Robby Naish Interview on the Blue Planet Show, Episode 32
What an honor to have Robby Naish on the show! He really needs no introduction: 27 times windsurfing world champion and a pioneer in kite surfing, Stand Up Paddle boarding, foiling and wing foiling. The first time he became a windsurfing world champion was at only 13 years old, traveling by himself to the Bahamas. This interview gives you insight of how Robbie Naish grew up and how he lives his life today.
Show transcript:
Aloha friends! It's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is extra special. I know it's been a while since the last episode, but I ran into Robbie Naish a few weeks ago at a race in Kailua and he agreed to come onto the show. So I'm super stoked to have him as a guest.
Really interesting stories. Robby Naish really needs no introduction. 27 times windsurfing world champion, pioneer. First time he became a windsurfing world champion was when he was 13 years old, traveling by himself to the Bahamas. Great stories. I found a few new things about him. For example, He was going to study art at UC Santa Cruz if he hadn't become a professional wind surfer.
And he also designed the first Naish logo when his dad started making boards under the Naish label. So I think this interview gives you a really nice insight of how Robbie Naish He lives his life today and hope to get some more time with him soon. As I always like to ask a lot of questions.
So he had to go to a photo shoot. I didn't get to ask all the questions I wanted. So hopefully I can get Robbie back again. But for now without further ado, please enjoy this interview with Robbie Naish. All right, Robbie Naish. So good to have you on the Blue Planet show. Welcome. Right on. Thanks, Robert.
Good to be here. Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago I just ran into you and Kailua. They had the race over there and that was super fun. And then I saw you were on a wing foil board with a seven meter wing, even though it was like a really windy day. So just let's talk a little bit about that.
How was that experience? It was fun. I was over there anyway and Dez and the crew were like, Oh, you should join this fun race they're doing. I didn't want to actually enter, but figured I'd go over and, chase people around. So I did the course sorta. And, I'm not really into racing, so to speak, but obviously, I'm old school, like I'm not doing loops and fricking spins and everything on the foil.
My body's not as forgiving as it used to be. And I know I'll hurt myself. An injury at this point is something I'm really trying to avoid. So I'm blasting around. I'm trying to go as fast as I can. I'm jumping high, but just not doing rotations, really enjoying winging and pushing the envelope of what I would call free ride gear.
So You know, not full on speed or race gear, but taking gear that I can use for anything and trying to make it go as fast as it can go. And in terms of wing size is that pretty much always means like windsurfing. If you're really going fast, you're going to use as big. a wing as possible even to the point where most guys are out on fours and you'll be on a seven.
It's just the way that, aerodynamics work in power and efficiency of foils. So you ride pretty lit when you're trying, especially upwind, you can handle a really big wing. Feathering upwind at a real high angle of attack. There's a point at which you just can't keep the thing in the water anymore reaching, and you've got to scale down the size of your foil at least.
But I tend to ride pretty big wings here. Yeah, even back in the days of wing wind surfing I remember you were always more on a bigger sail than most of the other guys, right? Yeah Wave sailing is different even here. It's the same like most guys would be out at he'll keep on like a 4.0 or 3.0. And I'll be historically on a five, Oh, four, seven, that's changed.
I've scaled down to where I'm writing smaller sales than I used to. Like my average sale now over here is a four or five. I'll hardly ever even go on a four, seven, just cause the way the equipment has evolved, it's changed. The boards are shorter, they're easily overpowered. You ride a bigger sale.
And you'll tend to stuff the nose a lot. They just balance better with a smaller sail. But it's more the difference between, say, wave sailing and slalom racing or course racing, where even today on the really short, really wide slalom boards, The guys are using seven meters when you'd be on a five, a wave sail, four or five way.
They're carrying giant rigs and then most of the guys are a hundred kilos as well to hold them down. So it's really different when you're trying to go fast, you'll use a. A flatter, bigger sail and then just get up on the fin or as it may be up on the foil. All right. Cool. Yeah, like my interviews can tend to go pretty long, but you just told me that you have a photo shoot today.
I guess this week you're doing some photo shoots for Naish. I'll try to respect. I'll try to respect that. Keep it to an hour or so. But, I always like to start at the very beginning. Talk a little bit, and for me, I grew up in Germany and I'm, I guess about five years younger than you.
And and you were like my idol, so cool for me to be able to just have a conversation with you and all that. But in, and it's a big reason why I got, came to Maui to windsurf and ended up living here too. So thanks for that. But yeah, so talk a little bit about growing up in Kailua and, like you had, you won your first world title at 13 years old.
And talk a little bit about that time, like growing up and how you got into windsurfing and or you actually your very first earliest memories of just like enjoying water sports or getting into the ocean and that you remember. Yeah it was about a five hour story. I'll try to give you the consultative version.
I got plenty of time. My whole life has been a series of right place, right time. I've just been blessed and lucky. Very lucky many times over. So my dad, both my parents are from California. My dad grew up in La Jolla and he was a surfer lifeguard at wind and sea. Started coming to Hawaii in the fifties to surf, was one of the first guys to surf Waimea, Makaha, places like that.
He's actually in the first surfer magazine ever published dropping in at Waimea. And so he was an ocean guy and moved to Hawaii, three kids already. My brother, Randy, who's a year and a half older than I am, myself and my sister when they moved to Hawaii, when I was, I think almost four years old, fortunately.
Basically, he took a teaching job at Roosevelt High School. And was a science teacher and packed up the family, moved to Hawaii so he could surf. So I don't really remember, much as a kid in California, my whole childhood memories. I've got a strange mind too, like my parents remember everything from their whole life.
My brother remembers everything. And I've got this strange selective memory where, there's all periods. I don't remember anything at all. But I certainly remember growing up in Kailua. Which was the world's best place for a kid to grow up. My dad surfed, so we grew up at the beach.
He got one of the first Hobie cats in Hawaii when Hobies were launched. So he had a Hobie 14 and was racing Hobies for years and years. He was. He's a state champion in the Hobie 14 like five times. And when they launched the Hobie 16, started racing 16s. And I don't know how many times on that he was national champion on the Hobie 16 in 1972.
And it was really a good Hobie sailor. And so we were pretty much at the beach all the time. We lived up right up from Lani Kai boat ramp in Kailua next to Lani Kai elementary school. My parents still live there and so I could walk to the beach and surf Kailua shore break. My dad let us surf Flat Island.
Once we, Could show that we could swim from the boat ramp to flat and back. Then we were allowed to surf the flat. And that was when I was in, I don't know, third grade, fourth grade. And it was the only time flat was ever really good was when it was super windy trade. So then you paddle out and back then it was before leashes.
You lose your board. And by the time you swimming in your board, it's halfway to the boat ramp. But just love growing up in Kailua. I didn't even own a pair of slippers until I was in like the third grade. It was barefoot, everything, barefoot, flag football, barefoot basketball, barefoot track, barefoot to school.
Didn't have a lot of money. My dad had. Three kids pretty quickly after four kids, on a high school public school teacher's job. But you would never know it, as a kid and in Hawaii, at least at that point, you didn't need a lot of money to have an amazing life. A lot of high water pants, that kind of thing where you have to wear your pants and you're still wearing them to school and you got all your ankles showing.
