Podcasts about outrigger canoe club

Please also watch the video version of this show on the blueplanetsurf youtube channel for lots of cool footage- video by Lucas Purcell  Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is not an interview, but rather a recap where I talk about my experience at the Molokai to Oahu race and what I heard from other competitors at the race. So let's get into it. Okay. So after a three year break for the pandemic and so on, the Molokai race, It finally happened again in 2023 and for the first time it had a wing foil division. So I was really excited about that and signed up for the Wingfo division, as well as a bunch of us from Oahu. And a couple weeks ago we went over to Maui and winged from Maui to Molokai, and then did the Molokai Holokai, and then Molokai to Oahu, a little training run. A couple of weeks before, and then the day before the Molokai race, we flew over and stayed at Kalua Koi, at our friend Eli's place. Beautiful place, right on the water. Here's Derek taking a little cruise on his bike down the path. And at Kalua Koi, the wind is pretty offshore, so the water's smooth on the inside. And the day before the race, the wind was pretty light on the inside, but once you got a little bit offshore, it was pretty strong winds. And Eli and Derek were decided to use our new prototype wings. We had a six meter and a seven meter version of our new wings and Eli was using the seven and Derek, the six meter. And then I opted to choose the, my tried and tested seven meter alien wing that I've been using. Here's Nani. So we're just warming up a little bit the day before the race, getting out there, feeling the water, and so on. Of course on the inside it's pretty smooth, and then once you get further out in the channel, the the water gets a lot rougher. So the evening before the race, there was a little race meeting, everybody meeting on the lawn. at Koala Koi and then they served up a nice dinner afterwards. So for us the energy at this event was amazing. People come in from all over the world, a lot of people from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan. It's great to see everyone again after like years of not having this event, to see all the top paddlers and foilers from all over the world. It's really cool and to see familiar faces from previous events and so on. So for me personally, this was I think it was like the 11th or maybe the 12th time I did this event. I did it, mostly on stand up paddle boards, or all on stand up paddle boards. I think I did it eight times solo, two times as a team, and then this is the first time I did it as a wing foiler. Derek Hama was collecting signatures for his poster, so that was a really cool idea, and he got a ton of signatures during the event. And this is Terry from Virgin Islands, Alan Cadiz from Maui, just hanging out, chatting, and getting excited about the next morning. And then you can see water is... Pretty calm nice sunset, of course, lots of escort boats. Usually the evening before, escort boats will come close to the beach. There's no harbor there you have to swim out to the boat to get your equipment. Usually the boats take over the equipment. come over from Oahu on the boat. But I usually opt to take a plane because that ride from Oahu to Molokai can be pretty rough when you're going into the wind and into the chop. So it's a pretty rough ride, but many people come over on the boat, but I always prefer to fly over. And then, yeah, you pick up your gear like you I picked up my board and wing from the boat the night before. And here you see a lot of escort boats the morning of the event. Then they have the pre race pule prayer, Hawaiian prayer. And then everyone's getting pretty excited for a safe and fun crossing. And yeah, the pule is always... A great great way to get ready in the morning. Everybody picks up a satellite tracking chip that tracks the race. So that's a good way for people to follow the race live. You can see where everyone's position is. Here are the two start buoys in the bay at Kalua Koi. And then this was the first start at... I think it was 7 30 a. m. I want to say it was the prone paddle board start Drones in the air and here's the Start everyone charges off It's of course a long race, but still you don't want to be left behind at the finish So everyone always paddles hard right from the beginning you definitely want to conserve your energy because it's a long race. And yeah, the beginning, the water was pretty calm. Pretty smooth water. Not a lot of chop in the water. So for, especially for the stand up foilers. You can see these conditions are not ideal for getting up on foil or pumping. So it's pretty much, there, there was some wind at our backs, but pretty much the stand up foilers had to pump up onto, up on foil and then pump pretty far to get to where it started to get a little bit easier with some bumps pushing them along. So this is the prone division. Of course, the... M2O is known as the Paddleboard World Championships, and that's how it all started. Surfers looking for something to do in the summertime in the North Shore, they started to pick up longer surfboards and paddle distances and found it was really good training for the winter. So for a long time, the Molokai Race Paddleboard Division was dominated by Jamie Mitchell. who's won it many times, but he hasn't been competing the last few times. It's still dominated by Australian paddlers. The top three male Unlimited and top three male stock division were all Australians. And the winner this year was Charlie Vercoe from, 22 year old from Australia winning the race on an Unlimited board in 453. And especially considering these difficult conditions, that's quite the accomplishment to paddle it in under five hours many. took much longer than that. It was definitely a challenging race at the end with the northerly currents pulling against you. The stand up division was a little bit smaller this year, still a good contingent of paddlers though, but a lot of the pro racers that used to compete in stand up paddling are now on stand up foil boards, including people like James Casey, who won the stand up unlimited in 2019 Kai Lenny, and many others that used to compete in stand up racing are now stand up foiling. So that seems to be the big competitive division now. But Mo Freitas from Oahu competed in the unlimited division. And so it, it was a competitive race for stand up paddling but a smaller field than before. And then here in the... That NSP, blue and green NSP board, is the paddler from Japan who was this year's champion in the Unlimited for the first time, a Japanese paddler winning the Molokai to Oahu race. Yusuke Hyogo, 36 year old from Japan, won the Unlimited stand up paddleboard division in 445. So that's an impressive time considering especially the... The difficult conditions as you see a couple of the blue planet bump rider boards really proud of All the competitors that used our blue planet boards. They did really well, so I'll talk about that some more later You can see here that the water on the inside was pretty smooth and it's just there was some wind from the back, but it's it's not, there weren't a lot of bumps pushing you along because, the wind's offshore. You can see all the escort boats lined up. They are supposed to wait for 30 minutes before joining the paddlers to keep the wakes and the churned up water to a minimum. But you can see how these conditions are definitely challenging for foiling because, yeah, the stand up foilers have to pump up on foil in these pretty calm waters with not much wind from their back. Here you see Moe Freitas. And this is the start of the foil division. So like I said, yeah, the water was pretty smooth on the inside, so stand up foilers had to really work to get up on foil basically flat water start and then pump pretty far out. Versus wing foilers we were able to take off pretty quick. There was a decent amount of wind, it was pretty light, but seemed like there was a little bit of a gust in the early on. And that helped us get going in the beginning, had a decent start, and pretty good wind in the beginning, and then later on during the race it got a little bit lighter. And I, we don't, didn't get drone footage from the start, but you can see the prone foilers, the stand up foilers pumping along, working hard, and then the wing foilers. Flying off to a good start. I was on a Blue Planet Wing Racer board 5'10 5'10 by 21 inches, so a longer, narrower board, and a 7 meter wing, and then a Mike's Lab. 600 foil with a 103 centimeter mast and you know that combo worked out pretty well. Had a good amount of speed right from the start. Trying to chase the faster paddlers ahead of me. So there was yeah, a few ahead of me. Especially Alan Cadiz who I was trying to keep up with. He was on a Mike's Lab 540. Which I think had a little bit higher speed, but then maybe with my 600, I was able to go a little bit steeper, a little bit steeper downwind angle, which was important because yeah, but that northerly current we ended up having to crisscross quite a bit. You just, you couldn't just take a straight line to the, to portlock. And Yeah, here we're already getting close to Oahu. It's skipped a bunch, but the middle of the channel got a little bit light. There were a good amount of bumps, and pretty steep bumps, and a lot of good riding, but just the wind got a little light, so even with the 7 meter wing, I find myself pumping the wing and the foil quite a bit, trying to keep a good angle. And then I'm a regular foot. Winger. And I just find that I'm not very good at switching my feet. I'm not as fast if I try to, put my feet the other way. I was basically riding most of the way with my body kind of twisted toe, my, my toe side direction. And then, at the very end, I started catching up to Alan Cadiz. He got quite a bit ahead of me, but then I caught him at the end. And then, I made it into the bay and I was like pushing hard upwind and then I just caught an edge and crashed and I fell and then Alan passed me again. But, overall I was pretty happy. I finished the race in an hour 55. I lost a little bit of probably another five minutes at the end, but I was definitely stoked to finish. And excited about my time that I finished fifth overall. And the winners in the wing flow division were Finn Spencer, 19 year old from Maui. In 131, amazingly fast time. And then second place was Aidan Nicholas from Auckland, New Zealand. And 137, and then third place Bobo Gallagher, 14, from Lahaina. And then fourth place was Alan Cadiz from Maui. And fifth place was myself. And Alan and myself were the first and second in the 40 and over division. I think Alan is already 60 and I'm 55, cool that us older guys can still be up there and mix it up with the young pros. Pretty stoked. And then in the female division Nani from Oahu, who's been winging with our group won the won the female race in 2. 10, so she also had a very fast time. So congrats, Nani, on a really good crossing. And then in first place in the wing foil team division were my friends Eli and Derek that we've been training together with so stoked that they finished right up there as well. And they did the team division as a two person team, but they both did the whole race, so they basically shared the escort boat and started together and finished together it's a cool way to do the race, just basically staying together and basically you're only going to be as fast as the slower winger. And then after the race, I got a chance to interview James Casey, so you should definitely check out that interview. He won the stand up foil division. I also interviewed Nani, and then Derek and Eli. Those interviews are posting soon. Here are the overall results again. Like the wing floaters definitely dominated the top, top ten fastest times. But we also finished at the blinker buoy versus the, everybody else had to paddle into the bay. So with the prone boards that was definitely a challenge to paddle all the way into the bay. James Casey shared a pretty cool story about that, how that all went down, so you might want to check that out. So I added a few more photos of the award ceremony after the event. Every time the Molokai Toaho race is held, they have an award ceremony at the Outrigger Canoe Club. It's always a nice event, it makes it a legitimate world championship event. Here are Eli and Derek who won the team Wingfoil Division on the Blue Planet Wings. Good job guys. These are the top female finishers. This time Olivia Piana came in first over Annie Reichard who finished first at the Maui to Molokai race. These are the top finishes in the sub stock division and I'm really stoked because they were all on Blue Planet bump rider boards. This is Kiyomi she was, and they were all on 14 foot bump riders, so stoked about that. And here's our Blue Planet team so had some really good results and not really. happy with the results of the You know the whole blue planet team and get to see our gear working well in these conditions and then here are the all the top stand up foilers James Casey won the stand up foil division, which was a close finish, and he was he was able to catch a little bump, he said, by by pillars. And pump it all the way over the reef, which is definitely a risky move because if you come off foil over the shallow reef, you can get stuck there and, have to paddle with the foil upside down, but he was able to pull off the wind. So congratulations, James, and congratulations, Finn Spencer. I'm going to interview the Spencer brothers soon. Finn Spencer, by the way, had a... Injury on his heel and big infection and he pulled through with it, but he came up on stage with crutches. So congratulations Finn and stay tuned for more blue planet shows. We bring out some more interviews from this race and many more interviews to come. So thanks for watching. See you on the water. Aloha.

