James Casey- Foil athlete, waterman- interview on the Blue Planet Show episode 25
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 the meantime, I was stop surfing heaps. So I still stop surfed a lot when the waves were small back home, I'd stop surf heaps, wasn't really competing, but just loved it. On the small days and you can then, you can just pedal out.
The same as in, in Maui were ping out to these outer reefs and surfing waves by ourselves rather than sitting in the pack of 20 or 30 on a shortboard waiting for that one that came through. That's a muddled history, . Once I got into this, I actually got into the subs surfing, went down to an event in Marula it, so called the Maru Classic.
Quite a famous event here in us here in Australia. Anyway, yeah had like guys like Rob Robby Nash come over in the history of it all. And, but I met two, two good friends now, JC Schara and Toby k Cracknell and Kai Bates as well, actually, and Sam Williams. And those sort of four people got me into the competitive side of s cause I didn't even know like the, a PPP world tour or the whatever it was called before that.
I didn't know what it, I didn't know what it exist. I didn't know you could compete on a standup paddle board. I didn't know there were races. I just was just doing it for fun. Wasn't really in the scene. So they, I went over to Hawaii, did the sunset event trials, got into the main event and basically from there Tristan was like, oh, you've qualified for the whole tour now if you wanna come to Brazil and France.
And I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. So I rallied. And, you I'd just finished uni at this time, so I was like, okay, I've got a bit of time. I haven't really locked myself into a job yet. So I just did that for, two, three years competing on the, the sup surf and race circuit doing, Molokai to Oahu and a bunch of races in did a few races in Europe, did a few surf events in Morocco and Hawaii and France, and went to the wave pool in Abu Dhabi.
And yeah, it was a pretty cool, time and then Brun, I was doing that until Covid hit and then now Covid hit up. We basically, it's all, it all stopped all the racings on the stop stuff. And yeah. So here's I wanted to share this video. This was oh, sorry. Definitely. This was when I first met you that this was like at the mall.
Mochi race. And you had a yeah, it was you and Marcus. Yeah. Marcus harder with Yeah. Talking about the dugout. I was just curious about it and interviewed you and that. So this was in 2016, was it the first time you did the mobile Kai race? This is the second time I did it. Yeah.
This is the second time I, yeah and it was my third season competing, like racing over in Hawaii, but I didn't get in the first year to to do Molokai. Cause I hadn't done enough races, basically. And that. And you were one of the first guys to use the dugout in the Molokai race, I think too.
Or, and you did really well with it, right? So everybody started being curious about the dugout boards. Yeah, so dugout boards were, pretty common on 14 foot boards. But for for the unlimited boards, Not many people were using them. So yeah, it's probably good to talk about this.
I was writing for JP and basically JP had said, oh, we don't make unlimited boards. You can get, one made from s i c, you can get one made wherever you want. And basically the year before I used a s I see. And Marcus had spoken to Matt Knowledge and said, oh, I think I can make something faster than your s i c what do you think?
And he was like, yeah, Matt was keen. And then I got caught winded oh, if you are getting one, Matt, he was my like, sparring partner. I was like, I want one too. So we both, paid Marcus to design a board for us. And deep sort of made the boards and yeah, these are the first, unlimited dugouts that that we'd used.
and basically it certainly caused a bit of a stir in Hawaii when people saw him. It was like the world's biggest bathtub when they filled up. But Yeah, it was, they were super quick and, this relationship with Marcus, stems all the way through, like within us and Simon son over the following year.
And and then I, won Moloka in 2019 on a board that Marcus and I actually built like in, in his backyard. And and that was the last, that was the last time the race was held. So you're the defending champion, theoretically. . Yeah. Look, four years, , I only have to race once.
Yeah. So yeah, no, it's it was a little project that for sure. Yeah. So I just wanted to share that. That's a classic older video. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. That's the main, yeah. Marcus is now all clean cut too. He is. Got his hash and he is shaved and he wouldn't recognize him. . Yeah.
And just so I'm in the background, so are you staying at his place right now or? Yes. I'm just, I'm over here in wa I was just cause we've just we're working together now with fun code foil, so it's been set started there that year deep that's, and then sent over and now with code foils and so it's pretty cool.
But yeah, I marks my good mates and yeah, I'm over here in wa I was just doing a foil camp up in Exmouth and so I've flowed back down. get back to your history though. Okay. So then you started doing the kind of the racing and also computing as a subs, surfer subs, surfery competition.
. Yeah. Yeah. my, my best result in the subs surfing stuff was the second place at Sunset. I lost a ca vaz , but it was basically I got the, it was a good year for me. Like the surf was good, my ball was good. And that was, yeah, second place and that was, I was pretty stoked.
And that year I won the overall race and surf sup champion, there wasn't an official world champion sort of thing, but it was like a thing they're trying to award, overall athletes, not just thes athletes, not just the races race athletes, but the overall. So I think that was 20 must have been like 2016 kind of time where I won that sort of thing.
And that's probably the biggest, sup sort of world champion sort of thing I've done in that. But yeah, I did all that until until Covid hit really, I was doing all the s sub surf events and a lot of the supp race events and then foiling came out. It stalled the momentum, with the sup stuff because foiling the reason I got into the sup racing was because I I'm a surfer first, so I've always, I've, I still surf short boards longboards foils now, obviously and standups.
But surfing was where it all started. And when I got into sap, competing in standup was all about s surfing and downwind racing, because to me, downwind racing was like longboarding out to sea and you're just trimming the whole time. So it's kinda like the longboard sort of style. . And then when the foils came out and you were, I started down winding them pretty early.
I was like, this is like short boarding out to sea. I'm not long boarding anymore. I'm like, we are surfing now. And so that to me was like a real light bulb moment. And a lot of people are like, oh, you don'ts race anymore. And I'm like, oh, I still do the local events. Like I, I was at the Aussie champs last year and still do a bunch of the local events.
But yeah the foiling is and the downwind foiling especially is mind blowing honestly. It's it's pretty crazy. And I guess my foil history I started, I actually met Alex Aue when I was over in Maui for a ppp race event. And I was introduced him through the Spencers. So Jeffrey and Finn were testing ups to go for stuff Me.
Oh Jimmy, you gotta meet Alex, you're gonna love this foiling stuff. And so I was actually staying with Vinny and Vinny Martinez and j Jake Jensen. And we were all in a house together. Cause we're doing a race and because I was introduced to Alex basically, but Vinny and I were both slopping boards and so we only had one foil set up.
Cause Alex lent us a board and a foil, like one of the original cars. And we were out at Kaha lowers trying out then a bunch of other spots between there and who keep and just if one of us was on the fall, the other one would be on like a bigger surf up just filming each other with a GoPro.
And we were just trying to get the shot of us flying above the water. And that was the, and as soon as we left there, we were like, man, I said to Alex, I gotta buy one, like when can I buy one? And he's, okay. That must have been like a sep September sort of time of year. It's 2016 and then maybe it was 2017 but around that time and I ordered probably the first go fall to ever arrive in Australia,
It arrived in like November just before the event, the ISA event in Fiji. And I remember going over there, I was over there to race the distance race on the standup, but I brought this foil with me and on the, when we were all surfing cloud break and whatnot in between the events and I was towing behind the boat.
on the drive out on my gofoil set up. And people are losing their shit. Oh, everyone's having a go. And that was the start of, the foil brain and the downwind stuff. And yeah, it's been a cool, it's been a whirlwind four years, since then, or I guess five years, six years since then.
But yeah then I was, and I heard like the first time you tried to do a downwind foil downwind, was it with the ca foil? Yeah, so it would've been just after I got from Fiji, I went over to Western Australia and there's a race called King of the Cut and all those, so it's really good downwind run cause the, you get these sea breeze and it's like super consistent.
And basically one day we went out with my square JP board and the gofoil and must have been, the board must have been like seven two by 26, but a square not like the boards nowadays had this kind of pointy tails and stuff. Pointy noses, not long and skinny and . We went out the Mandra run and we paddled, A friend of mine, Matt and I we were swapping boards, so one of us on the foil set up, one of us was on a race board stuff.
And basically we did the run I think is about 10 kilometers, 10 or 11 Ks. We did half the run and we swapped out and I got up twice, which looking back, I'm actually pretty stoked, could get up. I got up twice for about a total of like maybe 50, 60 meters up on Foil . And I was like, man, this is hard.