But growing up in Kailua at that point was amazing best place in the world that I think the best time in the world. So really lucky. And then got into windsurfing. Fortunately, when I was in the sixth grade, 1974, discovered it, my brother and I had a little Hobie 12, that little semi catamaran monohull.
thing that Hobie made. We had it down at Kailua one day and there were a few windsurfers in Hawaii at the time. Mike Corgan, Larry Stanley, Ken Clyde, a few other guys and they set some buoys and they were doing little triangle races and asked if Randy, my brother, and I wanted to race with them on our Hobie.
And that's how we met. And so I was 11 years old at the time and we became friends. I asked if I could try the windsurfer. I couldn't even pull the sail out of the water. It wasn't tall enough. There's a whole leverage thing in the beginning. Cause at that point there was only one wind surfer.
There was the 12 foot plastic board, one size sail, one boom, one dagger board. It wasn't an industry yet. Yeah. It was hard to pull that sail out of the water, right? Yeah. 72 pounds or whatever. But I just loved it. I went with Thor and Stan, they'd sail with me inside of them and let go and I could, ride along for a bit.
Got that, that feel of gliding on the water. And I was absolutely hooked, it's everything I loved. It was surfing, skimboarding, sailing, just that first feeling of being able to grab the wind and go and make it all work was just absolutely addicting. And from that point forward. I was just on a mission.
I'd go down to the beach after school. I go down on weekends and those guys were like teaching windsurfing. And so guys would of course drift down the beach and then I'd spend my day walking down and so they didn't have to drag their gear back up the beach upwind. I'd go down and say, Hey, I'm going to sail your board back up for you.
And so I'd take their board, I'd sail it back up, wait for the next guy, sail it back out, go, Hey, can I borrow your windsurfer for a bit? So I was that pestery little kid who was just. At the beach all the time, honing my skills and trying to get as much time on the water as I could. And then, of course, still surfing a lot at the same time and shore break and whatnot.
Paddling canoe, paddled from Lonnie Kipe Canoe Club to Steersman in the, I don't know what the youngest bracket was, 10, 11, 12 years old. And Started saving my money. I made paper shell necklaces. I airbrushed t shirts. I babysat whatever to make money to buy my own board. And in late 74 bought my own windsurfer for 340, which was a lot of money back then, but for a complete rig.
And that was the beginning won the Hawai'i regional championships in 76 that got me an air ticket from windsurfer international to the national championships in Berkeley, California. And a group of guys from Hawai'i went to that. I think Thor, Larry Stanley, Dennis Davidson, Pat Love, some of the local Kailua guys.
And so I traveled with them and I got second in Berkeley to Mike Waltz and he already had a ticket to the world somehow from the year before, and I ended up getting his ticket, so that's what got me to the Bahamas in 1976 to the world championship. And, as conditions was that would have it, I was really fast when the wind was light because I was small and light had a real advantage over the heavy guys. And I won in the Bahamas and that got me an airfare to the next year's world championship in Sardinia in 77 went to Sardinia, I won there, which gave me a ticket to Cancun in 78. I won there and it gave me a ticket to the next year. And so I went from free airfare to free airfare.
Until I graduated from Punahou, I was public school, went to Lanikai Elementary, Kailua Intermediate, Kalaheo in freshman year, and then luckily I somehow got into Punahou for my last three years. So 10, 11, 12th grade, I went to Punahou, graduated in 81. Okay. Sorry to interrupt you, but let's go. I just want to go back to you going to, to the Bahamas when you're 13 year old.
I guess your parents didn't come with you. You were just on, on your own as a 13 year old. Just talk a little bit about that experience. That just seems. So far removed from what most 13 year olds get to experience. Yeah. In hindsight, I don't know how my parents let me do that. I think the world was a different place, man, cell phones, no internet. It was like, you're fricking gone the world, but they let me go. I Wilkings, who was a local photographer from Honolulu, who was a surf photographer, windsurf photographer in the early days. And he went to be the staff photographer for Windsurfer International in the Bahamas.
And so I flew with him and slept on his floor. You got a free hotel room there. So I slept on his floor and did the event and yeah, I just can't believe my parents let me go there. I was a pretty responsible kid, but yeah, I was still 13. And everyone else is older than you and you just showed up and got to the start and just took off where, what happened, how was it?
How was the racing? It was, it was a regatta, sailing regatta. So triangle races, you usually did. Three, three to four races a day, right? You do a morning race and then you'd go and do a back to back race after that Olympic triangle racing. So upwind reach upward, downwind upwind finish.
And in those days they had weight classes and an overall, so they'd race the different weight race weight classes against each other. And I was a lightweight, obviously. And Conditions were pretty light in the Bahamas, fortunately. And I was really fast and technically pretty good. My dad taught me, a lot of tactics, how to start, different rules and back then that was a big part of it was quite tactical, especially light wind course racing.
And so yeah, I won after that, they stopped doing weight classes cause the heavy guys were like, forget it. I don't want to race against the light guys like that anymore. And then from then on, it was just divisional weight class titles. Yeah, it was an amazing experience cruising around. I hung out with Mike Waltz and Matt Schweitzer and guys like that.
There were, a few years older than me, but at the time, if you're 13 and you're hanging out with a 16 year old, it's like, Oh, the guy's so old, guys in their twenties are like ancient when you're a little kid. So it was quite an experience. Really enjoyed it. And again, just incredibly lucky to have even had the opportunity, one, to have got the free air ticket there because I couldn't have gone otherwise.
And the fact that my parents somehow let me go as well. Yeah, so that's awesome. And then you were able to just parlay that into more and more tickets to more and more events and just kept going from there. But what would you say did you have a secret to your success?
Like, How did you just keep winning and stay on top of the game? Like what was your special sauce that you, is there something you can share? At that point as an amateur racing windsurfer glass, I think luck was a big part of it that I often had conditions that just perfectly suited My weight, cause I was really light compared to most guys, even in the classes, but I also had a pretty unfair advantage of training in Hawaii, where we've got, a pretty short period of time between 74 and 76.
I probably had twice as much water time as almost everybody else in the event who came from places where it's seasonal, or cold and, not very much wind, in Hawaii, you've got that trade wind. At least enough for a, an old Winster where you could sell every day. And so then the hours that I had under my belt, even as a little kid.
I think really helped and then I'm just pretty focused as well. I wasn't there for the fun. I wasn't there for the social aspect. I was there to do the best I could do. And I hated losing even as a little kid. And so I was pretty driven to try to succeed, to avoid that feeling of losing. It wasn't the thrill of winning.
It was really that the fear of losing that was a big driver for me. But again just lucky good conditions. I was really good at picking up boards. Like you show up at the event and there's this huge pile of boards cause it's a one design, right? Everybody's racing with, here's a sail, here's a dagger board, here's a mast, a boom.
Base and go pick up a board out of the pile. And it wasn't really super technological. Then they had a plastic shell. They'd stick a big metal rod in the back of the board and pump it full of expanding foam, pull the rod out and the board blows up into the mold. And so some boards would weigh 40 pounds.
Some boards would weigh like 45 pounds. The rockers were different. And most people didn't even have a clue. And I'd spend a half an hour in the board area, picking it up, every board, looking at the rockers and trying to find the lightest board that I could. Usually the lightest boards were underblown and also then had the flattest rails and flatter rocker as they're overblown, they'd get round.
