The Blue Planet Show

Aloha friends, it's Robert Stehlik. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is extra special. I got to meet with Jimmy Lewis. Derek and Lucas and I visited his workshop in Haiku in Maui,  where We, he showed us his whole workshop, gave us a full tour, showed us his house as well. He even gave us t shirts and signed them. This is the t shirt he gave me.  So that was a super fun trip and I highly recommend watching this one on YouTube.  I'll post it as a podcast as well if you're doing other things. But the visuals are great. He shows us the full tour of his factory, his dust collection system, how to shape a board from basically hot cutting it with a hot wire cutting the blanks installing inserts foil tracks his philosophy on shaping and how he was inspired by sea planes when he developed some of the early foil boards. and showed us a hydrodynamic plate mount that he developed for the air chair and then how to get sharp edges when you're glassing, how to shape a twisted V tail. So he's not holding back, sharing whatever he knows. So cool  of Jimmy to give us all the details.  And at the end of the interview, I'll also make some special announcements about the Molokai race, a couple other things. Stay tuned to the very end. Thanks so much for watching, and without further ado, here is Jimmy Lewis.  Tell me again about the design and how you came up with that kind of, the, this guy, Vitor Marcal, he's a lifeguard captain on the North Shore now, right? And he's been a lifeguard for as long as I've known him. I've known him for a little over 20 years. And he was one of the first guys foiling  when Laird first started foiling and using the boots, to bolt themselves onto the board and those air chair foils. They had like snowboard bindings, right? Yeah. So they just And so Vitor was pretty progressive on it, to know  that he needed to adjust his foot straps sometimes or his bindings. So he had me put these tracks on. And, Vitor was really good. He could do jumps and backflips on a wave with that air chair, and he'd said, Yeah, when I jump up, jump, and I come down for a landing, my board would always stick. And he asked me what kind of  shape could I do so it wouldn't stick so much.  And the first thing I thought of was a seaplane, because they're made to  land on water.  

 Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show where I interview foil athletes, designers, and thought leaders. I talk not just about the equipment technique and so on. but also try to find out a little bit more about their background, what inspires them and their plans for the future and so on.You can watch this show right here on YouTube or listen to it on your favorite podcast app. Just search for the Blue Planet Show. I've been trying for a long time to get the Spencer brothers to come on the show and I finally met up with them after the Molokai To Oahu race and I got them both on the show today. So really stoked about that. Finn recently won the Maui to Molokai race and the Molokai to Oahu race, even though he had a major infection on his foot. So congrats on that. And they are both amazing athletes, not just in wing foiling, but also downwind foiling, prone foiling, surfing. They do everything. Really great guys to talk to. Hope you enjoy the show. So without further ado, here are Finn and Jeffrey Spencer. Alright, Finn and Jeffrey, welcome to the Blue Planet show. It's great to have you here. I've been trying to get you for quite a while. And then I finally ran into your dad at the finish of the Molokai Toahu race. And then Jeffrey gave me your text your cell phone number. So finally getting you guys on the show. Stoked. Yeah. Thank you for having us. Yeah. So you're on Maui. I'm on Oahu. And on Maui, just, since the Molokai race and not too long ago, I was in Lahaina like right before the Maui to Molokai race and everything was fine and now it's all gone. So can you talk a little bit about the fires on Maui and what, and. If you know anyone that got affected by it totally, yeah, we we had this storm that was passing to the south of the islands and it was like, usually it's not too concerning because it didn't look like it was actually going to hit us. But what happened was it ended up generating extremely crazy strong winds, like through the whole thing, but there was no rain or anything. So it's just. Like the most windy it's ever been, especially over on the West side in Lahaina. And they're just not used to having, that crazy amount of wind. So tons of stuff was getting knocked down. And I think just in the chaos, like the fire started, it was, there was ones on both sides of the island. There was some up country up in Kula and then also in Lahaina. So it was probably pretty difficult to be able to actually like. Control everything, especially in that amount of wind. It spread extremely quickly. And yeah, it's pretty devastating, but yeah, most the entire town of Lahaina pretty much burnt. Quite a few places up country as well, but look, it wasn't as bad up there. Yeah, it's not as densely populated now, at least but yeah, I was just reading in the paper this morning that there was some like live video of the power lines getting knocked over and then just falling into the grass and just like a line of fire starting instantly. Stuff like that. And then yeah, the wind was so strong that day that it just spread super fast and I guess people didn't even have time to. To get away, it's pretty, pretty tragic. It's like probably the big, the worst fire in, in recent history. Yeah. And then, so do you know anybody that got affected by it or lost their home or? Yeah. A bunch of our friends on the West side that we know and grew up with Santa paddling and foiling and surfing and just lost everything like lost their homes and pretty much everything. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so if yeah, and then I guess I talked to Zane yesterday who lives over on that side too and Zane Schweitzer, he, and he said like they don't need more clothes and stuff like that. Everybody's been sending clothes, but they just need like certain things like VHF radios and containers and things like that. They need it quickly. So because shipping stuff there, it takes a while, so anyway. Probably the best way to support Maui's is by making a donation. Absolutely. Yeah. The best way is like supporting the families directly. If I know personally, like the Clayton's and the flex from paddling, they're good family friends and there's tons of others. We're able to find them on there, especially social media has been a really good way for people to communicate through all this and the Maui strong foundation as well as a really good resource that they're able to take the funds and use them wherever's most needed at the current moment. That's another really good one to donate to. All right. Yeah. Best wishes for everyone on Maui. That's just a tough situation to be in for sure. But anyways, let's talk a little bit about you guys. How, where did you, have you always lived on Maui or how did you grow up? And, what, how did you get into water sports and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, since we were, We've lived here since we were babies. We were born in Canada, but basically our entire lives was here. We weren't even a couple of years old when we moved here. So yeah, it's just been my way. But interestingly, it took us a while to get super into water sports. We did a bunch of, the average like school sports growing up team ones, like basketball, volleyball, stuff like that. And then we started stand up paddling around. Probably 10 years ago, actually, at this point, but then just from there, like we always had fun bodyboarding and surfing and Santa paddling and then got into it from there. Yeah, right on. Who's older or what are your ages? I'm older and 19, 22 and 19. All right. So I guess when you started, you were. Like around, I was probably 13. We'd always play in like the shore break with boogie boards and, when we were really young, but we didn't really start like getting into it more. Until, yeah, until I was 13 and you were probably like 10, 11. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that your dad taking you down, down to the beach and putting you on a board or did you just show interest in it or like, how did that work out? We would actually, we'd go over to the west side near Lahaina, we'd go to Laniopoko and the waves there are super fleet friendly, the best place for any, anyone to learn. We just take long boards and stand up paddle boards and spend the days over there in the summer. Nice. Nice. Okay. And then how did you start getting into foiling? What was how did you first start foiling? I think it was a while ago now. I think before it all started, we talked to Alex Aguero about just trying some surf foils. Cause he was making kite foils at the time. And then it was funny, he said he had just started working with Kai Lenny on the same thing. So then we started doing that with them, just went to Sugar Co. and had the first GoFoil prototype that we tried and then just started going to the west side a bit and just getting into it and then Kai put out that video of him downwinding and that just exploded it. Yeah. Then everyone was like, Oh, I want to try this. But you were basically tried some of the very first prototypes that Alex was making him. Totally. Yeah. We just be like us in the beach down here, just going with Kai and on this old sub board with a tunnel box drilled into it and Yeah, just testing stuff. It was fun. Yeah. And then where are you mostly trying to do downwinders or more in the surf or both or what were you guys doing? Most part, it was in the surf. For the first couple of months. And then we started to try a couple of downwinders and realize that it was super fun. So then we started doing that a lot more too. Yeah. The foils quickly evolved to be good enough for downwinding. Yeah. And then in the beginning you were using GoFoils and then I guess at some point you got sponsored by Slingshot or or how did that evolve? We'd run GoFoils as well and it was great. And then we had an opportunity to. To try the slingshot stuff as well and it worked really well for us. So yeah, we, we met with Tony Ligo. She's a awesome designer and Yeah wrote with them for a while, which was amazing. Okay. And then did you have like influence in the design and things like that? Developing products or not so much. They just would send you stuff and you'd play with it. We'd help them test stuff, but we're a lot of new stuff and the wings and then all the coils and boards. And so it was super fun. Learned a lot from that for sure. We're definitely still very early on in like our experience though. So it's not like we were saying like, oh, this is. What you should do to make it good, it's like more just Feeling it out and helping as much as we could. Yeah. And then probably the equipment you were using on Maui was like smaller and you guys are lightweight too, right? It's probably like smaller than what they could sell to the average consumer, right? So yeah, and then you were some of the, I think, were you the first to do a back loop on a wing foil board or yeah. That's awesome. I remember seeing that video and I was wow, that's insane. Yeah, I just remember we were doing them surf foiling off of waves. You could come back out and hit the ramp. And I'm just thinking oh, I think this would probably work with the wing after I just had a wave session. And then right after that, I'm like, in my mind, I could see how it would work. And then after that, I went straight back out that night and tried it for a few hours. And then. The next didn't get it, but I got like close. I like fully saw the potential. And then the next day I yeah, went out and tried again and somehow made it work, which was honestly really strange. Like usually if you're trying a new trick, it takes a lot longer to learn. Like even for me, it I usually take weeks to figure some stuff out. But I think the backflip is just so it's such a natural movement on the wing of the foil with that, that it it worked out pretty well. So what are, after people say, are you doing it? Then a lot of people figure it out how to do it, but, I'm still doing it, being the first to d

Please also watch the video version of this show on the blueplanetsurf youtube channel for lots of cool footage- video by Lucas Purcell  Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is not an interview, but rather a recap where I talk about my experience at the Molokai to Oahu race and what I heard from other competitors at the race. So let's get into it. Okay. So after a three year break for the pandemic and so on, the Molokai race, It finally happened again in 2023 and for the first time it had a wing foil division. So I was really excited about that and signed up for the Wingfo division, as well as a bunch of us from Oahu. And a couple weeks ago we went over to Maui and winged from Maui to Molokai, and then did the Molokai Holokai, and then Molokai to Oahu, a little training run. A couple of weeks before, and then the day before the Molokai race, we flew over and stayed at Kalua Koi, at our friend Eli's place. Beautiful place, right on the water. Here's Derek taking a little cruise on his bike down the path. And at Kalua Koi, the wind is pretty offshore, so the water's smooth on the inside. And the day before the race, the wind was pretty light on the inside, but once you got a little bit offshore, it was pretty strong winds. And Eli and Derek were decided to use our new prototype wings. We had a six meter and a seven meter version of our new wings and Eli was using the seven and Derek, the six meter. And then I opted to choose the, my tried and tested seven meter alien wing that I've been using. Here's Nani. So we're just warming up a little bit the day before the race, getting out there, feeling the water, and so on. Of course on the inside it's pretty smooth, and then once you get further out in the channel, the the water gets a lot rougher. So the evening before the race, there was a little race meeting, everybody meeting on the lawn. at Koala Koi and then they served up a nice dinner afterwards. So for us the energy at this event was amazing. People come in from all over the world, a lot of people from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan. It's great to see everyone again after like years of not having this event, to see all the top paddlers and foilers from all over the world. It's really cool and to see familiar faces from previous events and so on. So for me personally, this was I think it was like the 11th or maybe the 12th time I did this event. I did it, mostly on stand up paddle boards, or all on stand up paddle boards. I think I did it eight times solo, two times as a team, and then this is the first time I did it as a wing foiler. Derek Hama was collecting signatures for his poster, so that was a really cool idea, and he got a ton of signatures during the event. And this is Terry from Virgin Islands, Alan Cadiz from Maui, just hanging out, chatting, and getting excited about the next morning. And then you can see water is... Pretty calm nice sunset, of course, lots of escort boats. Usually the evening before, escort boats will come close to the beach. There's no harbor there you have to swim out to the boat to get your equipment. Usually the boats take over the equipment. come over from Oahu on the boat. But I usually opt to take a plane because that ride from Oahu to Molokai can be pretty rough when you're going into the wind and into the chop. So it's a pretty rough ride, but many people come over on the boat, but I always prefer to fly over. And then, yeah, you pick up your gear like you I picked up my board and wing from the boat the night before. And here you see a lot of escort boats the morning of the event. Then they have the pre race pule prayer, Hawaiian prayer. And then everyone's getting pretty excited for a safe and fun crossing. And yeah, the pule is always... A great great way to get ready in the morning. Everybody picks up a satellite tracking chip that tracks the race. So that's a good way for people to follow the race live. You can see where everyone's position is. Here are the two start buoys in the bay at Kalua Koi. And then this was the first start at... I think it was 7 30 a. m. I want to say it was the prone paddle board start Drones in the air and here's the Start everyone charges off It's of course a long race, but still you don't want to be left behind at the finish So everyone always paddles hard right from the beginning you definitely want to conserve your energy because it's a long race. And yeah, the beginning, the water was pretty calm. Pretty smooth water. Not a lot of chop in the water. So for, especially for the stand up foilers. You can see these conditions are not ideal for getting up on foil or pumping. So it's pretty much, there, there was some wind at our backs, but pretty much the stand up foilers had to pump up onto, up on foil and then pump pretty far to get to where it started to get a little bit easier with some bumps pushing them along. So this is the prone division. Of course, the... M2O is known as the Paddleboard World Championships, and that's how it all started. Surfers looking for something to do in the summertime in the North Shore, they started to pick up longer surfboards and paddle distances and found it was really good training for the winter. So for a long time, the Molokai Race Paddleboard Division was dominated by Jamie Mitchell. who's won it many times, but he hasn't been competing the last few times. It's still dominated by Australian paddlers. The top three male Unlimited and top three male stock division were all Australians. And the winner this year was Charlie Vercoe from, 22 year old from Australia winning the race on an Unlimited board in 453. And especially considering these difficult conditions, that's quite the accomplishment to paddle it in under five hours many. took much longer than that. It was definitely a challenging race at the end with the northerly currents pulling against you. The stand up division was a little bit smaller this year, still a good contingent of paddlers though, but a lot of the pro racers that used to compete in stand up paddling are now on stand up foil boards, including people like James Casey, who won the stand up unlimited in 2019 Kai Lenny, and many others that used to compete in stand up racing are now stand up foiling. So that seems to be the big competitive division now. But Mo Freitas from Oahu competed in the unlimited division. And so it, it was a competitive race for stand up paddling but a smaller field than before. And then here in the... That NSP, blue and green NSP board, is the paddler from Japan who was this year's champion in the Unlimited for the first time, a Japanese paddler winning the Molokai to Oahu race. Yusuke Hyogo, 36 year old from Japan, won the Unlimited stand up paddleboard division in 445. So that's an impressive time considering especially the... The difficult conditions as you see a couple of the blue planet bump rider boards really proud of All the competitors that used our blue planet boards. They did really well, so I'll talk about that some more later You can see here that the water on the inside was pretty smooth and it's just there was some wind from the back, but it's it's not, there weren't a lot of bumps pushing you along because, the wind's offshore. You can see all the escort boats lined up. They are supposed to wait for 30 minutes before joining the paddlers to keep the wakes and the churned up water to a minimum. But you can see how these conditions are definitely challenging for foiling because, yeah, the stand up foilers have to pump up on foil in these pretty calm waters with not much wind from their back. Here you see Moe Freitas. And this is the start of the foil division. So like I said, yeah, the water was pretty smooth on the inside, so stand up foilers had to really work to get up on foil basically flat water start and then pump pretty far out. Versus wing foilers we were able to take off pretty quick. There was a decent amount of wind, it was pretty light, but seemed like there was a little bit of a gust in the early on. And that helped us get going in the beginning, had a decent start, and pretty good wind in the beginning, and then later on during the race it got a little bit lighter. And I, we don't, didn't get drone footage from the start, but you can see the prone foilers, the stand up foilers pumping along, working hard, and then the wing foilers. Flying off to a good start. I was on a Blue Planet Wing Racer board 5'10 5'10 by 21 inches, so a longer, narrower board, and a 7 meter wing, and then a Mike's Lab. 600 foil with a 103 centimeter mast and you know that combo worked out pretty well. Had a good amount of speed right from the start. Trying to chase the faster paddlers ahead of me. So there was yeah, a few ahead of me. Especially Alan Cadiz who I was trying to keep up with. He was on a Mike's Lab 540. Which I think had a little bit higher speed, but then maybe with my 600, I was able to go a little bit steeper, a little bit steeper downwind angle, which was important because yeah, but that northerly current we ended up having to crisscross quite a bit. You just, you couldn't just take a straight line to the, to portlock. And Yeah, here we're already getting close to Oahu. It's skipped a bunch, but the middle of the channel got a little bit light. There were a good amount of bumps, and pretty steep bumps, and a lot of good riding, but just the wind got a little light, so even with the 7 meter wing, I find myself pumping the wing and the foil quite a bit, trying to keep a good angle. And then I'm a regular foot. Winger. And I just find that I'm not very good at switching my feet. I'm not as fast if I try to, put my feet the other way. I was basically riding most of the way with my body kind of twisted toe, my, my toe side direction. And then, at the very end, I started catching up to Alan Cadiz. He got quite a bit ahead of me, but then I caught him at the end. And then, I made

