability are the
reasons I chose to ride it. The 730 is a lot more like a race foil, being stiffer in the maneuverability sense while going slightly faster. The 633 is a little slower and a little less maneuverable. Most people are going to be happiest with the 633 because it’s easy to use and super stable at slow to medium speeds. The 657 is less stable and faster, which carries momentum into moves where you’re not being propelled by the kite. This perfect balance between lift, maneuverability and speed is what fits my style of riding.
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THIS YEAR THE GKA SHOWCASED A NEW FREESTYLE FOILBOARDING EVENT IN BRAZIL AND YOU TOOK HOME THE PODIUM. WHAT’S THE STORY ON FOIL COMPETITION?
impressed with the height of his jumps, taking the board off, doing more spins and landing fast. At one point in a semi-final, I was up against Maxime Chabloz, who landed a 20-foot high dangle-pass; I thought I was going to get eliminated right there, yet I ended up taking that heat.
I first got the invite to the SuperFoil event in September, and I shrugged it off because I didn’t know who would go; I was rehabbing an injury from the summer and I would be in the thick of school. I hurt my hip landing a backroll on my surfboard, and the labrum in my hip’s ball and socket needed some downtime. I had been taking it easy for most of the summer, doing tons of wingfoiling instruction and the occasional photoshoot. When I was back at college, I got a text from Slingshot’s brand manager, Alex Fox, asking me if I was going to Brazil, and at that point, I still wasn’t sure. I finished my midterms a week before the foil contest, and it looked like it was shaping up to be a legitimate event. I was also a bit curious as to what the new format would look like and wanted to see if I could influence the direction of where competition freestyle foilboarding would go. Since I needed a break, I got a last-minute ticket and headed to Brazil, even though at that point I hadn’t kited in a couple of months. Knowing that there are two very different variations of freestyle foilboarding, one being strapped big air tricks and the other being my style, which focuses on unstrapped technical freeride tricks and smaller airs with board grabs, I wasn’t sure how the judging would be calibrated. I knew my biggest competition would be Charles Brodell, a French rider who does big strapped-in airs, and throughout the qualifying heats, was getting higher scores for his tricks. What we were doing was completely opposite, not that his riding isn’t cool. If I was someone that didn’t know every detail of kiting, and I was watching Charles, I’d be super
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Having not kited in quite a while and knowing that my style of strapless freeride foilboarding was up against strapped freestyle, I was going to need more diversity in my tricks. When other riders went back to the beach to rest between heats, I would foil upwind and work on new tricks. I started landing new jumps where I’d launch toeside, grab the rail of the board through a down loop and then land the trick sitting down. Getting the foil to reengage on landings and immediately create lift before riding away is hard, especially when you’re sitting down. But it certainly shows you that we haven’t tapped the true potential of foiling—if I’m able to go upwind and come up with new tricks during a contest—then it confirms that the future of foilboarding is wide open. After winning that heat against Maxime, it opened up the questions about scoring and how the judges would be rating our two very different styles of riding. There was this concern that a scoring system that only rewards technical handlepasses would not appeal to the typical foilboarder who identifies with carving, tacking and strapless riding. Clearly, there are going to be advocates for the big air strapped style of riding, but the goal with the SuperFoil contest was to create an event that would engage the growing number of foilboarding consumers and ensure it was relatable to the market. I ended up in the final going head to head with Charles Brodel, and it was probably the most fun heat I have ever had. We were screaming around each other in close proximity, demonstrating the two different styles of foilboarding, both at very high levels. At the end of that heat, I half expected the judges to call a tie because we were both doing such incredible things, but I ended up getting higher points and walking away with the trophy. In the conversations that followed, the judges were allocating points to moves that were foil specific, and the stuff that you could do with twin tips just didn’t score quite as high. Sure, you could land a handlepass in competition, but when pitted against the flow and efficiency-inspired freeride moves I was focusing on and executing solidly, it was enough to connect all the dots for the win.
