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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the kitesurf 365 podcast.
- [00:04]
B
Welcome back to the show. I hope you all had a great weekend. On today's episode, I'm joined by DK for another techcast. We start out this techcast by remembering Peter Lin, who sadly passed away a few days ago and we talk about his impact on the industry. I reached out to DK after Readin's Snack Pack release because there was a lot of talk about that and we decided to do this episode on some of the forgotten board designs. Don't forget to follow me at kitesurf365 for all the latest episodes. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave K. All right, DK, we're back for another TechCast and we're coming live from the Rad Sky Lab, which is your new facility up in J Bay in South Africa, by the way. Before we get into that, how's that going to work? You're going to be based in J Bay and in Cape Town.
- [00:55]
A
Thanks, Adrian. And it's good to be back and yeah, super, super excited about this, this new project that sue and I are working on and, and there'll probably be. Well, if anyone's been watching my social media, they've been seeing what's going on. As of this month, we're now based in Jeffreys Bay and the idea is to that this is going to be our development facility. So not only for lacuna but for the other work that we do. And the idea being to spend a majority of the year in this part of the world. And there's some really good reasons for that, mainly space and testing conditions. And then we're actually going to keep our apartment in Cape Town free so that we've got a base down there and spend most of the year. So like the autumn through to spring in J Bay and that summer peak season be based down in Cape Town, which is kind of essential. The whole world goes to Cape Town for the summer and whole kiting world. So we really have to be down there for that, that part of the year. But yeah, we're really hoping this facility in JB is going to be like really enhance our, our ability to prototype, make new, make new products. And we've also got some really good testing conditions right on our doorstep here.
- [02:13]
B
Awesome. Well, we're going to hear more about Rad Sky, I'm sure over the next few months and years. I'm excited about that. They've got a little YouTube channel starting it off, trying to build up Project Binky there. Let's see if you're interested in that type of stuff but mate, let's start with some Saturn news, mate. I just. Peter Lynn died yesterday. For a lot of new people out there they might not know his impact on the industry. Dave, what did Peter mean to you and what was his impact on kite boarding? Because I guess a lot of people assume him with just normal kite flying as well.
- [02:43]
A
Yeah, yeah. So not. Peter's a very old dear friend of mine and yeah it was. He has, has been unwell for a while so this wasn't a, wasn't a surprise but it's always a, always a shock and a bit of a blow when you lose somebody so, so special for the, the Peter's influence is like, is just in kiting in general is, is probably impossible to quantify it just massive. He has, he is a professional engineer and he got into kites and kite making I think about the same year I was born. Like 1974 was the start of his, his sort of professional kite flying business and he's just had an influence on every possible part of, of kites, kite making, kite flying. He's got world records and the largest kites ever flown. He created the, the kite buggy, like the, the very first sort of traction kite thing like that, like something you could actually commercially buy and go and use kites to, to pull yourself around on. He's had massive influences on kite sailing, kite power generation and, and of course kite surfing. And the. What most people will sort of remember him in kite surfing is for the, for the Arc, a soft four wheel kite with no bridles, in a C shape. But there was before that there was the C quad, there was the Peel like one of the very first like that. We're all very excited about having foil kites being used in competition these days. Well the very first commercially available traction foil kite was the Peter Lin Peel which came out in the 80s. So we're talking decades and decades of like just underground influence over the entire kite kite industry and kite surfing industry. And I don't know if we'll ever have somebody, somebody as influential ever come through this industry again. He was quite remarkable.
- [04:52]
B
Is that Peterlinkite still around? I know it's based in Holland.
- [04:55]
A
Now the structure on the Peterlin brand is quite a bit bigger and more complex than you could possibly, possibly imagine. So Peter for many years has not been involved in the businesses that use his name directly. So there's predominantly been two businesses. There's been Peter Den Kites based out of Ashburton and that is pedaling Kites was the business that created the show and display kites. So everything from like a little kid's Octopus kite, about 20cm by 20cm up to world record breaking like UAE flag kites, 1000m2 in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest kites ever flown. Those were all designed, developed and built out of the, out of the pedaling kites facility in Ashburton in New Zealand. For what we're more familiar with with kite surfing that was a. The brand pedal in kite boarding and pedaling kite boarding was licensed originally by a. A Dutch company called Flgerop and Flegerop sold their um, sold their kite business or the. The founders of Fleeger op sold their kite business a few years ago and that business was actually rebranded to plkb. So it hasn't re. For a few years. It hasn't actually used the, the Petalin name. But that, that is the brand that we would, we would associate with Peter Lynn Kites and or Petalin as is Kite surfers. And yes, they still exist and they still make kite surfing kites. They don't. They're not currently making the ARC kite which was the kite that sort of put Petalin front and center or the Petalin brand front and center and kite surfing in the early days. In fact my very first kite surfing kite was a Petalin Arc. And so the kite I got up and riding on in late 2000 was, was an early Peter Lin ark actually handmade in New Zealand. It actually was sewn together by my mate's girlfriend using a sewing machine that I later owned. Very long story. But that style of kite, the ARC style of kite hasn't been made for quite a number of years which is. Yeah, I think we've kind of. There's still something we could explore there in kite surfing. But the inflatable kite ranges are still made and sold under the PLKB brand.