 Aloha friends, it's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show, which is all about foiling. Today's video is basically a recap of the Voyager X Wet Feet downwind race here on Oahu. It was probably the biggest foil race we've had here on Oahu anyways, maybe anywhere. I'm not sure, over a hundred participants. So it's cool to see so many people entering. Standup paddle racing has been shrinking, but foiling is definitely growing fast. I'm talking with Brian Tricario and Derek Hamasaki. Who finished first and second in this race, in the wing foil division. And we got some really great footage from many different people filming along the way, so I really appreciate everyone submitting their footage, sending it to me so we could put together this video for you. We have the first part, which is a quicker recap of the race, put together by Lucas who also was flying the drone and so on. And then the second part we go into a little bit more detail and showing a lot of footage of the race itself. Harold was in a dinghy following the whole race with this camera, so got some good footage from along the race, so I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, here is the Voyager Downwind race. Aloha friends, it's Robert with Planet Surf and I have Alex Aguera with me here getting ready to get on the water for the maybe the biggest down wind foil race ever. What do you think? I don't know about that, but it's got quite a lot of participants. I heard there's a hundred people competing today, so it's big. Yeah. And it's all foiling. Standup foiling, wing foiling, and then also some guys are doing prone foiling from Cromwell to the finish, which is by Suicides. Yeah. What are you using today? I think I'm gonna use a 6.5M and a 600 foil 96 liter board. Good float board. There you go. A big combo. Yeah. And then the wind, it's windy today, so that kind of is good for a bit heavier guys. Yeah. Hopefully I don't get lit up too much. Sometimes I really light guys like Derek are really good at light wind. But then, I don't know, Derek. You say something too. What were you talking about? Talk about your equipment. What you got. Oh, I got a same like Alex 600 front wing hand wing is six meter and a 10 inch tail. Trying to go as fast as you guys. They should have a category of their own, oh yeah. Listen to you. It's called oil company owners. So yeah. We'll add that next time. Oh yeah. So we see you. And then hope you enjoy the race. Okay, so I got Derek Kawasaki and Brian Rio here with me, and we're gonna do a little voiceover of this race. So thanks for joining me guys. Yeah, no problem. Awesome. Thanks for having us. Yeah. So we're gonna talk a little bit about. The race. Do a little race recap, talk about who is in the race, the equipment strategy, technique, conditions, training the upcoming races in July. And then also, how, how standup foiling compares with the wing foiling. And the first part of the video is a shorter recap of the race with some cool drone footage from several sources. So we got Lucas filming at the beginning for some. Water shots from Derek and also Jeff Chang. And then Harold is the guy in that dingy who's, who filmed the whole race with his cell phone. So we got some cool footage of the whole race. In the second part of the video, we're gonna show a little bit more detail and go into like more detailed stuff about racing and winging and. Standup foiling and all that. I tried to get Kane to Wild on to join us too, but I didn't hear back from him, unfortunately. So I'm trying to get this video up by tomorrow, Saturday, a week later after the race. Pretty exciting. So maybe you guys talk a little bit about the start, right? Go ahead, Derek. Okay. The start was Pretty, it was pretty organized. People was spread apart, wingers were drifting further up, wind. We could fly up wind and then just sit with the sub guys going down. So we all just hung out. They gave us a one minute prior to they said we're ready to go. And then Everybody's sitting down on their boards or crouching down on the boards. And once it said go, it was on the wind was cranking out there. It was nice and it was a steady flow. I know a lot of people said they had a hard time getting up in the beginning cuz the bumps was outrageous, which is good. Yeah. What, how was your start, Brian? Yeah, it was good. It was hectic. A lot of people around A lot of people, you got your wingers starting, some are going right, some are going left, and then you have your sub coilers pretty much starting straight down swell. So if you weren't on the end and you were in the middle of the pack, there was a lot of traffic. So getting up fast was critical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely wanna get up quick and get going in front of everybody. That way you don't have to dodge everyone. And then also whatever boats or safety, and vessels was out there, the skis or whatever. Sometimes you gotta go chew their things and then you cannot push it. You want to just get through and whatnot. But it was, yeah, it was real. Get up and try to stay in front, yeah. I thought one thing about the start that went worked well compared to last year that at the Blue Water race, it was really spread out the start line, right? This time they had like a couple jet skis going back and forth. So they made a line like where nobody could get way ahead of everyone else. So that, and plus everyone had to sit on their boards at the start. So I thought the start, it was a pretty, pretty fair start for everyone. Like you said, you did have to make sure you don't have someone right your way as you're take trying to take off. Otherwise you're like especially cuz Yeah, the. Boiler, the standup boilers, we're going straight down wind, and we have to go a little bit at an angle to the wind, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think next time, like when sitting at the dinner table, you go with somebody that's getting up on one right? Reach and you get the other person sitting up on the opposite reach, you don't wanna be going crossing, right? Yep. True. So this is Kane the wild harold followed Kane pretty much the whole race with his dingy. So we got a lot of footage of Kane and then I think this is you Derek. Yeah. Yeah, I think you and I crossing back and forth in between. Yeah. And then this is getting close to the finish line, and as you can see, there was like a buoy on the outside of the waves. But then there was the wave, the surf was pretty big. And you couldn't really see where the finish was. Yeah, I couldn't, there was like, I was right. I came in first. I had no idea. I like, I just didn't know the area very well. But you can see here, there's that channel and I ended up too far. Upwind coming in too far. Upwind of the channel. And then you also came up in too far up when yet Derek? Yeah, I hooked around the buoy and then I, but I came in cause I saw you. So I pulled back up when, and I came into the finish line, but. Unfortunately when we were in that channel, there was no buoys. Oh crap. And yeah. So then all of a sudden there's both of us didn't see the finish line and went to the wrong, cuz you went too far upwind. And then and then Brian. Yeah. What happened when you came in? You saw us too? Or what? What happened? No, I thought you guys finished already. I came in before I hit that red buoy I fell cause I was too busy looking at where the channel was cuz you couldn't see anything. I was just focusing on where's the channel looking right? And I wound up breaching, falling. It's on the video too. And then I'm scrambling to get back up and made the right and I shot straight for the white condos. And then at the top of the swell I saw Jeff on the inside on the ski. And I just tried to shoot for the ski when I could see it. And I barely snuck in on the town side of the channel. I wound up going right at the pilings dry reef area and Saw that last second and hooked right. And snuck in there. But it was definitely a, it was tough to spot that channel. Yeah. Yeah. Congrats on that. So Brian won the race and then Derek came in second. Yeah, I guess so Derek, you were able to turn around and go back out and back in again? Or like how did you end up finish? Yeah. Yeah, so initially when I first came in, I saw you and I was like, okay, right on Robert first, and then I'll just come in behind, and because I didn't see any of the suppers too, so I was like, oh, okay. Awesome. But. When I was coming in, there was set waves, so in front of me was all white water. I couldn't see the reef, nothing at all. And then behind me, the wave was overhead, so I just had to hold onto my wing and just hope for the best, yeah. You just focusing on me at all. Yeah. I didn't wanna fall and get cleaned out by the. White water behind me. So just went in and then once we went in and realized, okay, this is the wrong spot. Went to turn, hit the reef and went down, I'm like, oh, crap. And then while I was in the water trying to get up, I looked over towards the west and I noticed the ski and the other buoys and go, oh, crap, too early. Okay. So I was able, there's enough wind coming in that area for the foil that I was on and my weight. Get back on foil. Come up and fly around. And then when I was coming around, I saw Brian's wing that was inside. So I was like, oh, okay that's it. So came in like just skirted the reef on that channel and then just came around and then passed the boy evening and then did that. Cool. All right. So here we have the start again. So we doing a little bit extended version of the race again here, and then Harold's following Kane to Wild, and you can see he got a really good start, like pretty much on the second bump that went under Hemi. He was able to take off and then he just took off at high speed. I, he has a lift 900 foil, I think. So really pretty small foil for standup foiling. And he was flying, he was making really good time. Yeah, it's actually I was amazed how fast he was going. Cu

 Aloha friends, it's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show, which I record right here in my home office and talking to wing foil athletes, designers, thought leaders, anyone who has something interesting to say. And today's interview is with Olivia Piana. She's an amazing world class athlete, not just in wing foiling and surf foiling and downward foiling, but also in standup paddle surfing, standup paddle racing, wind foiling, kiting and more. She has several world titles in her name. She talks a little bit about the challenges of competing as a woman in these male dominated sports and her about her goals. And then this summer, the moca Oahu race is coming up. We talk about that she's entered to race in that one of the few women doing the downward foiling. I'm entered in that race as well, so I'm looking forward to doing more interviews. Talking to athletes that are entered in this race before and after. So hope you can join me for some of those interviews. As always, you can watch it right here on YouTube or listen to it on your favorite podcast app. Just search for the Blue Planet Show. So without further ado, here is Olivia Piana. Okay, Olivia, welcome to the Blue Planet Show. It's great to have you here. Thank you. Hello, Robert? Yeah, so it's you're in Portugal. I guess it's 7:00 PM for you, for me. It's eight o'clock in the morning and Hawaii. Yeah, thanks for joining me and from the other side of the world. It's pretty cool that we can talk like this on Zoom, yeah. I've never talked to you before, so it's good to meet you virtually. But can you talk a little bit about like, how. Start from the very beginning. Where were you born? How did you get into water sports and what, how did you get into what you do today? I was born in Marsai in south, south France. Then I grew up in ban a very small city in the beginning of the Alps. So I was an hour and a half away from the coast, from the Mediterranean Sea. And I, so I grew up on a very natural place with the mountains and I play many different sport. When I was kid, I had the luck to have my parents that really gave me the opportunity to discover many things. And my mom is a windsurf fan. And when I was kid she brought me on the windsurf and yeah, I just totally fallen in love to a windsurf thing when I was 12 in in the Mediterranean Sea. And I wanted to dedicate my life to it. It was my dream to be wind surf for pro and to compete around the world and to win titles. And I had my my like some champions that I really loved. And yeah, that's that's how I discovered the patient for the ocean, the wind and the wave and wind surfing is my first sport. Okay. And then, so like you started at 12 years old and then you got into windsurf racing right away or like competing with windsurfing or, yeah, I started with windsurfing P dub race, slalom race. And so I went with my mom. My mom helped me on the competition and she really loved it too. And I start to travel a bit more. I never compete a lot on the wave, even if I really loved the wind surfing on the wave. But I guess, racing is much more easy to compete than wave riding. And when I was from the Mediterranean Sea in France, it's not really wavy. So yeah I had more opportunity to race and to do slalom. And and yeah, it was the only thing I will be more lucky to be a man a man that, a woman in windsurfing because it was not that easy to have a sponsor and help to compete and to, but I did it anyway and I really loved it. So you like yeah. You're basically, you're saying that the sponsors were not as helpful when you, for women, like they didn't support women as much as men? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I think it's it's a system that the industry is mainly men and then they think the women don't buy the product and then they design the product for the men. And then there is no woman into the sport. But it's more about the history of the sport and the mentality and the vibe on the beach and everything. It's not so welcoming for women and it's like it is, but some women try to make changes, but it's not so easy. Luckily with standard paddling and today with wing foiling, it's really different and there is more opportunity for women to, to compete. But it's changing slowly, but it's not that easy to to improve it. Yeah. Yeah, that's, so I was kid and I was on the beach like, Hey guys, can I really windsurf with you? But yeah, it was basically my most of the people get help for the, from the family or they work to pay everything because windsurfing is super Super expensive. But yeah, it's, it was not so easy, but I did my best and I'm super happy anyway. Okay. And then what came next? Cuz I know you got into all kinds of sports. Standup paddling and then foiling, wing foiling and I, what else? Yeah, and then I discover standard paddling in 2011. It was the day that it was not windy. And then I went with friends with this long and big boards on the waves. And yeah, it was the first time actually that I surf a wave without a sail. And and then thanks to my friend Fred Bonne that. So I live in tar that I met there in Spain. I this guy really pushed me to go into the racing and to compete and we were like a team to go to the event. And it, the funniest thing is I already wanted to compete in wave stopping and the first World Cup was in latter in 2012. And there was also the racing, the surfing and the racing were together. And the title there, there was the overall for was, I think it was the eight, no it was the standard war two before. And there was this overall title for surfing and race and racing. And then I did also the racing, but I was not so motivated to do it. And I won the race. I was like, oh, wow. Actually, it's pretty cool. And I discover how fun is it to race? And it's not only boring, to paddle, paddle, paddle for 15 kilometer. And it was pretty technical. The day after the distance race, we went on the wave to do the technical race. And it was a mix of racing and surfing. And I really love it. And I won again, like it was a bigger crash on the way with all the girls, like surfing and at the mark, like with the racing board. But yeah, it was so fun. And yeah, I got better opportunity in surfing than windsurfing. From the same brands. That's what it was. Very strange. Like the same brands on the windsurfing and stand up industry gave more money to women in surfing. So I was like, okay. And I had the opportunity to compete in standardizing more easy. Okay. So what, who was your sponsor at that time? Who was sponsor? Yeah, sorry to say it, but it was fanatic. Fanatic, okay. But maybe it's the situation, maybe it was more, it give more visibility if, it was just at this time more easy to have a good contract in s than wind surfing. So basically they were probably making more money with standup paddle board, so they wanted to promote that more than windsurfing. Is that basically fanatic, they sell a lot of windsurf boards, but maybe for a woman it was easily, it was more easy to give the good image to sail boards, to sell subs sub boards than wind surfboard. Okay. Yeah. So it was like it was it was like this. So yeah, I start like this. And so that was, so the first time you competed in standup paddling, you basically, you won the racing and then you also won the surfing. So you were the o or No, I didn't won the surfing. The surfing was on the very small waves and I got lost, I think. So I was thinking okay. It was Surfing in competition is not easy because it's very rare that you have the good condition and you can express yourself. And then racing make it much more easy. You just have the start and the finish. And also about the judgment. It's judgment in racing is pretty easy. Just you paddle and you cross the finish line and you have your position. And yeah, and I, and then I got some prize money with this competition and that permit me to go to the next competition and I start like this. Nice. I'm gonna, I'm gonna screen share a little bit from your Facebook page or Instagram or Facebook where they st. Like way in, in the past, but yeah, this was like, I guess you were writing fanatic boards and, but yeah, I guess even early on you were getting like stories in magazines and everything, right? Yeah. This was in the Sri Lanka. This was in Sri Lanka, my first barrel, let's say. Oh. And yeah it has an amazing streak. We were surfing on the wave on the morning and wind surfing on the afternoon. And to have a fanatic as a sponsor on this trip was really cool to do both sports. Okay. Yeah. So after you won your first Santa Paddle race, then what happened? You went to more contests and then traveled, like what? Yeah, basically I really traveled a lot thanks to sap. Standard, bring me everywhere in the world and make me meet a lots of amazing people. And I am super grateful for that. It's so easy and versatile. You can go everywhere. You can go like the picture that you see with many people on the board. I think it's in Leon, in France. On the river. On the river run. Yeah. And yeah, was really the beginning. The very beginning. This picture. Yeah. 2014. And then there was a races on, inflatable boards on in Europe. That's funny that, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The inflatable board there are definitely not as performance as the rigid one, but it's so easy to travel with. Yeah. Is, are the European market, is it still like most people using inflatable boards in Europe on when there go standard path? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. There is a lot of inflatable boards for beginner or for people that don't paddles that much. They really love to go on the inflatable board and enjoy their time. Yeah. Makes sense. And actually, they are better and better. They are not good for surfing, for example, but for just paddling on in France for example, we have a lot of beautiful place for just paddle under crystal clear water. Super nice. Yeah, I mean it's just convenient cuz you can pack 'em up small, you

Aloha friends,  it's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show. Today's interview is with none other than Jimmy Lewis, who is a legendary shaper. He got started at a young age shaping surfboards and then moved to Maui where he got into making windsurf boards. And at one point he was making windsurf speed needles for some of the fastest world record breaking sailors in the world at speed sailing events. And then he got into kite surfing and kite boards, and then standup paddle boards, and now foil boards. So he's a very versatile shaper. Some great stories to tell, and really interesting interview and entertaining as well. So you'll learn more about his design philosophy, board construction, and lots of good stories. So it's a longer interview, so take your time, re kick back and relax. Watch it here on YouTube with some visuals, or you can also listen to it as a podcast on your favorite podcast app. So without it further ado, here is Jimmy.  Okay, Jimmy Lewis, it's a real honor to have you on the show. Thanks so much for making the time to talk to me and the guests. So I'm just stoked to be able to talk to you for extended period of time and ask you all the questions I have. And so yeah, thank you for coming to the show. Oh, I'm happy to be here finally. I've seen the other ones. I go, why doesn't he call me? I appreciate that. Thanks. So yeah, so we'll get into all this stuff that's currently going on, at eventually I want to talk about your board shapes and your foil boards and equipment and all that kind of stuff. But I, first of all, I wanna start with just going into some background, I know you have a long history in the sports of water sports Tell us a little bit about, start at the very beginning, like how you grew up, where, where were you born, how did you grow up and how did you get into water sports and how did you start shaping boards and all that stuff. Yeah. My dad was in the Air Force, so I was born in Canada, I think after World War ii. My mom and my dad moved around a lot. My dad met my mom after World War ii. My mom's brother was a Air Force buddy of his, and they he brought my dad over to their house after the war. And then he met my mom, and I guess we moved around. They moved around quite a few years. Eventually we moved to Redlands, California. I believe it was in 1956. So I was I was born in 51, so that would make me five years old. And went into kindergarten there, went to grade school and stuff. And then in I don't know if you're old enough to remember the sixties, but that's when the surfing craze really was going crazy in the early sixties and we lived inland. But my older brother, I have two older brothers, two years apart. So my older brother I think was, if I was like 11 or 12, he was 15 or 16. And he he had a transistor radio that my dad had brought back from Germany. And I remember listening to all the rock music and the surf music on the radio coming outta his room. And he started getting interested in surfing and so he bought a surfboard. And so naturally me and my other brother wanted to do what he did. So we all started surfing and I think I bought my first surfboard. It was a pop out vessy and it was like a pig board, that vessie pig shape. And started surfing, I think. In the summer of my sixth grade, and I remember my mom took us down, took me and a friend of mine, just us two, down to Cardiff, which was quite a ways from, we, like Newport Beach was 60 miles in away. Redlands was like 60 miles directly inland from Newport. And anyway, when we really started getting into surfing a lot, we would drive down to Cardiff, but I don't know why my mom brought us down to Cardiff that day. Me and a friend of mine, Hanson Surfboards, was across the street, not directly from Carter Reef, but just a little south of that. There was a restaurant on the beach there called Sea Barn. It was like a little old diner of those sixties type diners Okay. Where all the surfers would go in there and eat sometimes. And there was a, they called that beach break right across, right out from sea Barn, right across the street from there was Hanon Surfboards the shop. And me and my friend went and snooping around behind there. And there was this sha, this little shack, I think it was just a single standing shape room. But we went in there and this guy, John Price was in there. He was later on to own Surfboards Hawaii. He bought the franchise from Dick Brewer on in the Man On in California. But he was in there shaping. And I had forgotten. But this friend of mine from Redlands, who was at the beach with me that day, reminded me about a year or two ago that I had gotten a couple pieces of the rail cutoffs. And that's, I took 'em home and made two little surfboards. I think they were about a foot long. I shaped some longboards, glassed 'em, I can't remember where I even got the glass and resin, but I shaped them, glassed them, got some logos out of the magazine. I remember one was at Jacobs and one was at Dewey Weber. And I glassed them for boards. And I remember bringing 'em to school and showing people. And then this other friend of mine was so impressed. So just like small model shapes, model pieces threw away from, okay. Yeah. I remember this friend of mine was so impressed with one of 'em. I just gave it to 'em. I don't know why I did that. I wish I still had one of those, or both of 'em. But I think that's been a thing all my life. I like to give stuff away to people that like it, especially something I've made. Anyway, that's how I started surfing. And then we would, I remember my mom used to give us 50 cents a day for lunch to buy the lunch at school. And the guys that went surfing who had cars, I was still like 13, 14, and 15 years old in those junior high and high school years. Fortunately I was for some reason, guys that are 16 and 17 don't want to hang around with 13 and 14 year old kids, and but I was able to go with those guys surfing and we had to pay gas money to get down to the beach with these guys that had cars. So I'd save my 50 cents all week long to have $2 and 50 cents for the weekend to go surfing. And I'd starve at school for all week long, not having lunch. And then would go to the beach, pay a dollar 50 for gas, and then I'd have another dollar or a dollar 50 depending on who charged what for a bag of Dale Donuts from Speedy Mart, which was like a precursor to seven-eleven. Down in Cardiff and then whatever else food we'd get and would just, all I cared about was surfing. I didn't do very well in school. I didn't fail, but I got like seas, but I was naturally good at math, algebra, and geometry, so I didn't, that was, I hated reading. I hated reading history. I hated reading any of that stuff. Just couldn't concentrate. I'd read it, I'd re, when I'd be doing my homework, I'd be reading a paragraph over and over again thinking about surfing or something. And finally I just put the book away how I even passed. I can't, I don't remember how I could do that because I didn't really study. And like I said, na, the math stuff was semi-natural, so I got pretty good grades in algebra, geometry, math, stuff like that. And then my mom moved to Berkeley in 67. She wanted, she was working at the library in Redlands and then she wanted to become a librarian, so she needed to go to the university, moved up to Berkeley. And I remember my older brother was already in college and my other brother just graduated in 67, so it was just me and my mom and my sister. And I was thinking, shoot up in San Francisco area, there's icebergs in the water up there. I just had this impression. It's it's so cold. What a pi. I just hated moving up there because that was the end of my surfing career, and then once I got up there, after a little while, I think my oldest brother came and visited and we decided to drive down to Santa Cruz and Reali and found that it wasn't as cold as we thought and it was doable. And then I made a couple surfers there and we started going over to Belinas, which is north of the Golden Gate Bridge. And surfing over there. And then one day, it was probably in the late, it was like late 68 maybe. And we went to Belinas and I saw this homemade surfboard. And this is the time when short boards first started being made. And there were, there weren't, it wasn't longboard surfing anymore. Nat Young and Dick Brewer were making short boards, the first short boards in the late sixties there. And I saw this homemade surfboard there that this guy made on the beach. And I go, shoot, I could do that. And so I drove down to Santa Cruz to the O'Neill shop. They used to make surfboards, they, they had a surfboard brand as well as their wetsuit thing. And I bought a blank, a gallon of residence, some glass, and came back and turned one of the rooms in our apartment into the shaping room and shaped that board. And then out on the out on the, what do you call it? The roof of the house. I started glassing boards up there, and that's how I started making boards. And then we chopped down all our old classic long, long boards, stripped them, and I reshaped those and then started making boards. Okay. So that was like late sixties or early 1968 was the first full size board I made. Okay. I actually forgot to mention that when I got into seventh grade, I wanted to make a belly board, which is like a boogie board, but we used to call them belly boards and it was shaped like a surfboard, uhhuh, and a longboard. And so when I got into seventh grade wood shop, I told the teacher I wanted to, you could make, they give you assignments of what you have to make to teach you how to work with wood. But I had I wanted to make this belly board. It was four feet long, glued up, shaped with rocker and stuff, and. He said that's way too big of a project for a seventh grader. So for the, I had to wait till ninth grade. So the next two years, all I thought about was making that belly board. So when I got