Cause we'd seen Kyle Leni do it on his, longer board. Oh, he must just need a longer board longer skinnier board at that time. And cuz Kai was on a sorn off race board, it's 12 foot kind of thing. It's funny how in the foiling world everything just comes back, right?
So like and then, cause now we're going back to that, but this was in 20, it must have been 2016 or 17. . But anyway, it doesn't really. And then I said to Alex, I think I need a bigger foil. So he sent me over the original malico the blue one that isn't curved down. It's like a flatter one.
It was actually ahead of its time because it was it was higher aspect, than the macOS were. And like when I got that one, I got home and I did a downwind run from maybe I was, anyway I started downwind once I got that foil and once I had that bigger foil, I was getting up pretty much straight away because of my my, my sort of s racing and downwind knowledge.
I could read the bumps well enough and was powerful enough to get up and foil and once up, I think I was just chasing bumps and it was, yeah, it was sick, but I had the, yeah that one definitely humbling moment where we got five Ks and 50 meters of foiling, , so yeah.
Yeah, . But even for you, it wasn't easy to get started, but yeah, no way. No way. But the right equipment makes a big difference for sure. Yeah even just the slightly bigger foil was the biggest, the difference for me. I think I was still on the same board more or less. I can't remember my first successful downwind run actually because I definitely had gone to Maui again and I did a downwind run with Finn and Jeffrey on a prone board.
We went from Kua to Sugar Cove and we were paddling into waves and then falling around. And then Alex had this 10 foot, it was like a square board. It was a like just a, he called it the aircraft carrier. It was super long and he'd just put a little bit more rocker in it. Yeah, super light. And I paddled that thing up easy and once I was up I was like, I was good to go thing.
Cause the downwind knowledge I had from racing standups just translated straight across. But I remember that first run of that big board and it was like, oh, this is pretty cool. , this is pretty epic. Boiling down wind is, As I said before, short boarding and like surfing down the coast rather than, trimming on the longer, unlimited or 14 foot stops.
Six. Wait, did you say you were prone foiling on a 10 foot board? Is that what it was? Nah, so I was, I was, I'll stand up, I'll stand up paddling on that one. Yeah, that was the aircraft carrier. It was like nine or 10 foot. long, long, but it was like square. It literally it was like this shape.
Yeah. The early kma boards were like that too, right? That's at the time everyone thought that's how you get it as short as possible by just cutting off the nose and tail and like its square . Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting that one Alex made actually and, and it was it was like looking back at it if he just refined that shape.
It was long and it it wasn't super skinny. It was probably like 25 or 26 wide, but it was like eight foot and just it was square for stability while going. Narrow for speed and long for speed. Looking back, like there's a lot of things that led us to, the latest design that, Dave has famously invented, the Barracuda style boards.
Yeah. And then you're still a team writer for Sunova, right? So when did that relationship start with Sunova? So just that video you shared before was the year after? So it was it was just as when I got my Go Foil I started on JP boards, so that was November. And then the following year, January, February, I signed with Sunova.
And the first thing I did was like, okay, we need to get on, we need to make foil boards because foiling is where it's gonna be. And so I went over to Thailand and we tested a bunch of staff and we drew up with Bert Berger. He was over there and Marcus was back here. So we didn't, but Bert and I drew up our first sort of, Foil board range, and it was long, they basically weren't thick enough.
So I, my first s foil board that I did with them was seven two by 24 and a half, which like is a pretty good dimensions looking back like how it's aged. But it was super thin. Yeah. So it was only like, it was only like 80 liters or something. And for me it was fine. But I remember going, starting on that and then Marcus took over designing the FOIL awards cause he was head starter foiling too.
And it made sense cause he understood it. And so we basically the rails on Bert's board were like super pointy like this. Yeah. And then Marcus just made him thicker and had the, added the chime in and that extra volume allowed us to go shorter. And a bit narrower. Yeah. And a bit narrower too with the same sort of volume.
But yeah, I guess our the Sunova relationship was, has been, is epic. , we're still designing a bunch of boards. We've got a bunch of prototypes coming. And yeah, there's, because I persuaded them to build these foil boards, I said, ah, and then I built like a, created the Casey brand.
They're like, okay we'll put the Casey logo on it. And, it's your job to curate the design with Marcus and make sure you write the design specs and the, the website, outline, explain to people what it is. So yeah, that relation relationship with Suno has been really good.
And obviously like racing, they were helping me fly around the world and travel and and the stop surfing stuff. And yeah, it's been a very healthy relationship with the boys in Thailand. The over. . Yeah. And then for, regarding the foil, so I guess you were writing for Gold Foil and then at some point you tried a whole bunch of different foils and you ended up writing for access.
So how did that ha all happen and what was yeah. Sorry. I was writing for Gofo for five years so Gofo for five years and basically, started with the Kai and then the MACO came out and then the EVA and the maico 200 and all that sort of stuff came out. And then the GLS came out, which was like mind blowing cuz they were these higher aspect things.
Then the P 180 and basically I've all the way up to the RS and the GT wings. I was a part of the team and it was just, yeah, it was, I was just craving a bit more input in the design process because go for guys are just like fully Maui based and they've got a pretty good test team in Maui. They've got Dave and they've got.
Jeremy Rigs and they got, Alex himself is great at testing too, so they didn't really need me. And unless I was there, and when I was there, I was heavily involved in the testing stuff. And remember vividly testing shimming the tail wing. We were out, off or out of Kalu Harbor in Alex's boat.
And Connor and I were both testing some Damon wings for the, there was an oli, the Oli race was coming up. And so we were testing like how to shim, like basically we're tuning our foils to get 'em as fast as we could for the race. And unfortunately that year the wind was blowing like straight on shore, so it was just a course race.
But the race we did was they dropped us out outside basically between uppers and lowers at Kaha. And we raced all the way back into shore. And I remember that, was that where there was a huge surf too coming in or was that huge surf? Yeah. Yeah. And a few guys, I think I got up last. , but I think Austin climber fell off in the surf
This got maxed out. You got a bomb coming through and it was a, that was a pretty cool race that was just like full, like figuring it out, yeah, and it was a bit murky water coming through. I hit something coming in through at the end, but it was sick. It was a cool race. But yeah, so we I'd worked a lot with Alex and Alex was literally I've got a house over in Maui and my family is a house over in Maui and he's actually, we actually share a boundary with Alex.
We're not direct next door neighbors, but like over the back fence, like Alex is our neighbor, so it's oh, cool. There's a pretty cool relationship. When I was in Maui, like last time I was in Maui Alex had literally picked me up and we'd go, okay, we're gonna go test this thing, James. Come on, let's go.
And yeah, it was super cool to be doing that. But the problem was when I wasn't in Maui, I couldn't test anything and I was only really in Maui, maybe one or. once or twice a year, and only really for maybe a total of three weeks. So I just, I was craving more input in the design and pushing the envelope to race the wings.
But also I guess with my coaching stuff I wanted to be able to, have input to help people learn to. So yeah, about 18 months ago, I, announced I was leaving Gofoil and tried a bunch of different foils. was trying lift stuff, I was trying uni foil stuff access Armstrong.
What else did I try? I felt like there was some cloud nine stuff too. And basically I, and I spoke to 'em all and basically the access guys were really keen to work on a range of foils with me. And basically in the last 18 months with access, I reckon I prototyped. probably 50 sets of gear, wow.
It was kinda like, be careful what you wish for , because then my job was like, one of the things they sent out six different towel wings. They didn't tell me what they did, but they said, go out and try them and tell me what you feel. And basically little examples like that.
And, so we tried a bunch of different stuff and it was an awesome relationship with Evan and Adrian. And I was on the phone to Adrian after every session. And that was exactly what I craved, like with Gofo, I did the same thing, but I only spoke to Alex every now and then.
Cause I only got prototypes every, once or twice a year. Whereas with access, I was getting like every month they were sending out a box of gear and saying, test this stuff for us, test that for us. And it was epic. And if fast forward to now, I guess I'm, I've just announced that I'm working with basically a few mates of mine, Marcus, Ben, and Dan.
And. basically creating our own brand, which is super exciting. Working with Code Falls and look, if this hadn't come up, I'd definitely still be working with Access because there was, there's basically, there's no bad blood with access. Like we're there we're still mates.