 Aloha Friends, it's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to the third season of the Blue Planet Show. I started this show a couple years ago in my home office, in the garage during the pandemic, just to get to know other wing foilers find out more what drives them, what inspires them. And as always, I like to find a little bit more about their background and just get to know them a little bit better and learn for my own benefit. And I'm stoked to be able to share it with all of you. I get people coming up to me all the time saying I'll watch your shows all the way to the end. So I'm one of the 5% that watches the whole thing. So stoked to hear that. And I know many of you are also listening to it as a podcast while you're driving to the beach or going foiling and getting stoked or just listening to it while you can't go in the water because it's too cold, or you're traveling or whatnot. Stoked. Always to hear that kind of stuff, super stoked. And today's guest is James Casey, who also has a great podcast. So if you haven't listened to that, it's all about downwind foiling. You should check it out. And he also has a coaching club that you can join to learn about downwind foiling. He's an amazing athlete. He holds the record for the most kilometers foiled in one day. And a great coach for any of you who want to get into downwind foiling. And he also invented the sport of winging upwind and then deflating and foiling downwind. Really cool stuff that he's doing and pioneering also designing and testing equipment and so on. Without further ado, here is James Casey. Okay, James Casey. Welcome to the Blue Planet Show. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I've watched a bunch of these shows and yeah, it's cool to be on here myself now. Yeah. And I've been listening to your shows while I'm driving and getting stoked and motivated to do more downwind foiling. So thanks for doing that. A lot of really good information on your show. And I want to get into that, like Doman foiling, your Casey crew or the coaching crew, and then also the Moloka race, and then your announcement about joining Code foils and all kinds of stuff. Your record 213 kilometer record on a foil all that kind of stuff. But before we get into all those things, let's talk a little bit about your background. Let's go into a little bit like where, where you were born, how you grew up, and how you got into water sports and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So yeah, James Casey. I was born in Sydney, Australia, and it's basically the east coast. And my mom and dad both surfed as a kid. They took me out surfing and like a boogie boarding first and then surfing. And I think I got my, I remember vividly actually gave you my first surfboard when I was like, probably a bit of a late starter compared to people nowadays, but I was like 10 or 11. I got like this PCUs, four Finn, super nineties board, skinny nose, like super pointy, heaps of rocker. But that was my first board. This was just one of my dad's old boards that he didn't use anymore. Yeah, this is your board now. You can, you can take this here, this out. And yeah, pretty much surfed all through my teenage years. I competed in like board riders, so I was I won the juniors movale board riders season sort of competition. But then I got 18, 19, I started getting worn in my rugby union. So I was playing a lot of rugby. Played for the, I guess the local club, the Ringer Rats, and was, I played a couple games in first grade, but I was basically just too small to be to be, following that dream as a, as an athlete in rugby. I was also competing against basically , who's now the Wallabies captain, Michael Hooper. So like in people who watch rugby would know what I'm talking about. But yeah, I was playing rugby against him a lot, so rugby was always, I was always second field to him, but I just loved it. It was great camaraderie and that sort of stuff and, but I was still juggling my rugby and surfing and basically as a rugby player you're pretty big and bulky and so it's not the best for surfing. But I got into standup paddling in my sort of I guess it was, I don't know the exact date, but I was. Pretty young. I was probably like 14 or 15. We, we were in Hawaii and I sprained my ankle kite surfing. And wait, so when, how did you get into kite surfing? Yeah, I was thinking that when I said that. Gotta explain that, . So I got into kite surfing. I used to go to Maui a lot. Basically my dad was a wind surfer and basically every July we'd go over to Hawaii to f as a family holiday to windsurf. And I was learning to windsurf and then all of a sudden all these kite around and I'd just nailed for windsurfing, I'd nailed my like water starts. So on the small sort of wave riding board, I was water starting, I was just starting into wave riding. And then I cut my foot on the reef out at uppers at Kaha. . And so I was outta the water for a bit and when I was outta the water, my brother, younger brother and sister learned to kite surf and then I was all fired up. I wanna learn to kite surf, it looks easier and you're on a smaller board. And so basically going backwards, I guess windsurfing my dad, cause he windsurf, he took us out in the lake a lot. Just a local Naraine lake. And we'd learned to windsurf on a big, we used to call it the island. Just a massive, it was a starboard, I think a massive starboard and you can get three people on it. It was super stable for us kids as well. So we did that. Then, so then I learned on a smaller board, wave, wave sailing and never really nailed it. I one or two trips down to OA and then Hawaii was almost there and then I cut my foot outta the water for a week. Then went to kite surf and kite surfing was what we loved to do as a family. Like my brother, my dad, and myself would all go out kite surfing at home and then me when it was sick. But yeah, then I sprained my ankle. Kite surfing this one time. I guess it was, it must have not been July cause there was some waves. Must have been, winter. And there were heaps of good. It was good surf that year too. So I cut my foot so sprained my ankle kiting and I couldn't pop up on a surfboard like, like regular surfing because my, an basically res sprained my ankle. So we went to the local shop what's it called? High Tech in Maui. And we rented Hawaii Paddle Surf, like standup paddle board. Cause we'd seen lad do it, we were in hook keep and Lad was doing his helicopters and that looks pretty cool. Yeah, we went down the hike. So can you, do you guys sell these salmon paddle boards? Yeah, we got a couple. So we rented two of those and we're actually staying at like near Mama's Fish house. , and there's a few reefs out there and basically, When there's no wind. We managed to score some really good sessions out there on the standup paddle board, just like glassy and like four to six foot kind of thing. And I was on a standup paddle board on these outer reefs and it was like, oh, this is pretty legit. And on the standup paddle board was easier because you're paddling out to his outer east and instead you're comfortable. So I'm like, this is cool. So he went home and St. Paddling wasn't really a thing yet. Went home and the local shop, I came in Sydney WSS boards. Sam Parker had, didn't have any production boards, but he did have a custom one that he, a local builder had built him just basically a big longboard. And so we grabbed that off him for a week and just was roughing out on that. No ankle is now better now. So it was just like, it was just cuz we liked it. And basically we, when the stock came in, we bought one, but be between that we were I actually grabbed my dad's windsurf board and we'd never paddled, so we had a rake and we cut the prongs off the rake, the plastic rakes, and we were paddling around the local spot on this windsurf board, like a smaller windsurf board had the full sandpaper deck. So we got all, got smoked rashed up on the stomach. But yeah, that was, and then, basically once the production stuff was out in Australia, we were riding it, but I was never really competing. So like I did all this is all like, 13, 14 or whatever, what's that sort of age? And so I was paddling it, but I didn't know there was competitions and my brother worked in the local shop WSS boards. And there was, I went to one competition at Long ra and I wasn't really, it was fun, but it wasn't really something I was motivated to, to pursue. We did a race, actually the fir, my first s race was Movale to Collary, which is like eight Ks. and it was a nice little northeast Lee Breeze. My I'd never paddled a race board before my brother working at the shop had organized a board for my himself, my dad and me. And there was two 14 footers and 1 12 6 and somehow I got stitched up and was put on the 12 six. So we're doing the race and it's all like a little down window. We just cruising cause we don't know how to race. We're just paddling like we are surfing, looking for little bumps to catch. And all of a sudden this storm comes through and we're about halfway through the race, we're at the back cause we're this cruising and this hail it starts hailing on us. So we, the massive storm, the wind was northeast hailstorm comes through the winds now south. And so we're all lying on our boards paddling into the winds like prone style. And because I had a 12 six I could keep it pointed into the wind easier. I wasn't getting blown around as much. So I, I remember vividly beating my brother. And he was all off it because he is oh, it was because you were the shorter board. It was easier for you to, paddle into the window. Mate, a shorter board should go slower. So it was, the competitive spirit was always there, but I didn't touch another race board for a very long time. So that was that was interesting. That was a not the best start to to the whole racing stuff. It wasn't until my now brother-in-law Grant Hardiman got into ums racing that I really got into thes racing stuff. But in the meantime, I was stop surfing heaps. So I still stop surfed a lot when the waves were small back home, I'd stop surf heaps, wasn't really competing, but just loved it. On the small days and you can then, you can just pedal out. The same as in, in Maui were ping out to these outer reefs and surfing waves by ourselves rather than sitting in the pack of 20 or 30 on a shortboard waiting for that one that came through. That's a muddled history, . Once I got into this, I actually got into the subs surfing, went down to an event in Marula it, so called the Maru Classic. Quite a famous event here in us here in Australia. Anyway, yeah had like guys like Rob Robby Nash come over in the history of it all. And, but I met two, two good friends now, JC Schara and Toby k Cracknell and Kai Bates as well, actually, and Sam Williams. And those sort of four people got me into the competitive side of s cause I didn't even know like the, a PPP world tour or the whatever it was called before that. I didn't know what it, I didn't know what it exist. I didn't know you could compete on a standup paddle board. I didn't know there were races. I just was just doing it for fun. Wasn't really in the scene. So they, I went over to Hawaii, did the sunset event trials, got into the main event and basically from there Tristan was like, oh, you've qualified for the whole tour now if you wanna come to Brazil and France. And I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. So I rallied. And, you I'd just finished uni at this time, so I was like, okay, I've got a bit of time. I haven't really locked myself into a job yet. So I just did that for, two, three years competing on the, the sup surf and race circuit doing, Molokai to Oahu and a bunch of races in did a few races in Europe, did a few surf events in Morocco and Hawaii and France, and went to the wave pool in Abu Dhabi. And yeah, it was a pretty cool, time and then Brun, I was doing that until Covid hit and then now Covid hit up. We basically, it's all, it all stopped all the racings on the stop stuff. And yeah. So here's I wanted to share this video. This was oh, sorry. Definitely. This was when I first met you that this was like at the mall. Mochi race. And you had a yeah, it was you and Marcus. Yeah. Marcus harder with Yeah. Talking about the dugout. I was just curious about it and interviewed you and that. So this was in 2016, was it the first time you did the mobile Kai race? This is the second time I did it. Yeah. This is the second time I, yeah and it was my third season competing, like racing over in Hawaii, but I didn't get in the first year to to do Molokai. Cause I hadn't done enough races, basically.  