 Aloha Friends, it's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to the third season of the Blue Planet Show. I started this show a couple years ago in my home office, in the garage during the pandemic, just to get to know other wing foilers find out more what drives them, what inspires them. And as always, I like to find a little bit more about their background and just get to know them a little bit better and learn for my own benefit. And I'm stoked to be able to share it with all of you. I get people coming up to me all the time saying I'll watch your shows all the way to the end. So I'm one of the 5% that watches the whole thing. So stoked to hear that. And I know many of you are also listening to it as a podcast while you're driving to the beach or going foiling and getting stoked or just listening to it while you can't go in the water because it's too cold, or you're traveling or whatnot. Stoked. Always to hear that kind of stuff, super stoked. And today's guest is James Casey, who also has a great podcast. So if you haven't listened to that, it's all about downwind foiling. You should check it out. And he also has a coaching club that you can join to learn about downwind foiling. He's an amazing athlete. He holds the record for the most kilometers foiled in one day. And a great coach for any of you who want to get into downwind foiling. And he also invented the sport of winging upwind and then deflating and foiling downwind. Really cool stuff that he's doing and pioneering also designing and testing equipment and so on. Without further ado, here is James Casey. Okay, James Casey. Welcome to the Blue Planet Show. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I've watched a bunch of these shows and yeah, it's cool to be on here myself now. Yeah. And I've been listening to your shows while I'm driving and getting stoked and motivated to do more downwind foiling. So thanks for doing that. A lot of really good information on your show. And I want to get into that, like Doman foiling, your Casey crew or the coaching crew, and then also the Moloka race, and then your announcement about joining Code foils and all kinds of stuff. Your record 213 kilometer record on a foil all that kind of stuff. But before we get into all those things, let's talk a little bit about your background. Let's go into a little bit like where, where you were born, how you grew up, and how you got into water sports and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So yeah, James Casey. I was born in Sydney, Australia, and it's basically the east coast. And my mom and dad both surfed as a kid. They took me out surfing and like a boogie boarding first and then surfing. And I think I got my, I remember vividly actually gave you my first surfboard when I was like, probably a bit of a late starter compared to people nowadays, but I was like 10 or 11. I got like this PCUs, four Finn, super nineties board, skinny nose, like super pointy, heaps of rocker. But that was my first board. This was just one of my dad's old boards that he didn't use anymore. Yeah, this is your board now. You can, you can take this here, this out. And yeah, pretty much surfed all through my teenage years. I competed in like board riders, so I was I won the juniors movale board riders season sort of competition. But then I got 18, 19, I started getting worn in my rugby union. So I was playing a lot of rugby. Played for the, I guess the local club, the Ringer Rats, and was, I played a couple games in first grade, but I was basically just too small to be to be, following that dream as a, as an athlete in rugby. I was also competing against basically , who's now the Wallabies captain, Michael Hooper. So like in people who watch rugby would know what I'm talking about. But yeah, I was playing rugby against him a lot, so rugby was always, I was always second field to him, but I just loved it. It was great camaraderie and that sort of stuff and, but I was still juggling my rugby and surfing and basically as a rugby player you're pretty big and bulky and so it's not the best for surfing. But I got into standup paddling in my sort of I guess it was, I don't know the exact date, but I was. Pretty young. I was probably like 14 or 15. We, we were in Hawaii and I sprained my ankle kite surfing. And wait, so when, how did you get into kite surfing? Yeah, I was thinking that when I said that. Gotta explain that, . So I got into kite surfing. I used to go to Maui a lot. Basically my dad was a wind surfer and basically every July we'd go over to Hawaii to f as a family holiday to windsurf. And I was learning to windsurf and then all of a sudden all these kite around and I'd just nailed for windsurfing, I'd nailed my like water starts. So on the small sort of wave riding board, I was water starting, I was just starting into wave riding. And then I cut my foot on the reef out at uppers at Kaha. . And so I was outta the water for a bit and when I was outta the water, my brother, younger brother and sister learned to kite surf and then I was all fired up. I wanna learn to kite surf, it looks easier and you're on a smaller board. And so basically going backwards, I guess windsurfing my dad, cause he windsurf, he took us out in the lake a lot. Just a local Naraine lake. And we'd learned to windsurf on a big, we used to call it the island. Just a massive, it was a starboard, I think a massive starboard and you can get three people on it. It was super stable for us kids as well. So we did that. Then, so then I learned on a smaller board, wave, wave sailing and never really nailed it. I one or two trips down to OA and then Hawaii was almost there and then I cut my foot outta the water for a week. Then went to kite surf and kite surfing was what we loved to do as a family. Like my brother, my dad, and myself would all go out kite surfing at home and then me when it was sick. But yeah, then I sprained my ankle. Kite surfing this one time. I guess it was, it must have not been July cause there was some waves. Must have been, winter. And there were heaps of good. It was good surf that year too. So I cut my foot so sprained my ankle kiting and I couldn't pop up on a surfboard like, like regular surfing because my, an basically res sprained my ankle. So we went to the local shop what's it called? High Tech in Maui. And we rented Hawaii Paddle Surf, like standup paddle board. Cause we'd seen lad do it, we were in hook keep and Lad was doing his helicopters and that looks pretty cool. Yeah, we went down the hike. So can you, do you guys sell these salmon paddle boards? Yeah, we got a couple. So we rented two of those and we're actually staying at like near Mama's Fish house. , and there's a few reefs out there and basically, When there's no wind. We managed to score some really good sessions out there on the standup paddle board, just like glassy and like four to six foot kind of thing. And I was on a standup paddle board on these outer reefs and it was like, oh, this is pretty legit. And on the standup paddle board was easier because you're paddling out to his outer east and instead you're comfortable. So I'm like, this is cool. So he went home and St. Paddling wasn't really a thing yet. Went home and the local shop, I came in Sydney WSS boards. Sam Parker had, didn't have any production boards, but he did have a custom one that he, a local builder had built him just basically a big longboard. And so we grabbed that off him for a week and just was roughing out on that. No ankle is now better now. So it was just like, it was just cuz we liked it. And basically we, when the stock came in, we bought one, but be between that we were I actually grabbed my dad's windsurf board and we'd never paddled, so we had a rake and we cut the prongs off the rake, the plastic rakes, and we were paddling around the local spot on this windsurf board, like a smaller windsurf board had the full sandpaper deck. So we got all, got smoked rashed up on the stomach. But yeah, that was, and then, basically once the production stuff was out in Australia, we were riding it, but I was never really competing. So like I did all this is all like, 13, 14 or whatever, what's that sort of age? And so I was paddling it, but I didn't know there was competitions and my brother worked in the local shop WSS boards. And there was, I went to one competition at Long ra and I wasn't really, it was fun, but it wasn't really something I was motivated to, to pursue. We did a race, actually the fir, my first s race was Movale to Collary, which is like eight Ks. and it was a nice little northeast Lee Breeze. My I'd never paddled a race board before my brother working at the shop had organized a board for my himself, my dad and me. And there was two 14 footers and 1 12 6 and somehow I got stitched up and was put on the 12 six. So we're doing the race and it's all like a little down window. We just cruising cause we don't know how to race. We're just paddling like we are surfing, looking for little bumps to catch. And all of a sudden this storm comes through and we're about halfway through the race, we're at the back cause we're this cruising and this hail it starts hailing on us. So we, the massive storm, the wind was northeast hailstorm comes through the winds now south. And so we're all lying on our boards paddling into the winds like prone style. And because I had a 12 six I could keep it pointed into the wind easier. I wasn't getting blown around as much. So I, I remember vividly beating my brother. And he was all off it because he is oh, it was because you were the shorter board. It was easier for you to, paddle into the window. Mate, a shorter board should go slower. So it was, the competitive spirit was always there, but I didn't touch another race board for a very long time. So that was that was interesting. That was a not the best start to to the whole racing stuff. It wasn't until my now brother-in-law Grant Hardiman got into ums racing that I really got into thes racing stuff. But in t

Ken Winner, wing foil designer extraordinaire talks about his background as a pro windsurfer and how he became a designer at Duotone and developed the first inflatable handheld wing for foiling.  At first there was little interest in his invention but once a few people tried it, the sport of wing foiling really took off. Transcript of the interview:  Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Blue Planet Show, where I interview foil athletes, designers, and thought leaders.  You can watch this show right here on YouTube or listen to it on your favorite podcast app. Today's interview is with Ken Winter, the designer at Duotone wing designer extraordinaire. And as always, I ask questions, not just about equipment and technique, but also try to find out more about his background, what inspires him and how he got into water sports. So Ken was really open in this interview, shared a lot of information about wing design, even showed his computer screen where he designs wings. So that's  at the very end of the interview. So you don't want to miss that part. It's really cool if you're into Wing design and wanna know more about the materials and the construction, the design and Ken's philosophy. This is a really good show for all that kind of information. During this interview, I'm gonna play a little bit of footage of Alan Cadiz Wing foiling in Kailua. I got some drone footage of him, which was after this interview, but he's using the 2023 Duotone unit Wing 4.5 meter wing. I'll play some of that in the background. Thank you so much for your time, Ken, and for sharing all the detailed information. So without further ado, here is Ken Winner. Okay. Good morning, Ken. How are you doing today? Good morning. I'm pretty good. All right. It's a little bit of a rainy and windy day here on Oahu. How's the weather on Maui? Same. Same. Yeah. Yep. So have you had super stormy winds the last few days? It's been crazy windy here. Yeah, it's been gusting 45 at times. Do you actually go out in those kind of conditions or do you wait? Yeah. Windy days. Yeah. It's pretty fun. Yeah. So you've been doing what you, what do you do on days like that? You go on a down window or you just go go off? I only do down windows with my wife nowadays. That's her favorite thing. Otherwise I from a friend's house over on Stable Road and Peter actually lives on Stable Road and so we launched there, go out race around a bit, test different wings, hydrofoils. Nice. What kind of equipment were you on in, on those super windy days? Anything from a two to a four. Sometimes we go out pretty overpowered just cause we have something we wanna try and we don't have many choices. Some days we just have to go and do what we can with what we have. We do a lot of prototyping in the four and five meter size. We do a fair amount in the three meter size and then smaller and bigger. We also prototype and test quite a bit, but maybe not as intensely. Nice. Okay. But before we get more into all the equipment and stuff like that, I wanted to get talk a little bit about your background. So tell us a little bit about start in the beginning, like wh how, where you grew up and how you got into water sports and all that kind of stuff. was born a long time ago, 1955, so there's a lot of history there. You don't wanna hear it all. Grew up near Annapolis, Maryland. Did a fair amount of recreational cruising type sailing. My dad owned boats. Built a lot of stuff when I was a kid. Owned a couple boats when I was a teenager. Started windsurfing in 75. How extensive do you want this to be? Started windsurfing in 75, won the world championship in 77. We won again, 80 in 81. We had the right there on Oahu, where you are. We had the World Cup, the PanAm World Cup, which I. Actually, yeah don't worry about making it short. Like we, we got time. So just actually like how did you get into windsurfing? What was your first experience with that? Or what were you doing? Anything other like surfing or water sports before windsurfing? Yeah. No, I've never actually surfed. As I said, I grew up sailing I, when I was a teenager, maybe 17 or 16, I bought a old wooden boat, a little wooden boat, a Bahamas fixed it sailed around, kept it house else. I also bought a shark catamaran sail out bit. So I was into sailing and I, I saw an ad for a windsurfer and thought that would be a good thing for me to try. So wind, Also about the same time bought a hang glider. So I taught myself to hang glide and but I really enjoyed the windsurfing more so sold everything else and just focused on windsurfing. So that you were around 20 years old? Yeah. About 20. Yeah. Did you you have any like formal education or did you go like straight into wind surfing? Yeah, it's funny, I was gonna University of Maryland when I started windsurf, and I might have stuck with that, but I started windsurf and thinking, oh, I can go to college little, a little time windsurfing. And and then when I'm ready to quit, I can go back to school. But I never did actually go back to school, kept wind surfing. For the next forever , 23 years, but ba So basically you're self-taught, like all the knowledge you have on with computers and aerodynamics or, all that is basically from experience and self-taught kind of thing or? Yeah, I do a lot of reading. I remember in, sometime in the early eighties Barry Spanner, I think got a book. The title was The Aerodynamics of Sailing. And I, I heard him make a comment about it, so I got it and I read from cover to cover several times and really absorbed, I think the lessons of that. And did a lot of other reading after that. But that was sort my foundation for learning about the technical side of sailing. , nowadays, of course, it's super easy to get a lot of information online, really good information. So unless you're pursuing a career like attorney or doctor or degreed engineer or PhD scientist, you don't need formal education as much as you used to. If you need it at all, I don't know. But yeah, I think as long as you're a lifelong learner, you can pretty much teach yourself almost anything. . Yeah. Okay. Yeah, a lot of things, for sure. Yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do some screen sharing here from the windsurfing Hall of Fame. There's little bit of information about you online here. So in the, so you started windsurfing in 1975. That's, this was the day, days when they, the booms were still made out of wood and so on, right? Talk a little bit about your first first wind windsurfing set up bought a used board for 300 bucks and went out, taught myself to use it, and just became hooked like most people. Did it every chance I had. And at first all I focused on was trying to improve my skills. That was hundred percent of my effort. But then gradually over time, I got more interested in improving the equipment. So over time I did some things like. Built my own boards and built my own rigs, masks spoons. Yeah. And you start, you started winning a lot of races, so you were very focused on the com racing side of windsurfing or also I guess freestyle as well, right? Yeah. So I won the freestyle world two or three times, and that was back, it was a much simpler affair than it's now. Of course, the guys who do freestyle nowadays circles around all of us who did freestyle back then. yeah. Around. But you gotta start somewhere in every sport. And so that, that's a picture of Robbie and Jurgen in me at the pan, the Panta actually which was right there on Wahoo. Over in Kai. Yeah. And you were able to beat Robbie, I guess at that point. Still, and you have several world world titles right? In Windsurf racing. Yeah. Robbie and I were rivals to some extent, but he was younger and when he got to be when he achieved his full adult strength, he was extremely hard. I started when I was 20. He started when he was nine. And it's surprise that he dominated the sport so much for so many years. He's a amazing athlete and really great guy. Good entrepreneurs, got a great business. And and we're still rivals. , it's been a good, it's been a good 40 some years. . And then you started build, you said you started building your own boards and making smaller and smaller boards, right? Yeah. So I, excuse me. Yeah I built a a nine foot board. Actually prior to that I had a board shaped for me and glass, and that was a board I would say. I basically invented carving, jives, cause everybody had boards back then. I had a round tail board, which carve through my, instead of skid through them. And basically from that point on, I focused a lot on trying to improve my equipment. I  you're showing a picture of the Transatlantic Windsurf race, which was a pretty funny. That was in about 98, I think. But this has gotta be pretty boring for anybody watching. People are interested in what's happening now. Yeah. No, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I don't think any, what he's gonna find is boring at all, but, , yeah, just yeah. And then I guess you yeah, I tell us a little bit about how you got into the Wing, wing des, or were you designing w windsurfing sales for duo to before kites, or like how, or, and then, yeah. Just tell us a little bit about how you got Yeah. So I went surfed intensely for three years. I guess in 97, I think I won the US Racing Championships. And then just shortly after that I tried kiting for the first time. And basically after I tried kiting for the first time, I I sold on my windsurfing gear and got straight into kiting. My, my first kite experience was with Don Monague right off Stable Road on Maui. He was out kiting. I was out windsurfing and I told him I wanted to try that, so he handed me his control bar and the leashed, his board to my ankle, and he told me how to secure the kite. And I, so I kited back and forth down to Kaha for the next half hour. And so that was my, that's how I got hooked on kiting. And so from the very first session, you were able to stay upwind a