- [07:39]
B
Yeah, sad news and our condolences go out to his family. But let's move on DK into this TechCast. You know, a couple weeks ago I had Damien Drarden on the podcast and he introduced the, the reading snack pack. I don't remember a board launch that caused that much discussion. Talk, praise, controversy, personal attacks, all of it. Honestly, I'm looking forward to writing it. To be honest. It sounds like a lot of fun, but the amount of that he copped online by the way, most of it was positive. You have to say there was some negative. I reached out to you, I said have you seen this he said, we need to do a techcast on these type of boards. Because I did say to you, I mean, I have seen these type of boards around before, but maybe not exactly the way Damien's done it. Let's start with the snack pack first. What did you initially think when you saw that board?
- [08:31]
A
I seriously just love to congratulate Damien and Kevin on such a widely talked about release. Like the last time, I think the last time I saw a release that I was like, yeah, you guys, like, you guys nailed it was when Core released the XR Pro and the guys set like broke the world the Woo world record board twice in one day. To have those two things line up and just the amount of discussion and sort of free marketing that they got just from that. I'll put this board release in that same boat where I think they were excited about the product, but I don't think they really anticipated that the amount of, just the amount of discussion that would blow up from it. And honestly, whether you've got positive discussion about it or negative discussion about it, the worst thing you can do when you have a product release is nobody talks about it. So having everybody talking about it, the guys have done a really, really good job. I'd love my own brand to one day release a product that actually had that much of an impact.
- [09:53]
B
Either way, it was a real pop and I think you said it right. Whether it was positive or a little bit negative, it still brings eyes to the product, to the website.
- [10:04]
A
I've been involved with Kite brands and the early days of DK kiteboards. We used to use negative publicity as much as we could because we had competitors and those competitors wouldn't back down from trying to negatively influence people's opinion about our brand and our product. I would far rather have somebody talking about us negatively than not talking about us at all. And I would always use that as an opportunity to inject some sort of positivity into a discussion. And I think the reading guys have done a really good job with that. I'd love to one day have a product that would produce this much emotion in the general kiting population. But you asked me what my take on it was and the title of the notes for this, for this Techcast are the forgotten board designs. And that was 100% my first take on seeing this board release. It's like, oh, wow, awesome. It's a modern retake on a very early style Ulri style twin tip board. Again, something we haven't like. It's been impossible to buy that Style of board for 20 years. Maybe not 20 years. Franz has done some, we can, we can cover some details or maybe that you could have got it as a custom. But in terms of a, like a mainstream kite brand haven't offered a board in the style for, for more than 20 years. And it's not invalid like it's, it was a valid design back in the day and it has valid takes right now. So. But what you have done is done a retake on something that was available a very long time ago.
- [11:59]
B
Let's talk about that board that you mentioned there by Franz Orly. Was it called the Wipica Orly? Is that what its name was?