And I was just amazed that, all these adults running around hadn't a clue. No idea that was the case, but I'd go around and look for that magic board. And go, Oh, this is the one. And then I refoiled my dagger boards. The dagger boards were made out of wood and they were just like super Mickey mouse.
And so I'd refoil my dagger board. I'd travel with a rasp and a file and sandpaper and make my dagger board, like a really nice foil. So yeah, just, I don't know, maybe took it more seriously than a lot of the guys that were there to just have fun.
I just listened to another podcast of and you talked about. That you actually learned German at Punahou school when you're at school. I always assumed that you learned it from your parents or something like that. Growing up, but you actually learned in school. And I guess that's because you could speak German that like Germans always loved you and you're like a big sports star in Germany.
When I was growing up, like everybody knew Robbie Naish, yeah, again, it was lucky to be, to have those three years at Punahou. And then I was saying earlier, windsurfing turned pro through all those years on winds class I was in amateur. And in those days, amateur professional was this absolute black line.
If you earned $1 as an athlete, you were a pro and you couldn't go to the Olympics. And the wind went in the Olympics in 1984, so I graduated in 81. And it happened to be the year that the sport turned professional. There are all these manufacturers now there was money, there were pro events, and I had to make that decision.
Do I stay an amateur, go to college and then try to get to the Olympics in 84 on the wind glider, which was a piece of crap. Different brand at Windsor, or do I turn pro and see where that takes me? So I deferred admissions to college for a year and went pro, but yeah, again, it was luck I went to Punahou and it's you had Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, German, French, and all these options for foreign language.
And I'm like I knew some Germans, through windsurfing, I had some like pen pals some German friends that started writing me early on. But the 1770s were all taking German and everyone was like, oh you're crazy German's so hard. I don't know. It made sense and again it was luck. I had this teacher, Frau Nehler at Puno Frau Nehler's so hard.
She's so mean and I thought she was just awesome and I actually learned, from her, I, or so much. And so I use that, through the eighties, windsurfing just boomed in Europe, as Germany was, and then still is always the world's biggest market for these sports. And so it really gave me an advantage, promotionally connecting with fans and going to the German events, going to ISPO, going to Dusseldorf Messe.
And And I had fun with it as well, like I'd sit around and listen and people didn't, in the beginning, know, even realize that I knew what they were saying. And then slowly started speaking, get to go on German TV shows and slowly, speak more and more. And now I'm, I wouldn't say I'm fluent, but I'm pretty much conversationally at least fluent.
And it's helped my career again, just right place, right time, lucky decision. And yeah. Yeah, I guess it's funny because my our kid goes to Puno, they're going to graduate this year and Puno always brags about how high their percentage of kids are that go to go on to college. So you're probably one of those failures that didn't make it to college.
Never made it, fortunately. But yeah, I wouldn't say that you're a failure though in life. So I can't see that. Yeah, sometimes going to college is not necessarily the best thing for everybody, right? Yeah, I certainly wouldn't be where I am today if I had gone to college. Okay.
So let's talk a little bit about starting your professional career. So I guess you were torn between becoming professional, going to the Olympics and then what, when did you start making money with windsurfing? Like when did that become your job? Yeah, pretty much before I graduated from high school, even we had our first pro prize money events.
So I wasn't taking any sponsor money, but we had two events, the Maui speed crossing, which Arnaud Derozenay put together, which was a race from Fleming Beach on Maui over to Molokai around that little, rock island on the east coast. Yeah. Coast of Molokai, a little bit like I don't know, a little Mokomanu, and then back to Maui.
It was a full on open channel race and he thought he was going to smoke everybody. A bunch of us flew over from Oahu and I won that and it was a thousand dollars prize money. And so I'm like, Oh, I didn't know what to do. So I donated half of it to the U. S. Olympic Committee and half of it to the U. S.
Olympic I can't remember, but I donated all the prize money so that I could retain my amateur status because I was still trying to figure out what to do. And then it, almost immediately there were announcements of other pro windsurfing events with prize money around the world. And I had at that point, again, luckily at the same time sponsors offering me contracts.
My first paid sponsor was O'Neill Wetsuits. And then Mistral and then Gastrin had just, everything started to fall into place where I said, okay, forget it. I was going to go to University of Santa Cruz, UC Santa Cruz. And deferred. Said, okay, I'll give it a year, see where this takes me. And fortunately, I'm still giving it a year.
Every year and seeing where it takes me. Did you did you have an idea of what you wanted to study if you went to UC Santa Cruz? Yeah, I was really into art and did a lot of art through school, sculpture, glassblowing. I've been airbrush painting since I was a little kid, but I knew I couldn't major in art.
So I was going to major in child psychology. I really like little kids. I like to babysit. I was like that weird boy that did the babysitting in the neighborhood because the girls were all irresponsible and I was responsible. That's I was going to, at least the idea was I was going to major in child psychology and minor in art.
Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. Okay. So then you got sponsored and then I guess then also Quicksilver became a big sponsor, right? Like how did that come about? , same thing. I got connected with Quicksilver because some of the first big events in the sport were in Australia. We had the Rip Curl Quicksilver Classic in Torquay.
And that started in about 82, 83, 84. We ran for several years. In Torquay, Australia, which was this tiny little surf town. If you go there now, you don't even recognize it compared to what it was in the early eighties, it's just giant, like everything else in the world. But Rip Curl and Quicksilver were right next to each other.
Rip Curl only did wetsuits. Quicksilver only did board shorts and t shirts. I met the guys and at that point, obviously you could be. O'Neill and Quicksilver because O'Neill only made wetsuits. That was it. No t shirts, no clothing, no nothing. And Quicksilver only made clothing. So I was O'Neill Quicksilver for many years until they both grew and both started, Quicksilver started doing wetsuits, O'Neill started doing clothing.
And after, several years of being sponsored by both, I had to make a decision to go with one or the other and yeah. Was really good friends with the O'Neill family, Jack O'Neill, Pat O'Neill. It was tough to leave those guys, but made sense economically because at that point I had become an initial investment partner in the license for Quicksilver Europe.
Four friends. And myself brought Quicksilver to Europe and formed a company in France called Napoli. And we had the license for Quicksilver Europe. And so I was one of the founding partners in that. And that grew and grew. We were the first Quicksilver in the world to really start doing non surf clothing.
There was a short summer, so we started doing jackets and we started doing ski stuff. And I remember the neon clothing and all that. Yeah, the war paint overalls and all that stuff. That was a fun time. And we grew that company, to a pretty big company before we finally sold it to Quicksilver Inc, Quicksilver USA in 1981.
And Yeah, again, nice. Yeah. Okay. We don't really have time to talk about everything, but let's go into I guess the sponsorship thing, and actually when did your parents start that actual Naish brand? Because I know you didn't actually start Naish, the Naish brand, but like, how did that come about?
Get started. Like, how did your parents get into making boards and all that? Yeah my, my dad started making boards in the garage, not even a garage, carport, at our house in Kailua, almost right away. He started windsurfing maybe, I don't know, eight or nine months after I did. He he took sabbatical from teaching, which is where, a teacher takes the year off and goes and gets further education and does stuff.