Mike Zajicek and Stefano Moris make some of the world's fastest foils. When I researched their foils to use for wing foiling, I could not find much information online. After many months of waiting, they were finally able to make time for an interview. The timing was great since I just received the 600 Mike's lab Foil from them that I ordered months ago. We talk about their background, how they started designing and making foils and go into detail on their foil design theories and construction. For more information on their foils, please visit: http://www.mikeslab.com Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show, where I interview foil athletes, designers, and thought leaders and get lots of good information for all those foil crazy people out there, like you and me. This year I didn't post a lot of interviews, but I'm ending this year, 2022 with a bang, with two really good interviews. Today's interview is with Mike's lab founder Mike and partner Stefano. They make some of the best foils in the world, the fastest foils in the world, hand-built in San Francisco and in Italy. The story, background story is really cool as well. know, Mike grew up in Czechoslovakia, communist Czechoslovakia, where he started building windsurf equipment and making it for his friends. And then escaping over the border, risking his life to escape Communist Czechoslovakia, and ended up in the West and eventually in San Francisco, started making windsurf boards again for some of the top athletes in the world, and then getting. Foils at the time of the interview. I only had one quick session on my 600 mike slab foil. Since then, I've been able to try it more and also use it on a really long downwind run in epic conditions from Hawaii Kai to White Plains where we winged like about 40 miles downwind. Super fun. And that's why I could really tell how fast this foil is. I went out with some really fast guys and was able to of smoke them in some of the runs just because the foil was really quick and easy to control and I was just able to make these big drops on these big bumps. And so I had a great time with it. I might include some of that footage in this during this interview. And then also I have some really nice footage of Alan Kez using his five, I think it's a five 40 Mike's lab foil in Kailua. And got some cool drone footage of him going super fast on that foil as well. I hope you enjoy the, this interview and next week's interview is gonna be with Ken Winter. He's the designer at Duotone and making some of the best wings on the market and also was really the first one to make inflatable wings for foiling. He's definitely a pioneer and a really good story. Started. Windsurf professional, and then got into the design side of things. And he really shared a lot about the, his wing designs and philosophy and et cetera. So that's a really good show as well. And I'm gonna post that the following Saturday, which is December 24th, and wishing everyone happy holidays. And without further ado, here is Mike and Stefano with Mike's lab. So welcome, Stefano and Mike to the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is about Mike's Lab foils. Thanks so much for joining me. I've been waiting for quite a while to get you on the show. And I finally got my own Mike's lab foil. I've only tried it one time, unfortunately, but really really excited about it. So welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. And actually, let's start with where you are joining from, so we're spread out all over the world here. All right. I'm in Sienna, Italy, and I'm close to San Francisco. Yeah. And then I'm in Honolulu where it's morning time. And I think for you it's Mike is midday and for Stephano, it's late in the evening. So thanks for making the time to, to join the Blue Planet Show. , my, my video is, Doing funky stuff, but, so anyway let's talk a little bit about your background. I just heard Mike saying that you you basically had to escape from, or Yeah. Tell us about, a little bit about your background how you got to where you're now. Maybe start with Mike. Yeah, so obviously I have went grade school, then apprentice training for cabinet making, but high end cabinet making, the European stuff, which you make, eat for generations rather than the, whatever I learned here. Kitchen cabinets with a staple gun, , very different. And then I went to like high school with kinda orientation for architecture, interior design and furniture design. And after that I worked for about a year in interior design in the office and also in the what is it? Shop shop. And we were catering to diplomats in Prague, taking care of the residences, preparing all that and. About 1978 actually. Exactly. I started making windsurfing boards because that was one thing we were allowed to do because my brother took on hang gliding and that was a no-no, especially close to the border. So that quickly became somewhat outlawed except one little hill in center of Czech Republic. So that's why me and my friends, we picked up wind surfing and, so 78 I made the first one, and that's how I actually introduced myself into epoxy and all that. And I kept making boards until 2012, actually more, that was the end of windsurfing boards, and then the kit boards went on for another, I would say three to four years. But during the end of that time the foil came on and I was able to jump on probably the first sword foil, which was imported into America by Brian Lake. And he left for a week somewhere and he said, yeah, Mike, hey, he have at it  and I, it was a very interesting time. He couldn't quite do it yet. It was a skim board. I put footsteps on it so I can even try because I hate boards without footsteps. And yeah, it was difficult. He thought he wasted his money  soon, very soon after he came back, he learned enough that he was doing the, I think it was Friday night races on kite boards. And very quickly he started winning the weather mark. And so we knew this is the way to go. And so sorry to interrupt you, but this was all still in the Czech Republic, right? No. I escape in 1983. And what are we are talking about now? Maybe 2014. So there's 30 years between. Okay. But okay. So you were saying back, so back in the Czech Republic, you're doing an apprenticeship for building furniture and so on. And then you started playing with hang lighters and building wind surfers, correct? Correct. That was all. So in the Czech Republic? Yes. And I'm sure that at that time you weren't really able to buy any goods from the West, so you had to basically build your whole rig and everything, or like, how, yeah. How was, how did that work? So back then, yeah, we basically bought, it was actually a pre molded piece of styrofoam, but we didn't like the shape, so we reshaped it a little bit and then laid it up with fiberglass and epox.  and for, let's say universal. We had friends like machine fittings where the high pressure hose would fit into get screwed from the, from both sides with like heavy duty bolt, expand the high pressure hose into this little delivering housing. That was our universal. And then we fitted aluminum MAs, which is just a piece of pipe, and same thing for the boom, which I found two trees and started bending my aluminum pipe to make a boom. And then I SCO end together. And I'm sure everybody started like that. Everybody in eastern Europe, right? Yeah, because I grew up in, in west Berlin, but we had friends in East Germany and they had to basically build their own equipment unless we brought them something over from the west, . Yeah. But I recall the beginnings in Maui, like early seventies, and nobody was making anything and they were pioneering their own way. Oh, so that, was that early you got into windsurfing, like back Yeah, I was 78 maybe just few years later and  certainly couldn't buy except those pre molded styrofoam blanks. Somebody was able to put together probably on the side in some factory. And yeah, that's what we bought and we could buy a park and fiberglass that was doable. Okay. And then talk a little bit about how you escaped from the Czech Republic and made it to the us. So me and my wealth, our dad was always on a dissident side, but he never got too much in trouble except getting fired from pilot school. But his friends they were persecuted a little bit more to the point that some of them ended up in u New Mines, and actually two sons of one of this, these friends helped us later on. But first we took a vacation in Yugoslavia and we contacted these couples sons over on my dad's friend, who in the meantime died as probably the result of the minds. So they researched an area how we can, or where it's safe to jump the fence between Yugoslavia and Italy. First we tried to sail from Yugoslavia to Italy across, like this Northern bay. We were quickly stopped by boat and we were in the wetsuit, so they just sent us. . Then later on, I remember being in some kind of a police station. I think that's when we came up to the border crossing and they basically took us out and did little interview. And the third time, there was few days later, these friends from Switzerland came and we started talking, strategizing, and they had this city in US Lavia where some other check people were able to just jump the fence in the middle of the city. And so that's what we ended up doing. And we abandoned our car on the US lobby inside and they basically loaded us into their car. And from dark midnight Italy, we drove all the way to Vienna refugee camp, which is Austria, where the waiting line was locked shorter. And we just had to lie to authorities there, that was the first country we stepped our foot on. So we will be able to stay in a refugee camp and apply for asylum. Wow. So this was like, I guess this was before the Berlin Wall came down and things like that. Oh yeah. What year? What year was that? I, this was 83 and Berlin Wall came down in 89. Oh, okay. So that

Jason Tangalin and Pono Matthews and the Foil Fever Ohana organized the Foilers of Aloha Classic foil contest on Kauai, held on Nov. 26th, 2022. The event was blessed with great conditions, a stoked community of foilers and next level performance in the waves. This interview contains drone footage of the contest, the second half also has footage documenting our 3 day trip with the crew from Oahu, we scored good wing foiling conditions on the Friday before the event. If you can, watch it at high resolution on a big screen, enjoy! Watch the foil surf contest highlights video here: https://youtu.be/BUQSkESvnjg We hope you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the blueplanetsurf YouTube channel, we post a new video every Saturday morning, Aloha! Please come visit one of our shops on Oahu: Hale'iwa shop and rental location: Blue Planet Hale'iwa 62-620F Kamehameha Highway Haleiwa, Hawaii 96712 Tel (808) 888 0786 Open daily, 9 am to 5 pm http://www.blueplanetadventure.com Honolulu store- - Hawaii's SUP and Foil HQ: Blue Planet Surf 1221 Kona St Honolulu, Hi 96814 Tel (808) 596 7755 open 10 am to 5 pm Hawaii Time, closed Wednesdays and Sundays http://www.blueplanetsurf.com Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bpsurf/ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blueplanetsurf Find Paradise Aloha! Transcript: Aloha friends, it's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show. I know it's been a while since I posted the last show, but today's show is awesome. You don't wanna miss it if you love foiling. And I also have two more interviews scheduled. I'm really excited about those. One is with Mike's lab, Mike and Stefano, they make some of the fastest foils available. I just got one after waiting for many months for it, and I'm excited to try it and talk about it on that show. And then also I have an interview scheduled with Ken Winter, who I've been get trying to get for a very long time. He's a former windsurfing world champion and the designer of the wings at Duo Tone. So I'm really excited to talk to him about wing design and so on. So stay tuned for those two episodes. And today's show is all about the Foil Fever Ohana, Jason Tangalin and Pono Matthews, the organizers of the Foyers of Aloha Classic event, which was held last weekend at Kalapaki Beach, which had some of the most amazing performance and conditions in any foil contest to date. So you don't wanna miss it. And if you have a high speed internet connection, You are gonna want to watch it at full resolution on a big screen cuz the footage is amazing. But of course you can also listen to it as a podcast on your favorite podcast app. During the interview, I only played the footage from the contest, which is of the first half of the interview. And then we just kept talking story for a long time. So I also included footage from our first day on Kauai, where we had two really good wing foil sessions, some really good footage from of wing foiling on Kauai in the second half. And then also the day after the contest, some surf foiling mark Surf foiling at Kak Beach. So I really hope you enjoy this episode of the Foyers of Aloha Classic. And without further ado, please welcome Jason and Pono from the Foil Fever Ohana. Welcome Jason and Pono to the Blue Planet Show. Thanks so much for being my guest today. Yeah, no problem. Right on. So yeah, I just got back last weekend you guys had that awesome contest at KAK Beach and the conditions were amazing. I was just telling Jason, I think it was, probably the best foil contest yet, in terms of the performance to a whole nother level and then the conditions and everything. Just an amazing event. And yeah, congratulations on putting together this awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. And then also, just the whole community that you put together, all the people that are involved in it and the, the party afterwards with food and everything. And it was, it is just a, it was just a great experience for everybody. And myself and a few others from Oahu we went over there to actually to do the, do wind race. And then unfortunately that the wind just died. Like we had super strong wind the whole week before, and then the week of the contest had just died off. Yeah. God, that's God telling us. Okay. One day's good enough for you, . Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, talk a little bit maybe about all the work that's involved in putting together contest like this. It starts with the big thing is trying to get the permits and we can't really do anything put anything out on social media to receives the authorization from Koi for us to get to put on a contest. But this year we tried to put out a little bit more social media than usual. We knew it was gonna come to be a lot of hard work cause of the first year we did it, it was a lot of hard work. But I don't know. It worked out making the shirts, getting all the sponsors. Initially on our first contest, we made it work. So Koi was the host. We made it where 60% of the competitors was from Koi, their hometown. And then 40% is spread it all over the state in California and Texas to give the local boys their an opportunity to join. And there was a lot of 'em that did the first contest that wanted, they wanted to just watch on this one. So it allowed me to invite a lot more from the state, which was good. And I try to, we try to invite invite the best of the best, and from the first contest to now, three years later the progression has gone on a whole nother level that we never thought it would ever be, because on our first one we're like, oh, I can't wait for next year. Yeah. I was like, but three years later it's a whole new world, that's for sure. Yeah. So the first one the first inaugural event was in 2019. And then basically, Whole pandemic came in the way. And then, so you this is really the second contest you guys are holding and Yeah, like you said the whole yeah, the performance just went through the roof, it seemed it just yeah, it's like crazy how exciting it was to watch the whole thing. Yeah. But, okay and I have a whole bunch of video. I posted that video with the highlights and then I made a longer video for this interview that we, we can show it and talk about it, but we still want to make it fun to listen to as a podcast as well. But I'm gonna actually just start screen sharing while we're talking. So that way welcome to comment on the video or just talk about the, your, whatever we're talking about. But I'm just gonna play this in the background. So this was the contest events item I'm just gonna play versus that video of the highlights. And can you guys see the video? Okay? Yes, you can. That's JD Irons. Okay. . So yeah, just actually let's talk a little bit about the conditions, cuz it, like the day before and the day after, it was just normal small waves and then this day was just yeah. Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, for sure. The day before we were all there doing the, we had the beach. On Friday. So we saw some other guys out there practicing and we were like, oh, there's some waves. It's like normal cak waves kinda slow. Me and my uncle and some of the other guys were talking and we were we hope there's waves tomorrow. Cause we weren't too sure. Like we never anticipated this swell to hit. Some of us were talking about it like, oh, okay, there's a big north swell and we know kak will get it if we have that trade winds also. And then Friday, I think we're talking about how the the soil is actually gonna switch directions for more northeast well, so we're like, oh, okay, we're definitely gonna have waves. But the trippy part about, its when we got there at 30 in the morning, I believe to set up the canoe club and then all we see is just water, covering water and boulder's big, huge rocks just covering up the road and we can hear the waves breaking over the brick wall. And we're like, we look at each other and we're like, oh my goodness, it's bombing it. It's gotta be really good. So that , I think that was the most exciting part, was just seeing that sunrise come over the mountain and just seeing the sets just rolling. And it was just definitely un unbelievable for all of us. I think we never anticipated it. It all worked out in the end, swallow all day long. Good waves. Yeah, and kak too. It's like the whole place is a little bit almost like an am amphitheater where like everyone's sitting around watching and and just the crowd, the, like the whole, the audio from the crowd. I wish I had recorded that to put with the video cuz it was just like cool to , hear all the comments and the cheers and whatever, it was just, yeah, it was just an experience to, to everyone was super excited about, the whole contest and watching every ride and like cheering everyone on. So that was definitely a good part of it. And a lot lot of good white pods, like this one . Yeah. That was me. Yeah. Yeah. That was, yeah, that was a good one. So a lot of, there was like a lot of kinda sick double ups Yeah. Where the thing just like would drop out from underneath you, it seemed right? Yeah. That's from the lower tide. Huh? So it's crazy because the last time we had a swell, like this was hurricane in Wow. It was never this big, and we didn't anticipate how glassy it would. Because the first contest, it was as big as this, but it wasn't glassy. It was really windy, very stormy. So all the really good guys got it was very hard for them. And that's why the guys, they're so used to it. They got really, they did really good on that one home advantage if, you know that wave, right? Yeah. It gets a, it gets tricky out there. Especially with this kind of swell too. And on that low tide, it was super shallow out there. Like some of these sets when we had to duck dive, we're duck diving on dry reef. So we would get stuck on the reef trying to duck dive and just get smashed. Yeah. Oh my God. I think Kane actually did a a bottom turn and he hi

