Wingnut

Almost as far back as I can remember, I reorganized my whole life around water sports.  I'm not sure where you were in 1994, but I was living in my $700 volkswagen bus and windsurfing everyday.  My career path followed my addiction, form Neil Pryde, Rushwind, Shore Sails, and Hurricane Sails, to Naish Sails, Gaastra, Vandal, Quantum Sails, Avanti, and finally Raptor.  Boats, boards, sailing speed records and kitesurfing... I lived it.  I'd checked those boxes.

At 48 years old now, I was fixing to skip this latest wrinkle...  wing foiling?  winging?  wing nut?  My initial take from 30,000 feet was that it looked stupid, perhaps slow and clumsy next to kiting and windsurf foiling.  It took Dalton a year of nagging to get me to try it, even as it started to gain momentum worldwide amongst my tribe.  My first ride came just in front of the shop, maybe 20 seconds on Dalton's foil in almost no wind, with the beach coming up fast.  A couple more brief tries and my brain went from "meh, whatever" to "LETS GO!" 

Too cheap to buy a board that is anyway sailed above the water, I leveraged the boatbuilding skills from the Weekender project to repurpose an old Formula board into a learning machine.  

I decided to go for a hard chine look, mostly because it would be fast and easy to fabricate.  After chopping out a rough board shape, I made a sandwich construction with some 1/8" Divinycell I literally had left over from this insanity some 20 years ago.  Kris Henderson had given me some glass awhile back, so my material costs were more/less nil.

Took right from the paint booth to the water the same day, and it seemed like just the ticket for a full on kook.  The whole family got into the action shortly thereafter.  Here Cascade gets his first taste at 13.  If you listen close, you can hear him yell, "I did it!"

All fun, but the best in show goes to Bailey.  Hoverboarding at 7 with Cascade giving us the priceless OMG audio.  Marty McFly would be proud.