LEFT: Hesitant to sign up for the GKA’s new hydrofoil freestyle format, when Fred heard Charles Brodel was going, he wanted to step up and see if he could influence the direction of foiling’s first freeride competition. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova UPPER RIGHT: Going head to head with strapped riders, Fred knew he needed the widest range of strapless tricks and spent the time in-between heats upwind inventing new moves. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova LOWER RIGHT: Carving a hard line with the cityscape of Fortaleza in the background, Fred focused on high-speed maneuvers and extra intensity that helped stack the points in his favor. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova 97
LEFT: The brave combination of a powered kiteloop and strapless air results in a high-altitude free-for-all. // Photo Svetlana Romantsova RIGHT: According to Fred, he never chose foilkiting over strapless freestyle, but having excelled in the former, it has staked him a reputation. // Photo Adam Lapierre
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JUST TO BACK UP FOR A SECOND, WHAT IS YOUR SECRET TO LANDING BIG STRAPLESS AIRS? It’s really hard to get the wing to reengage when you’re landing strapless, but it’s all about getting the perfect angle. I try to get the fuselage to enter the water at about 45° down, and as soon as you feel it engage, you add back foot pressure. Freeride foils with lower aspect wings aren’t quite as extreme because they have more surface area. Essentially, you are entering the water
at an angle that will clear the air pockets that attach to the top/ trailing edge of the wing. It’s all about Bernoulli’s principle; you get your lift from the water on top of the foil flowing faster than the bottom. Although I’m studying marine biology, I had to take some physics prerequisites and that has put some of the stuff I’m trying to do on a foil into perspective.
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Photo Svetlana Romantsova Photo Svetlana Romantsova
IT’S ALL ABOUT BERNOULLI’S PRINCIPLE; YOU GET YOUR LIFT FROM THE WATER ON TOP OF THE FOIL FLOWING FASTER THAN THE BOTTOM.
FRESH OFF A WIN IN FOILBOARDING’S FIRST LEGITIMATE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP AND WITH A BIT MORE COLLEGE WORK AHEAD OF YOU, WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP? I have about two years left of college left and with the pandemic, I’m not in a hurry to cut that short. I’m not entirely sure what’s next. I’ve always thought of kiting as a hobby that gets me around, rather than a job, but I would like to do some pro-coaching trips for foilers that are looking to master basic 100
and more advanced foiling skills. With my bachelor’s in Marine Biology, I’d normally go straight into research, but I also feel like it would be a missed opportunity to not use my kiting skills to see more of the world. I’ll get back to you on that question in the next couple of years!
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WORDS BY XANDER RAITH | PHOTOS BY TOBY BROMWICH
LIFE
BEYOND THE PARK
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W
hen the pandemic hit the East Coast, I did my best to socially isolate, hunkering down in my hometown of Nantucket, 30 miles off the southern tip of Massachusetts. I worked hard to respect the local guidelines in an attempt to mitigate and recognize the emerging threats of the global crisis. If traveling is a staple of an athlete’s life and often taken for granted, amidst the bizarre backdrop of life interrupted, the lockdown became an unforeseen opportunity to enjoy the Massachusetts coastline’s world-class surf, windy seasons and endless fisheries. Despite the frigid water temps, my 6.5mm wetsuit kept me warm all spring, allowing me entrance into the ocean nearly every day for the purpose of surfing, kiting or fishing. Having spent much of my youth pursuing professional snowboarding, the lockdowns allowed me to follow Nantucket’s transition through the seasons. Home for what turned out to be an incessantly windy spring, a perfect foil and wake kiting summer and an epic fade into fall with multiple hurricane swells—I kited more in the past six months than I have in my entire life. In the middle of the summer, my sponsor Duotone called with a favor. Duotone was hard-pressed to produce marketing materials for its 2021 line amidst the travel restrictions of the pandemic. Renowned kite photographer Toby Bromwich had proposed I fly out to Hood River to meet up with Colleen Carroll, Duotone’s female icon, and take advantage of the Columbia River Gorge’s consistent wind and diverse locations. However, the enthusiasm and impromptu photo mission did not dilute the reality that I would need to cross the country and travel amidst a time of great uncertainty, despite the lack of awareness and validation of its dangers from our nation’s leader. I was eager to travel but also wanted to be conscious of my decision, taking into consideration both my desire to embrace the spontaneity of the trip, the reality of our world’s current health crisis and the impact my movement could have on others. My last flight was in early March on a return trip from California, during which the necessity for mask coverage was not yet recognized, and toilet paper had become an extinct commodity. Besides the chaos of an impending nationwide lockdown, traveling was business as usual. However, six months later, the normalcy of traveling had changed. The airports were ghostly; hardly any shops were open, the lines for security and check-in were nonexistent and seats at each gate were staggered. But the most defining difference was the painless ability for me to skateboard through the airport, a fun technique that maximizes airport efficiency yet typically results in a swift pursuit from airport security—but not this time. The flight itself was relatively empty, and I enjoyed an entire row to myself. Truthfully, besides having to wear a mask and navigate the constant mental anxiety of caution while surveilling my surroundings for potential lapses in safety, it was one of the most pain-free travel experiences I have ever had.