Wing Foil Interview: Sam Loader with PPC Foiling is back on the Blue Planet Show Aloha friends! This is Robert Stehlik, Welcome to another episode of the blue planet show, where I interview wing foil athletes, thought leaders and designers right here in Honolulu, in my home office. And in today's show, I'm interviewing Sam loader, the owner of PPC foiling based in Auckland, New Zealand. We're talking for the second time on the boot planet show. In the first interview, we went more into his background, his business and foiling scene in New Zealand. This time we go over, what's new over the last year and all the equipment he's coming out with. We talk about the soar boards, his new wings the foil he has planned. So stay tuned. You can watch it right here on YouTube with all the good visual content, or you can just listen to it. Audio only as a podcast to search for the blue planet show and your favorite podcast app. Okay. So without further do, here is Sam loader, right? Sam, welcome to the blue planet show back to the boot planet show for the second time. How is everything going for you? Cheer, Rob, thanks for me back. Yeah, it's been it's been a while since the last show. It seemed it seems like, yeah, it was actually a lot's happened. Now it's been going, it's been going really well. It's been going really well. Been extremely busy. I've never been this busy in my life, but At the end of the day, at least we're at least I'm designing, foils something that we love. And so yeah, it's just been pretty full on since so much has happened since last interview that then we it's it's crazy yeah, so hence why the catch up  yeah. So it's, it is great to catch up again and like for anyone listening if you haven't watched the first show, if you're interested in, at Sam's background and so on, just watch that one, we're gonna talk more about your business, your equipment just what we've learned over the last year with what's just changed what's in the coming up in the future. And so on. That's what I wanted to discuss with you mostly. And I have a few questions also from Dan and a few other guys in New Zealand. So I'll try to get to those as. And gonna try to keep it in within an hour or so if we can, but we'll see.  Will you call me up on my birthday? So you a bit of be worth it, Rob? Happy birthday. Yeah. I hope you, are you taking the day off after this? I know it's morning time for you in Auckland, right? Yeah. Honestly, I want to take the day off and I want to say I am, but I'm probably not. I'm probably just gonna do some emails. Probably gonna cover the shop a wee bit. We've got the guys coming in the afternoon. I think Josh is coming in and but yeah, later on, I'll chill out. We'll go out for dinner, stuff like that. Pretty cold in New Zealand now. Yeah. It's winter time for you. Yeah it's dropped a lot. It's certainly not summer anymore, but it's, there's still breeze, so there's still good conditions for testing. And by drop, it's only dropped to about a three, two wetsuit, so it's it's not too bad down south has got some snow, so we've gotta go down there a little later. We, the skis up maybe take a win to the mountain, I always wanted to do that, so yeah. So I'm sure you have a lot of people coming into your shop asking for that are beginners just getting into it. So I, I just wanted to always start the show with some tips for newbies people getting into the sport beginners, what do you tell people? What, what are some tips for people getting into the sport? Yeah, since, I don't know how long it's been since it started, but. I think right now, because there's so much information out there. Like when someone walks in the store, we, we just, my game plan is to try and simplify the whole process. So it's quite, it's overwhelming. When you look around, you can see Royal boards, wings, and people just go, whoa, where do I start? But we've written down like a, the board, the wing really simple, we've actually got some super high volume boards, like one 30 S and stuff. We're doing like a bit of a trade and deal at the moment, so they can buy a bigger board and then they can progress on that for around six months. And then we can switch them out to a board that they're gonna, have for a longer period of time. And then we'll recirculate those bigger boards. It's maybe a bit of a stuff up on my part by having too many big boards in production  so we're just making the opportunity to yeah. To it's just in favor of the New Zealand customer, to make their learning experience a a little quicker. And then yeah, I think when you get the w we've got three, four brands in the shop and then we just, it comes down to a little bit of budget and a little bit of, what the customer wants to spend. So it's. Yeah I think so what volume, like for a beginner, like getting into, do you do you put, send them right out on a floorboard? Do you tell 'em to use a windsurf board first with a dagger board? Or like what and then from the first board, like what kind of volume do you recommend for beginners? Usually? If it's like the one board, I would just say 20, 20 liters above body weight. But we've got Ellen down here at the lake. He's doing lessons and cuz we've got these high volume boards, like 1, 1 30 S and one 40 S we, they can just jump on those. Even if the ad kg they're gonna be super buoyant, they're gonna learn the wing probably quicker than being on like a hundred liter board. And then they can just come back and switch that board out. But I think now it's 20, 20, 30 liters, maybe about body weight. I think the whole trend's obviously coming down boards are getting smaller. Yeah, I think the 50 to the eighties, the kind of the common sizes actually most of mine went all around the world and didn't come here. So I ran out  but yeah, it's I Def I definitely think the whole process for the new guy coming into sport, new girl, come into the sport. It can be simplified a lot, they don't have to have, three wings, three foils two boards. It can be, down to one of each and then they progress and then they come in and get some feedback. Yeah. You want, you wanna be able to get people on going without spending too much money too? Yeah, I always, exactly the main thing I've just noticed people just getting too smaller board, too smaller foil. If you increase those two factors, then the. Process is just gonna be so much easier and so much more fun. And then in terms of learning you said there's somebody doing lessons on a lake kind of smooth water. Like any recommendations you have for the location and then any tips for technique or getting started? Yeah. Yeah. We're pretty lucky with the shop here. We've five minutes down the road. We've got this freshwater lake and Alan operates down here. It's not ti obviously, so he can be there at any time. So flat water it, there are no waves, so it's really stable. So it's really easy to get going on each side. And then we've got the bays, we've got fun pro coast with manly and all these sort of sheltered bays, which get, in like a west to a. Right around to south sort of Southeast. So you've always got that kind of flat water with those winds. So I would just say, just try and stick to the flat water with wind, if you don't have access to a boat. And maybe even just grab a wing, jump on a skateboard or something.  We're doing these little skateboard, you don't have to go on the water straight away. You can grab a wing, jump on the land, go to a big ASALT, concrete area and just get the feel for the wing. I reckon that's been a cool thing. A lot of people are actually getting skateboards lately.  So we're getting these little what have we got on the shop? These slide carvers and yeah, they're selling pretty well with the wing. Which is pretty cool. Nice. Yeah. That's a great way to learn as well. All right. And then terms of the, like I know during the pandemic, probably a lot of people got into a sport. I know here in Hawaii, like it was, there was like booming and we never had enough inventory like last couple years, but then it seems to tr be transitioning where the demand's kind of slowing down a little bit or the growth seems to be slowing on. Do you and here in Hawaii anyways, are you experiencing the same thing in New Zealand? Yeah. Yeah. It was funny, couldn't, could it get enough stock? Couldn't get it in time. It was just frustrating at the time I remember. And then it all arrived at once and , we did, we were just like full and then it the demand dropped off at the same time. So it was funny, but we actually had a seriously busy summer last summer.  I was actually really surprised. It was extremely busy. We went through everything and yeah, at the pandemic, there was a massive demand for gear, but which did drop off, I don't know, it just spiked, but then it dropped off and now it's flattened out but I'm still seeing new B newbies coming into the sport, which is cool. Yeah, so actually speaking of the pandemic, so it I know in New Zealand, you pretty much had no cases for a long time and you were able to keep COVID out of New Zealand, but seems like recently, it's you guys have COVID too now, right in New Zealand and it's like more prevalent or. Yeah, I think it's, everybody's just getting it really . Have you gotten COVID yet? Oh yeah. I've had it. And then we've got, we've got like a bit of a social win group developing, good friends and, one of them each weeks dropping down with it. But, it's that majority is just like a little cold and then that bitter in a week, and most people are vaccinated by now. So it's not as bad as was early on. Yeah. And no more shutdowns. Is that, do you still have shutdowns or like what are no nothing like that. Kind of wish we, I shouldn't say it wish we did click it. Click and collect. Collect was working out pretty well getting on the water  but yeah, no we haven't had the shutdowns. I think the government just realizes everybody's gonna get this and and mo

In this conversation Clifford Coetzer, the founder and designer at Unifoil goes over tips for wing foil beginners, his background, how he started making foils and started Unifoil, foil design evolution, construction, stiffness, tradeoffs, testing prototypes, foil characteristics, and more, I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did, thank you for your support and positive feedback. Aloha, Robert Stehlik For more information on Unifoil, please visit: https://www.uni-foil.com Transcript: Aloha  friends. It's Robert Stehlik welcome to another episode of the blue planet show in today's interview. I'm speaking with Clifford from uni foil. He's in South Africa, I'm in Hawaii. So there's like a 12 hour time difference. There's a little bit of a delay and so on, but it's a great conversation. And we get into detail on foil design tips for beginners tips, for more advanced people, all kinds of technical things about the foils. I'm trying to wrap my head around all the different aspects of how everything works together, and Clifford's really good at explaining it and making sense of it. And obviously he's tried a lot of different things. He's one of the first people to come out with the high aspect foil. And so he's definitely one of the pioneers in foil design. Really good conversation. Hope you enjoy it. Please make sure to give it a thumbs up if you like it, make sure to subscribe to the blue planet surf YouTube channel down below. I'll put some links down in the description as well. For the uni foil website, you can watch the blue planet show right here on YouTube, or you can also listen to it on your favorite podcast app to search for the blue planet show. And without further ado here is Clifford. Okay, Clifford. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Good Robert. Thanks for having me on man. What a privilege? Awesome. To finally meet you. Yeah. Fi glad to finally get you on the show. So here in Hawaii, it's 8:00 PM in the evening. And for you, it's 8:00 AM in, in Cape, in South Africa and Jeffrey bay. That's where you're at. That's right? Yeah. Just the start of the day. Yeah. So how long have you been living in Jeffreys bay or is you born and raised there or? Uh, No. I was actually born in Johannesburg. But at a young age I moved over to England and then I've been coming over to Jeffrey bay on holiday. So I've actually got a house year. I've been coming here for 20 years and then about 10 years ago, I actually moved to Jeffrey bay. Excellent. So trying to start off season with some tips for beginners last year, I kind had it, the, of this, I asked the question, what are some tips for beginners, but I wanted kind turn it around. So for the beginners watching, what are some good tips for people that want to get into wing foiling? For myself, I only started wing foiling last year and my biggest tip is to use the right equipment. That is critical. So myself being a bit of a heavier rider I'm about hundred and four kilos, about 230 pounds to use the right equipment is essential, especially if you in light wind. My advice is to be overpowered. Rather a wing that is a little bit too big a board that is too big and a fo that is too big. It just makes the whole learning process so much easier. If you use your equipment, that's too small.  then it becomes a struggle. It becomes, it's just hard work. It's a nightmare. So in the beginning, overpowered for sure. If possible I would recommend one or two sessions behind a boat just to be pulled behind a boat and just get, just to break down the whole process so that you don't have a ring in your hands and a foil trying to do both at the same time. So if you can get going with just the foil behind a boat toe session, get just the feeding of the foil coming up outta the water. Great. And then with the ring itself, going on just the normal sub-board walking on dry land, getting a feel for how the ring works and then combining the two together. I find that works really well. And of course, nothing beats having someone who's got experience, if you go off by yourself it's difficult. But if you've got an instructor or someone who's already wing foing and they watch you, and they can tell you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong cry. This cry, this, that, that advice is gold, highly recommended. If you go like a school or something rather go someone who's already competent at wing, foing it, it just makes the whole process, the whole journey so much more pleasant. Yeah. Those are some great tips, I think. And I think most of us. Everybody's still new to the sport. So we remember what it was like to learn and are happy to help others too. Yeah, just ask for help. And and just keep in mind too, that it can be dangerous in the beginning too. If if you fall on your foil and, as a surfer, like usually you try to kind catch yourself if you're falling, but that's the wrong instinct when you're foiling. You wanna just eject as, as quickly as possible 100%. Yeah, 100%. I think in the beginning days when you're trading water, you only kick the foil once or twice and you learn very quickly don't trade water, rather hang on the board, but yeah, with foing you, you learn very quickly, don't try and save it rather as you say, object off the foil and get going again. It's so much save so much easier. Okay. I'm just put, pulling up your website here. So out of your lineup what, which foil do you like for someone your size? What foil did you start on? I started on a hyper I started on, on, we used to do quite a big one a two 50. I then switched over to the two 10, and that's what I use now at the moment. I dunno if much about the hype's been around for quite a few years. So we are actually working on a version two at the moment, which will be released very soon. The hyper ones have been out now for 20, about five years now. So they've been around for quite a while. Yeah. So that's actually a high aspect wing. Yeah. So you were one of the first to you to bring out a wing that was had a really high aspect ratio, right? Like one of the first to bring out a wing like that. Yeah. So what happened was I was working with with Ivan and Nathan from signature at the time. And they started doing down winding here in Cape town. And I said to Ivan can he put a GPS on Nathan? And just to see what sort of speeds is he doing? And I knew immediately that a high spec would be very efficient. So I started doing prototypes and I did the first high spec for, and yeah, watching those GPS graphs was well, it was amazing to, to see that he could be on the fo for so long. Cause I back then, if I was on the foil for 60 seconds, this is a long time. And you had, he was writing for 13, 14, 15 minutes at a time. So it is yeah, just pretty amazing. . Yeah. And Nathan seems like a super talented kid too. Yeah. Very much he almost, I think he, he actually beat Lenny across the channel in the mole race. The first time he came over here and just was able to pump upwind and pass him. Sorry. So sorry. Did you go to that event? Actually? I did that race too. Myself. Yeah. I saw them flying by me. I was on the stand paddle really? Oh, must amazing. Went was twice as twice actually, or just actually demo demoralize  I was watching that. I was watching that, that event from here in South Africa because they had all the GPS markers on all the riders. And then as the foils guys started right at the end and it was nervewracking. And it's three o'clock in the morning here and I'm trying to be quiet, watching this race and I'm at my parents' house the next day I'm flying out to Canada and, I'm chewing my nails what's going on. And then yeah to watch those little blips on that map, travel between all the riders and just blast through, it was certainly an amazing highlight. It was yeah. Phenomenal. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That was amazing. But anyways, let's get into the whole. Relationship with signature foils and the foil design and all that. I have lots of questions about that, but let's start your just your background, like what, like, how did you grow up? How did you into water sports? How did you into foiling and foil design? And so as in Born in Johnsburg I really enjoyed I went to a technical school. I really enjoyed engineering. got my first job at engineering company doing fluid dynamics, doing hydraulics doing press design which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed the whole process of designing something, drawing something, and then going down to the workshop and actually seeing it being manufactured and being made, and then being installed on site and actually being utilized. I've got a real kick out of that. It's something that that I really enjoyed. So at a young age I moved over to England and I was staying in England, but then I'd come back to say every year and. I think it was back in 2002, somewhere around there, I was in Cape town and I bought these two flexi four kites that they stack together and then you're flying them. And I, the part of these kites was really awesome. And I sat there on the beach and I see this guy come over the road and he's got a helmet on and he's got this board on his one arm and this package on his other arm and he comes to the beach and he rolls this thing out. And it's just this massive long. don't know what it was, and he starts pumping it up and he had this kite and I was like, whoa, I'd seen it on TV, but you actually have someone doing it right hand in front of me. And he was the only one on what we call kite beach in, in Cape town. And when I saw that, I was like, I've gotta do this. So the following year I bought a kite obviously a cab black tip. I'm sure you know those guys, but I think everybody started on one of those coats and. Yeah that, that pretty much started my consulting journey, but I never got anywhere. I just mowed the lawn and did the occasional jump because I was living in, in, in England and I'd only come over for, month or two at a time. So I never really progressed.

Aloha friends! It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show, which I produce right here in my home office, in the garage. In today's interview, I speak with Adrian Roper, the man behind AXIS foils. We get into some tips for beginners, and then we talk in detail about foil design, how to set up the foil properly, how different things affect different things on the foil. New designs he is working on, the mast, importance of stiffness, the fuselage, the angles of the foil. So many cool technical things. I learned a lot from this show. I hope you do as well. I wanted to apologize in advance. The auto focus on my camera keeps going in and out focus, and it's very frustrating for me, but I didn't wanna stop the flow of the interview.  I hope you can just overlook that and focus on the technical details in the interview. You can watch this interview right here on YouTube, or you can listen to it on your favorite podcast app. So I hope you enjoy this show and as always, please give it a thumbs up if you like it, subscribe to the blue planet surf YouTube channel, and without further do here is Adrian: Okay. Adrian Roper. Welcome to the Blue Planet show. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you doing today? Good, thanks. Yep. Beautiful sunny day. And it's pretty glassy out there. So it might be a good day to go fishing. Nice. And you're for you. It's like the middle of winter right now, like for us it's summer, but you're on the other side, so it's pretty nice. Is it pretty cold or how cold is it? It's cold, like compared to Hawaii it's cold, but still went foiling yesterday and had quite a good session. Excellent. I didn't have a full on thick suit on either, so it's not too bad. Okay. Yeah. All right. So this season that I'm trying to start a little bit with beginner tips right away in the beginning. Last year, I always did that  as an afterthought at the very end, but I want to start with some good tips for people that are new to wing foiling. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about your background and and get more into. The equipment side of things and technique and so on. So let's start with that. What are some tips you have for people that are new to wining foing same look, we have quite a few learners around us and I guess one of the biggest things is when you're learning, you don't know how to pump properly and getting up on the coil is the biggest. Just getting up and going. So having a little bit bigger hydrofoil than you might normally think, is a good idea, cuz it helps you get up and also having a slightly bigger wing as you improve with your skills, you don't need quite so much having an easy writing foil makes a difference. And like with the access stuff the BSC range that we came out with, the bigger ones, the 1 0 6 oh and the nine 70, they were particularly good and they are particularly good for people to learn on. And then we've also introduced the recently the SES, which is like a complete package and that comes in 1 0 4 oh and nine 40 and it's basic and simple.  But it works really well. And it's a great entry into the whole access platform. You can, upgrade it as you want bits and pieces wise. But it they're both the BSC range and the SES are particularly good for learners. You can stand in slightly the wrong place, you get away with a murder with them and they just, they still ride along quite nicely easy to carve, nice to ride. Okay. So using a. Big foil and a big wing. That makes a lot of sense. And then, yeah, so you have that super easy start package now where I guess it's made particularly with beginners in mind. Yeah. Yep.  Same base plate, same mask. The fuselage is slightly different, but it's similar to our normal red fuselage. The front wing was based on a BSC wing. But we've rounded the ends off more so that you can't stab yourself so easily. And we also, because we're, it's a different construction, we've made it out of colonial wood. So it's a solid wood core with a fiberglass laminate. And that makes a strong wing, that's a bit more affordable. And we thin the profile out a little bit on it which is actually quite a good thing. It runs quite nicely and it's a fun setup to use. Okay. And then right now you have it in two sizes. So basically one for the the bigger riders with almost 2000 square centimeters and then one for li right. Lighter riders with 1668 square centimeters. So both of those should have plenty of lift, right? Yeah. I think a lot of people, when you're getting into foiling, they walk into a store and there's just so many foils and it's also confusing and they just, I don't even know where to start. This breaks it down to AO over 80 kg or less than 80 kg. This is the one that'll work for you, and it makes it a lot easier. And they can go away, get started, have fun and work it out from. Okay. And then obviously you're also using a floaty stable board, especially when you're starting out. Definitely makes it easier, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Some of our learner boards are, have ridiculous amounts of volume in them. We work with a school in Auckland here and we've got a board there. That's I think it's six foot eight and it's, I dunno, 160 liters or something. It's crazy volume. They've used that with the 1 0 4 oh SES package and it just gets people up and going. It's not you don't necessarily ride it too many times cuz it's such a big board, but no matter, someone can stand on it, wobble around, easy to get up and going. You've gotta make it easy. I think for beginners, it's not it's not an easy, not a super easy sport to learn at the start, so you've gotta make it so that everything lines up easy and not too hard to get into. Yeah. I would say though, like you progress pretty quickly past that beginner board stage there very quickly. So I would recommend, instead of buying one, maybe either borrowing a big board or using a big standup foil board or just renting one, or taking in a lesson and then if you have a school me, that's the best thing is to take a lesson from a school and they can, work you through a couple of boards so that the, by the time you buy a board, it's something you're actually gonna hang on to for a little bit, because you do move down. You're right. You do move down very quickly through the boards. And then in terms of like that, I mean that those are good tips for equipment, but what about technique or Conditions and so on. What kind, what are some other things selecting? Selecting good conditions are really important. Like finding somewhere that's not too choppy. And if there's waves and stuff, it's hard work to swim out through waves and try and, get up and going while there's waves around. So if you can find a sheltered Harbor or lake situation to learn, that makes it a lot easier and finding wind, like I said before, getting up and going is the difficult thing. So if you can still learn the lessons of standing up and holding the wing and getting things in five knots. But you are unlikely to get up and going. So when you are ready to get up and going, you need 15, 18 knots to get up and going. Really. It makes it easier if there's a bit of breeze, bit of power. Yep. Agreed that. Yeah. Ideally you want about a little bit 15 to 20 knots maybe and smooth water if possible. And then. Also a place where you can if you end up drifting down wind where it's easy to get back up wind or, where you don't end up getting blown offshore or something like that. Yeah. Our local beach manly here is really good for learning. You start at the top end, you go out, you make a couple passes and if you get going good, if you don't, you slowly drift down the beach and end up on the beach and just walk back up the beach again and have another go. It's, you don't wanna be in an offshore situation where without other people around where you're gonna get blown away, for sure. Okay, great. Yeah. Those are some good tips, I think for people starting out. And so let's talk a little bit about you your background, like where, where did you grow up and how did you get into water sports? How did you get into the foiling industry or, water sports industry I was actually born in America. I was born in chapel hill, in North Carolina. My father was going to university there and I lived there till I was about two. And then I moved back to New Zealand and to Auckland New Zealand and grew up here. I spent time in my father, did a sabbatical leave from university and I lived a year in Bristol when I was about, I don't know, maybe 10 or something. And then, but I basically grew up at the beach in Ross bay, in Auckland. I had a peak class at little sailing dinghy, and I learnt to sail yachts. As a young kid had a boat and did lots of fishing and stuff Ming around from there. And some of my mates started getting wind surfers and it was the early, early, early days of windsurfing. And I wanted to windsurfer as well. And my parents wouldn't buy me one. I was 14 or something, I think at the time. And my mother offered to help me build one. So I did lawn mining rounds and got the money for it. And I actually found a recipe for a windsurfer and a French magazine, and I had to learn French so that I could translate it. You didn't have internet back then, so it was a bit more tricky. And I built the windsurf for myself from scratch in the back room. It was Paula Styron. So there's bubbles everywhere in the back living room of the house. And it was plywood skinned and I made the sail and the mast and the boom and all the various bits of it. And my mother helped me with that. , I. They were trying to just help me learn to do things for myself. And they had ideas of me going to university and everything, but I just got so struck by windsurfing and building things that I got into that. And I've done that ever since. I got a job at a windsurfing shop when I was about 18 years old and I learned to laminate and I also worked in sales in the shop. And then when I was, wher