- [12:07]
A
Yeah. So this is, I'm going to like, I'm just describe this genre of board as an Olri style twin tip because the first commercially available version of it was the Wipper Olri. Now there'll be many, many listeners who have no idea who Franz Ulry is runs, is one of the original pro kiteboarders. We're talking before there were pro kite borders there was Franz Franz already. So he's, he started writing for. He's a French writer and he started probably kite kiteboarding in the 90s. And he's a very talented waterman and a very, very much a larger than life character. I got a lot of time for France. I think he's, he did great things for the industry way back in the beginning but he was, he's also a talented craftsman and he crafted his own, his own take on a kite board. At the time all kite boards were basically some form of. So we're talking the late 90s. All kite boards in the early days were some sort of surfboard derived directional or maybe you could also describe them as small wind surfboards. But we in the late 90s that's everything was a directional. And then Franz came out with what credited as being the first twin tip board. And not only was it a twin tip, it was a very uniquely kite board twin tip where there were people that were sort of experimenting with big versions of a wakeboard. What Franz came out with wasn't, wasn't a wakeboard and it wasn't a directional. It was this thing that was like this, this was, this was different. And where it really was influenced by was snowboard design. The wiper Olri, the first one that was released, I think it was a 163cm long and it was relatively narrow. I'm picking. It's like 36 or 37 centimeters wide which is for a, for a board that long is really quite narrow and it almost looks like a snowboard. It didn't have the side cut of a snowboard, but it was that. It was sort of long and skinny rather than what we're riding now, which is sort of described as short and wide. And it had a really, really unique bottom shape to it. At the tips, most of the board had a relatively low rocker. And then at the end the tips flipped up almost like a snowboard. So all of the rocker in a snowboard is like right at the very tips. Well, that's what this board had. Now if you just do that with a flat bottom on a kite board, the board is almost impossible to ride upwind. It has really, really high drag because that really exaggerated flipped up tip on the tail pulls the tail of the board really deep in the water and slows you down. So to get over that, Franz actually put a release edge or a little step maybe 2 or 3 millimeters deep, just before the board flipped or that tip flipped up on your front foot. You effectively still had this bent up nose that would stop the board nose diving. But at the tail, as far as the water was concerned, the board stopped where the flip tip or where the step happened and the water would just fall off. So you didn't have that. The water didn't know that there was more rocker sitting above that flip tip. It would just fall off. It would separate at that edge. So you had the really low drag of a flat rocket board on your back foot, but the really forgiving nature of a high rocket board on your front foot and it would automatically felt when you went the other direction. Really unique concept. Really amazing that it happened so early that it happened pre, pre 2000 and yeah, very much a valid concept. And that was pretty much considered that the original twin tip. And in kiteboarding, do you see some
- [16:17]
B
of those aspects on the Snake pack? I think Damien's used that release tip. When I think about it, when I, when I look at it, that it does come back down on the edge. And you know, I haven't touched one up close. I'm just looking like you at photos. But do you see that similar, that similar release, OH100.
- [16:33]
A
Like if you go and look at photos of it there, Damien has very much replicated that. Like he's put some more interesting bottom shaping into the design. Very much has that, that very, that defining feature of these early Olre. Well there was the Olri underground kite boards. Also released one of these. And then later on Franz did this, the style of board under his own brand, Attica, for many years. And then there were others. There was e boards in Australia also did boards like this. It was like. It was definitely a design from sort of 99 through to about 2001 that was very, very popular, very, very well known. Definitely Damien's taken that the other probably defining feature of this style of board was actually a very round soft rail, very similar to a surfboard rail. And that's also a feature of the sneak pack that's taken from this. So those things would not. Yeah, both the release edge and the soft surfboard style rail on a Twintip, both of those features have sort of long disappeared from kiting and have now come back with this new board. But they do go back 26 years or longer of where they where this design. And I credit Franz with sort of bringing this to the world. And then other designers sort of worked on it for a little while and produced some refinements. But it is very much one of the oldest design influences you could find in board design and kiting.
- [18:13]
B
You mentioned Underground there. Let's talk about the wave trade, because that's starting to get newer and it's a name that people might know a little bit more now. Underground was a big player back in the day. Right. I mean, when you're talking early days, that they were the big players when it came to Twintip.