Adrian's actually coming up. I'm just gonna miss him in Perth, but he's coming over and I've left a bunch of gear for him cause, given some of the gear back and yeah, they want me to come over. Adrian wants to come over to New Zealand and do a downwind foil clinic and yeah, but they were cool, especially like going know when I told them about when I told them about joining code about a month ago, they were obviously a bit upset, but they were super cool and they're like, they were stoked for me that we, that I was creating my own thing.
So they weren't they weren't angry at me, and the beauty is we're still mates I guess. So it's it's cool. But as I said, like the relationship with Code Falls was really good. So it's, I'm sorry. Talk a little bit about that. So code photos, like who's behind it and what's the business plan and so on.
Yeah, so basically Marcus and Ben basically ha they're brothers. They, their Batard brothers and they've been designing their own or basically in the sunova range. Marcus has been doing all the foil and stuff boards for a while and Ben Tark has been doing the same for one and basically for them to be working together.
It's pretty cool cuz they've got some seriously good design brains and yeah, they just, they asked me did I wanna be a part of this company they're building and yeah, I was like, yeah, let's do it. Because I've worked with Marcus for, I guess five or six years now and I've known Ben for a bit longer and Basically the plan is to, just create foils for, for sorry, the dog's just done a fart.
the plan is stinks, stubby . The plan is to create foils that that we want to use, you know and that I can teach with too. Cause my coaching business is super important thing too. So at the moment we've just had one, we've had two prototypes. Basically we've got a sort of surf wing and think it's around eight 50 square centimeters.
And we've just had a prototype race wing that literally, I've only tried it twice, two or three times now, and it's been. Really positive. Like the whole philosophy I guess behind it is we want our stuff to be stiff and solid and the mast and the connection to the base plate, to the mast, it's all one.
But like the connection point is overbuilt, but it feels so nice and stiff. And then likewise the master to the fuse. The fuse is thick and so that's, I'm seeing if I have one actually I've got a mask just here. I can show that. Yeah. Why don't you show us? Is it all one, you said it.
The fuselage and front wing and tail wing are all one piece. No. So the don't think I've got a, a tail wing or No, there's none around to you. They must markers, must took it . But yeah. Yeah. Show the mask. So yeah, you can see like the, see how that's pretty chunky down the bottom here. But we just find it adds extra stiffness.
And even the base plate's pretty, pretty chunky too. Uhhuh . And then the connection to the. , this is a thicker it's just like probably 30% thicker than the, like most other brands. , just, this just allows more Fuse to get onto. So that makes the fuse a bit chunkier. Yeah. What we found straight away was that it was just super stiff, even though like our first prototype, but everything was just so well connected.
So yeah. The base plate things that I was talking about and then the fuse connection was just super solid. And that to us was a really important thing coming out with a brand now and like after seeing a bunch of brands, work on certain things, then realizing their mask is a bit stiff, isn't stiff enough.
And having the connections to the front fall or the rear fall a bit, basically don't want any flex. So having that able to see what other fall brands have done, we've learned from that and basically created a pretty. Pretty what I'm loving, especially in the surf, the eight 50, it's super well connected and a lot of people, so is it, is the fuselage like aluminum like the access foils or is it more like the lift flows where it's like a front piece together with the Yeah, it's yeah, more like the lift and uni foil sort of stuff.
How it's just like the front one goes on and then the fuse bolts on. Like a lot of people are comparing it to the cab, how it's on the angle, so Oh, you kind, yeah. So it's it's a super snug connection. , I can't, there was one just on the couch there, but Marcus just took off with it.
No worries. Show on the shop . But yeah, we're super So you, so are you actually a partner in the business or a team writer and r and d? Or like how does that work? Yeah. More of a partner not just team riders, which is why it's like an exciting. Sort of project.
So there's, we're building a brand up from nothing, so it's, yeah, four. then, so Marcus is, designer Sonova. Ben was a designer of one, no, is the designer of one. And then Dan, he's actually a, he lives three doors down and he's an architects builder, but he's really good at basically drawing everything up and making it all, so the designs, he puts it into software that makes the, it can blend everything so super clean and, slick looking connections.
And he's actually, he's been working the hardest of late trying to get all the files ready to build. It's been a, it's been a, it's been a busy month, that's for sure. Yeah. And that's why you're in Perth right now? I was actually over here to do a foil camp up in Exmouth, and I extended two days before and two days after, just so I could catch up with the team and.
and, talk about a lot of things and get some footage and just work on all things code as, as well as do a bit of work up the coast here. Just, it was good timing, it wasn't planned, it was just good timing. Cool. Yeah, like when we look at Australia on a Globe or something, it looks like a small little island, but to fly from Sydney to Perth is like a six hour flight or something, like three time zones, or what is it, three or four time zones?
Yeah. Yes. It's, I think it's a four and a half, five hour flight, depending on the winds. And yeah, it's a, it's three hours difference. Yeah. So back home when I chat to my wife, she's, at home now it's nine o'clock here and it's midday in, in Sydney. So yeah, it's a big country. It's a big country, that's for sure.
Yeah. I haven't been over and during Covid we actually couldn't fly to Perth Bec because. Everything was locked down, so it was, yeah, it's it was almost like a new country over here in Western Australia for a while. Yeah. Everything, everything went yeah. Starting new for company, with like access, they have so many different foils and design, like shapes, like different, so many different wings you can choose from and stuff like that.
So starting a new company, I guess one of the hard things is the tooling costs are pretty expensive. Every time you make a new wing you have to make a mold for it and all that. Yeah. And then if it doesn't work, you have to like toss that mold and make another one or whatever yeah, exactly. Yep.
It's not easy. Yeah, it's not easy at all. Yeah. The plan for the Rangers at the moment is we've got our surf wing all round, surf wing and downwind wing, which is the eight 50. So I've been surfing and down winding it , and it's been unreal in terms of size, it's. , I feel like the area's not that good a guide.
Cause we all know the one 20 probably surfs a bit bigger than what, or down winds a bit bigger than what the area is. . But it's, it, this eight 50 feels somewhere between the one 20 and the one 70. Probably like a one 30 or one 40 sort of size. If you were to compare in the lift range in the access range, it feels like an 8 99, so that's the kind of size that the one we have now. And we've got plans to build one bigger and one smaller , at the very least. And we're probably gonna go at least two bigger. So probably have five or six foils within that range. And then we're gonna do an, a race range, which we are busily working on now to get ready for mochi because it may only be March, but it takes time to build molds and test stuff.
And so we've got our first one here and we've it, it's great, but there's things we can improve upon it. So we're back to the drawing board and try to make it, better. And then we're gonna do like a more of a, lower aspect sort of style foil for basically bay runs, small, slow surf and just a sl a foil that goes slower so you can so especially for me when I'm teaching, I want, I wanna fall that I can teach with that isn't going so fast that it's like scaring people, and it doesn't have to be a really big foil to go slow. You can make us foil that is still like compact, that goes slow. So we they're the kind of the three rangers that we're working on. But really we're just focusing on getting everything released and the launch date, I guess for shops to, to have these code falls in shops for the eight 50 and I guess, and that's first surf range is or the all round range is the 1st of June.
So that's what we're working towards, which doesn't seem that far away. For us, but for everyone else, we're like, oh, June, that's like March, April, may, June. It's three months. But I think Robert, you probably know it, it takes more than just, the stuff is good now. We're just getting stuff, ordering like our, the manufacturing and logistics and stuff.
Yeah, just three months is not a long time. Not at all. So three, four months. Yeah, we're pushing hard, but it's and obviously we're hoping to have to release the bigger and smaller wings in that range. But it probably won't be till after June. So the first one will be the eight 50 that sort of slightly bigger than the lift one 20 sort of size 8 99 axis sort of size.
And then the rest will come after that. But yeah, baby steps because it all, the need a cost a bit, but it takes a lot of time too. So it's, yeah, it's been a. Spend a bit of a journey already. Just I'm only one, officially one week in . Cool. And then what about boards? Are you con gonna continue with Sonova making, like the Casey labeled boards or that, or are you gonna make code foil boards also, or?