And that. And you were one of the first guys to use the dugout in the Molokai race, I think too. Or, and you did really well with it, right? So everybody started being curious about the dugout boards. Yeah, so dugout boards were, pretty common on 14 foot boards. But for for the unlimited boards, Not many people were using them. So yeah, it's probably good to talk about this. I was writing for JP and basically JP had said, oh, we don't make unlimited boards. You can get, one made from s i c, you can get one made wherever you want. And basically the year before I used a s I see. And Marcus had spoken to Matt Knowledge and said, oh, I think I can make something faster than your s i c what do you think? And he was like, yeah, Matt was keen. And then I got caught winded oh, if you are getting one, Matt, he was my like, sparring partner. I was like, I want one too. So we both, paid Marcus to design a board for us. And deep sort of made the boards and yeah, these are the first, unlimited dugouts that that we'd used. and basically it certainly caused a bit of a stir in Hawaii when people saw him. It was like the world's biggest bathtub when they filled up. But  Yeah, it was, they were super quick and, this relationship with Marcus, stems all the way through, like within us and Simon son over the following year. And and then I, won Moloka in 2019 on a board that Marcus and I actually built like in, in his backyard. And and that was the last, that was the last time the race was held. So you're the defending champion, theoretically. . Yeah. Look,  four years, , I only have to race once. Yeah. So yeah, no, it's it was a little project that for sure. Yeah. So I just wanted to share that. That's a classic older video. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. That's the main, yeah. Marcus is now all clean cut too. He is. Got his hash and he is shaved and he wouldn't recognize him. . Yeah. And just so I'm in the background, so are you staying at his place right now or? Yes. I'm just, I'm over here in wa I was just cause we've just we're working together now with fun code foil, so it's been set started there that year deep that's, and then sent over and now with code foils and so it's pretty cool. But yeah, I marks my good mates and yeah, I'm over here in wa I was just doing a foil camp up in Exmouth and so I've flowed back down. get back to your history though. Okay. So then you started doing the kind of the racing and also computing as a subs, surfer subs, surfery competition. . Yeah. Yeah.   my, my best result in the subs surfing stuff was the second place at Sunset. I lost a ca vaz , but it was basically I got the, it was a good year for me. Like the surf was good, my ball was good. And that was, yeah, second place and that was, I was pretty stoked. And that year I won the overall race and surf sup champion, there wasn't an official world champion sort of thing, but it was like a thing they're trying to award, overall athletes, not just thes athletes, not just the races race athletes, but the overall. So I think that was 20 must have been like 2016 kind of time where I won that sort of thing. And that's probably the biggest, sup sort of world champion sort of thing I've done in that. But yeah, I did all that until until Covid hit really, I was doing all the s sub surf events and a lot of the supp race events and then foiling came out. It stalled the momentum, with the sup stuff because foiling the reason I got into the sup racing was because I I'm a surfer first, so I've always, I've, I still surf short boards longboards foils now, obviously and standups. But surfing was where it all started. And when I got into sap, competing in standup was all about s surfing and downwind racing, because to me, downwind racing was like longboarding out to sea and you're just trimming the whole time. So it's kinda like the longboard sort of style. . And then when the foils came out and you were, I started down winding them pretty early. I was like, this is like short boarding out to sea. I'm not long boarding anymore. I'm like, we are surfing now. And so that to me was like a real light bulb moment. And a lot of people are like, oh, you don'ts race anymore. And I'm like, oh, I still do the local events. Like I, I was at the Aussie champs last year  and still do a bunch of the local events. But yeah the foiling is and the downwind foiling especially is mind blowing honestly. It's it's pretty crazy. And I guess my foil history I started, I actually met Alex Aue when I was over in Maui for a ppp race event. And I was introduced him through the Spencers. So Jeffrey and Finn were testing ups to go for stuff Me. Oh Jimmy, you gotta meet Alex, you're gonna love this foiling stuff. And so I was actually staying with Vinny and Vinny Martinez and j Jake Jensen. And we were all in a house together. Cause we're doing a race and because I was introduced to Alex basically, but Vinny and I were both slopping boards and so we only had one foil set up. Cause Alex lent us a board and a foil, like one of the original cars. And we were out at Kaha lowers trying out then a bunch of other spots between there and who keep and just if one of us was on the fall, the other one would be on like a bigger surf up just filming each other with a GoPro. And we were just trying to get the shot of us flying above the water. And that was the, and as soon as we left there, we were like, man, I said to Alex, I gotta buy one, like when can I buy one? And he's, okay. That must have been like a sep September sort of time of year. It's 2016 and then maybe it was 2017 but around that time and I ordered probably the first go fall to ever arrive in Australia, It arrived in like November just before the event, the ISA event in Fiji. And I remember going over there, I was over there to race the distance race on the standup, but I brought this foil with me and on the, when we were all surfing cloud break and whatnot in between the events and I was towing behind the boat. on the drive out on my gofoil set up. And people are losing their shit. Oh, everyone's having a go. And that was the start of, the foil brain  and the downwind stuff. And yeah, it's been a cool, it's been a whirlwind four years, since then, or I guess five years, six years since then. But yeah then I was, and I heard like the first time you tried to do a downwind foil downwind, was it with the ca foil? Yeah, so it would've been just after I got from Fiji, I went over to Western Australia and there's a race called King of the Cut and all those, so it's really good downwind run cause the, you get these sea breeze and it's like super consistent. And basically one day we went out with my square JP board and the gofoil and must have been, the board must have been like seven two by 26, but a square not like the boards nowadays had this kind of pointy tails and stuff. Pointy noses, not long and skinny and . We went out the Mandra run and we paddled, A friend of mine, Matt  and I we were swapping boards, so one of us on the foil set up, one of us was on a race board stuff. And basically we did the run I think is about 10 kilometers, 10 or 11 Ks. We did half the run and we swapped out and I got up twice, which looking back, I'm actually pretty stoked, could get up. I got up twice for about a total of like maybe 50, 60 meters up on Foil . And I was like, man, this is hard. Cause we'd seen Kyle Leni do it on his, longer board. Oh, he must just need a longer board longer skinnier board at that time. And cuz Kai was on a sorn off race board, it's 12 foot kind of thing. It's funny how in the foiling world everything just comes back, right? So like  and then, cause now we're going back to that, but this was in 20, it must have been 2016 or 17. . But anyway, it doesn't really. And then I said to Alex, I think I need a bigger foil. So he sent me over the original malico the blue one that isn't curved down. It's like a flatter one. It was actually ahead of its time because it was it was higher aspect, than the macOS were. And like when I got that one, I got home and I did a downwind run from maybe I was, anyway I started downwind once I got that foil and once I had that bigger foil, I was getting up pretty much straight away because of my my, my sort of s racing and downwind knowledge. I could read the bumps well enough and was powerful enough to get up and foil and once up, I think I was just chasing bumps and it was, yeah, it was sick, but I had the, yeah that one definitely humbling moment where we got five Ks and 50 meters of foiling, , so yeah. Yeah, . But even for you, it wasn't easy to get started, but yeah, no way. No way. But the right equipment makes a big difference for sure. Yeah even just the slightly bigger foil was the biggest, the difference for me. I think I was still on the same board more or less. I can't remember my first successful downwind run actually because I definitely had gone to Maui again and I did a downwind run with Finn and Jeffrey on a prone board. We went from Kua to Sugar Cove and we were paddling into waves and then falling around. And then Alex had this 10 foot, it was like a square board. It was a like just a, he called it the aircraft carrier. It was super long and he'd just put a little bit more rocker in it. Yeah, super light. And I paddled that thing up easy and once I was up I was like, I was good to go thing. Cause the downwind knowledge I had from racing standups just translated straight across. But I remember that first run of that big board and it was like, oh, this is pretty cool. , this is pretty epic. Boiling down wind is, As I said before, short boarding and like surfing down the coast rather than, trimming on the longer, unlimited or 14 foot stops. Six. Wait, did you say you were prone foiling on a 10 foot board? Is that what it was? Nah, so I was, I was, I'll stand up, I'll stand up paddling on that one. Yeah, that was the aircraft carrier. It was like nine or 10 foot. long, long, but it was like square. It literally it was like this shape. Yeah. The early kma boards were like that too, right? That's at the time everyone thought that's how you get it as short as possible by just cutting off the nose and tail and like its square . Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting that one Alex made actually and, and it was it was like looking back at it if he just refined that shape. It was long and it it wasn't super skinny. It was probably like 25 or 26 wide, but it was like eight foot and just it was square for stability while going. Narrow for speed and long for speed. Looking back, like there's a lot of things that led us to, the latest design that, Dave has famously invented, the Barracuda style boards. Yeah. And then you're still a team writer for Sunova, right? So when did that relationship start with Sunova? So just that video you shared before was the year after? So it was it was just as when I got my Go Foil I started on JP boards, so that was November. And then the following year, January, February, I signed with Sunova. And the first thing I did was like, okay, we need to get on, we need to make foil boards because foiling is where it's gonna be. And so I went over to Thailand and we tested a bunch of staff and we drew up with Bert Berger. He was over there and Marcus was back here. So we didn't, but Bert and I drew up our first sort of, Foil board range, and it was long, they basically weren't thick enough. So I, my first s foil board that I did with them was seven two by 24 and a half, which like is a pretty good dimensions looking back like how it's aged. But it was super thin. Yeah. So it was only like, it was only like 80 liters or something. And for me it was fine. But I remember going, starting on that and then Marcus took over designing the FOIL awards cause he was head starter foiling too. And it made sense cause he understood it. And so we basically the rails on Bert's board were like super pointy like this. Yeah. And then Marcus just made him thicker and had the, added the chime in and that extra volume allowed us to go shorter. And a bit narrower. Yeah. And a bit narrower too with the same sort of volume. But yeah, I guess our the Sunova relationship was, has been, is epic. , we're still designing a bunch of boards. We've got a bunch of prototypes coming. And yeah, there's, because I persuaded them to build these foil boards, I said, ah, and then I built like a, created the Casey brand. They're like, okay we'll put the Casey logo on it. And, it's your job to curate the design with Marcus and make sure you write the design specs and the, the website, outline, explain to people what it is. So yeah, that relation relationship with Suno has been really good. And obviously like racing, they were helping me fly around the world and travel and and the stop surfing stuff. And yeah, it's been a very healthy relationship with the boys in Thailand. The over. . Yeah. And then for, regarding the foil, so I guess you were writing for Gold Foil and then at some point you tried a whole bunch of different foils and you ended up writing for access. So how did that ha all happen and what was yeah. Sorry. I was writing for Gofo for five years so Gofo for five years and basically, started with the Kai and then the MACO came out and then the EVA and the maico 200 and all that sort of stuff came out. And then the GLS came out, which was like mind blowing cuz they were these higher aspect things. Then the P 180 and basically I've all the way up to the RS and the GT wings. I was a part of the team and it was just, yeah, it was, I was just craving a bit more input in the design process because go for guys are just like fully Maui based and they've got a pretty good test team in Maui. They've got Dave and they've got. Jeremy Rigs and they got, Alex himself is great at testing too, so they didn't really need me. And unless I was there, and when I was there, I was heavily involved in the testing stuff. And remember vividly testing shimming the tail wing. We were out, off or out of Kalu Harbor in Alex's boat. And Connor and I were both testing some Damon wings for the, there was an oli, the Oli race was coming up. And so we were testing like how to shim, like basically we're tuning our foils to get 'em as fast as we could for the race. And unfortunately that year the wind was blowing like straight on shore, so it was just a course race. But the race we did was they dropped us out outside basically between uppers and lowers at Kaha. And we raced all the way back into shore. And I remember that, was that where there was a huge surf too coming in or was that huge surf? Yeah. Yeah. And a few guys, I think I got up last. , but I think Austin climber fell off in the surf This got maxed out. You got a bomb coming through and it was a, that was a pretty cool race that was just like full, like figuring it out, yeah, and it was a bit murky water coming through. I hit something coming in through at the end, but it was sick. It was a cool race. But yeah, so we I'd worked a lot with Alex and Alex was literally I've got a house over in Maui and my family is a house over in Maui and he's actually, we actually share a boundary with Alex. We're not direct next door neighbors, but like over the back fence, like Alex is our neighbor, so it's oh, cool. There's a pretty cool relationship. When I was in Maui, like last time I was in Maui Alex had literally picked me up and we'd go, okay, we're gonna go test this thing, James. Come on, let's go. And yeah, it was super cool to be doing that. But the problem was when I wasn't in Maui, I couldn't test anything and I was only really in Maui, maybe one or.  once or twice a year, and only really for maybe a total of three weeks. So I just, I was craving more input in the design and pushing the envelope to race the wings. But also I guess with my coaching stuff I wanted to be able to, have input to help people learn to. So yeah, about 18 months ago, I, announced I was leaving Gofoil and tried a bunch of different foils. was trying lift stuff, I was trying uni foil stuff access Armstrong. What else did I try? I felt like there was some cloud nine stuff too. And basically I, and I spoke to 'em all and basically the access guys were really keen to work on a range of foils with me. And basically in the last 18 months with access, I reckon I prototyped.  probably 50 sets of gear, wow. It was kinda like, be careful what you wish for , because then my job was like, one of the things they sent out six different towel wings. They didn't tell me what they did, but they said, go out and try them and tell me what you feel. And basically little examples like that. And, so we tried a bunch of different stuff and it was an awesome relationship with Evan and Adrian. And I was on the phone to Adrian after every session. And that was exactly what I craved, like with Gofo, I did the same thing, but I only spoke to Alex every now and then. Cause I only got prototypes every, once or twice a year. Whereas with access, I was getting like every month they were sending out a box of gear and saying, test this stuff for us, test that for us. And it was epic. And if fast forward to now, I guess I'm, I've just announced that I'm working with basically a few mates of mine, Marcus, Ben, and Dan. And.  basically creating our own brand, which is super exciting. Working with Code Falls and look, if this hadn't come up, I'd definitely still be working with Access because there was, there's basically, there's no bad blood with access. Like we're there we're still mates. Adrian's actually coming up. I'm just gonna miss him in Perth, but he's coming over and I've left a bunch of gear for him cause, given some of the gear back and yeah, they want me to come over. Adrian wants to come over to New Zealand and do a downwind foil clinic and yeah, but they were cool, especially like going know when I told them about when I told them about joining code about a month ago, they were obviously a bit upset, but they were super cool and they're like, they were stoked for me that we, that I was creating my own thing. So they weren't they weren't angry at me, and the beauty is we're still mates I guess. So it's it's cool. But as I said, like the relationship with Code Falls was really good. So it's, I'm sorry. Talk a little bit about that. So code photos, like who's behind it and what's the business plan and so on. Yeah, so basically Marcus and Ben basically ha they're brothers. They, their Batard brothers and they've been designing their own or basically in the sunova range. Marcus has been doing all the foil and stuff boards for a while and Ben Tark has been doing the same for one and basically for them to be working together. It's pretty cool cuz they've got some seriously good design brains and yeah, they just, they asked me did I wanna be a part of this company they're building and yeah, I was like, yeah, let's do it. Because I've worked with Marcus for, I guess five or six years now and I've known Ben for a bit longer and Basically the plan is to, just create foils for, for sorry, the dog's just done a fart. the plan is stinks, stubby . The plan is to create foils that that we want to use, you know and that I can teach with too. Cause my coaching business is super important thing too. So at the moment we've just had one, we've had two prototypes. Basically we've got a sort of surf wing and think it's around eight 50 square centimeters. And we've just had a prototype race wing that literally, I've only tried it twice, two or three times now, and it's been. Really positive. Like the whole philosophy I guess behind it is we want our stuff to be stiff and solid and the mast and the connection to the base plate, to the mast, it's all one. But like the connection point is overbuilt, but it feels so nice and stiff. And then likewise the master to the fuse. The fuse is thick and so that's, I'm seeing if I have one actually I've got a mask just here. I can show that. Yeah. Why don't you show us? Is it all one, you said it. The fuselage and front wing and tail wing are all one piece. No. So the don't think I've got a, a tail wing or No, there's none around to you. They must markers, must took it . But yeah. Yeah. Show the mask. So yeah, you can see like the, see how that's pretty chunky down the bottom here. But we just find it adds extra stiffness. And even the base plate's pretty, pretty chunky too. Uhhuh . And then the connection to the. , this is a thicker it's just like probably 30% thicker than the, like most other brands. , just, this just allows more Fuse to get onto. So that makes the fuse a bit chunkier. Yeah. What we found straight away was that it was just super stiff, even though like our first prototype, but everything was just so well connected. So yeah. The base plate things that I was talking about and then the fuse connection was just super solid.  And that to us was a really important thing coming out with a brand now and like after seeing a bunch of brands, work on certain things, then realizing their mask is a bit stiff, isn't stiff enough. And having the connections to the front fall or the rear fall a bit, basically don't want any flex. So having that able to see what other fall brands have done, we've learned from that and basically created a pretty. Pretty what I'm loving, especially in the surf, the eight 50, it's super well connected and a lot of people, so is it, is the fuselage like aluminum like the access foils or is it more like the lift flows where it's like a front piece together with the Yeah, it's yeah, more like the lift and uni foil sort of stuff. How it's just like the front one goes on and then the fuse bolts on. Like a lot of people are comparing it to the cab, how it's on the angle, so Oh, you kind, yeah. So it's it's a super snug connection. , I can't, there was one just on the couch there, but Marcus just took off with it. No worries. Show on the shop . But yeah, we're super So you, so are you actually a partner in the business or a team writer and r and d? Or like how does that work? Yeah. More of a partner not just team riders, which is why it's like an exciting. Sort of project. So there's, we're building a brand up from nothing, so it's, yeah, four. then, so Marcus is, designer Sonova. Ben was a designer of one, no, is the designer of one. And then Dan, he's actually a, he lives three doors down and he's an architects builder, but he's really good at basically drawing everything up and making it all, so the designs, he puts it into software that makes the, it can blend everything so super clean and, slick looking connections. And he's actually, he's been working the hardest of late trying to get all the files ready to build. It's been a, it's been a, it's been a busy month, that's for sure. Yeah. And that's why you're in Perth right now? I was actually over here to do a foil camp up in Exmouth, and I extended two days before and two days after, just so I could catch up with the team and. and, talk about a lot of things and get some footage and just work on all things code as, as well as do a bit of work up the coast here. Just, it was good timing, it wasn't planned, it was just good timing. Cool. Yeah, like when we look at Australia on a Globe or something, it looks like a small little island, but to fly from Sydney to Perth is like a six hour flight or something, like three time zones, or what is it, three or four time zones? Yeah. Yes. It's, I think it's a four and a half, five hour flight, depending on the winds. And yeah, it's a, it's three hours difference. Yeah. So back home when I chat to my wife, she's, at home now it's nine o'clock here and it's midday in, in Sydney. So yeah, it's a big country. It's a big country, that's for sure. Yeah. I haven't been over and during Covid we actually couldn't fly to Perth Bec because. Everything was locked down, so it was, yeah, it's it was almost like a new country over here in Western Australia for a while. Yeah. Everything, everything went yeah. Starting new for company, with like access, they have so many different foils and design, like shapes, like different, so many different wings you can choose from and stuff like that. So starting a new company, I guess one of the hard things is the tooling costs are pretty expensive. Every time you make a new wing you have to make a mold for it and all that. Yeah. And then if it doesn't work, you have to like toss that mold and make another one or whatever yeah, exactly. Yep. It's not easy. Yeah, it's not easy at all. Yeah. The plan for the Rangers at the moment is we've got our surf wing all round, surf wing and downwind wing, which is the eight 50. So I've been surfing and down winding it , and it's been unreal in terms of size, it's. , I feel like the area's not that good a guide. Cause we all know the one 20 probably surfs a bit bigger than what, or down winds a bit bigger than what the area is. . But it's, it, this eight 50 feels somewhere between the one 20 and the one 70. Probably like a one 30 or one 40 sort of size.  