- [18:30]
A
Yeah, yeah. So this is so underground kite boards based in Christchurch in New Zealand. And actually we mentioned, we mentioned Peter Lynn at the beginning of this podcast or we can, we can credit. One of Peter's influence, major influences on the kiteboarding industry is actually underground kite boards. So Pedal in kites or Pedal in. Based in Ashburton, Peter. Peter started developing kites for use on the water. Predominantly he wanted to go sailing, but he started to experiment with kites on the water in. In the lakes up inland from ashburton in the 90s. And one of the friends of his, or one of the close friends of his son Pete was a guy by the name of Kane Hartle. And Kane is an incredibly talented athlete. And Kane was one of the test pilots that Peter was using for his water kite development. And Kane wanted, wanted better boards. They were experimenting with boards they were making at the sort of skunk works at the Peterland factory in Ashburton. But they wanted better boards. There was a windsurf shaper by the name of Adrian Rope, who had a. Who was shaping windsurf boards in a shed on the Christchurch estuary in, in Christchurch. And his brand was under Underground Windsurfing. Now, Kane met up with Adrian and started talking about getting some boards made. And they started out making sort of high density foam, so 100% PVC foam cored quad fin directional boards which were originally marketed, they were developed with Kane as sort of the test rider using Peter Lynn kites. And funnily enough, Kane and his wife Stephanie ended up competing internationally. Sort of the very first world tour of kite surfing happened in 1999 and Kane and Steph were sponsored by Pedalin to use pedal in kites to go on that tour. And they used boards made by Underground. Now Kane and Steph going on the world tour was a massive, massively increased the visibility of petal and kites for use in kite surfing, but also introduced the world to this little, this little manufacturer in New Zealand, Underground, who could make really nice boards. And after Kane came back from that tour, he had seen Franz Ulry's twin tip boards and got Adrian and the Underground factory to start making those boards. And so they were Underground's first twin tip boards were very much these sort of longer, 160ish narrow, sort of 37, 36 centimeter wide boards. Very much influenced by Franz. Now fast forward about a year and there's a lot more kiters are starting to kite in the Christchurch estuary. The underground kite boards, the underground factories, making a lot more kite boards and starting to ship them around the world. And the guys who are working in the underground factory are all kiters and they're all into experimentation. And everybody's going, hey, what if we make a smaller version of this twin tip? What do we make? A smaller version. And they start to shrink. And we start, we're getting 140s, 138s and the starting is a little bit wider. And what came out of that design is the name the wave tray. And the wave tray is like the wave tray completely revolutionizes what kiteboarders think of performance, can be out of a twin tip in kiteboarding and also completely revolutionizes underground kite boards. And they go from being this tiny little brand based in Christchurch in New Zealand, almost unknown, to being a major supplier of high performance twin tip kite boards into the kiteboarding industry. And it's all off the back of the wave tray. And the development that sort of happened over the, over the New Zealand Summer of 2001, 2001, 2002, these things just take off. And by the following season, by the following international competition season, most of the professional riders on either the PKRA or the KPWT Tour are actually Riding Underground wave tray twin tips, despite the fact that most of them have been sprayed to match the graphics on their sponsors boards. And it sort of started with Peter and then you bring Adrian or started with Peter and then you bring Kane into the mix. A really good talented rider and then Adrian Roper, a, a talented board shaper, put all that together and suddenly there's a, there's a whole scene of really amazing kite boards and amazing kites coming out of, out of Christchurch in New Zealand. Underground went from that and then released another board called the flx which was their first take on a, on a wood core with ABS rail like snowboard style construction and ended up, I like to describe them. By the mid 2000s, underground kite boards were the largest independent kiteboard brand in the world. The only brands that were selling more kiteboards than Underground were kite brands that were also selling kite boards. So the Underground was the biggest selling seller of kiteboards without having any sort of association with selling kites themselves. So yeah, quite an amazing thing. And if you got Adrian on here, I guarantee you he would credit Peter Lynn and Peter Lynn kites being in Ashburton as the seed that started that, that amazing journey for him.
- [24:37]
B
Let's talk about the real Super Short movement. I remember when I got into kiteboarding, diving back and looking at old footage and seeing guys riding and by the way their, their foot straps were like, it looked like they were standing on the nose and the tail. They were tiny people like Lou Wayman famously riding tiny little boards. Tell us about that movement. And was that just after the length they went short to, to experiment that way as well?
- [25:05]
A
Yeah, yeah. So this is like, this follows on sort of directly after the world going mad on, on the wave tray, which is a. Yeah, like very much a cornerstone board in our whole industry. If we're talking about influential people in the kite industry, Lou Wayman's name has to come up. Lou has always been beyond the curve. He's always doing something that's completely out of, completely out of the mind of anybody else in the industry.
- [25:35]
B
Dk, we should do a tech cast one day and we just go through Lou Wayman's crazy ideas like the carrot and the tray and the tray. We could do that easy.