No, at this stage we're gonna, like Ben still works for One Ocean Sports and Marcus and I still work for Sunova. So it just, it makes sense for us to stick with them, for the, yeah. For the time being because it's we've got great relationships with Ben's got a great relationship with Jacko at one and Mark and I have a great relationship with, Tino and Dylan at Sunova.
We don't wanna, we don't wanna break that relationship and Sure we've got good products and we're super happy with how it's all working. As is and the foils, are they made at the Sunova factory or where are they made? The fos are made in China. Yeah. So they're, that we've different factory, the Sunova.
Don't really do carbon fiber. I guess they're more of the bolser and polonia skins, which for a foil doesn't really work. . Yeah. It's a, it is a very specialized manufacturing process and yeah. Definitely not simple. You have to have Yeah. Get everything right. Especially like to make the mass stiff and torsional and all that, all that kind of different kind of things to consider.
But anyway, yeah. Cool. Congratulations. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. Super exciting. It's been, and let's talk about the Moloka race. Since 2019 we haven't had it. And then this year it's gonna be on July 30th, I think. And I got to see the list of people for the for the foil race.
And it's a pretty, pretty impressive list. A lot of people are entered. Yeah, including you and Kailan and a bunch of other really top top writers are doing the foil race, so I almost feel like that's gonna be like the main event, almost like the down one foiling, yeah. But yeah, talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. Obviously 20 Montana wanna 'em a stand up and uh, basically that was my goal. That was when I first started stop Racing, my goal was to win Malachi to Oahu when I was stoked to be able to do that. And I dedicated to my dad who's now passed away. And that was a really emotional, experience to be doing that.
But I feel like to me, like a lot of people are like, oh, you gotta do it again. Go back to back on the s And to me, I feel like it's almost not that chapter's done, but it's like I've achieved what I wanted to achieve on the standup. Not only that, since I started racing mochi on a sap, like the first year I did that, there were 15 to 20 big names.
And probably of those we five people could have won it. The previous year, the year I won, there were probably only like probably five or six people that were like really racing it com like super competitively with a win. And of that sort of five or six, there was probably only two or three or four that were real serious contenders.
So it, what I've seen is the s downwind supp racing has declined a bit, or a lot. Yeah, for sure. Like all the guys that were downwind, downwind, standup paddling are now supp foiling or just, prone or they're downwind foiling now.
So to me the sport that I was interested in has shifted to foiling, so for me, the foil stuff, it was even in 2019, I was foiling like a lot. And for Malachi, I put my, gave myself a bit of a foil band and Marcus was foiling and training for the foiling and He was like, come on, Jimmy, come on the phone.
I'm like, nah man, I just gotta, I just gotta tick this off. I gotta win this race on the standup and I just wanna, I wanna get that done. And yeah, I'm stoked I did that because then it wasn't on for 20 20, 20 21, 20 22, and it's just come back in 2023. I could have been I could have been, still wanting to win it on a standup and, not having it mean for a while.
They were talking about maybe doing the the foil event on a Saturday and then the paddle and prone event on the Sunday. If they would do that, would you do try to do both or would you just Only on foiling? Oh, I'd focus on foiling, but like the factors on the day before, I'd do both because I'm over there, so I, and I still have all my gear over there. It's all ready to go. The only thing is the extra cost. The moloka to a race is not a cheap event, and an escort boat is super expensive. And hard to find. That's one of the biggest challenges I think like this year especially. Cuz during the pandemic, a lot of the escort boats got out of the business or they, sold their boats or got into fishing or doing other things and then, yeah.
So it's actually gonna be really hard to find escort boats for all the competitors I think. Big time. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah that, I'm lucky enough, I've got the same boat captain and Andrew he actually hit me up. He goes, I got a few people asking you doing mochi cuz people are hitting me up to do their escorting on it.
Your first, you won it last year so last time we did it. So you are, you're my first guy and he is like, and he goes, and I hope you're foiling . Cause obviously for a boat it's quicker on a foil. Yeah. You need a fast boat to it, . Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Yeah. I signed up to do it on a wing foil this year, so I'm excited to, to be wing foiling.
Yes. It's so cool that they did a wing event too. I assume. The wings should win. Like the wings should be the quickest really. But it'd be interesting to see how they go on the final bit. That up win leg could be pretty, there'd be a bit of tacking going on, and if there's no win, yeah.
Going into the finish is gonna be tricky. But for you to, for you guys too, going into the wind with a Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, it's, yeah. And the foil board's gonna be super cheeky yeah. But yeah, last year we had that blue water race where jack hole came in like third overall I think the first two finishers were wing foyers and then he came in third, so he beat a lot of wing foyers on the standup foil board, yeah, pretty fast.
Cuz you can go straight down wind versus on a wing, you have to angle more, a little bit angle off. Yeah. Yeah that's a big question. Can you go quick enough over further distance to, to beat the sub guys? We're going more direct I guess, but Yeah, I think you said you did the king of the cut with where there was wingers and standup foyers, a king of the cut race or something. Yeah. I haven't done it when there's wingers because it wasn't on last year and the year before. In 2019, winging wasn't a thing, wasn't a, what, people weren't racing. So the last time I did King of the Cup was 2019 and then Covid hit, so we couldn't get over here.
And then when everything opened up last year, end of 2022, the King of the Cup wasn't on anymore. Basically all the volunteers, but they couldn't get enough volunteers together. But have you competed in any doman races that have both wingers and standup foil? I don't think I have actually. Yeah. I don't think I have.
Yeah. I haven't competed again or rice against. It'll be interesting to see. Yeah. Who's faster . Yeah. You would think, definitely like with the Wing, you do have an unfair advantage and you can probably use a smaller, faster foil, yeah. But yeah, I think it, I think there's Yeah. A lot of, yeah.
Yeah. A lot of animals that go into, I've had the Marcus about this, and he did the race when speaking of the cup when there were wingers and foyers and the wingers smoked them, not only because they were from the start, they were up and going. But smaller foils, they're using small foils.
They're using big wings, like big sails and yeah. They're just, , they're moving. Yeah. The wings were quicker, even though they were having to go a little bit further distance. They were faster by, by fair bit, actually, five, 10 minutes I think it was. Okay. That's good to know.
Yeah. Cool. So yeah, I think that's gonna be super exciting. We're gonna try to interview some more people that are in that race and yeah, it should be fun to be part of it, the first time they're doing wing foiling too, yeah. So actually, have you done much wing foiling or just more focused on down winding and surf foiling?
Yeah, more focused on down winning and surf oiling. But I, I've done the, I guess the stuff the wing that I do is mainly around wave riding. So I'm, and not even heirs. So I'm, I do a few, hes, but I'm not a trickster. Like I don't, I'm I'm not as interested in the big jumps and the flips as I am, like the calves and, the re-entries and the cutbacks and that sort of stuff.
So to me winging, winging is like poor man's towing, it's like toe falling cuz you can to toe yourself into the wave and then you just drop it in the back end and you're just surfing like you would anyway. So it's And then talk a little bit about I know you've done like upwind on the wing and then deflate and then just go down one with the wing under your arm or something like that.
Or put on your back. Yeah. The wings is, talk a little bit about that. It's such an epic tool for that. So in Sydney especially, we get a lot of days where the wind is in winter we get offshore breezes, so it's like howling like 30 knots offshore. And we can go into sort of harbors or bays or river entrances and we can like big river entrance and we can what we do is we wing up wind, like five ks up wind, which is like almost 10 Ks cuz you have to z and zag up wind.
You attacking. And then I'll I, in what a lot of guys were doing was they were going on onto the shore, deflating their wing on a beach, rolling it up, putting the backpack, and then paddling up. And I was like, why are we doing this? Why don't we just deflate it on the water? So I started deflating on the water wrapping up trail on the backpack.
It was a bit wet, bit soggy, but it was still doable. . And then I was like why am I sitting down and doing, why don't I just deflate it whilst en foil? So I deflate it whilst en foil and then hold it under your arm until you stop. And then you've got your paddle on your back knee. You pull that out once you're ready.
But yeah, and then I was chatting with mate and I'm like cuz it's this run we do it's in a river and basically there's a national park so you can't drive. It's hard. It's like a bit of a, it's like a two or three K hike to get to the beach that you'd start at. . So instead of going there, we actually just start at the finish point and we wing up wind and then we do our pack down, however you wanna do it.