If you were to compare in the lift range in the access range, it feels like an 8 99, so that's the kind of size that the one we have now. And we've got plans to build one bigger and one smaller , at the very least. And we're probably gonna go at least two bigger. So probably have five or six foils within that range. And then we're gonna do an, a race range, which we are busily working on now to get ready for mochi because it may only be March, but it takes time to build molds and test stuff. And so we've got our first one here and we've it, it's great, but there's things we can improve upon it. So we're back to the drawing board and try to make it, better. And then we're gonna do like a more of a, lower aspect sort of style foil for basically bay runs, small, slow surf and just a sl a foil that goes slower so you can so especially for me when I'm teaching, I want, I wanna fall that I can teach with that isn't going so fast that it's like scaring people,  and it doesn't have to be a really big foil to go slow. You can make us foil that is still like compact, that goes slow. So we they're the kind of the three rangers that we're working on. But really we're just focusing on getting everything released and the launch date, I guess for shops to, to have these code falls in shops for the eight 50 and I guess, and that's first surf range is or the all round range is the 1st of June. So that's what we're working towards, which doesn't seem that far away.  For us, but for everyone else, we're like, oh, June, that's like March, April, may, June. It's three months. But I think Robert, you probably know it, it takes more than just, the stuff is good now. We're just getting stuff, ordering like our, the manufacturing and logistics and stuff. Yeah, just three months is not a long time.  Not at all. So three, four months. Yeah, we're pushing hard, but it's and obviously we're hoping to have to release the bigger and smaller wings in that range. But it probably won't be till after June. So the first one will be the eight 50 that sort of slightly bigger than the lift one 20 sort of size 8 99 axis sort of size. And then the rest will come after that. But yeah, baby steps because it all, the need a cost a bit, but it takes a lot of time too. So it's, yeah, it's been a. Spend a bit of a journey already. Just I'm only one, officially one week in . Cool. And then what about boards? Are you con gonna continue with Sonova making, like the Casey labeled boards or that, or are you gonna make code foil boards also, or? No, at this stage we're gonna, like Ben still works for One Ocean Sports and Marcus and I still work for Sunova. So it just, it makes sense for us to stick with them, for the, yeah. For the time being because it's we've got great relationships with Ben's got a great relationship with Jacko at one and Mark and I have a great relationship with, Tino and Dylan at Sunova. We don't wanna, we don't wanna break that relationship and Sure we've got good products and we're super happy with how it's all working. As is and the foils, are they made at the Sunova factory or where are they made? The fos are made in China. Yeah. So they're, that we've different factory, the Sunova. Don't really do carbon fiber. I guess they're more of the bolser and polonia skins, which for a foil doesn't really work. . Yeah. It's a, it is a very specialized manufacturing process and yeah. Definitely not simple. You have to have Yeah. Get everything right. Especially like to make the mass stiff and torsional and all that, all that kind of different kind of things to consider. But anyway, yeah. Cool. Congratulations. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. Super exciting. It's been, and let's talk about the Moloka race. Since 2019 we haven't had it. And then this year it's gonna be on July 30th, I think. And I got to see the list of people for the for the foil race. And it's a pretty, pretty impressive list. A lot of people are entered. Yeah, including you and Kailan and a bunch of other really top top writers are doing the foil race, so I almost feel like that's gonna be like the main event, almost like the down one foiling, yeah. But yeah, talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Obviously 20 Montana wanna 'em a stand up and uh, basically that was my goal. That was when I first started stop Racing, my goal was to win Malachi to Oahu when I was stoked to be able to do that. And I dedicated to my dad who's now passed away. And that was a really emotional, experience to be doing that. But I feel like to me, like a lot of people are like, oh, you gotta do it again. Go back to back on the s And to me, I feel like it's almost not that chapter's done, but it's like I've achieved what I wanted to achieve on the standup. Not only that, since I started racing mochi on a sap, like the first year I did that, there were 15 to 20 big names. And probably of those we five people could have won it. The previous year, the year I won, there were probably only like probably five or six people that were like really racing it com like super competitively with a win. And of that sort of five or six, there was probably only two or three or four that were real serious contenders. So it, what I've seen is the s downwind supp racing has declined a bit, or a lot. Yeah, for sure. Like all the guys that were downwind, downwind, standup paddling are now supp foiling or just, prone or they're downwind foiling now. So to me the sport that I was interested in has shifted to foiling, so for me, the foil stuff, it was even in 2019, I was foiling like a lot. And for Malachi, I put my, gave myself a bit of a foil band and Marcus was foiling and training for the foiling and He was like, come on, Jimmy, come on the phone. I'm like, nah man, I just gotta, I just gotta tick this off. I gotta win this race on the standup and I just wanna, I wanna get that done. And yeah, I'm stoked I did that because then it wasn't on for 20 20, 20 21, 20 22, and it's just come back in 2023. I could have been I could have been, still wanting to win it on a standup and, not having it mean for a while. They were talking about maybe doing the the foil event on a Saturday and then the paddle and prone event on the Sunday. If they would do that, would you do try to do both or would you just Only on foiling? Oh, I'd focus on foiling, but like the factors on the day before, I'd do both because I'm over there, so I, and I still have all my gear over there. It's all ready to go. The only thing is the extra cost. The moloka to a race is not a cheap event, and an escort boat is super expensive. And hard to find. That's one of the biggest challenges I think like this year especially. Cuz during the pandemic, a lot of the escort boats got out of the business or they, sold their boats or got into fishing or doing other things and then, yeah. So it's actually gonna be really hard to find escort boats for all the competitors I think. Big time. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah that, I'm lucky enough, I've got the same boat captain and Andrew he actually hit me up. He goes, I got a few people asking you doing mochi cuz people are hitting me up to do their escorting on it. Your first, you won it last year so last time we did it. So you are, you're my first guy and he is like, and he goes, and I hope you're foiling . Cause obviously for a boat it's quicker on a foil. Yeah. You need a fast boat to it, . Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Yeah. I signed up to do it on a wing foil this year, so I'm excited to, to be wing foiling. Yes. It's so cool that they did a wing event too. I assume. The wings should win. Like the wings should be the quickest really. But it'd be interesting to see how they go on the final bit. That up win leg could be pretty, there'd be a bit of tacking going on, and if there's no win, yeah. Going into the finish is gonna be tricky. But for you to, for you guys too, going into the wind with a Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, it's, yeah. And the foil board's gonna be super cheeky yeah. But yeah, last year we had that blue water race where jack hole came in like third overall I think the first two finishers were wing foyers and then he came in third, so he beat a lot of wing foyers on the standup foil board, yeah, pretty fast. Cuz you can go straight down wind versus on a wing, you have to angle more, a little bit angle off. Yeah. Yeah that's a big question. Can you go quick enough over further distance to, to beat the sub guys? We're going more direct I guess, but Yeah, I think you said you did the king of the cut with where there was wingers and standup foyers, a king of the cut race or something. Yeah. I haven't done it when there's wingers because it wasn't on last year and the year before. In 2019, winging wasn't a thing, wasn't a, what, people weren't racing. So the last time I did King of the Cup was 2019 and then Covid hit, so we couldn't get over here. And then when everything opened up last year, end of 2022, the King of the Cup wasn't on anymore. Basically all the volunteers, but they couldn't get enough volunteers together. But have you competed in any doman races that have both wingers and standup foil? I don't think I have actually. Yeah. I don't think I have. Yeah. I haven't competed again or rice against. It'll be interesting to see. Yeah. Who's faster . Yeah. You would think, definitely like with the Wing, you do have an unfair advantage and you can probably use a smaller, faster foil, yeah. But yeah, I think it, I think there's Yeah. A lot of, yeah. Yeah. A lot of animals that go into, I've had the Marcus about this, and he did the race when speaking of the cup when there were wingers and foyers and the wingers smoked them, not only because they were from the start, they were up and going. But smaller foils, they're using small foils. They're using big wings, like big sails and yeah. They're just, , they're moving. Yeah. The wings were quicker, even though they were having to go a little bit further distance. They were faster by, by fair bit, actually, five, 10 minutes I think it was. Okay. That's good to know. Yeah. Cool. So yeah, I think that's gonna be super exciting. We're gonna try to interview some more people that are in that race and yeah, it should be fun to be part of it, the first time they're doing wing foiling too, yeah. So actually, have you done much wing foiling or just more focused on down winding and surf foiling? Yeah, more focused on down winning and surf oiling. But I, I've done the, I guess the stuff the wing that I do is mainly around wave riding. So I'm, and not even heirs. So I'm, I do a few, hes, but I'm not a trickster. Like I don't, I'm I'm not as interested in the big jumps and the flips as I am, like the calves and, the re-entries and the cutbacks and that sort of stuff. So to me winging, winging is like poor man's towing, it's like toe falling cuz you can to toe yourself into the wave and then you just drop it in the back end and you're just surfing like you would anyway. So it's And then talk a little bit about I know you've done like upwind on the wing and then deflate and then just go down one with the wing under your arm or something like that. Or put on your back. Yeah. The wings is, talk a little bit about that. It's such an epic tool for that. So in Sydney especially, we get a lot of days where the wind is in winter we get offshore breezes, so it's like howling like 30 knots offshore. And we can go into sort of harbors or bays or river entrances and we can like big river entrance and we can what we do is we wing up wind, like five ks up wind, which is like almost 10 Ks cuz you have to z and zag up wind.  