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TOP LEFT: Making the transition from snowboarding to freeride, it’s not hard to imagine a winter parka over this boned out stale grab. TOP RIGHT: Having traded his boots for regular strap bindings, Xander first had to correct his board’s tendency to wing off into outer space during load and pop. BOTTOM RIGHT: Fellow park and freestyle athlete, Colleen Caroll mastered the crossover into civilian freeride a few years back with her typical upbeat grace and charm. LOWER LEFT: Trading his Vegas C-kite for the big air Rebel, Xander explores parts of the Columbia River Gorge he never knew existed.
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TOP LEFT: From lace ups to strap ons, the Entity system offers infinite dimensions of adjustment when you peel back the details of strap bindings. ABOVE: Bringing boardsports grabs to the dangle air discipline of freeride, Xander executes an inverted crail grab over the Hood River estuary. TOP RIGHT: Born and raised in Nantucket, Xander spent his childhood chasing snow, frequently spending summers training up on Mt. Hood’s glacier. MIDDLE RIGHT: Cycling through Duotone’s freeride gear, Xander lays into a carve with the Spike, a dedicated light wind board. BOTTOM RIGHT: Where the coniferous forest yields to basalt rock and rolling grassland, Xander and Colleen explore both the east and west.
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Toby picked me up at the arrivals curb at PDX, and within 15 minutes, we were racing east along the southern banks of the winding Columbia River. From the car window, I could see whitecaps crumbling from the building wind as we approached Hood River. Confronted with howling wind and a limited timeframe to cover an entire range of boards, kites, and bars, we wasted no time and were on the water in a matter of hours. When opportunity knocks, it’s best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The unmentioned wrinkle in Toby’s invitation to Duotone’s freeride photoshoot is that I have never been a freeride athlete. Generally speaking, most freestyle athletes begin their kiteboarding adventure with the standard fare of jumping, spins and maybe some board-off moves before maturing into the more technical specialties of freestyle and park riding. My submersion into kiteboarding and more recently the industry side as an athlete had remained largely dedicated to the niche portion of park riding. I got into kiteboarding due to my long history with snowboarding and my early fascination with kite park riding. My inclination to learn how to kiteboard stemmed from videos such as the Freeride Project and park events including the Triple-S Invitational. As soon as I learned to fly a kite, I was building homemade features with my brother, lacing up wakeboard boots and trying to imitate what felt like snowboarding on the water, a perfect substitute for the summer months when the mountains were closed. I have always acknowledged that park riding certainly has its logistical difficulties. Yet, it is an integral aspect of kiteboarding that distinguishes the sport’s potential and recognizes the faults that continue to impede kiteboarding from its respective definition as a mainstream technical boardsport with the likes of skateboarding, wake and snowboarding. Conversely, for this photoshoot, Toby’s desired requirements pertained to riding strapped boards with fins and kite models designed for “boosting,” and if we were lucky, a tactical strike mission to the Oregon coast to shoot surfboards and wave kites. Toby was looking for someone who could showcase the equipment’s big air capabilities, while also illustrating the product’s associative attainability, capturing the interest of a complete novice ranging to the most avid consumer. In short, my idealistic forte was not necessarily what Toby had in mind, but that being said, I do admire freeriders, the ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles) of kiteboarding, those that can “do it all.” These riders not only have the ability to handle anything that is thrown at them but can do so at a level that rivals the distinguished best. With this in mind, I was happily up for the challenge to expand my repertoire and embrace the potential of all-terrain kiteboarding. My unfamiliarity with freeride equipment revealed itself in my first couple of passes in front of the camera. From the second I released my board’s edge for a highly anticipated explosive air, the board would eject like a spinning baton on an unexpected trajectory; without my boots, there was no magic glue to keep me and my board connected. I expected a learning curve for the new moves, but the number of yard sale airs was uniquely embarrassing among