And then we'd go like most of the way back to the finish. But you can go, there's two options you need to pull in to this little bay where the car is, where you can go around this headland and there's like, it's just a peninsula, so it's a sand spit and you can go around the other side so you get like an extra three or four kilometers.
So I guess two, three miles of down winding and it's just it's like a kilometer. Upwind back to the beach. And so what I was doing was I was de like doing my deflate, like wing up wind deflate at the top of the run, and then I'd wing all the way down to the bottom of the run and I rigged up this soda stream bottle so I could use press a button and it reinflated the wing whilst I was up on fo.
So instead of sitting down and pump, I was actually pumping up the wing. Prior to this, I was pumping up the wing of the water. Yeah. And I'd I sort do it that way. But yeah, the soda stream bottle is pretty sick. So you also don't have to carry that big pumper around, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly right.
Yeah. But I heard someone say that the carbon dioxide is like not good for your bladder or something like that, that they used to do that with kites and it wasn't good for the bladder or something like that. Have you had any problems, like with your bladders or anything like that from the, I've only done it like three or four times.
The soda, I use a soda stream bottle and I just rigged that up. So it's just a big, like a big CO2 canister. And yeah, I'm sure it's not great for it, but it was I still pump up on the water a lot of the time because to set up the Soda Stream bottles is a pretty specific thing, whereas I can just grab my pump and a dry bag and I'm good to go.
, whereas the soda stream, gotta, you gotta attach it onto the boom and, have the hose. And it was just a cool it was an idea that Matt made of on Grant Perry and I worked on for a little while and yeah he, he's on a, he's on an E four, so he filmed it all.
It was a pretty cool little clip. Yeah, it still has a lot of function, but yeah, the biggest thing that we noticed was when you did the co2 the wing itself got really cold. So the CO2 was a really super cold air. And it like sort frosted the now the outside of the.
The canopy or the inflatable edge of the stratt. Yeah. The leading edge was like, freezing around the belt, probably especially, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not sure how good it is for the long term . I haven't tested it enough times to know, but I've done it four or five or three or four times and it was fine.
Prob actually probably four or five times. It didn't it didn't blow anything up. We tested it on land first because we were worried about that. What's gonna happen here? But yeah, it was sweet. It was sweet. Nice. There's I'm sure there'll be like, there's, I feel like there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a potentially a cool market in that, like if you can cuz winging down wind is epic.
Yeah. But it takes a bit of wing management. So like I find it easier to downwind with a paddle than I do with a wing. Cause once I have the wing and I'm like letting go of it and it's just, flagged out, it's behind me. , it's all in front of me, I've got, if I change directions, , there's a bit of technique to either, you either swap hands or you've gotta bring it behind you and drop it down behind you and try to, it's there's a bit of, there's a bit of admin to, to keep the wing out of the way and not yes.
To be able to go the same lines. Cuz what I find is when I'm wing it, I'm gonna cut across the wind a lot more than I would when I downwind. Even if I've just got flagged out to go straight down wind, the wing wants to blindfold you, essentially. So that's where it came from. The whole deflate thing.
I I love the downwind thing, but, and I winging up wind was the free shuttle, but the downwind part, I was like, man, this wing just doesn't get, doesn't get outta the way and back home I'm using a four or five meter wing most of the time when I'm down winding. It'd be easier with a two or a three obviously.
it's even easier for you to stay Flighted. . Yeah. What I've been doing for if you're doing, if you're racing downwind, what you can do is just put the wing up over your head and have it almost level so that if you're going faster than the wind, straight down wind it's just of been neutral over your head, so that works pretty well too, but it's, yeah, but it's not really, your sounds get tired. Yeah. Your arms get tired, right? Yeah, not so much cuz you can't really stay in that po you can do that when you're on a good bump and you go really fast, straight down wind. But then once you of come off the bump and you catch the wind again, so you bring the wind, bring it back down, wind, wind back down and stuff like that.
But yeah, that makes a lot of sense for like speed going down wind, because you're like, I was thinking too, like the electric pumps are getting pretty good, like battery powered electric pumps. I wonder if you could set up something like that, but then you have they probably can't get wet, so be hard to make that waterproof.
So yeah, I've had so many people hit me up and say, oh, you should try this electric pump. And I'm like, yeah, but electric I'm in the water. Like it's going to get wet. If I fall off all of a sudden that's 30, 40 bucks down the drain and electricity and water is something I don't really wanna be too close to.
Yeah. Yeahium battery and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The other, I think even better options, you just get a decent pump. Like electric pumps are great, but like you get good pumps that, like hand pumps instead of the ones we stand on and get hand pumps. Yeah. And you can just pump it up. It doesn't take that long.
And a lot of the time I'll just deflate the leading edge and leave the middle strut inflated. So it's just pumping up the leading edge. So it's not the end of the world. And water in a pump is a lot less. It's less worse, it's less bad than water in a electric pump . Yeah.
And you can make 'em pretty small to the hand pumps maybe. Yeah. Actually it's cause you definitely don't want something that you have to push against your board or something like that cuz it's like everything's moving around. It's more almost like you want two handles that you can push together or something like that.
Yeah. Accordion style pump. That'd be pretty serious. Yeah. Oh, there you go. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I just think it's all coming. It's all part of the evolution and I think I was probably people think it's a bit, hard to do or whatever, but I promise you any wingers out there who wanna learn a downwind like and downwind like we do on a sap or.
it's way easy to learn to daylight your wing than it is to learn to paddle up . I guarantee you. Yeah. There's this guy, Paul, that he wants to do like channel crossings and stuff like that. And like one of the risks is that your paddle breaks, right? So he's thinking as a backup, he's gonna take a wing and a pump with him, so that just paddle breaks or you can't, the, you can, as long as there's wind you can, wing with it, so yeah. I think a better backup plan is the hand paddles. Have you guys seen those? Oh yeah. They just, you can, cause they're much smaller, like a wing and a pump gets pretty heavy. And that's gonna, that's gonna limit your ability to paddle up, which is probably gonna increase the chances of you breaking your paddle
Cause the more you're paddling and the more weight you have to paddle. That's the biggest disadvantage of the deflate downwind. Is that once you wrap it all up and put it in a backpack, The extra weight of the wing, like it's probably maybe five or six kilos.
So it's a lot of water weight too, if it's still wet, right? Yeah, it's a lot of water weight and so I've actually done some of my fastest ever like downwind runs when I've had the wing in my backpack because the extra weight, I can just go faster, but it's way harder to get up. Oh, that, that's an interesting point actually.
And I wanted to talk about that as well. And cuz Dave Klo also says in the down windows, when he is going fast, he likes a little bit heavier board just for better, more momentum and stability and more. Yeah. And I found that too actually, that sometimes weight is a good thing and lot of people I talk to is no weight is never good.
You just wanted the lightest gear possible, you and it totally depends, like in my experience that's not really true. But what, how do you feel about weight in the board and the foil and so on? Like you said, like wearing weight on your back actually helps with going faster. Yeah, no big time.
So the only thing is so Dave, for example, if it's only 10 knots, Dave being heavier compared to me will have a harder time getting up than I will if we're on the exact same foil. If Dave gets up and then, so let's change it up. So let's say it's a really windy day and Dave and I are on the same foil, the same setup, exactly the same, but he's heavier.
Once we're up on foil, he should be faster. Ju just based on, and this is not taking into account how you read a bump or how you do all that, and you're pumping ability or any of that. But just on the, if you were going in a straight line together then, and you're next to each other on the exact same bump, Dave should be able to go faster than I can in big conditions, but in smaller conditions on the same foil.
If he's slightly under foil, I'm just right, then I'm gonna go quicker. So the weight is a big thing and it's a hard thing to plan for because look, you're not gonna, you're not know for mochi, Oahu, the start of the race is generally a lot lighter than it is at the, in the middle.
. So if I'm to, if I'm to wait my board for the start of the race, I'm gonna have a harder time to paddle up. But if I can get up with that heavier board, it's gonna be better for me in the middle. . But the other thing with Malachi is you got the off wind at the end. So you, I think for a race like Malachi where there's lots of different conditions, there's definitely an advantage for the lighter guys and lighter equipment, but not in the middle of the channel, just for the beginning and end.