And so he took my windsurfer every day that I was at school and was down at Kailua learning how, and he got really into it. And at that point there was a lot of room for improvement, especially in Hawaiian conditions on that big plastic windsurfer. So he started making boards in the garage. In 77 already and experimenting and playing around.
And it was not long thereafter 79. He started, shaping more, doing more boards. And he did the Minstrel Naish board and the Minstrel Kailua which were put into production by Minstrel in Switzerland. It was a Swiss company at that point. And then in 1980, quit teaching and started working for them full time.
And it was, I think they moved out of the garage and into the little warehouse on Hikili street in Kailua in 79, and that's when Naish forwarded it. Was formerly started doing custom boards for other people and the custom board market grew and grew and grew and ended up making a factory on Hikili street, full on custom board, every single one by hand, really different than today.
But at one point where they were doing a thousand boards a year out of that little factory in Kailua and shipping them all over the world was, an amazing period in windsurfing during that boom through the late 80s early 90s and everyone hand airbrushed and It's a cool period.
So they definitely started the brand and I was lucky to have, through my entire pro career, the days of the Pan Am cup days into the world cup days. Always the best boards in the world from Harold Leakey, who started working with my dad and my dad as a team. And it wasn't until the winter of 95, 96, that I started Naish sales Hawaii and started doing my own windsurfing sales.
And the logo that you're still using today is basically the original logo. I mean that from the very beginning, right? That kind of that Naish. No, the script, the scripty Naish with the sail. I did for my parents. Oh, that was your artwork. And then the new one is different. It's not a script. But yeah, that was actually a little complicated because we had the awesome local, custom board business.
And then I started that international sale business and called it the same thing. And there were trademark issues and whatnot in the beginning, but it eventually all worked itself out and became. One, one entity, one brand. Yeah, I've got a sticker drawer right here. Let me grab one. So these are some of the current, currently used logos, but Robbie's gonna pull out an old sticker of his original logo. That's awesome. So yeah, these are the Remember the rice papers? Yeah.
Oh, it's backwards for you guys, no? No, I can see it. Yeah. That's so cool. So you actually drew this when you were probably an art student at Punahou school. Yeah. Yeah, good days. Yeah. Really lucky. Okay, so you were a professional windsurfer traveling around the world and, Sponsored by you got plenty sponsorship money coming in.
So what made you decide, okay, I'm going to just start making my own sales or start my own business. Like how did that happen? I was certainly not because I ever want to do. It was more of a necessity. The sales sponsor that I had been with my entire pro career, Gastra, at that time had been bought and sold and bought and sold several times.
And. It got to the point where it got sold again and the new owners were just taking it in a direction that I wasn't comfortable with and we had a team of guys, myself, Pete Cabrini, Don Montague Pat Correll, an administrative guy. And we were all doing the work for gastro based here on Maui and these new owners were going to just dismantle it and move everything to Hong Kong and do all the development there, basically, get rid of the team guys.
And I just was like, wow, this is, it sounds super lame. I don't want to do that. And I didn't, it would have been weird to go to Neil pride, for example. After, years and years of one sponsor to switch. I wasn't that kind of guy. I never switched sponsors. And so I just said, fuck it.
Let's do our own thing. And I'll just bite the bullet, keep the team together, continue making stuff the way we want to do it. And sorry to interrupt, but so Pete Cabrinha was part of that team and then he started his own brand later or like how? Yeah several years later, once we started doing kites, So Pete was marketing, it was obviously still involved with R and D and whatnot.
So Don Montague was the main sale designer. Pete did marketing, graphics. He was always really I would say a gifted artist. He still is, now he's pretty much out of the industry and just pursuing his art and doing really well, but he's always been really creative. And yeah, for the first several years, we, we started Naish Sales Hawaii basically in, in 96 and it wasn't until 99 that we started doing kites and that's where everything really exploded for the 2000 season.
And it was just after that, that Pete got approached by Neil Pride to start doing Cabrini cause they wanted to do kiting, but they didn't want to do it with the Neil Pride brand. Because it was like this at that point between windsurfers and, oh, kiting's bad. And like in the first couple of years, we were the only ones in the industry, and of course they all came in after the fact, but for a while they were all pissed at me for doing kites because they thought it was bad for the windsurfing industry.
So yeah. And Pete Cabrino was basically grew up with you in Kailua. Like you guys were always winging and working together in Kailua and stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah, he's a couple of years older than me. You're like my brother's age, which when you're little is a lot, but of course, as we grew up, grew older, we became partners in crime, did the tour together.
He did the it was not the PWA tour. It started out as WSMA tour. And then the WBA tour had a lot of name changes over the years. But in the first several years of professional windsurfing, Pete was, you The Mistral gastro team with me, we traveled around and had lots of fun together. And then I guess most of your boards in the beginning were shaped by your dad, right?
And then I think, when did Harold Iggy start making Naish boards? And I think Jerry Lopez made some boards too, right? Yeah Jerry was later on when we were doing stand up. And so 2000, after 2008, once we got into stand up, we worked together for several years. Still really good for friends, but you have Harold that you started working with my dad quite early on.
Early eighties and, they were an unbelievable team, they kind of shape and come up with concepts and whatnot together. And then Harold would do the shapes and Rick would do everything after that, all the sandwich and laminations and sanding and whatnot, and then they were literally amazing, the two of them worked so well together, personality wise, craftsmanship wise, it was It was amazing.
And then Harold, unfortunately passed in 2012. Yeah. So who who does the board design now? Do you, are you directly involved or like how closely are you involved with design and so on? Yeah. Since I sold the operating companies a little over a year ago, I'm less hands on every single thing that happens as there was before, but Mickey Schweiger and I have been doing pretty much all the board designs for anything directional.
Like I was doing all the directional kite boards and then Mickey and I were doing all the standups and all the windsurf boards the last several years. Different guys do the twin tips, Des Walsh and some of the engineers do the twin tip stuff. And, Mickey's gotten to the point where he's really good and doesn't really need me overseeing what he does.
We've got such an incredible template of stuff, a legacy of shapes that we're building from. And the way everything is digital now, there's no more hand shaping foam. There hasn't been, for really a long time, well over a decade. Yeah. So when you say that you designed the directional boards, like you actually sit in front of the computer and design the shapes and everything.
Yeah. Cause yeah, really your design. I did every directional kite board for years. And, after Harold passed, we've pretty much been doing the boards. Digitally ever since. And even a little bit before that, there was a transition from hand shape as technology improved. And we were able to duplicate things a lot more accurately doing it.
On a shaping machine and sending digital files rather than sending plugs to the factory, having to digitize the plugs and then hope that the molds afterwards come out something like the plug that you had sent. And so it's much more precise now. And add a little bit of rocker or change the rocker line slightly or being able to do stuff like that.
You can't really do that. Hand shaping it, obviously. Yeah. You can, especially on bigger boards, it's a bit harder, when you're doing a five, one kite board, things are compact enough that you can make micro changes pretty easily without affecting other stuff, but we were doing it now.
You can make incremental changes. You can make three prototypes. They're exactly the same except for one specific change on each one. And know that you're not throwing in a bunch of other variables where you're like was it that was different or that was different? Then that kind of accuracy is.