Aloha friends, it's Robert Stehlik, welcome to season two of the Blue Planet Show.  On this show, I interview wing foil enthusiasts, athletes, designers, thought leaders, and go into great detail on technique, equipment, but also tried to find out a little bit more about the person, what inspires them, and how they live their best life. You can watch it right here on YouTube. For those of you who are visual learners like myself, that's really helpful to have that visual content. But of course you can also listen to it as a podcast on your favorite podcast app. Just look for the blue planet show. In this interview with Alan Cadiz is we start with very basic beginner tips, the top five tips for beginners, and then we get into a much more advanced stuff as well. So there's something here for everybody. And we also talk about equipment, including what Alan used in the recent wing foil race on Maui that he actually won against other wingers that were less than a third of his age. So a nice work Alan, on that. I really hope you enjoy this interview. If you do, please remember to give it a thumbs up here on YouTube and subscribe to the blueplanetsurf YouTube channel. And without further ado here is Alan Cadiz: Allen, welcome to the Blue Planet Show! Actually, welcome back to the blue planet show. Thank you for inviting me back. Yeah, so we, we had a great interview last year and there was one of them actually, it was the most popular video on the Bhutanese show with almost 40,000 views on YouTube and then a lot of listens on the podcast as well. You always have great information. People love to hear about it. So that's great to have you back on the show and just wanted to catch up and see what happened over the last year. So what's new or what's the latest and greatest that's going on Maui? It's during the last year, it's just been more, more winging. We've had consistent wind all year on winging is growing in popularity on, it's still been quiet, with COVID winding down. It's not as many people as in the past, but we just had our first competitive event in three years. And what else is new? That's cool. Yeah. We're going to get into that more later that definitely hear about that Patagonia, kite and wing festival, but to get started like last year, I'm usually asked all the more advanced questions first that I was interested in. Hearing about, and then at the end I asked the guests to talk a little bit about beginner tips, but I want to turn it around the other way, start with the beginner stuff and then work up to more advanced things. Cause I figured that most people that are really into winging are gonna watch till the end or listened to the end and the beginners, we got to get them into it right in the beginning. So I asked you to come up with your top five tips for beginners to get into wink foiling. And you not only prepared some answers, but you've made a little video from what I understand. So let's start with that. What are your top five tips for beginners? All right. Thank you. Yeah. So I was thinking about those tips and there's so many different things. But I've tried to think about the key things and I put together a little timeline video here. Tip number one. And I just pulled these clips out of my inventory of clips and start on a big board. Now this is a winter Ford. We have a surplus of wind surfboards here on Maui on you can, you might think a sup board would be a good substitute, but you really need the daggerboard unless you can put strap-on fins on your support. I don't recommend using the support. It really needs to have something with the daggerboard now. And I recommend this for people who are just learning, how to use the wing, just to learn the basics on you can learn on a set board a foil board, but I recommend a large foil board to start with. Here, I've got Frank my, my pay here. He's a very skilled. And using a smaller board. It's challenging. So as a beginner, if you're on a smaller board, it's pretty tough to get going. And, in the extreme case, a really small board, it has its advantages, but it's tough to get up on the smaller boards and this is goes through the whole spectrum. So as a beginner, you really want to have a floaty board is just more challenging to get up. There are advantages to the tiny board once you're up. But in the learning stages, you really want to have a floating board. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So that's tip number one. So not everyone has access to the big boards on and. It doesn't because the learning curve is so fast. It doesn't always make sense to buy a big board. Maybe for some, they've got a big family or they've got a slow learning curve or they're sailing in light wind, but if they have the option to rent on, I would encourage that for the first, a few runs on a mistake that a lot of people make is they'll run out and buy the board that they think they're going to end up on, maybe an 80, 80 liter board. And it's a real struggle to learn on those smaller boards. You can do it, but it just takes a lot longer. So if you have access to a bigger board take advantage of. Yeah, very good. And then I just wanted to mention too, for people that have an old standard board or something, a big floaty signup board, there is a kind of a stick-on center thin daggerboard available from Slingshot. I believe that you can basically glue onto the bottom of your board and make if your board doesn't have a dagger board. And that makes a big difference because it keeps the board from this going downwind. If you only have the fins on the tail, the boards is going to turn down when, and it's going to be very hard to stay cross winds. I've seen people show up at the beach with the sup board and have that problem where they just go straight down wind. So yeah, that's basically I as tip number one, before you try this foil, learn the wing handling with a regular board that doesn't have a foil on it, basically. Yes. And if you don't have access to that, you can, learn on a foil board, but really get your hands on the biggest foil board you can get. Yeah. And I, I don't know if this is another tip you had to, but I'm also practice as much as you can on the beach before you get it on the water. The wing handling a lot of it. You can practice on the beach before, before you're in the water. Yes, I do have that. I think it's tip number four or five. Okay. So tip number two, you want to learn how to steer the board and turn around? Very close to the beach specifically, learn to turn around before you get out there on, so this is my daughter she's she has an interesting technique. She'll kneel down at the end of her run, do the turn on her knees. So she doesn't fall. And then stand back up. But the point is that you're turning around close to the beach. And when I say close, 20 feet out, get on the board and turn the board around 180 degrees to come back in. You don't want to get a hundred yards off shore and realize you can't turn around. Now I can keep going or I can keep going, or we can discuss that idea. Yeah. I think that's a really good tip. I guess a lot, I know I've heard of people, like they were so excited about getting up on foil and be able to go there. They just kept going as long as they could before they fell in. But then when they got way outside, like in Hawaii, Kai, for example you realize, oh, I don't know how to go the other way. Yeah. And why Kai is slightly off shore. If I remember. So maybe that's a tip in itself, you want to go in a place where it's side shore, if it's off shore wind, make sure you're sailing with a partner to keep an eye on you. Yeah. And then I'll also, it's a good idea to just if you have a place where you can just go down when, and maybe park your car at the other end, then don't have to worry about staying up when in the beginning. Yes. This next clip is all about staying up wind. And this is something that when I'm teaching my students, I try to focus on getting them to go up wind for a number of reasons. And the biggest reason is that you're not downwind. You don't have to walk back up or find transportation. You spend your time sailing back and forth instead of walking back up. So this next clip here is a little bit longer. It's actually a section of a video that I call maximum performance. This is the tip for beginners on turning the board up when, and this is one of my edited videos on, so I'll go ahead and play the whole thing. It's about two or three minutes, and then we can stop and talk about it. Okay. Great. One of the things I want to cover with quickly, this is more of at the novice level. And this is for almost the first time wingers. It's really easy to go down, wind and end up down wind very quickly. What I want you to try and do is turn the board into the wind. This does two things. One is it gets you going up wind. So you're not losing as much ground. And it slows the board. The struck is like a wind sock or a weather vane. It wants to point the wing into the wind. You can use this constant to leverage the board upwind or downwind by pointing the clue towards the back or front of the board. Respect. So we call the back of the struck clue or back end of the wing. And if I point that wing pointed down wind, it's going to point the board down wind. So I want to point the struck behind or in this case to my left, the more I aim it to the left I'm pulling here. The more it turns into the wind. If I push it away, it turns down with this is done while luffing the wing overhead and steering the board through your core. If you come from a windsurfing background, you'll recognize this as similar to wind surfing in that if you drag the clue towards the tail of the board will turn up. When you twist the wing toward the tail of the board, the wing wants to return to pointing into the wind and as it does it torques your body and board up wind. However, if you sheet in while pulling the clue back, the sheeting will overpower the

Aloha friends, It's Robert Stehlik.  Welcome to season number two of the blue planet show. If you're watching this, you probably already know that this show is all about wing foiling and the personalities behind the sport. I try to go a little bit deeper, find out more, get the good, juicy stories and just learn more about the people and how they live their best life. So I hope you can join me for another season. Today's show is a really cool talk story session, with four of Oahu best wing foilers. We just give each other advice, you know, for more advanced stuff like wing foiling in onshore wind, how to handle your wing without getting in your way. And then also jumping off the top of the, off the lip then landing back in the wave.  But we also talk about more entry-level stuff. Just like how to get up on the foil and tips for beginners, like how to get started in this cool sport. So I hope you really enjoy this conversation. I just wanted to apologize that, you know, it's been a while since, last year's 16 episodes.  I got really busy opening a second location for Blue Planet that we now have a new shop in Haleiwa,  it's running pretty smoothly now. And then around Christmas time or COVID, and I was really feeling low energy and not that good for several months. So about a third of the people who get COVID actually feel the long-term symptoms. So I hope you're not one of them, but I'm happy to report that my energy is back. I feel good. I'm excited to produce more shows. So I'm going to, re-interview some of the people that I talked to last year and also talk to new people, and I really appreciate everyone's suggestions, comments on blog. Um, keep them coming and I appreciate the support. And, uh, so yeah. Hope you enjoy this cool conversation with my buddies. All right. Thanks for joining me guys. Today I got core Eli, Derek and Lucas here with me to do a little voiceover on a video that we shot a few weeks ago. And I wanted to talk a little bit about winning an entre when like riding waves and entre wind. Cause it's something that I always find a little bit tricky with the wing handling and stuff like that. So, uh, Luca was the drone photographer, um, that day and then Koa, Eli and Derek, and I were all in the water. So I'm going to screen screen-share here and we're going to play this video. Can you guys see the screen? Okay, cool. So yeah, this was kind of a rainy overcast day and you went to another spot first and that was. Raining. And, uh, we're unsure if the wind was going to be good. So we kept going and, um, and then the wind seemed really light and we weren't sure if it's going to be windy enough. So we ended up sending out, um, or. To see if it was windy enough. So tell us a little bit about that call you are the first one to go out. How was it just to get going? Yeah, it was a bit nerve wracking just because it was my first time being there and I was just like, oh no, what if I go to the sand bank and like hit the sand and like, just get stuck and hoping that the wind was there. Yeah, it's kind of a tricky spot because if you can't get up on foil, you end up getting, you know, pushed downwind into the bay and like basically on the, on the shallow sand. Um, but once we saw you, um, able to get up and going, we all pumped up and went out as well. And then this is actually, um, at my second session, I came in and got the camera, my back mounted, um, GoPro max. But yeah. Um, I w what I wanted to talk about a little bit, like, one thing I struggle with is when you're, when you're riding the wave going, you know, going with the wind, I never know where to place it. So it does like, cause if you put it in front of you, you end up getting, um, kind of dark winded, and then sometimes when you put it behind you, then it gets like stuck on the water. So, um, maybe Eli, tell us a little bit about how you, how you handle the wing, um, and entre conditions. Um, what I had when I try to do is have it luffing behind me with enough momentum. So before I set it behind me, I'd make sure though Ling has momentum and, um, and is moving enough for it to float, because if it, if it doesn't have that, um, movement or momentum, it'll kind of drop, like you mentioned. Um, also sometimes I'll let the tip, touch the water for a little bit. Um, and when I turn, I usually try and swing it around. Um, and that, that swinging energy really helps keep it floating a little, but yeah, you're right. It's really challenging with onshore conditions. Uh, yeah. What about you, Derek? Do you have any pointers for the I'm writing an entre conditions? Um, I think because I use that Y handles to, well, when I'm surfing. Um, I don't really feel any like w even if it's on shore off shore, it, I kind of keep the weight on my shoulder. Like, like a shield that prevents any bad windy or any kind of stuff. Yeah. It just, I don't know, wherever my shoulder goes again, it helps. But, um, if I was to hold the front end, Definitely would have to take a different approach to yeah. I mean, yeah. I've noticed that too, even in, um, well, I guess if it's tied off shore, it's kind of hard to do that, but you kinda like to keep the wing really close to your shoulder and then hold it by the Y handle. Yes. Yeah. You know, and with that, that allows me to kind of use the wing. A wing tips, like as a pivot point, you know? Yeah. It seems like with that onshore conditions, how Derek codes, it, sometimes the one that's on shore, the wind will kind of power up the top of the wing and he'll get some power and speed from that almost. Yeah. Like kind of pushing you to kind of like call you back. You know, when the guys put the wing behind him and he just riding for miles. Um, I can use that as kind of, as a advantage and get me to fats, um, spots or, um, project you to a turn to make it look like your attorney even harder, but actually what's happening is the wind. Pushing you and you just, you just surfing a foil, you know, you said about mitigate what happened. Yeah. But what have I, what about you called away? Um, was this the first time you, we know you winged in Kailua and other onshore conditions before? Yeah, I would just say, um, just keep the speed going and. The wing will just do its own thing. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I think it just takes some practice to like, I, I guess I just hadn't had that much practice writing and entre when it's just different. When, uh, insider conditions, you can just kind of flag it out and it'll stay, stay kind of next to you, but it's definitely different when it's on shore conditions. Yeah. You just, you just have to make sure that it doesn't end up in front of you when you're going faster than the, than the wind. Yeah. So like, if you're going down the line on the wave or with the, um, sometimes you can, you can get back winded and then that's like, you definitely don't want the wing between you and the, and the wave basically, but I I've noticed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You end up, you end up running over it. You're going to run over you. And land on it. Um, like the rafting or something, or it's going to come in front of you. And then, um, if there's other surfers or all your other winger friends, you're not going to be able to see anything at all. You know? So you just got to, um, I think if you go and you probably spend a few hours, you should be able to figure out what a word. Yeah, but it's definitely not something where you just go over there and you show up and you, and you comfortable and you just gotta work it out or surf other spots in that similar wind range and just figure out what our expense. Right. Cool. Um, so the, the one, the one thing that was really fun that day was like just jumping. On the kind of like jumping off the top of the wave and landing back into the wave. And that that's seems like it's pretty easy to do when the winds blowing on shirk as the wind kind of pushes you back into the wind wave. So you, do you want to talk a little bit about that technique of like jump jumping off, off the top of the wave and landing back into maybe. You were doing a lot of those, those jumps. I am regular footage. Um, so the wind is a little side onshore, um, kind of favorable, uh, for being regular footed. That means jumping going left would be he'll side, um, with his light on short conditions. You know, anytime it's on shore, it's a little easier to stay on the wave. Um, but these conditions were really light and onshore. So it makes it a little more challenging. You definitely want to project your momentum forward and not too much to the side. You don't want to fall out the back. You want to make sure you land in front of the wave so you can, um, continue writing it. But yeah, anytime it's on shore conditions, it'll kind of help push you into the wave a little, uh, yeah, look it out. And I was a nice one in landed right in the white wash and came down. That was a nice one. Any tips we're pulling off the landings more consistently? No, it's all up. Um, it's really helpful if you land in front of the wave so you can keep your speed and momentum up. Um, also the way you point your foil in the water, when you come down can be helpful. And when you kinda bring the foil up, that kind of helps stabilize it a little, you know, like a little Railey or, um, kind of bringing it up a little that helps it's helps me anyway, stabilize it. And it helps me stay. Um, she did in with the wing. You can see Barrick bringing up and landing it right down there. Yeah. I find it helps to, um, put your weight a little bit on the back. So you don't nose dive on the landing. And then what seems to work for me is like touching down slightly with the board, but then trying to bring it, pop it back up right away on, back on the foil. Um, What about you, Derek? You got any tips for the landings yeah. In that, um, you know, watching a video. And so you would, when you come in to your approach to, you know, do an air, you kind of hit tha

Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show. On this show, I interview Wing foil athletes, designers, and thought leaders and ask them in-depth questions about wing foil equipment and technique. I'm also trying to get to know my guests a little bit better, their background, how they got into water sports, what inspires them and how they live their best life. As a visual learner, I'm adding visual content that you can watch right here on YouTube, but you can also listen to these long form interviews on the go as a podcast, just search for the blue planet show on your favorite podcast app. Today's interview is with none other than Armie Armstrong, the founder of Armstrong foils. It's amazing how he built a business in just a few years from a few prototypes to one of the biggest manufacturers in the world of foiling and a wing foiling equipment. We just got some of their new boards at our shop here in Honolulu. Really nice, Innovative features. And he talks about that in this interview also about growing up on a sailboat, learning how to walk basically on a sailboat, sailing around the world with his parents. So that's a really cool back story. I thought I also want to say a special thank you to our sponsors. This show is brought to you by people just like you, that support blue planet here in Honolulu. So next time you're shopping for new gear. Please check out blueplanetsurf.com. And I think you'll find that we have great quality, service and pricing, so you can't go wrong getting gear from blue planet. And of course also you're supporting content like this and making it possible. So thanks for everyone who supports their business. All right. Army Armstrong. Welcome to the blue planet show. Thanks so much for coming on. How are you doing today? Oh, awesome, man. Yeah, we're just about to go and test some prototype foil. As soon as this is finished, we're out on the water. So yeah, life is good. We were locked down and Zed for awhile recently, and it's all for a year and a half behind the rest of the world with the COVID thing. So we're going through it now. I don't know. It's crazy, but yeah, we were allowed back on the water. Yeah, a couple of months of that was pretty bad locked off the water. So now we're back into it. You weren't allowed to go even on the water at all during lockdown, you had to stay in your house. Basically. Yeah, it was pretty hardcore. And then even now, we're, I guess we're almost two and a half months into it, like a lot of businesses of open, so it's pretty hard for a lot of people. I'm just super lucky that that you guys in the states seem to be charging ahead and carrying on and Europe as well seem to be back to normal. So fingers crossed. We hit that way too. Yeah. Not really back to normal, but people are just tired of arranging their lives around COVID, and basically just like at some point you just have to learn to live with it. I guess that's the thing, but yeah, like last time we met was I guess like about three years ago, I think in Raglan maybe two years ago before the, before this whole thing. Yeah, that's right. When that was that your last international trip? Probably one, no, actually I went to New Zealand again, like a year later, which was in February, I think, February on 2009, 19. As the pandemic was already going on in China right before they stopped the travel international travel. So that was a good trip. But so now you're in Auckland. Yeah. Zeeland it's it's. Summer's just starting, you got nice weather over there. Yeah. It's just starting. And yeah, we're lucky we're at a lockdown and we're back in the water. And yeah, we're just getting through pretty exciting list of prototypes and, moving ahead, once they put in. Let's start in the beginning. Last time we talked to you, you mentioned, you just said that you grew up on a sailboat sailing around the world with your parents. So I don't want it to find out more about that. Can you tell us more about, how you grew up and how you got into water sports and, love for the ocean and all that kind of stuff. I was just really lucky that born into a sailing family. I think I was really lucky. Definitely had a lot of great adventures with my parents. I was conceived in Brazil, so my father was an architect in Brazil, and then they'd been planning, a sailing adventure with some friends of theirs who is also a Kiwi architect along with my father. And they went back well all back to the UK, made up there boredom. Fit it up. And I had two young families, so six kids total, three each side, and then the four adults. And they jumped on a 44 foot kitchen sound off around the world to the blue yonder. And so that was, I was six months old when we left the UK. And, we sat around for a couple of years, floating around the Pacific to learn, to walk on the boat and then, ended up in New Zealand after, pretty good salient venture. And then we were always sailing every, every chance my parents got to get out and about. And once we were in New Zealand. And yeah, just all of my childhood memories are, sailing places. So the trip that two year trip, you actually, do you remember much of that? When you, if you're six months old, you probably don't remember. I don't remember a lot, but I actually made a, I was when I was at school, I did a, like a many student DACO type thing on it, and there was lots of super eight footage and lots of slide slides and stuff. I put together a bit of a a story and interviewed everyone actually on video. So we've got that, which is pretty cool. So yeah, I remember it more through photos and stories. But it's interesting, like just learning to walk on the boat and that just being in the ocean for a lot of time, I know you can't, I have to get in the water weekly at least or else I just start going crazy. Yeah, that's that just is what it is. So that's interesting. Do you think that learning to walk on a boat helped you with having better balance or being used to being on, on, yeah, definitely for sailing and maybe for other sports too, because that just feeling the way the water's moving and being used to it. And I think that's the way with a lot of, the traditional navigators, they just grew up in that way of being on the water and fishing and stuff. And yeah, that's definitely something that I guess yeah, that they say that your brain gets pretty wide in the first, five to seven years. So I think all of those real early experiences, as I think with top surface, they get into that when they're really young, they have a, quite an advantage, I think. Yeah, for sure. That's interesting. So do you get seasick at all or you're never really got seasick. Yeah. That probably has something to do with the two that you're just used to. You said that I love it. I love, the rougher. It gets the more fun I love being out on the ocean, that's. Yeah. Cool. So what are your earliest memories of like being in the ocean or in the surf or like doing like kind of water, sports, like surfing or for me, it's really sailing. We did a little bit of playing around in the surf more body surfing, really. When I was young, we didn't really have surfboards. We used to just play in the surf, but we were more, more silent. We were off on styling and benches, that's, that was really, up until I went on my own adventures in my teens, I was just with my family. Going, sailing around New Zealand. And then later on in life, we did a lot of missions back out into the Pacific with dad and his friends, silent tool sorts of, interesting places. And then personally, for me, when I got right into whitewater kayaking, actually when I was in my teens, I was really influenced by a teacher at one of my schools who was a real whitewater, kayaking, fanatic. And yeah we try and really have, we didn't want what a slalom at team one, all of New Zealand titles for the whitewater slalom competitions, and got seriously into that trial and the New Zealand team. There were a couple of really good guys, so I never got into that team, but. Really dug it. And then we had ourselves off of waterfalls and in our late teens and early twenties and a couple of my good friends who have gone on to become, world-class kayakers. And then I got into, I got bitten by the wind surfing bug at university, so really transitioned, kayaking into wind surfing. And I was lucky enough to go wind surfing and Raglan. Cause I was at uni at Waikato doing a science degree and Ragland's, a short drive. And so yeah, we used to Skype off lectures when it was windy and go wind surfing. And that was great. And had a good friend near James court. Who's won an NZ, its best windsurfers. And he was at uni with me doing a science degree as well. And so we used to yeah. Spend a lot of time out in Raglan when surfing. That was really where I got into the wave side of things more than through surf. And this was like in the 1990s or around what time? 1990s. Yes. So I guess late, late eighties, I really got into windsurfing. And then at uni, 1990 to 95, we were probably windsurfing as much as uni scraped through my degree. So much time on the water. Yeah, that sounds very similar to my, my background too. I got into wind surfing and that's how I ended up being, coming to Hawaii and going to the city here and stuff. But and then what happened next? Like how did you transition from wind surfing to the other water sports that you do now? Yeah. So when say a thing and then got right into sup rotted the early days on a sale, we were on a sailing trip actually to tie. W we did a whole big Pacific mission and about 2005 or 2006 I'm with my parents, with my dad at the time. And we were meeting up with some friends of hers who had been doing a big multi-year circumnavigation of the globe. And we caught up with those guys in Tahiti. And we were, while we were inside Hadia, big south swell came or Southwest swell, and we went, okay let's go down and have a look at Chapo. And w

Aloha friends is Robert Stehlik. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the blue planet show.  on the blue planet show. I interview Wingfoil athletes, designers and thought leaders. And I asked them questions, not just about wing foil equipment and technique, but I'm also trying to get to know them a little bit better, their background, what inspires them and how they live their best life. You can watch this show on YouTube for visual content, or you can also listen to it as a podcast on the go to search for the blue planet show on your favorite podcast. I haven't come out with a new blue planet show for awhile. It's cause I've been super busy. You might've heard that. We took over a new shop in Haleiwa on Oahu's north shore, formerly known as tropical rush. We just opened there and I've been super busy, getting everything set up. It's really exciting, but it also, it takes a lot of time. So I haven't had as much time for the YouTube channel and the blue planet show, but I've been waiting for a long time for Alex  to come onto the show and he finally had some time to do it. So I got a great interview with him. Alex is nutty about wing foiling. He's coming out with GoFoil Wing foil boards and wings. And of course he plays such an important role in the development of the sport. He basically invented the foil that allowed Kai Lenny to do downwinders on a big long board. And basically kick-started this whole sport of foiling in the surf and now with wings. So thank you for that, Alex. And without further ado, this is the interview with Alex. All right, Alex Aguera. Thank you so much for joining me on the blue planet show. So how are you doing today? Doing great early in the morning, over here. How are you doing Robert? I'm good. Yeah. So I'm on here on a Oahu. You're on Maui, nine o'clock on a Wednesday. So yeah. So tell us, let's start a little bit with your background. Where did you grow up and how did he get into water sports and like early childhood to start from the very beginning? For getting into water sports, it started when I was let's see about 14. We went on a family vacation. I grew up in Clearwater, Florida, by the way. And. We went on a family vacation to the Virgin islands, British Virgin islands, and we're going to be on a sailboat and, do the bareboat charters where you travel around to each of the islands. And it's, it was just a fun, two week trip in the, in a place where we'd never been in places that were super clear water like that crazy, it was just fantastic. But anyway, the captain of our boat, we had hired a captain who would sail us around to the, for the first week. And then we were on our own. The second week, the the guy would put this wind surfer in the water at this one place where we first started called Soper Sol and Tortola. Any of, they would start sailing around with him and his other captain, buddy friend, on this funny looking sailing craft that, ended up being one of the original. Baja style windsurfers. So this would be for the original windsurfer was some of the first boards that oil swipes, or it may, and it looked like a big, giant, long board made out of a fiberglass. But anyway, when we got back to Florida after the chip, my dad wanted to check this out as a possible, get the kids doing this. Cause we were riding motorcycles and stuff at the time you wanted to get us off of motorcycles. So he calls up Hoyle Sweitzer, which was windsurfing international or whatever. They called themselves. At that time, this was really early. This is like 1975. And oil tells him, he goes, Hey, I'll sell you six of them and make you a dealer, so it was like, okay, we were the first dealer and in Florida and it all started from there. We started wind surfing right in 1975. And that's how I got into all these other sports that have evolved since then. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. Foil Schweitzer is Zane Schweitzer's grandfather who basically invented the sport and had the patent and everything. Yeah. So your dad became the first either the first wind surf dealer in Florida. Yeah. Like district nine or whatever, what are they? I can't remember fleet nine or something, the, for the ninth, one in the United States. So that's when the books were still made out of wood and stuff like that. And the bowl we're still out of wood. There was a daggerboard was still out of wood. We hadn't progressed to, a composite looking white daggerboard yet. And we hadn't invented harnesses yet foot straps or anything. Okay. And then, okay. And then what happened next? After that, we Pursue to get better and better at wind surfing. And my dad started to be the distributor for the Southeast United States. And we were really in the winter and our whole life changed from, he was working at Honeywell, which is one of the firms down there in Florida. He was a engineer. And then he switched over to just going to be wind surfing. We're going to go all in, into this wind surfing thing. So from there, we add a whole bunch of people in Florida that we were the original Florida wind surfing crew. We called ourselves the fearless flying Floridians there for a couple of years. And it was a real close crew there in the Clearwater Sarasota area that we always raced against each other. And we just got better and better. And then pretty soon we were doing well in the national and world championships. Awesome. And then. How old were you when you did that kind of the racing and your first world championship? I guess? My first national championship was the following year. What Hoyle used to do back then was we would do these big district championships. There was like maybe five or six throughout United States and whoever had won their district championship would get a free trip to the nationals. So the nationals then following year in 76, I'm 15 years old, a win, a free airfare to Berkeley, California, where we're going to do the nationals. And I traded it in for money to buy a bus ticket and pay for my hotel when I'm over there. So just imagine you're 15 years old, you're traveling in a Greyhound bus, cross country. Get over there, you rent your own wind surfer back then they would have, rental packages where you just come in, rent your own gear and then raise. So at 15, that was quite an experience, to have my parents to be able to let me go, all the way across the country and do that all by yourself was, looking back at it now back then, seem oh, that's okay. I can do this. We'll look back at it. Now. I was like, God, I would never put my kids through that. But that was a fantastic Regata because. What happened was, so it was 76. We're at Berkeley. We had a lot of wind and stuff, but as first time I get to meet Mike waltz and Matt Sweitzer, who were like the gurus back then of windshield, because they had a thing called the windsurfing news, which was like a little paper back, like a magazine, the early wind surfing magazine was a paperback called wind surfing news. And it was always the swipe tours and like waltz and this and that. So we get over there, meet Matt and Mike can win or goes for his first championship with all the boys. And Robbie Nash does his first championship. All the boys, he, so little 12 year old blonde kid comes in from Kailua. So it was like, all of us got together for the first time at that time. And he was Robbie Nash is two years younger than you about, okay, so you were 14 and then there's someone even younger than you showing up. Yeah. Yeah, that was, how did you do in that? Oh, I got beat up. It was blowing really hard. And in Florida where I learned, I was just learning to race around and, barely get planing kind of conditions, which we have in Florida coming up to that summertime, you get to Berkeley, it's blowing 20 to 20 fives, sometimes gusting 30 and one of the races. And I don't think I got across the starting line. I got beat up. I was just rag dolling. Cause you only had one, one sail and it was pretty big. I probably weighed 125 pounds at the time. And I remember there was these divas, these sisters, the SWAT tech sisters. There was Susie and Martha and The girls just beat up on me. I was getting whooped up on by girls mad. It was like, oh, bad. It was, I was humbled when I went there, but watching some of the stuff that was just then evolving because Robbie had come over and he started doing this railroad thing, it's the first time any of us see a rail ride. And I was like, oh my God, what is that kid doing? Who is that kid? And then by the time, the week it ended max White's here. And I think Mike had picked it up and Ken were all doing railroads by the end of the week. They had figured it out. But when you first saw that, I was like, what the heck? That's something new. And then we did one of the, I think it was, could have been the very first freestyle event there. And. The guide who Dennis Davidson, who was one of the original Kailua windsurfers was putting a little teeny fin on his board. He was doing these super fast tax and stuff. And we were like, wow. And he ended up winning the very first freestyle. Oh. And then again, so that's awesome. And so then how did that progress it, you became a professional windsurfer, right? Yeah. That that was many years later in about 1980, started getting paid to do wind surfing races by wind surfing international and oil spikes or, and we would go over to Maui for the first time. We were going to do the Pan-Am world cup was a real big race. It was for high wind and it was in Kailua. And the first year I didn't go to, it was in 79. There wasn't any wind. So they had to race in Waikiki. The next year, oil flies us out. I spend six weeks on Maui practicing with Mike waltz. He had told me, Hey, you gotta come over here and see this place. If it blows all the time, he had just discovered Okinawa, within the last six months. And he goes, there's nobody around the wind's blowing all the time. There's waves. So my brother and I went over there and hung

Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show.  On this show I interview Wing Foil athletes, not only about the technique and the gear that they use, but I also try to get to know them a little bit better, their background, what makes them tick, what inspires them and how they live their best life. It's a long form format. So if you'd like in-depth information, then you're going to love this show.  I really appreciate you. I know not everyone has time to watch it on YouTube with the visuals. I think it's great, but you can, of course, also listen to it as a podcast with audio only, just search your favorite podcast app for "the blue planet show".  Today's interview is with Kevin and Kaden Pritchard. Kevin Pritchard is a multiple time wind surf world champion. Him and his brother, both Matt Pritchard and Matt's son, Kaden is 12 years old and he's only been winging for about a year. And he's already doing crazy moves: back flips and he's working on forward flips and he breaks down technique for me on the Flaka, which really helped me out too. So there's some really good stuff in here. And just the whole story about the Pritchard family living on Maui, basically because a friend gave a wind surf board to Kevin's dad. So that's what led to the whole family living that lifestyle now. So I thought that was great. Really interesting story. Good to see the two generations together and hope you enjoy this show as much as I did. And without further ado, please welcome the Pritchards!  Okay. Kevin and Kaden Prichard. Welcome to the Blue Planet Show. Thanks so much for making some time to join me. How you guys doing today? Yeah, thanks for having us. I was like, checking you out on that. On the internet and it's oh, let's do something. Could be cool. We've got Kaden who's starting to really start to rip on the wing foil. And yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Thanks for reaching out to me. I appreciate that. And and I saw you, you just started a YouTube channel and blogging and all that kind of stuff too. So I always like to collaborate with other people that try to create content and stuff like that. So it's great to have you guys, and you're both on Nali right now, right? And where are you at? It looks like you got a lot of gear behind you. There we are in my dad's workshop or yeah, his dad. We have a little rental. Wind surfing thing. So renting the waves and stuff over here on Maui. And my brother does a lot of lessons teaching, wind surfing. And he's been, has he been teaching leaning to a little bit Kayden? So your dad is Kevin's brother. That's how you relate okay. What's your dad's name? Okay. And then Kevin you been a long time windsurfer multiple time world champion and stuff like that. So then what, can you talk a little bit about your career actually, let's start with where you grew up and how you got into it and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I grew up in California and actually my brother and I, we started windsurfing together with my parents and my mom and my dad. And like we all used to travel around, we'd go to hood river and we lived in California, so we just started my dad was addicted to it, so he just took us with us and just, we all fell in love with the sport and it was super fun and yeah, just started wind surfing all the time and we got into it and then my brother moved to Maui in 92. I think it was. And then I moved in 94. And then we just started going, doing the world tour together and just like step-by-step got better and better. And then yeah, it was awesome. We, he won a bunch of world titles and I won some world titles. It's crazy how a sport can take you and change your life. It's like we started in California together and now our whole family's here. And then he's had a family of two kids and it's pretty fun watching the Caden grow up to in the mix of, what we used to do as a family, go and wind surf and all this stuff. And his, my dad, his grandfather is I would say he's his biggest, person helping him go down to the beach and doing winging. And my dad's learned a wing and he's 70. So they go down together all the time and it's pretty cool. So we've got a family atmosphere that we've had all our lives and to see it getting passed down has been, it's been fun. Cool. So how old are you now? I'm 45. And what about UK? 11. 11. All right. Cool. So how, when did you stop competing professionally as a windsurfer or are you still competing or no. I would say it's pretty cool. I won the law classic in 2000 and then I won it in 2017. I think it was. 16 2016. So having I had a amazing career of 16 years of, still being, near the top. And that was one of my best moments was just, like 16 years later when it beaten these kids out who keep that was, it was special conditions with big waves and weird conditions, but still it was it was a good feeling to end your career on top and that's awesome. So that was only four years ago. You won that law classic, something like that. That's awesome. And then I do a bunch of testing for the wind surfing company as he sails and. Got more into that, brand ambassador and I'm still surfing every day. It's good. And testing the equipment, testing the gear and using the knowledge of all those years of competing and wind surfing to, make products better and things like that. So what do you do now mostly like where do you live mostly and what do you do? And so on. Nowadays I live on Maui and just have fun. I get to, go winging if it's like right now in the summertime. I haven't gone yet, but last summer I went a couple of times and I liked the just like the variety right now, just if it's good for cutting go cutting. It's good for wind surfing, go wind surfing, unless it's there's a, different seasons of when sales come out. When it's a busy test season from testing the winter thing here and then otherwise just just having fun. Yeah. And I'm just gonna play your this is like your new YouTube channel, and this is in Mexico, right? Yeah. You spend a lot of time in Mexico or in Baja. Yeah. This is kinda, this is where my brother and I would come down and we learned, I would say we learned wave sailing here because we, it was probably an eight hour drive from Southern California. And we would come down to this spot and learn the way. So it was pretty, it was like a kind of a. It's a long way. So you get a lot of turns and you can work on your sailing technique really easily. So it's, I think it's one of the best spots in the world for progressing your, your sailing or your whatever. When I was down here, there's this guy out there weaning and he was catching like, I dunno, 300 waves a day or something ridiculous like that, but it's pretty cool. Definitely a good spot that got you interested in and foiling as well. Yeah. How is that going? I guess you were talking about just starting to spoil and struggling with it a little bit. Yeah. I think the wind surfer on the foil is the hardest device. I don't know why they're either. Maybe nobody has really Stepped up the R and D with it, but the way wave, wind surf, foiling. I don't know. I've struggled with it. You just have so much power in the sale, you know where the wing, you can just get rid of it. And same with the kite where the wind surfing. It just it's hard. I don't know. I had a hard time with it anyways, right? Yeah. I actually haven't even really tried wind surfing with the foil. I used to wind surf all the time, but with the foil, I think it's like a whole different thing. And yeah, I think the foil and the wing just work really well together. Like you said, you can power it and ride the wave more like surfing the foils rather than the using the wind power. Yeah. It's pretty cool to watch him and see how like confident, like I was, I seem to be like carving little things with the foil and I think. If I could do that on surf board, which, would be the goal. It would be cool, but I don't know. I guess I got to put more time into it, like he's on the water all the time, so I'm not quite used to the foil as much as I should be, so in Baja, you also have you run like camps as well, like brother does. And that's where it would be, like I was saying, it's just awesome for just the waves are just endless. So for learning, it's incredible, it'd be fun to do a clinic with this kid down there if he could be in the cold water, but all right. Okay Kayden, let's talk a little bit about you now. How did I guess you were 11 years old, obviously still go to school, right? Yeah. Where do you go to school? Which school do you go to? I have a homeschool this past year. I've been getting a lot of time on the water and then next year, the Seaberry. Obviously you can drive it. So how do you get to the beach who takes you and so on? My grandpa has been taking me basically every time I want to go for since June, I would say right since June last year. So is that part of your homeschooling PE program is going wink, foiling. Yeah, no, you got time off, but so are you born and raised on Maui and how did you get, like, how did you get into water sports? What's your earliest memory of surfing or water sports? So on I started surfing with my dad when I was like three, and then when I was like five or six, I started doing it by myself and I loved it. And that's what I did till I was like nine or nine or 10. I still do it. But then I got into wind surfing and then one day my grandpa came to my house and just said, let's go win. And I didn't really want to go. But then I went. Down there. I loved it. And so when was this about a year ago or two years ago, or do you remember when, how long ago? That was a year ago. On July. Wait on June 1st. Wow. So pretty much exactly in one year. And now you're doing all these crazy moves. Yeah. So you're progressing pretty quickly, obviously. Like for those of you who don't know, I'm going to share some video of you doing some of these crazy moves. So at T talk a little bit about the ba