You attacking. And then I'll I, in what a lot of guys were doing was they were going on onto the shore, deflating their wing on a beach, rolling it up, putting the backpack, and then paddling up. And I was like, why are we doing this? Why don't we just deflate it on the water? So I started deflating on the water wrapping up trail on the backpack. It was a bit wet, bit soggy, but it was still doable. . And then I was like why am I sitting down and doing, why don't I just deflate it whilst en foil? So I deflate it whilst en foil and then hold it under your arm until you stop. And then you've got your paddle on your back knee. You pull that out once you're ready. But yeah, and then I was chatting with mate and I'm like cuz it's this run we do it's in a river and basically there's a national park so you can't drive. It's hard. It's like a bit of a, it's like a two or three K hike to get to the beach that you'd start at. . So instead of going there, we actually just start at the finish point and we wing up wind and then we do our pack down, however you wanna do it. And then we'd go like most of the way back to the finish. But you can go, there's two options you need to pull in to this little bay where the car is, where you can go around this headland and there's like, it's just a peninsula, so it's a sand spit and you can go around the other side so you get like an extra three or four kilometers. So I guess two, three miles of down winding and it's just it's like a kilometer. Upwind back to the beach. And so what I was doing was I was de like doing my deflate, like wing up wind deflate at the top of the run, and then I'd wing all the way down to the bottom of the run and I rigged up this soda stream bottle so I could use press a button and it reinflated the wing whilst I was up on fo. So instead of sitting down and pump, I was actually pumping up the wing. Prior to this, I was pumping up the wing of the water. Yeah. And I'd I sort do it that way. But yeah, the soda stream bottle is pretty sick. So you also don't have to carry that big pumper around, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. But I heard someone say that the carbon dioxide is like not good for your bladder or something like that, that they used to do that with kites and it wasn't good for the bladder or something like that. Have you had any problems, like with your bladders or anything like that from the, I've only done it like three or four times. The soda, I use a soda stream bottle and I just rigged that up. So it's just a big, like a big CO2 canister. And yeah, I'm sure it's not great for it, but it was I still pump up on the water a lot of the time because to set up the Soda Stream bottles is a pretty specific thing, whereas I can just grab my pump and a dry bag and I'm good to go. , whereas the soda stream, gotta, you gotta attach it onto the boom and, have the hose. And it was just a cool it was an idea that Matt made of on Grant Perry and I worked on for a little while and yeah he, he's on a, he's on an E four, so he filmed it all. It was a pretty cool little clip. Yeah, it still has a lot of function, but yeah, the biggest thing that we noticed was when you did the co2 the wing itself got really cold. So the CO2 was a really super cold air. And it like sort frosted the now the outside of the. The canopy or the inflatable edge of the stratt. Yeah. The leading edge was like, freezing around the belt, probably especially, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not sure how good it is for the long term . I haven't tested it enough times to know, but I've done it four or five or three or four times and it was fine. Prob actually probably four or five times. It didn't it didn't blow anything up. We tested it on land first because we were worried about that. What's gonna happen here? But yeah, it was sweet. It was sweet. Nice. There's I'm sure there'll be like, there's, I feel like there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a potentially a cool market in that, like if you can cuz winging down wind is epic. Yeah. But it takes a bit of wing management. So like I find it easier to downwind with a paddle than I do with a wing. Cause once I have the wing and I'm like letting go of it and it's just, flagged out, it's behind me. , it's all in front of me, I've got, if I change directions, , there's a bit of technique to either, you either swap hands or you've gotta bring it behind you and drop it down behind you and try to, it's there's a bit of, there's a bit of admin to, to keep the wing out of the way and not yes. To be able to go the same lines. Cuz what I find is when I'm wing it, I'm gonna cut across the wind a lot more than I would when I downwind. Even if I've just got flagged out to go straight down wind, the wing wants to blindfold you, essentially. So that's where it came from. The whole deflate thing. I I love the downwind thing, but, and I winging up wind was the free shuttle, but the downwind part, I was like, man, this wing just doesn't get, doesn't get outta the way and back home I'm using a four or five meter wing most of the time when I'm down winding. It'd be easier with a two or a three obviously. it's even easier for you to stay Flighted. . Yeah. What I've been doing for if you're doing, if you're racing downwind, what you can do is just put the wing up over your head and have it almost level so that if you're going faster than the wind, straight down wind it's just of been neutral over your head, so that works pretty well too, but it's, yeah, but it's not really, your sounds get tired. Yeah. Your arms get tired, right? Yeah, not so much cuz you can't really stay in that po you can do that when you're on a good bump and you go really fast, straight down wind. But then once you of come off the bump and you catch the wind again, so you bring the wind, bring it back down, wind, wind back down and stuff like that. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense for like speed going down wind, because you're like, I was thinking too, like the electric pumps are getting pretty good, like battery powered electric pumps. I wonder if you could set up something like that, but then you have they probably can't get wet, so be hard to make that waterproof. So yeah, I've had so many people hit me up and say, oh, you should try this electric pump. And I'm like, yeah, but electric I'm in the water. Like it's going to get wet. If I fall off all of a sudden that's 30, 40 bucks down the drain and electricity and water is something I don't really wanna be too close to. Yeah. Yeahium battery and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The other, I think even better options, you just get a decent pump. Like electric pumps are great, but like you get good pumps that, like hand pumps instead of the ones we stand on and get hand pumps. Yeah. And you can just pump it up. It doesn't take that long. And a lot of the time I'll just deflate the leading edge and leave the middle strut inflated. So it's just pumping up the leading edge. So it's not the end of the world. And water in a pump is a lot less. It's less worse, it's less bad than water in a electric pump . Yeah. And you can make 'em pretty small to the hand pumps maybe. Yeah. Actually it's cause you definitely don't want something that you have to push against your board or something like that cuz it's like everything's moving around. It's more almost like you want two handles that you can push together or something like that. Yeah. Accordion style pump. That'd be pretty serious. Yeah. Oh, there you go. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I just think it's all coming. It's all part of the evolution and I think I was probably people think it's a bit, hard to do or whatever, but I promise you any wingers out there who wanna learn a downwind like and downwind like we do on a sap or. it's way easy to learn to daylight your wing than it is to learn to paddle up . I guarantee you. Yeah. There's this guy, Paul, that he wants to do like channel crossings and stuff like that. And like one of the risks is that your paddle breaks, right? So he's thinking as a backup, he's gonna take a wing and a pump with him, so that just paddle breaks or you can't, the, you can, as long as there's wind you can, wing with it, so yeah. I think a better backup plan is the hand paddles. Have you guys seen those? Oh yeah. They just, you can, cause they're much smaller, like a wing and a pump gets pretty heavy. And that's gonna, that's gonna limit your ability to paddle up, which is probably gonna increase the chances of you breaking your paddle Cause the more you're paddling and the more weight you have to paddle. That's the biggest disadvantage of the deflate downwind.  