Yeah, it is amazing to have and, yeah, so Mickey's handling the majority of the designs now and he just sends them to me and I check them over and we'll tweak them. But he's the one that's sitting, in front of the computer the vast majority of the time and I'm just giving him some checks going, yeah, you should have bought that tail or I think we should, carry that rocker a little further.
Whatever. And I still really enjoy that aspect of it. The design aspect has always been fun. As long as it doesn't become work. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about business. You were obviously very hands on and the running the business. You're basically the CEO. And then you said you sold a lot of it a year ago.
So what's your involvement now? And are you still a part owner? Do you like, yeah. So what is your role in the business now? Yeah it's complicated. I just, I got to the point, cause we grew and grew over the years and it was always fun. It was never my priority. I was always in my head, a pro athlete, and I also had this business.
And I wasn't living and dying from the business. I was living and dying from my pro athlete income. And I don't know if it was age or just time. You start to look at things differently as you get older, risk starts to become different, stress you handle differently. We were always successful.
We always made money, but I was just getting really worn down with the pressure of the business side of the business. I'm the only shareholder. I was self financed. I had no bank LC. I had no investment partners. So I was floating millions of dollars. Of risk capital in an industry where your margins are pretty fine.
You're living and dying by a couple of percent. We're always successful and it didn't matter, but life changed. I got divorced. It changed my whole outlook on life and my financial situation as well getting older and looking at how much risk you're willing to take, and I just said, God, I've worked my whole life to get here.
Liability risks becomes a factor that you worry about where you don't really worry about that when you're younger. And the stress became unhealthy and, importers owing you money and dealing with factories and, just having that much money in limbo all the time. The employees I love, but at some point you start to worry about your employees too and their livelihood.
And if you make a mistake, it affects them and their whole families. And it just became this vicious circle of stress. And I became I think too conservative in my approach, my outlook, I became really protectionary, operating through fear rather than through through enjoyment on the financial side and on the risk assessment side and just decided it was time to pull the plug on that aspect of it.
I love design. I love working with the guys. I love the sports. I love riding. I love testing, but It started to become real work and real stress. And so I found a way out where I basically sold the operating companies. I sold Nalukai Incorporated, Pacific Border Sports. So I sold my US distribution company and I sold the main international business.
I still own the Naish trademarks I still own the brand and can do, clothing and whatnot. And I'm looking at doing some different things there that seem fun. And working with the new owners under license. Kubis Sports out of the Netherlands, out of Holland, now runs the operating companies.
And they work under license and I work with them, just helping them in any way that I can, trying to guide them, especially in these first few years to keep what I hope is the right trajectory and keep the team stoked. And obviously they're changing a lot of things administratively and whatnot, but I think we'll be good in the end.
So yeah, it left all the fun stuff. I get to work with Mickey and Des and Noah and the crew. I get to, enjoy all the fun stuff. Testing and writing and doing photo shoots. But somebody else has the headache of financing the business and dealing with the importers and dealing with the deadlines and dealing with all the tech sheets and all that stuff that was dragging me down.
That sounds like a great great solution. And you probably still get the percentage for the licensing fee, right? So like you said, the real profit margin is only like a few percent anyway. So if you can make that same percentage without doing, having all the risk and the work, then that sounds great.
Yeah. Good, good for you. So you enjoying life a little bit more. I just watched a YouTube video yesterday where you were super charging your engine on your VW bus and took a couple of days. It looked like of tinkering in your garage. To be able to have time to do stuff like that, that stuff you enjoy and you're passionate about, that's super important too.
Yeah. Yeah, the quality of life for me personally, it just, it was literally like popping the cork. On a bottle that was about to explode. And so I'm really enjoying riding again, everything. I'm kiting a lot, windsurfing a lot. I'm still, I'm doing standup a lot. I'm the only guy out there on standup sometimes, winging, winging all the time, foiling so really enjoying the sporting side.
I'm way healthier. I'm more fit. I'm certainly mentally more fit. by not having to carry around the stress 24 hours a day that I was carrying around. Spending, a lot of time with the family, flying to Kailua a lot, spending time with my parents who are both still around and doing great.
My daughter Nani and my granddaughters live in Kailua, my brothers are still in Kailua. So going back and forth to Oahu a lot again. So yeah, in general, knock on wood, again, it was the right decision at the right time. Really lucky to have been able to do it. While I'm still young enough and healthy enough to do it.
To be able to continue to love what I do and have the passion for the sports that are driving me through my whole life and so yeah, i'm Super blessed super stoked and having a lot of fun at the moment. Yeah, that's awesome And it's so cool to when I look at your facebook page. You just still Actively involved in everything, windsurfing, kiting, stand up paddling, foiling, it's like you do it all and still doing it really well.
So it's just a good, you're a good role model for a lot of older guys like, like myself too, but just like to be able to do all of that. And I think also, obviously a lot of the people that, the older windsurfers that kind of. Participating a lot now are getting into wing foiling.
And and this is supposed to be a wing full podcast, so we haven't really talked about wing foiling at all yet, but let's talk a little bit about that. How did you get into it? And then where do you think it's going? I was just thinking, the, that whole progression of wind surfing from the wind surfer to like foot straps and going shorter and riding waves.
And that, and then doing the first four loop or something like that, it took like decades. And now in wing foiling, it's not even one season, they're going from like single rotation to now they're doing like triple rotation jumps and stuff like that. It's The progression is like so much faster.
It's like on steroids. Yeah, so And then I guess wind surfing a lot of people said that it became too high performance for the average person, you know Where early on it was just like people just enjoyed cruising on a lake back going back and forth and light wind or whatever now That's not really cool anymore and so it that whole side of the sport died off and there's no easy entry into the sport Do you see the same thing happening in wing foiling or like how?
Yeah. So where do you see when wing fulling going? Yeah. It's doing energy yesterday and it was the same thing where, you know, windsurfing grew up in the time of magazines and trade shows and development was nice and methodical and slow. You'd start working on something and you'd finish it, implement it into production and six months.
It would be. At a trade show a few months later, it'd be in the magazines. The first time someone would see it when they'd get the magazine and, open it up and check it out. Kiting was a transition from that into the beginnings of the internet. Stand up pretty much same thing. Most of the people in the beginning got their news and their information from magazines and.
Wing foiling is the only one that's from start to finish. Sorry. Photo shoot guys. Does that mean we're running into our deadline here, ? I know, I was just calling wing foiling from the very beginning like that, that first shot of me riding up wind at Kaha on our first four six original wing surfer.
went around the entire world that night, right? And that's what started it all. And every single progression is instant now. It's like you test something new, it's on the internet that night, the guys around the world are already, trying to do it the next day, both in terms of the gear and in terms of the writing.
So the progression is so fast and we've got an entire information packet from a construction standpoint, from a development standpoint of all the other sports behind us, technically that are helping to advance the wing foiling equipment too. So the experimentation is starting with a really high knowledge base.
And I was hoping it would say simple, stupid for a long time because the longer a support stays like basic one model, slow changes, the healthier it grows, right? But man, within I used to be the only guy at Kanawha. I'd be Mickey and I down there testing and trying stuff.