Damien Leroy and Gwen Le Tutour have been on a roll, posting two great instructional videos per week and helping lots of people getting started in the sport.  They are humble but are clearly exceptional humans and motivated by a desire to help people. Interview transcript: Hello friends. It's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the blue planet show. in today's show. I'm interviewing Damien Leroy and Gwen Le Tutour.  We talked about their background, how they got into watersports, wing foil technique and equipment, what inspires them, and how they love to share their stoke with others, watch it here on YouTube. Or you can listen to it as an audio only podcast, just search for "Blue Planet Show" in your favorite podcast app. Today is June 19th, 2021. And this month you've been posting two videos. Every day. One video is part of our video contest and one of our blue planet videos. So I hope you can join us for the daily videos contest and our blue planet daily videos. We're going to decide the contest winner on August 14th with a $2,000 price. So to enter, please check out the link below. And send it to your submission. Today's guest Damien, and when are amazing human beings, they're very humble, but I'm stoked to have him on the show. If you've winged foiled at all. You've probably seen some of their great, amazing instructional videos. They do a great service for the sport. And so without further ado, here are Damien and Gwen, Damien and Gwen, welcome to the Blue Planet Show. Thanks so much for joining me. Let's get started a little bit with your background. Maybe Damien, tell us a little bit about, how, where you grew up and how you got into water sports and all that. One, thanks so much for having us and we appreciated and how I got into water sports. Technically I've been in water sports since I was like two, but I grew up a ski racer in Colorado, which was on snow a little bit different, but truthfully. Really get involved with the water. Much until my like teens. I was training in Mount hood, Oregon, and I would go to the Gorge. I'm sorry, I'd go to the coast and boogie board. And I thought surfing was way too hard. And boogie board was like the coolest thing ever. And yeah, it just more from there. I saw kite surfing. I was a big ski racer. And kite surfing was the unknown and yeah, I that's kinda what got me into it was ski racing, seeing it in hood river training at the gore training in Mount hood and visiting the Gorge. And I had some injuries, he racing and went to Florida, Naples, Florida. And my best friend in Naples was flying one of these kites. And I didn't know him at the time and I walked up and he just handed it over and he's oh, you gotta try this. I was just like, whoa, what is this? And for that's where it started truthfully. I'd say how long ago was that when you got into college? Ah, man, that's I was 18, so for like close to 21 years ago. Yeah, it was at the beginning. Things were super, truthfully, even in the Gorge, people wouldn't talk about it. It was all wind surfing and you'd see one or two guys, which for sure was probably like Corey Rosler and maybe Lou like visiting or something, but nobody was doing it. Nobody would do lessons, nobody would talk about it. And and my buddy in Naples happened to buy a kite and just learn on his own and it was awesome. And then I got connected with Cabrina right in the beginning and was just been super blessed ever since. And I've been riding with that company for a long time and just incredible family, credible group of people and just super grateful because I was able to become moral champion and do all sorts of things in the sport. But more than that, I was able to give back and. Share the knowledge that I've learned throughout my incredible adventures. I'm now back with people, which is the most rewarding thing you can do. And I read that at one point you were kiteboarding world champion. Yeah. I just did everything. I tried everything so racing and speed and freestyle, big air and way everything. You just do it all when you're just into it. And I won a solemn, a world championship which was racing around some buoys in Spain and yeah, for me, I just always wanted to challenge myself. That was it. So as long as I could keep challenging myself, I would stay excited about the sport. So it didn't matter what I was doing. I was always excited about it versus I see a lot of people get really hooked on freestyle and then they just burn out and, ends quick. So for me, I was lucky to get into foils and just always keep trying something different. Cool. So where did you grow up in Colorado? I was born here and Vail, Colorado. And then I moved when I was 10. We had a fly fishing business in Alaska, so it halfway in the summer I would work with my family and Alaska fly fishing, which was a business we own. And then half the summer I would train in Mount hood. And then I just, we moved everywhere, Idaho, Montana. You name it all over the world, so we're very, it was exciting time and I'm very grateful and it was a neat childhood and hopefully I can share it with my new little baby girl. Awesome. So you have, you're married and have a daughter or? Yeah, I just had a little two month old little nugget and she is just. I don't know, everybody tells you and I'll say it to everybody out there, you don't know until you have a child, but, I was so driven in all these directions, do all this stuff. And when you have this like thing that you created and for sure there's, lack of sleep, but it's the most beautiful thing you could ever do. Awesome. Yeah. All right. Thanks for sharing that. What about you, Glen? Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Yeah I grew up in France and in Brittany next to the ocean. So I grew up surfing and wind surfing my browser got me into it. And then when I graduated from college and I was about to travel for work that's when I started kite surfing, because wind surfing was just like, I don't know, but at the time if you were a windsurfer, there was I dunno, you had your community and you maybe didn't really want to transition kiteboarding. But for me, I had always been very interested in what it took was just like traveling and be like, okay, I need to like, be able to, like travel whiskey and make it a lot more convenient. So that's when I started. Guide thing. And I was working as a Marine engineer, so on ships traveling around the world and I've always been really passionate about the ocean. And so I really wanted in everything I do, I want to use my skills in a way that easier help people or help the planet. And so as a Marine engineer, I joined a nonprofit called . It's a conservation ocean conservation, nonprofit, and that's when I left France and went to Australia to work on the ships and I met a girl, I didn't speak English at the time. I'm in a girl, an American girl, she's now my wife. And that's how I ended up in the U S so I never imagined I would come to the us. I remember growing up. Like looking at magazines and how why and all of that. And I was like, just dreaming and and then, like seeing my life now it's like unreal, but everything started all there was a huge shift when I met Damian. So last year I was living in Idaho and because my wife is from there and I came to Florida to buy a van. And I had been following Damien for awhile on, on Instagram. And I reached out to him. I was into videography, either video, refu business in Idaho. And I was like, Hey do you want to make a video? I'm going to be here for two days. But I was thinking like this guy is we're a champion. Like he's not going to reply to like me. A video of refer from Idaho, but your dad, he replied, he was like super nice. And he was like, yeah, like for sure let's do it. So we made a video and I edited it and then Damon loved it. And I was like, okay, I sing there is more to do. So we were really aligned in, in our values in and you, our mission which to me is always using my skills in whatever I do to, to help and to make it like meaningful. So we really connected. And then that's when we started to work on some videos together to really help people, especially, it was the perfect timing when winning was like picking up. So we were like, let's create something to help people whinging and living their best life. Like we do. This was back like, so when did you guys meet? That was about a year ago. You said that was last year in September and that's when we met, but then I went back to Idaho and and then came back in three, nine in December. Okay. And so before that, you also did a video videography for like wind surfing, kite surfing, things like that. Yeah, I would say not I was always just most of my business was just videography and I was taking, anything. Being based in Idaho, I was a lot of, it was not involving what your spot, but when I would travel to Maui I connected with people. I would always try to that was my passion, but when I met Damian, he just took it to the next level. Yeah, I think I saw somewhere too, that you were into ultra running and things like that, like during sports, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I did a lot of things in my life firefighting. I was in the military and I did love stuff. And then running, I took running because I was based like for a while I was like away from the ocean and I needed something to do. And running was like the most conveniencing because you can do it anywhere. So I picked up running and not being like so passionate about running, but I was like, how can I challenge my. Was running that's pretty much, what I can do right now. And so I did a lot of or like I did a few, like a hundred mile races, which is very challenging, but it's a great experience where you find yourself in a hundred mile race. For sure. Robert, I have to try him in Glen, ran a hundred miles in firefighting outfit. I'm just letting you know, on a hundred miles in for firefighting. That's hard core. So when yo

Video voiceover of some recent wing foil drone footage by our local crew of wing foilers: Jason, Daniel, Jeff, Jed and Robert. The drone footage is from three different wing foil surfing sessions in May and June 2021 here on Oahu. This show is also available as a audio only podcast, just search for "Blue Planet Show" in your favorite podcast app, this one is Season 1, Episode #11 Show transcript: Okay, welcome guys. I'm trying something new here on the blue planet show. We're going to play a video that this is video. I shot over the last couple of weeks with the drawn of my friends here on a wahoo, and we're going to watch it together and moderate it, or, do a little voiceover, talk about what's going on and try to give you some pointers and, beginner tips, more advanced tips, any kind of equipment tips we have. And then the conditions are pretty similar and all that is three different days, but the conditions are always like between, I would say between 10 to 20 knots about, it's pretty some lighter moments probably, but pretty decent win on those days. I'm gonna introduce myself first and then we'll go around everybody. Just introduce yourself. So my name is Robert Stellick and one thing I love about wing foiling is this the community like people are so welcoming and friendly. I love that. Hi, my name's Jason. One thing I love about wind foiling is having that freedom and not being able to paddle back to the lineup. So that's one thing I enjoy. Hi, my name is Daniel calling today. One thing I like about when foiling is I'm sharing it with a bunch of friends, all in the water and running away from the crowd and keep, we keep pushing each other every single day. Yeah. Two things I love about waiting for them. So I like going in and out of the surf riding waves. And then I also like trying new things and. That's what I like about our group is everyone's always trying new tricks and things and makes it interesting. So those are the two things I like. Nice Jed, Aloha. I am Jed. And what I love about winning foiling is zipping around when the prone for alert or prone surfers are just sitting there waiting for waves. When we can actually see the waves and just stay on foil the whole time. It's just the best feeling. Yeah, it is an awesome January. So now, okay. So this is the first day out of three sessions that I was filming with the drawn. And I'm going to start with Daniel. Who's writing right here. Can you tell us what gear are you using first? Right now I'm using a four, four. Magic foil board from Glen Pang who shaves platonic country. And I'm on a 72 centimeter mass Armstrong where the 10 50 front wing and a flat tail wing in the back with a 50 fuse and zipper, shim and Armstrong, a foil Abe before a wing four or five wing, right? Four or five. Yeah, 4.5. And this is one of your signature moves at the bet going back winded. Yeah, sometimes I been practicing it too. Like going back winning, like even when the wave is like breaking or steep, just to cooking like faster. To just to get in even in the pocket, like really quick. It seems like it's also a good way sometimes to turnaround without getting like sometimes when you drive, it's easy to get back winded. If the wind is light. Yeah. Then by pulling in you're by shooting in the wing, you don't get that back winded. Yeah. So Off and on little bits, little small, but good practice. Jump board is actually a 36 Dieter board. So it's small. It's almost like my prom board, maybe just a tad bit, little more volume, like two inches, two, two more liters of volume. Okay. So it's not your prom board for prime surfing, use a different board. I use a 33 liter board. How do you like that? When Daniel at? I like it. It's really powerful. Like I tried ozone ANSYS. What else did I try a wing ride, but I really like this and the handles is rigid and I felt that was important, like before anybody came out with rigid handles. And as I talked to Robert recently, like Robert says that he likes his handles rigid also. So I think a lot of the company's been coming out with these rigid handles. And I like it cause it's like it's super strong and then there's two different bladders two pumps. So the. The boom. And then the leading edge, I have the Cabrina acts two and those handles are a little bit floppy. Some people don't mind it, but I don't prefer that. I actually prefer the boom. So I started on the echo and and now I've got one of the slicks, which are pretty nice. Nice. Jeff you, that was just you on the video, but you just got the new echo on the new Ansis V2, or then the new newest model. Yeah. So I was writing the original ANSYS wing and then I recently a couple of days ago, I got the new score wing. So the, we put it on top of each other and they look exactly the same. So we didn't think there's going to be much difference, but there is quite a bit of different. So it feels. Yeah, although it's heavier, like a few answers heavier because of the windows, it's actually has a lighter feel. So when you're lifted off the water, when you're water starting it pops off the water instantly, and then it feels tighter in your hands. Everything is similar to the F1 where they tightened everything up. It feels more responsive and more lively. And especially when you're riding the wave, when you go to Lafitte in the back, it just, you just throw it back there. And instead he just is in perfect position, like the first instance in a lot of the other wings you have to, when you throw it back there, you have to adjust it. Sometimes it wants to do the front legs, but this one, you throw it back in it's level. Perfect. And it's pretty much effortless. So it's a big improvement. Over the other one, I think. And so he basically tightened up the leech and then he flattened the profile. So it's faster through the air, those are the two changes you mean? And then the Leo is on that dark wing yet. It looks, I get that one has so much vianet like it just looks, it looks strange to me that, that dark wing, but I think good part of it is this kind of has a pointy tip too, right? Yeah. I think the design of that was not really intended for wages more for jumping and tricks and back loops in front loops and that kind of thing. And getting here is when you put it on a wave, it wiggles a little bit. That's what the Leo said too, that it it's really good for jumping and then. Ears Corey both Corey and Jason. You are both on the, on a wings too. And Jason, you've been through a lot of different wings. You've tried a lot of different wings. So what do you like about the Armstrong that over the other ones you've tried? I think my favorite thing about the Armstrong is the power that you get and how stiff it is. That day, I believe I was using a five, five, and Cody was on a four or five, eight week. And yeah, also like it for jumping as well, too, and it parts really well when you're actually on the wave and the wingtips are shorter, so it doesn't touch the, like the water surface as much. Even with the five, five I don't really have that much problems actually touching the water surface. So that's the reason why I like that rain and. It's it's, so beef felt like the materials and everything that they put into it. That's probably like one of the best ones that I prep for me for my preference. I like it. Yeah. I tried it too. And what I found that, those, the thing the wingtips are really thick. And even if you do touch down with it, it just seems like they just released really easily. Yeah. It just feels like it just ricochets off the water, which, you know, like calling me and I actually found out but it's a little heavy, but one thing that I do like about it as well too, is the windows. Like most brands you get out there and they don't, you're not able to fold the windows or creases where this one, you can actually fold it, which actually like my wife and I, as soon as we're done, we're just crinkle it up and just throw in the bag and, not. Having a tear and, rip this kinda on what we're looking forward to. Cause we're not like, as you see, it's like my wing hanging on the hook over here. I know Jeff is looking at it or probably is they'll do that. But yeah, that's something I like about the Archstone stuff. It's built that a lot of thought into it. And so you were on a five, five and Daniel was on a four or five. So there's quite a bit of difference in power, right? Between the four or five and the five five, or would you say? Yeah. I think I used a five-pack business kind of like holiday clinic umbrellas. You don't like, I've been getting inspired by you. Jeff and Daniel of course was the leader in the jumping category right now. But I found like this one kind of locks you down, like umbrellas you down a lot more. So it makes it easier on the knees. So that's why I like having a bigger pile and then also like getting the speed and kind of powers you up really nice. It's easier to get going out when the wind's a little bit light. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I fall a lot, so I want something to get me up easy too, because I'm used to such a small board, like Daniel, I'm using a four, four, and it's 22 wide and it's like 45 liters and I'm on a Armstrong, 1250 and it's modified. I lost a little bit with not too much forward, but I've been experimenting with my wings as well, too, but awesome. How did you modify the 1250. So what I did was at con I had a belt sander, and I shaved off the wing tips. I felt like it was biting too much. Like it was tracking lot. Cause I like to actually I want more of that prone feeling like when you're out in the surf. So I wanted something that actually would release like more from left to right when I'm doing like turns I wanted that real juicy feeding. And I felt cutting the wing tips down and I got a flying detail from Jeff, which actually I just love, nothing is just unreal. So that was Corey Jason's wife. We just did a jump. That was nice job. Nice car. So jumping pretty high now