Is that once you wrap it all up and put it in a backpack, The extra weight of the wing, like it's probably maybe five or six kilos. So it's a lot of water weight too, if it's still wet, right? Yeah, it's a lot of water weight and so I've actually done some of my fastest ever like downwind runs when I've had the wing in my backpack because the extra weight, I can just go faster, but it's way harder to get up. Oh, that, that's an interesting point actually. And I wanted to talk about that as well. And cuz Dave Klo also says in the down windows, when he is going fast, he likes a little bit heavier board just for better, more momentum and stability and more. Yeah. And I found that too actually, that sometimes weight is a good thing and lot of people I talk to is no weight is never good. You just wanted the lightest gear possible, you and it totally depends, like in my experience that's not really true. But what, how do you feel about weight in the board and the foil and so on? Like you said, like wearing weight on your back actually helps with going faster. Yeah, no big time. So the only thing is so Dave, for example, if it's only 10 knots, Dave being heavier compared to me will have a harder time getting up than I will if we're on the exact same foil. If Dave gets up and then, so let's change it up. So let's say it's a really windy day and Dave and I are on the same foil, the same setup, exactly the same, but he's heavier. Once we're up on foil, he should be faster. Ju just based on, and this is not taking into account how you read a bump or how you do all that, and you're pumping ability or any of that. But just on the, if you were going in a straight line together then, and you're next to each other on the exact same bump, Dave should be able to go faster than I can in big conditions, but in smaller conditions on the same foil. If he's slightly under foil, I'm just right, then I'm gonna go quicker. So the weight is a big thing and it's a hard thing to plan for because look, you're not gonna, you're not know for mochi, Oahu, the start of the race is generally a lot lighter than it is at the, in the middle. . So if I'm to, if I'm to wait my board for the start of the race, I'm gonna have a harder time to paddle up. But if I can get up with that heavier board, it's gonna be better for me in the middle. . But the other thing with Malachi is you got the off wind at the end. So you, I think for a race like Malachi where there's lots of different conditions, there's definitely an advantage for the lighter guys and lighter equipment, but not in the middle of the channel, just for the beginning and end. Yeah. Because for the middle of the channel, a big guy can probably make up a lot of ground on the guys that are smaller, but they've gotta be able to get up early and then foil as far as they can, as close they can to the finish. So it's interesting, there's a few things going on fo I can't wait to get into this foil racing because I've done a bunch of downwind fall races here in Australia, but mainly against surf skis in ri canoes and a few mates who are learning. I have, the best race I've had has been over here in Western Australia against the all the WA crew and Marcus and then Z Westwood, but there was heaps of seaweed, so it was like, it was who could foil through the seaweed best  and bit of a like, it it was like a obstacle course, but yeah, I'm looking forward to getting outta Hawaii and getting some. Some good rising and good conditions for sure. Should be fun. Yeah. Not too much seaweed in Hawaii, but yeah, sometimes I've noticed like just a little tiny thing that stuck on your foot makes a big difference in your speed, so huge. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking the way too, like I remember, back in the windsurf racing days, like slalom racing and stuff guys would wear like weighted jackets, like weighted life jackets so they can hold a bigger w sale basically, yeah. So that's another interesting thing, like yeah, where you wouldn't think that it doesn't really make sense, but when you're using he heavy equipment sometimes it's wow, this is nice, yeah. Anyway, but uh, you've seen the, to the to foil guys do it a bunch too lids on a big weighted heavy board putting lead, lead weights on their boards and stuff like that. Yeah. And that just means they can get away with a Basically going faster with the same foil, because I think especially in the toe falling and stuff, we're just in the, tip of the iceberg. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's gonna be like, basically I think toe oil is gonna be a lot smaller than what they are, so you shouldn't have to weight it up. You should just be able to use a smaller foil. But at the moment, the foils have too much lift, and we've gotta weight our gear up to make them work. So it's, I just think the fo they aren't enough. There aren't enough iterations of it yet.   I think it's similar to also, it's similar kind of to having a longer fuselage. It's less pitch sensitive. So if you have a heavier board, it balances out that pitch sensitivity, yeah. True. Lightboard will just, Harder to control the pitch and the heavier board just has so much momentum that you don't have to make as many adjustments, it's like more comfortable ride in a way, absolutely. Absolutely. But there, I think there's something to it, I, I would say lighter is not always better. That's what some people think, but it's not true. Yeah. I don't, I feel like for what most of us are using, like in, in smaller waves the lighter stuff is epic. Cuz a light set up is gonna be really reactive. . But when you start to get too much power and too much speed and that's when you want the heavy stuff, that's when you wanna dull everything down. Yeah. It's like having a nicer suspension or something, like a smoother, smoother ride or something like that. I don't know. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. All right let's talk a little bit more about equipment, like the foils. What have you learned from riding all these different foils and and what, now you're developing the quote foils, like what, what kind of things are you trying to put together and what, I guess when you're down with foiling, you're always trying to create a foil that's easy to pump up on and then fast and easy to control at the maximum speed or, has a high top end speed. So how do you do that? What's, how do you achieve that compromise? Yeah, so I guess if we talk about the range, like we've got our, like the planned range for co, the planned range for code foils is a race wing, which is obviously gonna be super as high aspect as we can get it because we want to be going, be able to go really slow and really fast. with the one foil, like for a race like mochi, you start in pretty much, no bumps. It's like howling offshore, but it's, there's no fetch in the middle. So at the beginning you need that foil that can paddle up easily, and then in the middle you wanna fall. That can go fast cause you're out in the middle of the ocean. There's a lot of stuff going on. And then at the end of the race, you've got an upwind pump. So like you need a foil that can pretty much do it all. And that's what we see a race wing is, I, it's something that it doesn't necessarily we don't want it to turn really well. Like we prefer to add another, two kilometers on the low end and two kilometers on the top end, rather than have it be able to do really nice roundhouse

Ka Lahui Kai went to Tahiti to compete in the 2022 Hawaiki Nui Va'a and did not disappoint. They brought together some of the top paddlers in the sport and had a very impressive finish as a team.  We cannot wait to see what they accomplish next! We sit down with Danny Ching and Kala Diaz to talk about their ama on Day 1, and their ama on Day 2. And then their ama on day 3. And trust - it was something to talk about! We got day by day and dive into their course strategy and if they stuck with it.  We talk about how they kept focused, their nutrition, and also who had the worst hangover on Bora Bora. It's a great episode ya'll. This episode is not sponsored by Athletic Brewing Company...yet. However, the discussion is open with V8 Splash. Support the show

We were so stoked to be able to talk to the winner of the Women's Hawaiki Nui Race: Outrigger Canoe Club. The Crew: Lindsey Shank, Hoku Keala, Donna Kahakui, Anella Borges, Angie Dolan, Rachel Kincaid. The Coach: George Wilson. What a huge accomplishment they achieved in Tahiti! They share their feelings at the start line, their practices leading up to the race as well as some small hurdles they had to overcome after they crossed the finish line.  These women are an inspiration to women outrigger paddlers around the world! It goes without saying, the entire team was so grateful for the outpouring of support from the Tahitian community when they arrived. And especially grateful for the Hinano's after the race!  If you haven't had a chance to watch their race, click the link below to watch the battle on the water between Outrigger Canoe Club and Team Teva. To the team - All we can say is congratulations and thank you guys for sharing this episode with us!je t'aime , Kel and WillWatch Their Race HereSupport the show

This week's episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is another installment of one of our most popular recurring segments: Drinking Kona (and, in this case, Maui Brew) with the Crabbs. As you may have heard, Trevor Crabb is coming off his third straight Manhattan Beach Open victory – two straight with Tri Bourne – and Taylor Crabb has put together a heck of a season alongside AVP Rookie of the Year frontrunner, Taylor Sander. So we had all the boys on to drink some beers, and chat about all things beach volleyball, including: How a Bourne or Crabb has been in every Manhattan Beach Open final since 2015! How a childhood of pickup games at the Outrigger Canoe Club led all of them to their incredible success thus far on the AVP Tour What ACTUALLY happened between Taylor Crabb and John Hyden at AVP Fort Lauderdale Taylor Crabb's first year with Taylor Sander And oh, so much more. ENJOY! (we sure did) *** NEW BOOK ALERT!!! Travis Mewhirter and Kent Steffes just published a seminal work on the history of beach volleyball in their new book, Kings of Summer: The Rise of Beach Volleyball. Check it out on Amazon!! https://www.amazon.com/Kings-Summer-rise-beach-volleyball/dp/B0B3JHFKM7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WGJFWHPBGPQ2&keywords=kings+of+summer+book&qid=1658922972&sprefix=kings+of+summer+book%2Caps%2C1328&sr=8-1 We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/ This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features longtime beach volleyball professional, and seven-time NVL champion Pri Lima.  Lima is one of the ultimate good people in the sport of beach volleyball, a topic we'll get into a lot on the show. Along with her career, which spanned from Brazil to Louisiana to Florida and California, we discuss: - Her current role in the sport as a coach and mentor, expanding her club, Optimum Beach, to franchises in New York, Tennessee, and several locations in Florida.  - What it was like in her prime on the AVP Tour, at the peak of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings' powers, and how most players "were playing for fifth." - How the Brazilian Tour operates, and her experience on it, competing -- and beating -- with players like Maria Antonelli, Carolina Salgado, Taiana Lima.  - How the good people of Lafayette, Louisana made her professional career possible - The value of being a lifelong learner This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love! This episode is also brought to you by Kamena Outdoor! Dave Kamena is a longtime beach volleyball enthusiast and has perfected his outdoor backpack over the previous 17 YEARS! It makes a great Christmas present, or just a great present for yourself. Head over to Kamena Outdoor to get your backpack today! We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates! If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game! Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you. SHOOTS!  

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features the GOAT, Karch Kiraly. Currently the coach of the U.S. Women's National Team, Kiraly has won three gold medals and could very well win another as a coach in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.  This podcast is absolute GOLD -- pun fully intended. We cover the full range of topics, including: - Kiraly's upbringing, and how competing against grown men at 11 years old galvanized his pursuit of finding answers to win, and quickly - His difficult decision to give up beach to compete on the United States National Team, which resulted in his first gold medal at the 1984 Olympics - His wildly successful partnership with Kent Steffes - How he has been able to adapt at every evolution the game, indoor or beach, and remain at the top - SO MUCH MORE If there's one episode y'all should listen to, it should be no surprise that this is the one. Share it out, tell your friends and fellow volleyball fans.  This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love! This episode is also brought to you by Kamena Outdoor! Dave Kamena is a longtime beach volleyball enthusiast and has perfected his outdoor backpack over the previous 17 YEARS! It makes a great Christmas present, or just a great present for yourself. Head over to Kamena Outdoor to get your backpack today! We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates! If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game! Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you. SHOOTS!  