- [25:45]
A
That would be an absolute, absolutely amazing techcast. Let's write that one down because I think, yeah, we could easily talk for over an hour on all of that and the influence that he's had. So yeah, the influence on the Super Short movement was a couple of videos came out of Maui with Lou Riding his kites on super short lines. And short lines is now a thing. But Lou was riding his kites on super short lines on a V pulley bar. So. So it was a four line kite, but no depower. It was just a bar and the front lines attached to a pulley which has got a whole. Again, we'll cover that in the Lou Wayman crazy ideas cast because it is actually a really good idea. But the board that he was on, it was a custom made board from Jimmy Lewis and it was 90 by 33 centimeters. So just ridiculously small. And we were like, how is he even getting up on that, let alone and. But especially the whole setup with the super short lines, it's like, how is you generating enough power? How can you go up wind on it? This seems crazy. And me having my own board factory at the time, it's like, well, the only way to prove that this is either just this is worthy of something or just completely insane as we have to build one. And I literally just drew out a pattern on a piece of cardboard in my board factory and vacuum bagged a piece of foam. Said, we've got to try this. So I made myself a 90 by 33. Actually I had some short lines and a pulley bar at the time. So I tried the whole setup and it was ridiculous. Like I thought that board, the only way that board would work would be if it was. I was ridiculously overpowered. But it was so small and such low drag. It was finless as well. Like there was. There's just which. So it was super skatey. All of it seemed like nothing would. Nothing about that would work, but it actually did. So yeah, I used it for a little while. I wasn't the only one that started experimenting with it at that point in time. If you saw Lu doing something, you at least had to qualify it for yourself. And so a whole bunch of other people did. And within the space of maybe six months, every major kite manufacturer, kite and board manufacturer in the world had released something in the hundred centimeters or less. So the 1 meter or less twin tip, you could buy them commercially and ride them. And they're an acquired taste. Like there is one of the most amazing things about it is the amount of power you can hold. Especially when at the time we were dealing with kites with minimal or no depower. You had an amazing amount of authority over the kite because literally there's no tail beyond your foot strap. Literally your board finishes at the same point your foot does. So you can really, really hold a Lot of power, which was amazing for jumping, and no spin weight. So you can. You could easily add another 360 to any move that you could do because you just rotate on a dime. But they're really hard to land because you have to be perfectly balanced directly over the center of that board. If you are like 0.1 degree too far forward, too far back, you'll skate out and land on your ass. So again, maybe in the space of six months, we saw every major manufacturer release one. There was never a second development. Like everybody had a go at it. Oh yeah, that works. But it's not a mainstream product, which is a lot of things that Lou does. So that was a short lived but really interesting development. There might be reasons to go back and play with that again. And now that I'm sitting in my own lab again, I might actually give it another go.
- [29:55]
B
We started this podcast because of the reaction to the Reading snack Pack. I guess the next type of boards and the boards that I heard commonly thrown out were about the mutants. You know, when you, when you listen to Damien, he's talking about maximizing your session. Jump on the way out, ride the waves on the way in. And you know, actually what he's saying is actually we are missing a lot of that stuff. And that's what mutants were ideally about. Right?
- [30:20]
A
Yeah. I like to say mutants are really hard to define. They're a broad spectrum of possible solutions. Like given any major kiteboard manufacturer's range right now, you can buy surfboard style directionals and you can buy wood core sidewall snowboard construction, twin tips. That's what you can get from every major brand. And there is a chasm in between. There's like nothing. There is no product in a, in every major. Like I'm talking the top five kiteboard brands right now. They really don't produce anything that exists between those two, those two extremes. Now, mutants occupy some sort of continuum between a surfboard style directional and a. And a traditional square outline twinter. They have a directional rocker, so you typically have more rocker on the front foot and less rocker on the back foot depending on. And they could be jivable, they could be just ridden one way. That that doesn't necessarily play into this design philosophy. Like a lot of people set them up so that they sort of twin tip style pads and straps and they're always on one side, but they typically have more rocker on the front foot, less rocker on the back foot. They generally have more and larger fins on the back foot. So they could be a Tri fin could be a quad fin. They could be up to sort of 100 millimeter fins rather than sort of two 50 millimeter fins that you'd expect to find on a twin tip of a similar size. And they have some sort of feature on the nose side that allows them to land and ride backwards. Even if they're not very well adapted, you're not going to ride them backwards for very long or very often. So that could be channeling in the nose, but it's more likely a couple of twin tip style fins in the nose. That's the sort of broad description, but the application has always been to sort of take advantage of both styles of board, have the ability to take, have the ability to land backwards that you can get with a twin tip, but have the extra grip of larger fins on your back foot that you get from a directional and get the higher speed, higher water speed that you get with a lower rocker on your back foot. So personal favorite of mine, I haven't had an opportunity to design one for a, for any one of my brands in quite a number of years. I have built a very select few customs in that in the past 10 years, but I've really not as many as what I'd like to do and I personally love it. I think they're a really valid form of, of board construction. I especially like building them in sort of twin tip style construction but with the directional features because you get the fast reflexing of a wood core, you get the high durability of the rails. But they're also just as easily built in the sort of more traditional surfboard style construction but with the more twin style features. And I would say in terms of history of the, of the Mutant, probably peak Mutant for me would be Mark Shin 2002. So Mark is the, the only world champion we've had, we have ever had in kiteboarding that has won two world championships in the same year in the same discipline. And that's we in for a few years. In the early days of kitebourning, the early 2000s, we had two competing world tours, the PK and the KPWT. And Mark competed on both tours fully in 2002 and won both tours in 2002. And he did that while riding Nash Mutants, which is just. Yeah, I don't think it'll ever like, I don't think Mutants will ever, will ever beat that as a, as a cornerstone of that design and sort of validates what that design was capable of.