Yeah. Because for the middle of the channel, a big guy can probably make up a lot of ground on the guys that are smaller, but they've gotta be able to get up early and then foil as far as they can, as close they can to the finish. So it's interesting, there's a few things going on fo I can't wait to get into this foil racing because I've done a bunch of downwind fall races here in Australia, but mainly against surf skis in ri canoes and a few mates who are learning.
I have, the best race I've had has been over here in Western Australia against the all the WA crew and Marcus and then Z Westwood, but there was heaps of seaweed, so it was like, it was who could foil through the seaweed best and bit of a like, it it was like a obstacle course, but yeah, I'm looking forward to getting outta Hawaii and getting some.
Some good rising and good conditions for sure. Should be fun. Yeah. Not too much seaweed in Hawaii, but yeah, sometimes I've noticed like just a little tiny thing that stuck on your foot makes a big difference in your speed, so huge. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking the way too, like I remember, back in the windsurf racing days, like slalom racing and stuff guys would wear like weighted jackets, like weighted life jackets so they can hold a bigger w sale basically, yeah. So that's another interesting thing, like yeah, where you wouldn't think that it doesn't really make sense, but when you're using he heavy equipment sometimes it's wow, this is nice, yeah. Anyway, but uh, you've seen the, to the to foil guys do it a bunch too lids on a big weighted heavy board putting lead, lead weights on their boards and stuff like that.
Yeah. And that just means they can get away with a Basically going faster with the same foil, because I think especially in the toe falling and stuff, we're just in the, tip of the iceberg. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's gonna be like, basically I think toe oil is gonna be a lot smaller than what they are, so you shouldn't have to weight it up.
You should just be able to use a smaller foil. But at the moment, the foils have too much lift, and we've gotta weight our gear up to make them work. So it's, I just think the fo they aren't enough. There aren't enough iterations of it yet. I think it's similar to also, it's similar kind of to having a longer fuselage.
It's less pitch sensitive. So if you have a heavier board, it balances out that pitch sensitivity, yeah. True. Lightboard will just, Harder to control the pitch and the heavier board just has so much momentum that you don't have to make as many adjustments, it's like more comfortable ride in a way, absolutely. Absolutely. But there, I think there's something to it, I, I would say lighter is not always better. That's what some people think, but it's not true. Yeah. I don't, I feel like for what most of us are using, like in, in smaller waves the lighter stuff is epic.
Cuz a light set up is gonna be really reactive. . But when you start to get too much power and too much speed and that's when you want the heavy stuff, that's when you wanna dull everything down. Yeah. It's like having a nicer suspension or something, like a smoother, smoother ride or something like that.
I don't know. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. All right let's talk a little bit more about equipment, like the foils. What have you learned from riding all these different foils and and what, now you're developing the quote foils, like what, what kind of things are you trying to put together and what, I guess when you're down with foiling, you're always trying to create a foil that's easy to pump up on and then fast and easy to control at the maximum speed or, has a high top end speed.
So how do you do that? What's, how do you achieve that compromise? Yeah, so I guess if we talk about the range, like we've got our, like the planned range for co, the planned range for code foils is a race wing, which is obviously gonna be super as high aspect as we can get it because we want to be going, be able to go really slow and really fast.
with the one foil, like for a race like mochi, you start in pretty much, no bumps. It's like howling offshore, but it's, there's no fetch in the middle. So at the beginning you need that foil that can paddle up easily, and then in the middle you wanna fall. That can go fast cause you're out in the middle of the ocean.
There's a lot of stuff going on. And then at the end of the race, you've got an upwind pump. So like you need a foil that can pretty much do it all. And that's what we see a race wing is, I, it's something that it doesn't necessarily we don't want it to turn really well. Like we prefer to add another, two kilometers on the low end and two kilometers on the top end, rather than have it be able to do really nice roundhouse cutbacks.
. Because for racing it's not so much about turning, it's more about speed. It's the first across the line. It's not who's the most stylish along the way. And then we have our sort of all round range, which is that more combination of. Yeah, we wanted to go quick. We wanted to be able to paddle it up pretty slow too, but we wanna be able to turn it too.
And so that's what the eight 50 is like. It's the one that we're releasing first. It's an all round wing. You like, we've used it for down winding and done some pretty quick times. And then we've done it. We've used it in the surf and it's super fun. So all the clips, I, the one that, that video I shared that was all on the eight 50 and I've gone as fast as two minute kilometers, like two minute flat and as slow as like 3, 3 15.
So the range on that foil is pretty good from what we've tried so far. Which so super pleasing. So going from a race foil to a more carving, surfing foil, is it just like the aspect ratio? Is it the wing tips? Like how do you make it turn easier and versus being more efficient, or going faster?
Yeah, it's there's a few things, right? There's the foil section's probably the most important thing, and you're probably not gonna use the same foil section for a race wing as you are. a sort of more all round wing, and then you've got the outline of the wings. That's the span and the cord.
And so obviously, a more all round foil is gonna be, lower aspect. It's gonna be, instead of being like, it basically it's high, it's as high as you can get it without, with it still being usable, and then the all round wing is something that's something that's still like high-ish aspect but it's, you don't wanna be so high aspect that you can't turn it.
So it's just finding that, that happy medium, it's hard to, and that's what the testing's all about, that's what we're playing around with now with the, we're really happy with the aspect ratio of the eight 50 actually don't have, all I know is the square centimeters. I don't know the span or the cord or anything, but, we'll, when release it, all that stuff will come out.
And then obviously the race swing's much, much higher aspect. And then the third range is the sort of, the. I guess this, you can use it for downwind, but it's main thing is it wants to go slow. Like it, it's designed to go slow and to turn really well. So basically the stall speed is much lower, which comes at the cost of, top speed.
But because it turns so well and it can go slow, you're just, it's more of a small wave, surf wing and down, learn to downwind wing and learn to wing w like just, it's not necessarily a learner's wing, cuz I still want to use it. I'm really excited to use it for, small bay runs or, top small surf or light wind wing days.
But it's the best foil. If you're getting into it, it's the best fall to. , but we don't wanna build it as a learn learner wing because it's not that it's gonna turn really well. So it's, and then that one probably has a little bit of a thicker foil section kind of thing or the problem. Yeah it, yeah we literally were just drawing it up last night and Yeah, it's gonna have, yeah, it's gonna have a, it's gonna be lower aspect again.
So basically high the race w's gonna be the highest aspect. The all rounders in the middle and the surf wings the lowest aspect. It's probably not gonna pump as well as the other ones, but it's gonna turn better, and that's, and it's gonna go slow really well. So that's our vision, that's, we feel like if we do those three fours, it covers everything that you need.
And yeah, so we, we've got the benefit of seeing other brands, do stuff like that too. And the uni foil progression and the new Armstrong mid aspect, it's that's the kind of that's the sort of area that I guess, Brands are pushing now. It's like that just surf.
It's not just about going fast, it's about going slow and being able to turn. Yeah. It's interesting how it went, like from, super boards went super short and then going longer again, super high aspect. And then going, now we're going short again, medium aspect again. So we got but I'm gonna share the screen of your this was the, your record paddle distance paddle.
Oh yeah. Yeah. This is, and so maybe let's talk about that a little bit and I guess like your wife was there with your baby. Yeah. Six, six week old son at this point. He was yeah, it was a journey and it was something that was organized and, obviously my wife was pregnant at the time.
We were organizing it and then, we had. Put it on ice while, the birth and everything happened, . And then once everything was our life was back in order, we're like, okay, let's have a look at, let's have a look at what we can organize. And yeah. So the goal was to go as far as you could in, in one day basically.
Yeah. So I was actually on, I was like just looking through the Guinness World record stuff. Cause I'm like, I wonder if there's like a foil, like a downwind foil record. And I was looking through it and lo and behold I found this this the record was furthest distance on a hydrofoil paddle board in 12 hours.
So basically we are like, okay, let's do it. So there's a bit of admin to get, like you need three witnesses on the boat. You need a, obviously you need a boat to get to the start point. You need to line it up with weather. And this was like a six month project that kind of came. Came all came together.
This is basically just six weeks after my son was born, which was yeah, which was cool to have it all come together. And was using the axis a r t 10 99. I would've loved to use a smaller fall, but as you can see, the start was pretty light conditions. The wind was actually pretty offshore at the beginning, , and there was a little bit of swell, which you can see, I'm just trying to tap into just here.