There was nobody winging. It was like just us. And within a year, there were like 20 guys. And now you go down there, there's a hundred guys. It's everybody's wing foiling. It's amazing how fast it's grown. And if you look at the progression, like you said, of the moves, what the kids are doing. You see a kid who started winging five months ago and he's already doing back loops and trying all the rotations and it's super awesome.
But it is unfortunately with 60 brands already worldwide, everyone's stand up in the beginning where it was like, Oh yeah, here, I'm going to get into this business. It's already so flooded and so crazy. That, it is what it is, and it's helping to grow it even faster.
It's a shit show at the moment in this race to advance and make it higher tech and higher performance and more expensive and more complicated and more technical. And I'm like, Oh, slow it down. But you can't, once that genie's out of the bottle, it's gone. And the stuff is getting higher and higher tech, more and more complicated, more and more expensive, higher and higher performance.
But of course, there's still the basic, most people are going to get on a board. They're going to get a simple wing and they're. They're going to mow the lawn back and forth and that essence of just gliding on the water using the wind and especially how accessible winging is that you can do it with almost no wind.
You can have really good fun in dead flat water. You don't need any waves at all. Like kiting in the beginning, but even more accessible, I think, because you don't need. 30 meters of area. You don't have this, arc of death with your kite. You don't have trees and buildings and power lines that are an issue.
Winging is just so easy and accessible that aspect of it, I freaking love the fact that it's getting people on the water, like you said, older guys, it's the only sport at the moment where you see 70 year old guys getting into it and seven year old kids getting into it and everything in between and all of them stoked and.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, unlike standup paddling, that was like never really a cool thing with young kids or whatever, but it's like wing foiling, like surfers are getting into foiling and then that gets them into wing foiling and just like the, yeah, wing foiling just seems to have a much broader appeal to everybody.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's just so much more. I think also just having the wing not attached to the board. It's just so much more freedom to do things and do new moves that you can't even think about doing on a windsurfer, right? Yeah, it's really opened up the playing field. Racing is unbelievable.
So high performance. It's the most accessible foil. Sailboat in the world by far, and even in racing stuff is cheap compared to if you're going to go, look at the price of a moth or something like that, and the complexity of most foil sailing craft, so super fast, super high performance, easy to learn, quick to learn.
And then just what you can do with it, from racing and speed to the wave stuff is absolutely insane. When you see what Cash and these guys are doing on actual breaking waves I want to stay the fuck away from white water. It scared the hell out of me on a foil, foil surfing.
I want to be out on the shoulder on a nice flowing bump, but I don't think foil should be in the surf with surfers. I think that's freaking crazy. And even on a wing, I want to stay as far away from surfers as I can because even the good guys are going to eventually make a mistake and surfing with Ginsu knives is a bit scary.
But just that realm of options that you have with this sport of just going out on a lake and. I love just going out on a big wing of 556070 and almost no wind at all. And just cruising around and exploring. That's still super fun. And you can do that anywhere, any little lake, Bay, whatever.
So yeah it's an awesome sport. Yeah. Yeah, no. And it's interesting to how stand up paddling blew up during the financial crisis, like 2008, 2009 and stuff. And then wing foiling blew up during the pandemic and became super big, really fast, probably faster than any other sport.
The growth rate, but it seems like also this the whole cycle is accelerating. Like you said now It's like kind of everybody has like piles of inventory and the in the market has Seemed like it plateaued really quickly. And and now it's like it's a it just changed so much in the last two years that how is that I guess you, you don't have to worry about it too much business wise, but but we've seen it, at our shop we went from having 50 percent of our sales being foil equipment.
Now it's maybe 10 percent and we're doing more standup again, which is interesting, like it seems like that's making a comeback. Is that the same for you guys or? Yeah, ours has been pretty balanced and, we're, we were the first in winging, so we were doing a lot of wings from the very beginning and I anticipated the glut that was coming after COVID, you could tell that everybody was bumping up production at the factories.
And you could see that there was going to be way too much inventory. Because when everybody was home with free time and free money from the government, not just in America, but all over the world, they're sitting around. They weren't allowed to travel. They weren't allowed to spend money on other things.
They had to do something close to home. Getting, Like here's some free time and some free money. So everybody bought, new tires for their truck and a lift kit and, wing stuff and foil stuff. And of course that had to end at some point, people have to work again. They don't have the free time anymore.
So a lot of people that wanted to buy those toys had already bought them. But how many, you're not going to buy a new oil every single year. And yet all these companies were just pumping as much as they could to, you get it on the ground. I think there was, by about, eight, nine months ago, there was like a three year supply of wings on the ground around the world, right?
All the major brands, three for nine 99, like crazy, close out stuff, cause they just needed to turn up the inventory into cash. Naish wasn't so bad because there was an anticipation that it was coming. It was still not great. There was still, of course, when everybody else goes on closeout, You're expecting to go on and close out as well, regardless of how much stock you have.
And that's already healing itself. Some of the bigger brands are having real hard times now because they thought that trajectory was going to continue. And of course it doesn't. I was always really pessimistic in business. I'd always plan for the worst and hope for the best. And a lot of other people just go, yeah, we're all in.
And that's not a healthy way to run things, so there's some unhealthy brands out there at the moment even some pretty big ones. So it's not going to be this way forever. It's like snowboarding and being everybody gets in, stand up at the beginning, everybody gets in and they do a couple of containers of stuff and then they realize, wow, business isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be.
And it settles back down. But yeah, stand up, like I love stand up, I don't understand how all these guys that used to go stand up aren't doing it anymore. It's just as much fun now as it was in 2010. It's just less crowded. All good. And like you were saying how accessible wing foiling is, but in comparison to that, stand up is 10 times easier.
Like any, but any overweight old American tourist on the stand of paddleboard and paddle in flat water. If the board's wide enough and big enough. So it's not like foiling is definitely a little bit more take some skills and some water. knowledge or you have to be a little bit into it, terms of accessibility, I think stand up is still probably the most accessible sport for almost anybody, right?
Yeah. It's a recreational activity more than a sport at this point. So about 90 percent of the boards being sold in the world are inflatable. If you go to Europe, it's all inflatable. I was in Austria last Last summer there were like a thousand standups out on this one tiny lake that I was doing a thing on and it's awesome It's getting people on the water and a certain percentage of those people stay with it end up buying a composite board or you know they're Associated then with board riding water sports and they get into other things whether it be kiting or winging or whatever So whatever is getting people out on the water is a good thing It's a good thing.
But I also, I hate having people associate an inflatable water toy with standup paddling to me. It's just not the same thing, but yeah, I guess I just get people out on the water and just putz it around on the lake. Yeah. You might as well, there's no reason for it to have a 3, 000. Carbon race boards might as well take an inflatable.
It's going to do 90 percent the same thing out in the waves, like what we have, totally different story. Yeah. And then it sits in the garage for the rest of the year. After, I use it one or two weekends in the summer. So yeah, for that, I guess it does make sense. Can see that. Yeah. Do you feel like when wing foiling has already plateaued or what where's it going?
Is it growing? It's still growing. It's not growing at the pace. There's always that explosion in the beginning where you get that people coming in from other sports. That the crossover guys like, like me that are coming from kiting or windsurfing or whatever, and they're always the first in.