- [35:00]
B
Dk, just let me jump in here and this will Move into our next point which is about wave riding twin tips. Damien, his video talks about having a surfboard rail, the importance why the surfboard rail makes this board different. Can you break down what he's talking about and why the surfboard rail makes that difference opposed to where we're going to this next point which is wave riding on a twin tip.
- [35:23]
A
Oh, look. Yeah, totally. And in fact, earlier on in this podcast I kind of mentioned it, but not, but not fully. I said that one of the defining features of Franz's, Franz Ory's twin tip that Wiper made and then later the underground version and then his Attica boards was a soft rail. And what I'm talking about with the soft rail, it was a surfboard style tucked rail. So basically all of our currently available twin tip designs have a very, it's not a hundred percent, but pretty much all twin tips that you buy these days have a very square finished edge. And the thought in most, most people's minds is, ah, a square edge gives me something that can bite into the water and I'll be able to hold my edge really well. Well, it's actually that that very square edge is actually the opposite to that. What that square ed is allow a very clean water release. And a bit like the, the, the what I was discussing with the, the stepped tip on the, the tips of this, this Olri design, the water flowing along the bottom of the board when it hits a very sharp square edge releases. And that release gives you very low drag and that low drag gives you a board that's nice and fast. But that very clean water release also means that the board is very likely to want to leave the water. Like if you hit a piece of chop, it'll want to release. And we use that, yeah, that we, well, we use that for most of the tricks that we do. A softer surfboard rail, if we tuck that rail and give it some curvature, the water doesn't want to let go. The water will actually flow to that edge and wrap around it. And in the process of wrapping around, when the water is being pulled up, by wrapping around the rail, the board is actually being pulled down. It's an equal and opposite reaction kind of thing. So a softer rail will actually hold an edge better and carve smoother. And yeah, that is exactly what Damien was talking about. And why he put that, why he's put that soft edge into the, into his new design is to get more grip onto the wave face when you're riding it on a, when you're riding it Back in. The feel of a surfboard on a wave comes from that very tucked in rail at your front foot.
- [37:57]
B
Let's talk about wavering twin tips dk because there's a bunch of notable designs in here and probably names that people will recognize more opposed to what we've been talking about now.
- [38:08]
A
Oh look, this is again a personal favorite of mine when it comes to board design. Our professional wave riders in our industry, our whole tour is based on using surfboard style boards with a kite and trying to replicate what surfers do on waves as close as possible. And that's a very valid way of, of defining wave riding with a kite. Surfers do this, we should try and do as close to what surfers do and we use similar equipment. That's one way of defining it. There is another way of looking at waves which is like, well, we're kiters and we can ride low volume boards with identical, that can ride identically both directions. That gives us other options we can do in waves. Like what, what would us, what would surfing look like if surfers rode wakeboards? Is one way of thinking it. And so there is a small, dedicated, almost fanatical group of kiters that have been around since the early days of kiting, who riding their own path when it comes to wave riding. And they will religiously ride a twin tip in waves drawing their own path on what, what that is as a, as a discipline in a genre. And there have been several board designs that have been optimized for that. So what, what is a, what does a twin tip look like if you optimize it for use in waves? And probably the most famous example would be the Ocean Radio Mako. That board has I think probably nearly a 20 year history now and has an almost cult like following amongst its users. Most kiters don't even understand it when they look at it, but the guys who do use it are passionate, so incredibly passionate about using that board. And then there's been a few others. The Nomad Kite boards, which is a German. Well was originally German I think now Tarifa based custom board builder makes the Nomad wave. Again, fanatical group of people that will just will religiously buy that. They will buy one, they will wear it out and they will buy another one because it does exactly what they're after. And then I had a, a design at DK Kite boards which was the DK Katana, which I later redeveloped as the Cabrino Tronic. And again the Cabrino Tronic had its own fanatical group of Riders that was like, yeah, this board is amazing. And it's exactly what I want to do with a kite in waves. The defining feature, all those boards tends to be quite a lot of outline curve. So the