But at about three or four hours in the wind really kicked up and I wished I was on a smaller foil then. So at the beginning I wish I was on a bigger foil and at the end I wish I was on a smaller foil. And that's like what we're just talking about, the range of a foil.
Yeah. You want to be out. So right now, this is towards the end and I'm fully maxed out and you can see my stance changes. I get really far forward, get really square and yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of different conditions to negotiate that's for sure. So by square you mean like your toe is more pointed forward and more of that kind of stance?
Yeah. Like more offset, like my hips are forward, especially toward the last clip of me foiling in at the end was like my hip even now, look how look my hips are fully forward. That's cause I'm over foiled basically. Yeah. I'm just hanging on and because my, I've probably been standing for 10 hours.
My, your feet go pins and needles in your feet and you just, and your mus some muscles are not working anymore and yeah, it was tricky. Yeah. I can't even imagine pa like just standing that long and pumping and oh my god, it must have been pretty exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I hear you switching your bag
Yeah, the food changeover, we almost had it. So that's Zane Westwood, he was on the boat as my, foiling. He was a good, great foiling mate and he understands what I'm doing. So everyone to educate everyone else on the boat and. We just missed that little changeover.
We, we hadn't practiced it. We should have practiced it beforehand, but it ended up just when I came down, they just throw, throw me a big swap packs over and it's a pretty big escort boat too. , it's a huge escort boat, basically. We it was really hard to find an escort boat for this. And I had a mate who does whale watching tours and because we were filming it, he's oh, you gonna want a decent boat?
He had a smaller boat, but he is like to have, the production team plus support, plus the witnesses for Guinness to watch it. We needed a boat that could handle like, having eight to nine, even 10 people on board. So yeah, it was a full production. That's why it was so hard to organize, Yeah. Yeah. So I know you, you have a limited amount of time, so I don't want to keep you too long. But let's talk a little bit about do wind foiling and the technique. Can you give some pointers to people that are getting into how to get up on foil? And I've been doing it a bunch.
I, I wouldn't say I'm very good at it. I'm getting better at getting up on foil and we've done we have a training group where we do like the pop-up training and flat water, and I'm actually able to do it with just a little bit of push from some sw ground swell. But and so getting up for me wasn't too hard on a big foil, but then I guess keeping it going a lot of times I just felt like my, the foil wouldn't go fast enough to stay with the bump, so it kick out and then sometimes I would just lose momentum before I can catch the next one.
And so it just, yeah, maybe some pointers on downwind foiling. Yeah, I think the first thing is a lot of people say downwind foiling is the hardest thing you'll ever do, and. I'm not gonna say it's not, but I think a lot of people are just surround themselves straight into the deep end. Like conditions like we're watching now.
Like I wouldn't wanna be learning in conditions like that, but there's no way you wanna be learning in like back out in my coaching group, like the coach, I've got a club, I guess an online community with the coach Casey Club, where we talk about this every Tuesday, but like the, basically you want, there's bay runs which are basically shorter period shorter period bumps with just wind bumps and that happens in, harbors, rivers, lakes botany Bay and Sydney is one of the, one of the awesome places to, to do it.
And basically the advantage of that is it's easier to balance because you start in pretty much flat water and the flat water allows you to work on your. Your paddle skills and your balance without working your paddle skills and balance it's really very difficult because you're not gonna be able to stand on your board and be able to put power down to get going.
So I even say you should go for a paddle on your board just in Flatwater as like the first thing to do. Because if, cuz if you go out straight into downwind conditions, it's gonna be really hard to just to stand on your board especially with these new like long skinny boards, yeah, they make it easier to get up.
But being, something like 21 or eight, 19 or 18 wide, they're really had to stand on no matter how long they are. Like, there's a level of balance that is needed to be going into downward bump. So just to start out, my, my biggest tip is get your downwind set up and take it to a.
Piece of flat water, the flattest water you can find and just work on your paddle stroke, your paddle technique and work on activating the foil. You don't have to learn to paddle up onto foil, but you have to know how to paddle to a speed that your foil feels like it's doing something under you. And if your foil isn't activated you're probably not going fast enough to then get it up in bumps.
You don't have to learn to paddle up in flat water, in my opinion, to be able to downwind foil. It definitely doesn't hurt, but it's not the be all and end all. From there, once I've done a bit of time and I'm confident I can activate the foil and get that sort of pumping motion down, I'll then go into, like I said, like a protected zone as my son.
Yeah, he's so little cute. He's just started, he's just started walking now he's a tens one in a couple days. I'm sorry. I fly home tonight. Oh, nice. So that miss his birthday. But yeah, in terms of the bay runs, you wanna get out and bay runs so that basically that it's not that choppy.
And you want all the bumps going one direction. What a lot, what I've seen a lot of people do is when they're struggling is they go out into an ocean run and they got, the swell coming from the east and the wind coming from the south and there's waves going one direction and wind bumps going the other direction.
And that's really hard to learn to foil. And that's even hard for people that know how to foil to do it. But ideally you want all the wind going one direction. You want it to be shorter period. Shorter period. Bumps are much easier. Once you can successfully do an entire bay run so you can foil for, eight, nine Ks downwind in a bay, then you can think about going into the ocean, in the ocean, as you can see here.
There's lots of different bumps going every different direction. There's it. It's not clean. It's wild. And classify it, you've got your. Your bay runs, which I call like green runs, they are groomers. If you're on, in, on the mountain you'll start, when you learn to, when you learn to ski or snowboard, you're gonna start at, the training zone that's pretty much flat.
So that's our flatwater. Then you go to your green run and the green runs they're groomers. It's all nice and clean and easy and they, it's like corduroy bumps, right? Like corduroy bumps, slow moving. Yeah. . Yeah, exactly. Slow moving. And then once you get, once you do that, you then go to your blue runs.
And your blue runs is getting a bit steeper terrain, but it's still groomed. And that's an ocean run with no swell. So if you do an ocean run, obviously there's, it's hard to get no waves, but if there's just wind bumps, it's gonna make it much easier. So that's our blue runs. And then you go to your black diamond runs and that's when there's wind and waves going every other direction.
And that's just, it's not groomed. It's the opposite. It's wild. It's it's all over the place. They're the, that's the sort of the guide I guess. And like the, I mentioned before with the Coach Casey Club, I go through all that sort of stuff. And step people through it.
And it's it's a really cool community cuz a lot of people are going through the pain together. , a lot of people struggle learning to downwind foil and I can guide them into, even have a look at their local spot and say, okay, when the wind's blowing this direction, go check out go check out this spot.
Yeah. And if the winds blowing in this direction and what conditions you should be looking for and all that sort of stuff. So the KC Club is at K C A U s.com. Yeah. And so talk a little bit about that. If somebody wanted to yeah. Once you get into Darwin foiling, what kind of stuff do you offer on your coach Kiy club?
Yeah, so there's, I have two different parts within my, like my, my, my online or like my coaching business I guess I've got like in person. So if people are in Sydney or in Australia at some point, . They can join me for like a private session. I'll do one-on-ones, but also do like clinics.
I'm actually doing a bunch of camps overseas this year. I'm going to the Maldives with noon tours and gonna do more of that in the future. But during Covid where this business started, it was just like we're doing a few little foil camps up and down the coast, then a few private sessions.
Then the other one that I dreamt up during Covid was the online community. And that was obvious why you do that during Covid. We couldn't go anywhere, so I was like we should have, like, how do I coach people who can't come to me and I can't go to them? So I created this online course basically where it goes through the step-by-step guide of how to downwind foil, how to surf foil, how to wing foil, and actually a bunch of stuff on supp racing, like paddle technique, which has actually helped a lot for the people learning to, to downwind foil.
And that's the coach Casey club, that online stuff and basically throughout the course. And then I was, then I wanted to engage with my clients more. So I did a, I introduced a weekly call, so every Tuesday I call it talk Back Tuesday I do a call with all members like a Zoom call we're doing now, Robert, and we're looking at, instead of looking at just us talking we bring up videos and everyone loads it up into a Facebook page and we, when you go through all the videos, and so I give them feedback on the, on what they're doing.
