Everyone’s Winging It
The latest watersports craze is getting more people on the water and harnessing the wind
no more than 9 feet in span. A bunch of dudes in wetsuits riding foil boards were flying along over the wave tops, hunting “bumps” (short surfs) and longer rides on the wakes of passing boats. They’d catch a surf and float the wing at waist level with one hand while they carved the wake. Then, in a blink, they’d turn with equipment: Foiling dinghies need dollies and endless maintenance, and require hiking. If the wind dies, you’re toast. Kites need a lot of open space to launch and land, and once you’re off the beach, there’s no stopping.
Wing-foiling has no such issues. The wing is simple, small and portable, and can be used on a variety of boards, big and small, foil or not. At the moment, there’s no formal racing—channel crossings are the cool thing to do, and when you need a break, you can simply float on your wing like a pool
Kai Lenny flying off the lip of a Maui wave, wing held high overhead, or Robby Naish’s silly and fun GoPro tutorials online. These giants of wind and wave sports got on the wing thing immediately, and much of the current popularity can be attributed to their videos alone. Unlike modern windsurfing and kiting, however, winging has nothing to do with competing— for now, at least. It’s all about freeriding. Naish is just playing around. Lenny is cruising the open ocean with his buddies. And, most important, kids are getting into the act, doing what videos is infectious. “Growing up, I was the only female grom, and there haven’t been that many girls who wingfoil,” says Kainani, who started kiteboarding at 7. Kainani says old-school twin-tip kiting is “pushing water” and slow. She went straight into kite-foiling. She got a simple foil with only a 12-inch mast—the vertical part of the foil—from her uncle, Greg Drexler, a developer of wings, kites and foil boards. She kited with that for about a year, and when her uncle started to make wings, she made the switch. “A lot