tips of those boards are really narrow compared to the center width, so that they almost look like ovals. That high amount of outline curve, very narrow tips, means the boards carve and turn really nicely. So you still need a little bit more power than what you would and you'd be riding because you're riding something a little bit smaller, lower volume than a surfboard, but you can really press on the tail and those boards will come around. Yeah, they're an amazing piece of kit for the, those that know, they really know and they will go after that. They absolutely love that type of board and what it brings to them. I have a personal story with the Tronic that I absolutely love to say, and that's. I've ridden One Eye in Mauritius on the Cabrino Tronic and had probably one of the most cornerstone sessions. Seriously, the most fun I've ever had with a kite on the water was riding One Eye on a, on a twin tip. Funnily enough, while Duotone were trying to do a photo shoot and I was like, I was blasting through wearing my seat harness, my nitrous shorts, helmet, C specs, like, I was like full nerd, get up and absolutely loving the entire day. I spent hours out there just doing laps. And yeah, there was a whole bunch of reasons. One Eye is backside to me. So, yeah, I'm really not as proficient. Backside with a more surfboard style board. And also with One Eye, because it's such an offshore spot, the kite tends to sit behind the wave and it's very hard for, Well, I was finding it very hard with a surfboard to actually get a really good top turn there. It's just really hard to get onto your, onto your toes when the kite's trying to pull you back through the back of the lip. And getting onto the Tronic just allowed me to have a, like, I had just had way more authority over the kite. Ended up having a way more fun day than if I'd been out there on the surfboard.
- [43:21]
B
I think Kiahi Diabotes does it best. I feel like the rest of them are just being pulled off the wave too much. And I would be interested to see how Kia, he would ride a board like this because, you know, you know Damien saying, I don't touch any other stuff now, you know, I, I, this is the only board I take and that's got. That got me exc about it. But I'd be interested to hear what those type of guys who are not involved with reading at all to hear their, their thoughts on this board. Because I'm, I'm super excited to ride it, bro. I really am. It really excites me even for like down, you know, like I'm, I'm looking at it as a downwind option because we do a lot of downwinders here. We go up and we do 30, 40Ks. I think going out into this, into the swells and just riding on that board, that just seems like, mate, I'm excited.
- [44:08]
A
Oh look, totally. I'm going to tell you one of the, let's say the Mako, like I'm describing it as a wave riding twin tip. One of the most popular places in the world for that board is actually the Columbia River Gorge. Exactly what you're talking about. It's big river swells, not really any waves, a lot of chop, a lot of wind, guys doing massive downwinders down the, down the river. The weapon of choice is the ocean radio Mako. It absolutely loves those conditions and for good reason. It feels in fact all of these, whether you're on the Mako, the Nomad, the Tronic, the Katana and quite probably I haven't ridden Readen's new board, but quite possibly the same. They feel like a snowboard on. In soft snow, like it's. What you've got is the ability to carve. When you push on the tail, the nose comes around like you were carving a snowboard. And it's a very addictive feeling. And yeah, like one of the. I used to absolutely love doing long downwind runs on the DK Katana. Just a little bit less kite, a lot of board, but something that really likes to calve. But I can still jump, I can still land backwards, I can still do all of the twin tip stuff, but I've got a board that actually wants to, wants to turn, wants to carve. Just makes kiting fun. A lot of the designs that, what we're talking about here was stuff that were designed just to have a bit of fun to do something different. And you could almost describe kite boarding became far too serious, like about what defines like proper kite boarding needs to be in this narrow box. Twin tips are twin tips and they're designed for doing big air and wake style and we've got to do that. And then if we're riding waves, we have to be as close to a surfer as we Possibly can. So therefore we have to be on a surfer. And I'm like, I'm happy to ride skim boards and mutants and super short boards and wave riding ton tips and like, like my go to board from Muizenberg is a probably you could describe as being a mutant. It's way closer to a surfboard than a twin tip, but it's also got a full deck of EVA and it's got big, high grip rails, but it's built in a twin tip process. It's like nothing. You can't buy that board, but oh my God, is it so much fun. And that's my. For years, that's just been the board that I would use for an onshore, like an onshore small wave spot like Muizenberg. There's a multitude of different things we could you can use.