And then you get that boom of the next guys and we've had that. And now it's slowed down to what's I think a more constant flow. But the fact that the demographic is so proud is it's going to continue. The fact that kids want to do it. Middle aged people want to do it, older guys want to do it, girls want to do it, women want to do it.
I mean it's absolutely appealing to the broadest group of people that any of the sports that I've ever done has. And that lends itself to a pretty healthy future. You're not going to tap out your demographic quickly. It's not all 60 year old guys with money. It's not all the fact that so many young people want to do it shows really good promise for a healthy future.
Yeah, and it's such a great way to get into foiling too. People that are curious about foiling, I always tell 'em like, obviously maybe going toying behind a boat or jet ski and maybe e foiling is a little bit easier for total beginners, but then wing foiling is really the next natural choice to, to figure out how to use a foil, right?
Yes, I, to me, it's the easiest way to learn. I've gotten people up on a foil in half an hour, a few times back and forth on a stand up paddle board, telling them the right things, getting them on the foil board and they're up and riding, in that first day. But yeah, we have some recommendations.
Prone or stand up is so much harder than winging. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some recommendations like for total beginners in terms of equipment and some tips that you give people when, like you said, first, learn the wing handling on a standup and with a dagger board ideally.
Yeah. You even not just, most people just want to jump on the water and jump on the board too quick. You spend a lot of time with the wing on the beach until you really understand the dynamic in both directions. When the tip starts coming down, how do you get it back up? Just learning that feel of the wing and the wind.
And then getting on a board and combining it without the foil. So you're doing two things at once, not three. And then once you've got it where you can go in and out, both directions comfortably, and you're not fumbling with the wing all the time, then you move on to the foil. And then remember to keep, keeping that pressure straight down on the foil.
I was trying to tell people, you're not trying to take off like an airplane. You're trying to pressurize the foil. And that's really different about getting that, that wing loaded under your feet. So any lateral pressure, like windsurfing is bad. You don't want to pull to the side, you want all your pressure straight up and you're just trying to load the foil and not power it up and take off like that.
That's where people just, crash and you'll see him doing the same mistakes for days and days. Or if you just. Dial them into what the feeling is that you're looking for. It can come really quick. And so just the main mistakes people are making is trying to go too small, too quick. Don't learn the wing yet and try and get on the board.
And then using too small a board, too small a foil too quickly, let it, come to you and you'll outgrow your stuff relatively quickly, but there's always a friend that wants to learn. That'll take your bigger, older stuff. Especially having a big stable board that you can stand on comfortably without having to like water start underwater or whatever.
That's You've been on this prone foil board or something like that. It's yeah, a lot of guys say, Oh, I gotta be on a little board. It's way more cool. I'm still writing a floater. Most of the time, obviously I can write a 30 or 40, a 50, a 60. I've got whatever I want. And the vast majority of the time I'm on a 72 liter.
Cause I want to get up. If I fall between waves, I want to get up before the next wave. I don't want to be up to my chest, bouncing my wing off the reef, trying to get going. And so there's, yeah, I mean to each their own, but there's definitely that, that oh yeah, smaller is better, which isn't necessarily the case unless you're doing rotations.
And of course you want as little board as possible. And then, yeah I watched that video where you're riding the South Shore I think La Perouse Bay, and you said, look, you like to have the foil really far forward using actually a fairly bigger size foil, so you can pump back out and and then you, and your back foot's way behind the mast and stuff like that.
So talk a little bit about how you like to set up your gear that's different from how other people use it, yeah, it's really hard to generalize because with so many brands of foils back there in the market there's really a difference in lift. I can say, oh yeah, I ride an 840 most of the time, but my 840 and that 840 might be really different.
Where the wing lines up on the fuselage, where the lift point is in comparison to the mast is really different from brand to brand. Yeah. But in general, I like to have I want to have my feet. and my weight on that pendulum point, like a teeter totter, right? You can put a sandbag way over here on the teeter totter and stand here and balance it, right?
But you're not gonna be able to do it too quickly. You're putting your weight here to balance that weight out that's here. And you can do it. And that's how most people are falling. Or you can put it here. And have really quick control of your fore and aft movement to follow the chop to catch things, when you're, and it's not just Whoa, leaning back and then it's going to come up.
And then I just like to be behind the mask with my foot so I can really quickly make those lift adjustments. I've noticed that a lot of beginners ride with too much, like where they have to put too much pressure on their back foot. Where as you get better, you realize you want to have just equal pressure on both feet.
You don't want to have to lean on your back foot all the time. You get to get tired and you're not balanced, right? Exactly. It's just trim, just having that comfortable between the feet balance so you can carve. You're not using the rail, but, so to speak, you can. you can control that pitch fore and aft side to side really easily when you find that balance point like standing on a ball and if you can stand right on the middle of the ball and have quick access control in every direction for me at least it makes it way more fun than being back here And having it fast in one direction, but slow in the other.
And then foils, I still ride a pretty big foil. Most of the time, my guys will be out on five 50, 600. And I'm most of the time on an eight 49, 14, even lighter winds, a 10 40. If I'm going on a lake and cruising around, I'm not trying to race anyone, it's flat water, there's little bumps, I'm going to catch that little bump and have more fun on it with a 10 40 than I am on a 700.
Yeah, again it's not that race to be as small as possible, but bragging range. Oh, I'm on a 450 and a 30 liter board. All right. You're just going back and forth the same as I am. It depends on your weight, depending on your conditions, depends on the wind, depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
The good thing is it's all good. It all works, so another thing I wanted to ask you is right now it seems like the hottest thing in foiling is down, downwind foiling, like everyone's getting into that, buying the long boards and bigger foils, that kind of stuff. And what's your take on that?
What, how do you feel about downwind foiling? Do you do it at all? Or not really? I'd rather. poke myself in the eye with this, but that's just me. I never understood the appeal. Obviously, I could do it. I'll go and I'll go with Mickey. I'll test, but I've never been a downwind guy, even in the days of stand up.
I'd go, I'd test boards, I'd write a 14, I'd get on an unlimited and just not understand the appeal. I've just never been. And even now with foiling, you're flying. Guys are coming down the coast. It looks like they're getting pulled by a spaceship. They're going so fast. Then when you go and do it, to me, you're still just trying to keep up with the ocean and the ocean's like trying to pass me.
It just doesn't feel fast. It looks fast watching other guys do it, but then I'll go and do it and we'll do a full on downwinder on a 40 knot day. And it still just doesn't feel. I don't know. I'm too spoiled of being powered by the wind, I think. And it's too much work, not enough reward. The whole drop the car there, drop the car there thing.
It's too much time. I get it. I understand the appeal. It's awesome. That's so many people are doing it. Maui is just a constant flow of guys. I know when I went to Oahu, Diamondhead all day long, guys are coming down from Black Point around to Tongs. It's fricking cool. But I personally, yeah, maybe I'm just not old enough yet when I get older, I'll get into downwinding another, when I'm 70 I'll embrace it.
But right now I'm having too much fun just blasting around. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't realize how difficult it is. They're like all gung ho about it. And then they end up buying the longer board and the bigger foil because they can't do it on the. The equipment they got first and then they realize, Oh, and then, it's, it can be so frustrating if you can't get up on foil and you're just like paddling this tippy foil board all the way down when it's like, Oh yeah, talk about a heart attack.