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industry veterans like Toby and Colleen. I revisited my Entity bindings’ adjustments and filed a mental note in my load and pop pre-flight checklist to grip the board with my toes. With my first session well underway, it didn’t take long for Toby to ask me to do a board-off, consisting of removing my feet entirely from the footstraps while holding the board with one hand, all while flying through the air. For an athlete that obsesses over slider hits, rail presses and snowboard-inspired grabs, this floating free-for-all felt like a bizarre circus act—no less, a circus act that requires precision skills in board handling, load and release timing and kite control. In some respects, the grabs and tweaked out form that is achieved while hitting features in the park can be duplicated in the freeride discipline, just posed 20-feet higher while floating through the air. As my experimentation and adaptation continued, Colleen, an impressive park rider in her own right, had already confronted the newness of the freeride discipline and was extremely gracious and helpful in my humble quest to dangle beneath Duotone’s freeride kites—mounted in footstraps, which proved to be far less cumbersome than my typical wake boots. As I would learn, this freedom allowed me the opportunity to add new variations to my more accustomed grabs. As the week continued, I bounced around between Duotone’s freeride and big air range of kites and boards while experiencing a portion of kiting that was far less familiar to me. During the mid-summer’s relaxation towards the pandemic, Hood River was an interesting place. As a destination, there were still a lot of people in the streets and hordes of kiters on the water. Beyond outside dining and the prevalence of masks in social settings, the biggest change was in the frequent social encounters in and around the beaches. Elbow greetings were the standard, people at the event site moved with a stand-off attitude, and kiters seemed to congregate in smaller groups. Everyone seemed to bring their own pump to the beach and the usual atmosphere of sharing was tempered by the unknowns of how the virus was spreading. As luck would have it, on day three of my six-day tour, the wind shifted directions and the forecast aligned with a decent swell on the coast. Together, Toby, Colleen and I packed up the new surfboards and a quiver of shiny new Neo surf kites and drove west. While my Hood River sessions were unique with footstraps, freeride kites and board-offs, surfing with a kite is one of my favorite disciplines and what I do most, particularly when there’s no park to be found. After checking nearly every beach within an hour radius of Oregon’s accessible coastline, we struggled to find a wave that was breaking close enough to shore to effectively photograph. Because Oregon’s coastline is so rocky, many areas are simply non-accessible, forcing us to choose from beach breaks where the sandbars gradually faded into the ocean, causing the waves to break further from shore than we had anticipated. Nonetheless,
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ABOVE: As a former Olympic hopeful and X-Games athlete in snowboarding, Xander suffered back to back injuries that opened the door to kiteboarding; the opportunity to practice the art of snowboarding in the warmth of summer and over water. RIGHT: Taking a break from the Gorge, Xander scores a short session on the Oregon coast. TOP LEFT: Toby knows how to make unwinding lines look good. MIDDLE LEFT: Having dominated the female park scene for years, Colleen continues to mix kiteboarding with a successful real estate career, selling the Hood River good life. BOTTOM LEFT: Photoshoots are long days from start to finish with non-stop movement that only ends when the sun goes down.