- [47:00]
B
So where are these boards gone, dk? How come we don't see more of that? And you know, going back to what we've been saying, let's find more fun in kiteboarding. It's not always about big air. That's why I'm excited about this board. And I'm sure Red Sky Studios are going to maybe not copy as design, but have a play around with that type of stuff, you know. But I'm. I'm honestly, dk, I'm excited to get on the water and have a play on this board.
- [47:24]
A
It used to be like, I like when. When I Sue and I had DK kiteboards factory in. In New Zealand, the minimum quiver of boards we would put in the back of the van to go to the beach was 10, because we might only put two kites in, but we'd put 10 boards in. We would choose the board for the conditions. The kite's the kite. It's the engine to pull us around. But the thing that defines the style of what we want to do and the fun that we're going to have and maximizing what we can get out of the conditions we had at the time. The board defines that. And so 10 boards in the back of the van was absolutely gimme. And we are literally spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars right now on the building that I'm currently sitting in and fitting it up. And let's say we can have an idea on a Thursday morning of something, something we just want to ride on Saturday. Thursday morning we can think about it, and Saturday afternoon we can be riding it. And it could be anything. And a lot of what we're talking about here, the forgotten designs, is stuff that it's not that we've forgotten it. The industry has concentrated on what it can sell and not all of this other stuff that can be a lot of fun. And while I'm building my own facility, so any of that can just become a reality in a matter of a few days.
- [48:53]
B
Well, dk, really, really interesting, dude. I think that going back about finding the fun and embracing different stuff and you know, you mentioned there bringing different boards. I remember when I was a young Kaido, I would always bring, I want to say it was a nobili, like a 165, like what you would learn on. And before hydrofoiling, that was my light wind board in Dubai. If it was light winds, which Dubai can be, and very, very hot winds. So even 15 knots is like 10, 11, 12 knots. I could go out on that 160 and on a bigger kite, a 12 or 14 and have a decent session.
- [49:29]
A
Totally. In fact, one thing I didn't even like, I didn't even put notes in here was because this would like totally add another half an hour to this podcast. But there was race boards, three fin, four fin race boards. The brand I used to work for, Airush, had their Sector 60 legendary board for light wind before there was any commercially available hydrofoils. This is just the tip of the iceberg of like what's come and gone. Have we forgotten the fun? Damien and Kevin have come out with something that seriously looks like fun. Is there more? I think there's more. I think we could go back through this back catalog of designs, modernize them up to create a whole new genre of stuff that's fun and enjoyable. Or maybe we need to find a new Lou Wayman or just get Lou back on the water.
- [50:26]
B
Well, I think we've discovered a new TechCast here, DK. Lou Wayman's crazy ideas. I think we'll definitely do that. I'm going to reach out to Lou as well on and see if he would like to be involved in that because I think that'd be super cool. The three of us to sit down.
- [50:38]
A
That would be totally amazing. So, yeah, no would be awesome.
- [50:43]
B
Dk, thanks again for your time, buddy. Another amazing techcast. Yeah, look, as I said, hopefully I can get my hands on one of the snack packs soon and give you a bit of feedback on our hot road. Because like you said at the top, any type of press is good press, even if it comes off bad. And I know Damian was a little bit upset about that, but I'm looking forward to trying the board and it's going to be super and the more stuff we can get on the water, the better. You know, I think that's what the way you look at it, I think you said it right back in the day, there was more people were more interested in trying new things. I think we've got away from that. Let's find that again. Thanks brother.
- [51:17]
A
Thanks Adrian. Thanks to all the listeners. And yeah, we'll see where we go
- [51:21]
B
next one hey guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Don't forget, if you want to support the show, the easiest way is to support us for free. Rate me on Spotify. I'm loving those five star reviews. Share them in your local wall, WhatsApp or kite surfing group. Or just simply tell your mates. If you want to support us more regularly, head over to portraitkite.com and check out all the madness there. Portrait is an independent media company trying to tell the stories of kite boarding the way we believe they should, and these projects are funded by people just like you. Road to Pro Japan is now out streaming on Portrait. If you haven't seen that, definitely go check it out. I'll put the link in the bio. The podcast guys will always be free, so don't worry about that. If you want to find more techcasts or more episodes just like this one, use the search search button@kitesurf365.com to search your favorite writer or topic. And we'll be back this Thursday for the Megapod.