So a lot of people upload go GoPro stuff, just selfie stuff. Some people set up a camera on the beach, some people have mates film them, and they do it as a team. So two guys wanna learn down and foil, they'll just film each other while they're out there, and then they can get a lot of feedback from me every week.
And then I've got the final sort of piece of the chapter was what I call Friday wins. And it's just a bit of goal setting. So when people are planning their week they talk about, okay, what have I achieved this week? What do I want to achieve in the week ahead and how am I gonna get there?
, that's that's the package, it's the online course. It's the weekly coaching call. Talk back Tuesday. Then it's the Friday wins, which you go through your y you basically your goals and go through what you achieved in the, what you've achieved in the last week, and then what you wanna do for the week ahead.
It's been a really cool, been a cool project, really. It's been unreal and so many people I've, I feel like I've taught so many people to downwind foil now and opened up this new this new form of exercise or, enjoyment and it's yeah, look it, it started out as just being like a sub race sort of thing, but with, cuz I was passionate about it and there weren't many other people do it.
I did downwind foil first and I've introduced surf ball and wing fo since. But downwind foil is definitely the main thing on main people, main thing people are coming to me for. A lot of people, a lot of wingers join up to learn how to jive or learn how to tack or or learn how to downwind with the wing.
And so that's the other stuff that I've of worked on. And, I've got a bit of a how to jump stuff, but I'm not pretending I'm a trickster. I'm not the best at jumping, but I do, I can teach the basics of jumping. So yeah, that's the kind of stuff. And e even I guess for me, when I drew up the course, it was like beginner all the way through to advanced, not super not like elite, but like I, on there, I've got a lot of stuff for people who wanna learn to wing.
Once you have your equipment, you can jump online and I've got a step by step guide like how to hold the wing, how to pump up the wing, how to choose your equipment and all that sort of stuff. So it, it's more than just downwind foiling. But in the coaching calls, the downwind foiling probably takes up the most time cuz the downwind foil crew are very frothy.
like to ask a lot of questions and, which is awesome. Yeah, it's been great. . . Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. So all right. I think you, you get gonna have to go soon, but appreciate your time. That, it's really, it was really cool to chat and catch up and looks like a quite a few of your crew is coming to the Molo Kay race this summer, right?
Yeah. I just got a text this morning from the from a mate and he was like, that is involved with Moloka Tao. And he is there's a few guys signed up from your neck of the woods. Do you think that do you think that they're up to it? And it was like, names like Zane Westwood who actually started up as coach Casey club member, and I coached him with that.
And now we're just mates just froing out, falling down, wind together all the time. Guys like Oscar Hansen, who's, the guy's got the surf pump floor record and Josh Coo, who's also a coach Casey club member. So it's pretty cool that guys I've coached now. I'm looking to do Malachi Oahu, and I'm actually I'm just in the early stages of writing up a bit of a Malachi Oahu foil program so that people who are aspiring to do Malachi Oahu can, I can sort point them in the right direction and give them the best advice on how to train for it and, get nutrition sorted because it's like, it's a, it's 52 Ks it's a long way.
It's a big passenger water. It's not as far on a foil as it is on the sap. As long as you're up on foil. If you're coming down, it's probably gonna be longer than a sup. You gotta be ready. It's gonna be a lot of it comes down to having a good strategy and the rate nutrition and the rate support and logistics and Oh, that kind of stuff, oh, they, all the, all that stuff can make or break the race basically, yeah.
I think that a lot of people talk about malaka, tohu, like the race. It's, if you made it to the start line, , you've done a good job. Like you, you can now enjoy it cuz it's so much admin and training and when you get there it's hey just relax and enjoy. But yeah, thanks so much for having me, Robert.
It's been on really coming to show actually one thing I wanted to ask, like they were talking about the event organizers maybe having a different finish line for the foil racers. So if you could have if you could choose where to finish where would that be? Like, where would you say you would like to have a finish line for foiling if, oh, or do you think probably a good challenge to have to go upwind look, I think it's should, they've gotta be clear because obviously if you're designing a fo that needs to go upwind, you're gonna, if you're, you want know about it. Whereas if you're designing a foil but you're gonna finish like somewhere at the Outrigger Canoe Club, you'd be using a very different foil for the entire race.
And I think to me, the Outrigger Canoe Club would be an epic place to finish. That's where the boys finish their local runs, right? So it's to me that's the obvious spot that I'm up for anything, even last year. Yeah, the wind sock. Exactly. But last year I was actually looking at coming over to the Blue Water Classic and start through the prone and sub guys started.
I was up for the challenge. I think it's, downwind, fallings, epic. But I think, flatwater like foil racing is something that's gonna grow as well. And even like when conditions are only five or 10 knots or there's just swell, that's something you can race in and like foils are now good enough that you can paddle up in next to nothing.
Like guys are flatwater foiling in a lot of places. And so to be able to I don't think you need to change it just to make it easy for everyone. I think the challenge is half the fun, 52 ks in the foil now is only about, if it was all down wind, it's only about two hours, so by making that up wind stretch makes, it, makes it, it is not a nice finish, but it's a real finish and it makes it comparable to all the supp and prone guys that do it too. Yeah, but even if they had to finish outside black Point, that would make it a lot easier too. But to finish.
But yeah, I don't know. I guess it makes it more challenging to have to go all the way to the keyhole for sure. y Yeah. I think, yeah, probably the, the most obvious one would be having it there and just having a deepwater start out of China wall. And then you can just then people can just limp into the finish line.
maybe have a boat to tow people in or something because Oh, you got, everyone's got an escort boat, so you can just jump on your escort boat and go in from there. Yeah. But maybe that's the obvious one, cuz then it's at least everyone's finishing the same spot. I like that. I think the race should finish in the same spot as everyone, as long as we're all competing on the same day.
was a different day then we're doing a different race. Yeah. All right. Thank you James. I really appreciate it. And thanks for sharing your stoke and your knowledge and so yeah, I mean I've been listening, so if you're interested in that one foiling, definitely check out the Casey show and then also the Casey Coaching Club.
Yeah, thanks for your time and maybe we'll talk again after the MOK race or while we're over there or something like that. Sounds good. Definitely have to catch up when we're over there. Yeah, that'd be fun to show you the code foils too. Haha. Yeah, I'm definitely interested. I wanna try 'em.
Yeah. Cool. He is cool to try different things, but yeah, I've been using the Mike's lab foil and that, that thing's so fast. It's pretty amazing. You got it. That's the benchmark, right? Yeah. I'll have to try that. Yeah. Pretty amazing how fast they are. Like the drag, the controllability at speed is pretty cool.
That's the important thing. So a lot of progress being made, I think. Absolutely. Yeah. It's exciting times. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much Robert, and speak soon. Yeah, have a great day. Yeah. Cheers. See you. Okay, friends, thank you so much for watching all the way to the end. As I appreciate everyone that watches the whole thing on YouTube.
It's only about 5% of the people who click on the video in the beginning watch the whole thing. But I do know that a lot of you also listen to it as a podcast all the way through. And I always appreciate when people tell me I watch the whole thing. So thanks so much. I know it's been a while since my last interview in December had Ken Winter and also Mike's Labs, Stephan and Mike from Mike's lab.
So those were great interviews and I'm always. Into doing more interviews. So I'm just gonna have to keep at it get people on the show. I tried to get Ken and Johnny Hyken on the show, but I haven't been able to get them to come on yet, so I'm still working on that. If Johnny Heineken, tell 'em to respond to my email and set up a time to talk, I would really like to talk to him, especially about wing fo racing, which I'm really into.
So yeah, that's it for the show. Hope you enjoyed it. We do have a great sale right now at Blue Planet on foil boards especially. We got blue planet foil boards, all standup and wing floorboards for 7 99 for the bamboo carbon construction, bamboo with carbon debt construction, and full carbon for 9 99.
So that's a great deal. We're gonna basically have a closeout sale for of whatever's left in stock so we can make room for new things for next season. . We also have 20% off the Armstrong Forward geometry boards both prone and standup foil boards and wing FO boards. And then we also have 20% off the PPC boards, PPC SOAR boards, which are also excellent construction.
Very nice boards for wing foiling. Yeah, so thank you for your support. Basically, this show is made possible by customers of us just like you, who support Blue. Support our retail operation, which allows me to make these podcasts and videos. So thanks so much for watching. Really appreciate you. Have a great time.
See you on the water. .