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Colleen and I ventured into the Pacific and did our best, cycling through the new surfboards, launching aerials and carving turns in fun but nonremarkable onshore slop. We finished off the trip back in Hood River after an anti-climactic attempt on the coast. In typical Hood River fashion, the wind continued to blow with its clockwork-like consistency, validating why it is one of the world’s premier kiteboarding destinations. Although relatively new to kiteboarding, for the 10 years prior, I’ve spent my summers at snowboard training camps on the glacier of Mt. Hood. However, it was only after learning to kiteboard with my father in Nantucket in 2013, did I begin traveling to Hood River for the express purpose of spending time in the slider park. Inspired by the Triple-S and my snowboarding background, the discovery of the Hood River Slider Park opened an entirely new, small but all-encompassing world. Obsessed with park riding, prior to this photoshoot, I’ve spent the entirety of my time in Hood River tacking back and forth between slider features and skimming over the shallow sandbar, never once venturing out of this small bubble. Yet on this most recent trip with Toby and Colleen, I experienced the direct opposite. I was able to look at the slider park from afar and even kited nearby on a few occasions, but for the first time in years, I never came into contact with the floating playground. Instead, I was introduced to an entirely new perspective of the Columbia River. We ventured west, up the river and kited among the thick forested tree line and volcanic outcroppings. Colleen took us out east, where the trees turn to shrubs and the mountains descend, fading into rolling desert plains. While experiencing Hood River’s diverse compilation of grandeur was entirely new for me, for Toby and Colleen, the risk of visual duplication of previous shoots remained firmly in their minds. Hood River and its nearby hotspots have been saturated with media since the existence of our sport, and Toby, Colleen, and I worked hard to find new perspectives that capitalized on its rarer yet iconic picturesque beauty. As my final day in Hood River rolled around, I still had not set foot in the slider park. My freeride game had improved, I had scored some of the biggest airs of my life, and Toby gave me passing marks for my improvised darkslides and hand drags. The learning curve was filled with face plants, kite crashes and my board errantly winging itself into left field like a lost satellite. Yet, in the process of working my way backward into freeride, I eventually embraced the challenges of the ATV mentality and the wide-open arena of big lofty airs.
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TOP RIGHT: Xander gives all-terrain kiting a solid go with this powered hand drag for the discerning lens of photographer Toby Bromwich. ABOVE: Having given the Rebel a chance, Xander finds new respect for big air after experiencing some massive sends that pumped up the old adrenaline.
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D I C E
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O U R W AY T O M A K E T H E W O R L D A B E T T E R P L AC E .
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AWESOME MAPS Kitesurf Map
Discover the best 500+ kitesurfing spots across the globe, plus info on style, level, wind direction, water temperature, peak season and more on a hand-illustrated map! From the biggest shallow flat-water lagoon in El Gouna to freestyle in Cauipe Lagoon and the epic waves at One Eye, get inspired and plan your next kitesurf trip in style. Get it as a poster, large canvas print or huge eco microfiber towel. From $59.93 // www.awesome-maps.com
ION Quicklock Hook
Next level safety is the name of the game with the new patent-pending, lightweight aluminum Quicklock Hook from Ion. The design’s snap-lock system allows riders to single-handedly hook in as it opens and closes automatically when you hook your chicken loop in, eliminating any chance of your kite releasing accidentally. Compatible with all Ion C-bars, the Quicklock is Ion’s newest revolutionary take on kite hooks. $69.95 // www.ion-products.com
KITEBOARD ON ICE Switchblade Kit
Never miss a session due to a lack of snow! The Switchblade kit is an external snowboard edge enabling you to kiteboard on ice. Ready to mount to any snowboard, the Switchblade is designed to give you traction on ice and patchy unbonded snow. Riding on ice is very similar to snow and having such little resistance allows you to kite in very low wind speeds. Mounting a second blade to the toeside edge will allow for smooth rail to rail transitions and a full snowboard feel. Made in the USA, the Switchblade kit includes a stainless steel blade, aluminum bracket, stainless steel mounting hardware and a carbide blade sharpener. Extend your winter season and get out there! $249.95 // www.kiteboardonice.com
JOOLCO Hottap Nomad Kit
Going off-grid doesn’t mean you have to rough it, especially when you’re outfitted with a Hottap Nomad Kit! Wherever you can take a propane bottle, you can take the Hottap—it’s the world’s smallest water heater in its class that sets up in no time. Simply flick the switch, and hot water will start flowing. It heats up to a safe 122º F, puts out a superior flow rate of up to 1.6 gal/min and it lasts for over 15 hours on a single propane tank. Connect gas. Connect water hose in. Connect water hose out. Done. $399 // www.joolca.com