Yeah. So it's not as easy as it looks, I would say to people that wing foiling is definitely the The easier way to have fun more, more quickly. A lot less work. And then you can do downwinders winging, and then at least if you come off the foil, you're right back up. Yeah, it's still cool.
Thanks so much. I know you have to go, but I guess just give let's talk a little bit about your time management. Like we talked earlier, like you make time to fix your car for two days and, do things like that. So how do you Yeah. How do you make time to, to have a conversation like this and with your busy schedule and and how do you prioritize things and right now, just, trying to put as little on the calendar in the future as possible, I used to have just commitments all year long, like I, okay.
September, I'm there in October, I'm there in November, I'm there. And I'm being a lot more selective to what I commit to so that I can be flexible. I love being able to wake up in the morning and not even look at the forecast. I'm not fucking hunting wind grew and looking for this. Going back to how it was before.
See what the day brings. And then make the most of it to a certain degree. Be on the computer as little as possible. And everyone's Oh, you see that swell coming Monday? No, I haven't looked. So how's it look? Awesome. Just trying to be more stoked and fluid and be flexible. Which I'm really enjoying, okay, let's go to a while.
Oh, my daughter's doing a volleyball game there. I'm going to go to that. Yeah just try to be organic, flexible, make time for not just bringing relentless testing, testing all the time. But no, I'm not going to work on my car today. Like I've got one of my cars semi taken apart right now.
And that's be my next project. A lot of work in the yard, enjoying working around here. Got a little orchard, watching the fruit grow. Watch our first harvest of avocados on the way. Just, yeah, trying to enjoy life. Try and be a good friend. Good boyfriend, good dad, good son, good grandpa.
All those things that you can lose track of. And, knock on wood, I'm in the luxurious position where I can do that. A lot of people can't, they're, they have to just fucking work two jobs all day, every day and have a hard time getting their head above water. And I appreciate that.
And I know how lucky I am to be in the position that I'm in that I can enjoy those other aspects of life. And in my head, like I said, I'm still a pro athlete. I'm 61 years old. I do a lot for Red Bull. I love working with them. It's like a family at this point. I've been with them for so long.
And I love I, I heard in another interview that you actually got into Red Bull because it benefited like the vitamin D or something like that. And then I just wanted some free products to start with. Yeah. So that's that's where it started. I drink it every single day. I've drank more Red Bull in the last 30 years.
And it's I absolutely love it. But I love everything the company is all about as well. And so I do a lot of sharing it like internally speaking to athletes around the world, doing athlete summits and whatnot, sharing about the functionality of the product and how to use it to your benefit. And just the legacy and the history and where we came from.
Yeah, it's an amazing story with an amazing founder. Yeah. Enjoying being an athlete and still being able to do what I love. My mind and body are allowing me to keep basically playing and having fun. So I'm sharing it with other people. Sharing with Stoke is important to me now too. Sending positive messages.
I don't drink, I don't smoke, don't do drugs, try and live clean. Live life honorably. And that, that seems to be difficult for a lot of people these days, I know it sounds like you have a really good balance between, your professional life, your work life, and then also personal family and enjoying, enjoying things.
So when you go out in the water, is it more for fun or you feel like you're also, like you say, pro athlete and marketing and all that kind of stuff? A lot of fun because I don't really put pressure on myself. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to post on youtube. I don't have to so like you'll see periods of time where I don't do anything at all And i'll get into it and post a bunch of stuff and it's fun Okay, I don't want to do that anymore.
I don't want I don't want to be part of that whole Freaking me, it can Become unhealthy. I don't think it's a positive thing personality wise. Going, Oh, how many legs do I have? And I just, it brings out the worst in us. Arrogance is not a positive trait. Self promotion is not a positive trait.
Humility is a positive trait. Humility doesn't get you very far in the world of social media. So if you want to sponsor it, like that's the thing that a lot of sponsors want to see how many followers do you have and whatever. That's what athletes today have to be on social media and stuff like that.
Yeah. And I heard you talking about that too, like how you dislike social media and so one of the kind of sometimes disconnect from your cell phone and stuff like that. And I think that's such a big thing now for the young people, especially during the pandemic, everybody got hooked on their devices and it's a huge social issue, I think.
But yeah. And back in the day when you first went. As a 13 year old went to Bahamas, there's like I remember those days when you traveling, you can't be like, Oh yeah, just text me or call me when you get there. It's you don't know, like you have to have a place and a time to meet. And if the person's not there, then you're like, okay, maybe I can send a letter or call, call someone somewhere else.
Yeah. It was really different. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of benefits to it, but there's some disadvantages to it as well. It's certainly in many ways, not healthy. The amount of communication and yeah, but it is what it is. Got to deal with it. Make the best, navigate that path in as healthy a way as possible.
Yeah, so I know we're going over time already. So what's your plan today? What are you doing? I'm heading down right now to cool out and go shoot. Wing foiling actually we're doing some video over The last week into this next week for next year's stuff and it's it's sunny and windy and flat because here on Oahu, it seems like there's no wind at all right now.
So I guess, yeah, it's always windy here. Yeah. Maui always gets windy. So cool. Yeah. Thanks so much for your time and really enjoy the conversation. And maybe we can do it again one day. A lot more questions. Maybe when I come over to Oahu, we can do some of the beach. This is. You sitting in your office?
In my office? Yeah. I started the podcast during the pandemic, so Zoom was like, great way to talk to people, but don't really have to do that anymore. So yeah. Let's do it in person next time. Yeah I was even gonna say in, I'll just come over to M and come along in the photo shoot and check it out and take some pictures or whatever, but yeah.
There you go. Yeah. Next time. Right on. Okay. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. All right. Any, any last met last minute message to the weight and folders out there or the water sports world you want to say to everyone? No every day on the water is a good day. So Yeah, get out there.
Don't be a wave hog, but yeah, have fun and hopefully we'll see you out there Yeah, share and enjoy Right on. Thank you, Robbie. Yeah, stoked. I gotta go get it. Right on. Alright, so as always, I really appreciate everyone that watches the show all the way to the end on YouTube, or listens to it as a podcast.
I really appreciate you guys and girls out there, all the wing foilers and water sports enthusiasts. I hope I'm keeping the stoke alive for you and I'm hoping to do more in person interviews as well in the future. I've been super busy doing stuff so not as much time for the shows but I do have some people I still want to interview.
Some of the big names in the sport, so I'm not done with this show yet. I'm going to keep it coming. I was super stoked to get Robbie Naish on the show. I'm going to try to meet up with him again, hopefully in person next time. So yeah, just keeping the information flowing and the stoke going.
And this summer is going to be super exciting for me. I'm doing the I'm going to do Maui to Molokai to Oahu races on a wing foil board. And then the following week, I'm also going to do the Molokai to Oahu on a regular stand up paddle stock race board. Stay tuned. Busy training right now.
Also working on a book, stand up paddling for dummies. So that's going to come out in the future. And I have a little bit less time for the show, but just trying to do everything and live life to the fullest and get out on the water as much as I can. Hope you stay stoked out there.
Thanks so much again for watching. See you on the water. Aloha.
