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Wing Foil Kits
Wing foiling is a realatively new sport but has gained wide adoption for it's very high "fun/complicated" ratio. The gear is small, light weight and very quick to setup. Just a board, foil and wing. The process of learning to foil is fun and rewarding and every time you go out it's a different experience. We got our first taste of foiling in Aug of 2022. Here is a video of Nate and Alan out on their first try riding a foil. We've kept at it and consider ourselves advanced foilers now having mastered the basics. There is a healthy club of wing foilers in New Bern, NC called the East Carolina Foil Club and in 2023 we even saw the first wing foil race in NC off of shell point at Harkers Island along with the "Around harkers island regatta". We also have an excellent foil gear shop called Banx Watersports in New bern formerly Standup Outfitters that now sells primarially wing foil equipment to feed the addition of all the local crazy "wingers".
There are many diciplines that fall into the "foiling" category but we were specifically drawn to wing foiling. Compared to windsurfing the setup time is nearly instantaneous. Just pull your board out, attach the foil, inflate the wing and you're ready. Compared to kite surfing you can launch anywhere without worrying about a safe place to launch your kite, space to lay out lines or worry about the wind direction. Many former windsurf and kitsurfers have taken up wing foiling for these reasons. Wing foil races are also very popular with slalom, upwing and freestyle competitions.
Alan foiling on the Bay River, NC
Foiling gear is progressing all the time and each advancement is making the sport more fun and cheaper to get into. New hand wing, board and foil shapes keep improving overall efficiency, reducing weight and cost. One of the biggest expenses in wing foiling is the board itself. The first board we bought cost over $1,000. This is compounded by the fact that a larger board is recommended to learn on but you grow out of it relatively quickly and then need a smaller board to progress. Boards come in all shapes and sizes from short sinker boards to long skinny boards that resemble kayaks and each is tailored to rider weight, dicipline and the conditions but the vast majority of foil boards are currently built just like surfboards. A blank is shaped from EPS foam, track boxes are installed and reinforced with a high density foam, and finally the board is sealed and reinforced with fiberglass or carbon fiber. Unlike surfboards however, foil boards are unique in that they must be strong enough to support the riders weight while cantelevered out in front of the foil mast puting tremendous bending load on the board.
Hollow Plywood foil board kits:
We saw an opportunity to design a range of easy to build cnc cut foil board kits from a material we know intimately. Plywood! While not every board shape can be replicated in plywood there are a few unique advantages to a hollow plywood wing foil board. The biggest advantage of course is cost. Home built baords from EPS foam can cost just as much as a production board by the time you factor in shipping for a large foam blank. The process involves lots of sanding and perfect glassing technique is needed to achieve a durable result. High performace foam boards require even more difficult techniques such as vacuum bagging which produces a lot of waste and if it goes wrong the whole board is junk. With a plywood we eliminate the shaping process entirely as the shape is defined by the plywood pieces themselves. The finished board is folded up in a matter of hours and no shaping is required at all. The baord can be finished in just a few days. A properly engineered plywood foil board will be light and strong every time. The construction method is identical to that of a "stitch and glue" kayak or SUP board but for such thin ply we opted for "tape and glue" since the strength of wire stitches wasn't necessary.
Introducing Spear, our first plywood foil board kit. This 8' 2" long "downwind" style board is 19 1/2" wide with 110L of volume. At just 14lbs 4oz it's just as light as other production down wind boards. It is constructed with 3mm poplar plywood, paulownia deck stringers and inwales and the plywood is coated inside and out with epoxy. The board was load tested with 400lbs while bolted to our custom made test stand to be sure it was plenty strong. Check out the full build album here. We belive this is THE FIRST CNC cut plywood foil board kit available to wingers anywhere.