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MANERA Magma/X10D Boots
Do you hate booties? Manera offers two styles that are made to be forgotten while still offering great foot support and protection. Designed in 3D for a perfect fit and with no Velcro whatsoever, the 5mm Magma boots are made for cold and windy winter days, thanks to Magma+ fleece which acts as both an insulator and heat generator. For less extreme conditions, check the X10D model—according to Manera, they are incredibly lightweight and offer you the closest barefoot feeling you can get from a boot. $69-89 // www.manera.com
LIVE WIRE PROTOTYPING Lockable Tee Nut
Designed by Columbia Gorge inventor and kiter Jim Stringfellow, lockable tee nuts can be used with any foil board track and have the ability to lock into position. Now, you’ll never have to worry about losing another tee nut or having one shift off position. The new tee nuts lock into place with any surf fin key, are CNC-machined from brass to avoid any issues with corrosion from the elements and are available in either M8 or M6 threads. $29 for a set of 4 // www.mackiteboarding.com
RIDE ENGINE Carbon Elite
The world’s first hardshell harness, the Elite Carbon, is Ride Engine’s stiffest, most-supportive model. Now equipped with Unity Ladder-Lock Straps which eliminate all webbing straps and integrates with Ride Engine’s all-new Unity Spreader Bar, riders now have a true ‘set it and forget it’ system that eliminates spreader bar slip and twist, giving unrivaled support and a second to none connection and feeling of the kite. Constructed using top-shelf 12k carbon fiber, which ensures a durable, strong Armor Shell frame, for 2021, they’ve added 4mm more Fusion Memory Foam at essential spots to provide the ultimate in connection, feel and support. $443 // www.rideengine.com
QUOBBA FINS Carbon Glass Series
From Kai Lenny to GKA Wave Champion James Carew, pros and dedicated kitesurfers alike are discovering the performance of Quobba Fins. Quobba Fins incorporate a revolutionary new patented fin design, which ‘orders’ the typical turbulent ‘unordered’ water flow found around the base of all standard fins. By shaping and ‘ordering’ water flow around the fin base, the Quobba fin system markedly reduces trailing turbulence drag, thereby increasing speed and hold in comparison to standard fin designs. Made of a unique combination of ‘chopped carbon and glass fiber’ to provide the perfect balance of strength and improved flex pattern, Quobba Fins have tremendous stability at all speeds to get you through the lulls and to lock in your rail when it’s nuking. $125 // www.quobbafins.com
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VIEWPOINT
THE INTERSECTION OF DESIGN AND MATERIALS Words by Ken Winner | Photos by Mario Entero
Our goal with the new Neo SLS was to use materials that we knew to be superior, lightweight and stronger. The 2021 Neo SLS model takes on our new Penta TX material and compliments it with STW70 heavy-duty ripstop. Penta TX is an extremely stiff, light, robust material, ideal for the leading edge and other high-stress kite elements. It’s woven from thicker threads, has less stretch, and it’s five times more tear-resistant than previous materials. The final touch to its composition is an entirely new coating matrix for superior durability and resistance to bias stretch. Once we had the materials, the next step was to evolve the geometry of the kite and capitalize on the strengths of these materials. This design process was the polar opposite of what we have become used to over the years—our early efforts with Penta TX showed us that we would have to make some major changes to our well-versed approach of past, which focused on enhancing the shortcomings of materials. Now, we had to harness the potential of the new Penta TX. The physical and mechanical properties of Penta TX were wildly different from our previous cloth. In addition, early Penta TX prototype kites had a very lively feel that proved too lively and harsh, especially in the smaller sizes. Our vision was to cultivate the liveliness and tame the harshness through design and structure, not material. With the overall goal being to make a stronger, lighter, superior model of the Neo, the Penta TX provided significant weight reduction and a huge range for in-flight performance. Structural stiffness is what harnesses these attributes, so we focused our use of STW70 on the tip struts. It’s lightweight but can be tuned to deliver precise stiffness. But, as with all great innovations, the real question is, can it last? We had to assess its durability, so we built kites with STW70 tip struts and sent them to kite schools in places with demanding climates like Brazil. Interestingly enough, after months of hard use, the kites came back to us in far better condition than we expected. STW70 was looking like a miracle material, requiring less reinforcement and therefore contributing even less to the weight of the kite. A greater understanding of the materials was also a big part of the process. We did durability testing and built protos in different
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sizes using patterns from existing production Neos, also available in 2021 alongside the SLS construction. This parallel process allowed us to study the differences in look, feel and performance. We had to implement different strut construction; on one hand, because the Penta TX is stiffer and on the other because the STW70 is lighter. As we gained a better understanding of the material and how it would affect the performance of Neos, both big and small, we began dialing in the geometry changes that would give us better performance. Big kites tend to be less lively, less crisp and less quick, so we looked to maximize the liveliness of the Penta TX. On the contrary, small kites tend to be very lively. Although the general consensus was to capitalize on the exciting performance and weightlessness that Penta TX gave us, we were on guard to prevent an end product that was hectic and harsh. The first and possibly the most obvious change in geometry of the Neo SLS is in the tips, which are more square than in the past. In reality, the difference is small, but to the eye, it appears big. Making the tip squarer was not the big step. Making it squarer without changing the bridle anchor points was. We tried various positioning and found that if we lowered it too much the kite was unpredictable, lacking consistent structure and less reliable than last year’s Neo—the opposite yielded minimal effect. Combining this change in geometry with the flex strut of STW70 in the tips gave our larger Neos a really lively feel with super quick turning. When we made the same changes to smaller Neos, we accomplished quick turning, but the feel was a bit harsh. In order to mellow this out, we narrowed the chord in the center, widened the chord in the tips and narrowed the overall arc of the kites only slightly. We knew these changes would mellow the feel of the mid-size Neos, with small adjustments creating balance. We exaggerated the changes to chord dimensions a bit on the small sizes and ended up with some very lively, quick-turning kites. The result was intentional and complemented by the comfort that the Neo’s new SLS materials deliver.
ABOVE: The new SLS Neo in action with new wingtip structure and Duotone’s new Penta TX and STW70 dacron substitute. BELOW: Matchu Lopes inspects the shiny new leading edge material upon its release.
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IN MEMORY OF CURT CALDWELL 1960-2020
Words by Marina Chang and Cole Caldwell | Photos Jason Wolcott
Every riding spot has its local legend, and for Ventura County, that person was Curt Caldwell. A mentor, father-figure, and partner in crime, Curt and his son, Cole, then 14, started kiteboarding in Oxnard, CA, in 2001. After attending the first annual Pismo KiteExpo demo in 2002, their newfound passion for kiteboarding was further inspired by their budding friendship with the event’s founder, Kinsley ThomasWong and his family. This friendship would eventually take them along with a growing crew of passionate kiters from the Central California coast region to far-off destinations in the early years of kiteboarding, including the Dominican Republic, Baja Mexico, Brazil, the Turks and Caicos and more. Curt and his son were joined by a small group of recently transitioned surfers and windsurfers at Silver Strand beach in Oxnard as well as the growing kite scene at C Street, the more consistent riding spot in the county. C Street had always been a destination for windsurfers and surfers but the kitesurfing community grew in the coming years, to include riders like Peter Lansberg, Lonnie Toft, Ian and Earl Alldredge as well as Patrick and Rob Rebstock. 116
Curt was the guy with a smile that could light up a room, melt your problems away and make you feel like a life-long friend— even if you had just met him. If there were any curious onlookers or visitors at the beach, Curt would approach them, teach them the ropes or give them the lowdown on how to kite safely in the area. Then as always, in true Curt Caldwell fashion, he would invite them back to his house for some drinks and food, striking up long-standing friendships that wold last over the years. Former Ventura local and photographer Jason Wolcott sums up the essence of Curt: “He was one of the people I looked up to the most. Curt welcomed my little family and me into his home every time I came back to visit from Indonesia after I moved away. He also helped me learn to kite, which is how we met in the first place,” adding, “I was always so stoked to see his truck in the parking lot at C street. Even if the conditions sucked, at least I would get to hang out with Curt. I will greatly miss his wisdom, advice, huge smile, infectious enthusiasm for wind and waves, his style, his laugh, and most of all, his friendship. Whether riding a twin tip or strapless surfboard, he ripped and inspired us all to ride harder and be better.”
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ON THE MAP
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Xander Raith // Hood River, Oregon
Jake Kelsick // Antigua
Alex Robin and Jeremie Arache // Briancon, France
Vetea Boersma // Arlington, Oregon
Fred Hope // Fortaleza, Brazil
Maxime Chabloz // Corsica
Every once in a while it’s good to get out of the usual rut and make a point of kiteboarding amongst extraordinary landscapes. // Photo James Boulding
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