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Angie Akers, the AVP and FIVB Rookie of the Year as a player and the new coach of April Ross and Alix Klineman.  On this episode, we discuss: - Akers' itinerant journey into beach volleyball, from road running to working for the Lehman Brothers to kickboxing to the beach - Her experience coaching for the Netherlands for the previous six years - How she fell into a training group with John Speraw, Jeff Nygaard, and John Hyden as her first training partners - Compiling an accomplished beach career despite not playing beach volleyball until she was 26 - How she became April Ross and Alix Klineman's new coach - A fun training camp to Brazil, and what's next for the A-Team This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love! This episode is also brought to you by Kamena Outdoor! Dave Kamena is a longtime beach volleyball enthusiast and has perfected his outdoor backpack over the previous 17 YEARS! It makes a great Christmas present, or just a great present for yourself. Head over to Kamena Outdoor to get your backpack today! We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates! If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game! Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you. SHOOTS!

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features fan question host Savvy Simo, who asked a wide variety of fan questions for the show. On this episode, Bourne, Mewhirter, and Simo discuss:- What guest did we learn the most from?- How does off-season training differ from in-season training in beach volleyball?- Why is cornhole and drone racing on ESPN but not beach volleyball?- What are the financials of an up-and-comer in beach volleyball? - What are the best ways to learn the Xs and Os of beach volleyball?And much, much more.  Thank you, as always, for watching the show, and thank you all for your fan questions! To submit a question, either each out to us on Instagram (@trammew, @tribourne) or our email, sandcastpodcast@gmail.com.  This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love! We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates! If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game! Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you. SHOOTS!

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Chris Meade, one of three founders of the four-way volleyball game, CROSSNET, that has exploded since its founding in 2017. In this episode, we discuss: How the idea of CROSSNET was hatched, in a 4 a.m. brainstorming session with the founders Convincing a manufacturer to take a chance on three kids with $15,000 in their savings accounts Taking the leap to leave a six-figure job at Uber to launching your own company How CROSSNET has gotten into thousands of schools and is now being retailed in major stores such as Wal Mart The impact it has had on the sport of volleyball The next steps for CROSSNET, including getting it into Canada, Australia, and, yes, swimming pools Thanks as always for listening to SANDCAST, the No. 1 beach volleyball podcast in the world. This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love! We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates! If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game! Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you. SHOOTS!  

In this episode, Andrew interviews one of Hawaii’s most loved volleyball trainers, Alika Williams. Alika Williams was born and raised in Hawaii, and he began playing indoor and sand volleyball in the ninth grade. Alika played at Punahou School and played on the sand at Outrigger Canoe Club and Waikiki Beach. He went on to play in the NCAA for indoor volleyball at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which led to his professional sand volleyball career on tour with the Association of Volleyball Professionals.Alika is now a highly sought volleyball trainer at Hunakai Park in Honolulu. He operates from his own court and works with people of all ages and levels. In 2012, the NCAA opened up scholarships for a women’s division, and he began coaching some now very well-known female players in women’s volleyball, including Carly Kan, Julia Scoles, and Julia Lau. Listen in on this episode as Alika shares from his passion as a volleyball coach, what he loves most about being a coach and watching his students evolve. He shares about his own challenges along the way, the setbacks, and the ways that he developed his own mental toughness as a player who was “undersized” in the world of volleyball. Alika’s personality is super uplifting and this is an episode that will inspire anyone to keep going after their dreams.To find out more about Alika, go to his website, www.hunakaihi.com IG: @hunakaihi

Tom Discusses:- Winning the Sorrento Beach Open in '74 with Marshall Savage over Von Hagen & Menges after he showed up at the beach partnerlesss, his IVA career from '75 - '77, playing in the '76 World Championships with Von Hagen against Menges & Lee when the lighting was crashing, and he was CRUSHING BALLS even though they lost in the finals, going to Hawaii in '75 and playing at the Outrigger Canoe Club with Tommy Haine and pounding 2 balls over the fence, some classic stories from his time on the IVA, his favorite partner on the beach, his 3 favorite beach wins, some classic stories of road trips in his VW van with Greg Lee & Jim Menges to the East coast back in the day, the players he helped get their AAA rating, including Pat Powers, how fun it was to play on the tour in the 70's and the player houses they crashed at after the player parties up and down the coast, and his thoughts on legendary players like Jim Menges, Matt Gage, Buzz Swarts, etc...Support the show (https://godstoghosts.com/donate/)

The relationship between brothers is often too complicated for even brothers to fully understand, let alone communicate to the world beyond, especially when their immediate world beyond knows their life history – where they grew up and went to high school, where they went to college and what they’ve done since. When you throw into that the fact that the two brothers in mind – Taylor and Trevor Crabb – were, for a period of two years, also simultaneously maintaining the most volatile of relationships – business partners, roommates, volleyball partners, running among the same group of friends – it would have been quite curious if they didn’t fight a bit than to the extent they did. So yes, when Taylor and Trevor Crabb played beach volleyball together, as they did at the professional level in 2015 and 2016 and in various tournaments in 2011 and 2013, there were times they didn’t get along. And there were times – almost all the time, really – on the court, that it just didn’t matter. “It’s every partnership,” Taylor said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “The longer you’re with someone, the more stuff is going to get on your nerves. Being brothers just amplifies it that much more. For the most part we were able to put it behind us and perform, and we played great for the year and a half that we were together. But just like every partnership it gets harder and harder as it goes on.” Watch any sibling partnership and you will see much of the same. Nicole and Megan McNamara at UCLA “will say things to each other they would never say to a different partner,” former Bruin assistant coach Jeff Alzina said. But they’re able to snipe at each other, to demand more, because they’re sisters. The McKibbins, Riley and Maddison, are no different. This is just what siblings do. They demand more. Expect more. And besides, it’s not as if a true blood relationship is needed to dig at one another. Growing up, the Hawaiian crew – the Crabbs, Bourne, McKibbins, Brad Lawson, Spencer McLaughlin – simply labeled Taylor “little shit.” Nobody is quicker to talk a little trash to Trevor than Bourne, his own partner, and vice versa. “They still try to give me crap,” Taylor said, “but it’s getting harder to.” The point in their careers is a rare one for siblings of any sort in the sense that, 18 months from now, it is not all that unlikely to see both Crabbs in the Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020. Taylor and Jake Gibb are the No. 2 team in the U.S., Bourne and Trevor No. 3. “You really gotta stay present in it,” Bourne said. “It’s such a long process. As much as our sport weighs on Olympics, you want that label, that’s everyone’s dream, it’s literally one tournament of your whole career. If you get caught up in two years of that certain event putting pressure on every other event, you’re really wasting your time. You just had a great finish on the world tour? Enjoy that. Be there.” And so the process begins. Taylor and Gibb are in Sydney this week for a three-star, their first event of the Olympic push and of the 2019 season. Trevor and Bourne skipped Sydney, focusing instead on a four-star in Doha the following week. By 2020, three kids from the Outrigger Canoe Club could be donning the red, white, and blue. “It’s pretty nuts,” Bourne said. “We were – well, we still are – cocky little shits.” You see, whether the birth certificates say so or not, this Hawaiian bunch is a family. And, like most competitive siblings, the trash talk never stops, no matter what side of the net you’re on.

Phil Dalhausser stands, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “That,” he says, “looks so boring.” He’s watching a young man play volleyball by himself, tossing a ball, hitting it line, tossing another, hitting a cut, tossing another, hitting a high angle. Over and over and over, nearly two hours on end. Many of the passerby on the Manhattan Beach Pier that day could have reasonably concluded one of a few things: the guy was either bored, as Dalhausser suggested, had no friends to play with, or was just borderline crazy. There was, however, a fourth option. Tri Bourne was actually having the time of his life. Weeks later, Bourne is in Bear Valley, California. He skipped out of AVP San Francisco early. It’s tough to be around the sport you once dominated, watching others who had never beaten you win titles you’re sure would be yours for the taking. So he’s visiting his sister, Kai, and his nieces and nephew instead. They’re barefoot minions, those three, ages two, four and six, charging around the forest, biking down hills, rumbling through creeks and swimming in the lake nearby. It’s suggested that they’re already addicted to exercise, and it’s also pointed out that it’s not the worst addiction to have. Bourne purses his lips, looks down. “It is,” he says, “when the one thing you can’t do, is exercise.”   ***   This is not a comeback story. No, no. That’s not how Bourne views it, and it’s not how he’d like you to view it, either. This is a reinvention, a rebirth, though not of the holy sort. Tri Bourne isn’t returning to the AVP Tour, to beach volleyball, the same person he was when he and John Hyden finished second in the world rankings in 2016. He’s coming back as Tri Bourne 2.0. More well-rounded. A different person with a different perspective. A mindset that goes far deeper than pass, set, hit. A skill set that is relevant east of the Pacific Coast Highway, too. Weeks before the onset of the 2017 season, Bourne and Hyden were registered to play the Fort Lauderdale Major. Bourne was still on the heels of ankle surgery, but all seemed fine. His mobility was good enough, jump felt no different, cardio was up to his world-class standard. Except there was something going on with his hands. He’d block a ball and his hands would sting and throb, eventually swelling to the point that he wore mitts at practice. He thought it was carpal tunnel syndrome, where the hands experience tingling and numbness from a pinched nerve. He got it checked out. The doctors didn’t know what it was, just that it was not carpal tunnel. Neither did the next doctors. Nor the next. It wouldn’t be until Bourne went to the University of Utah, site of the United States Olympic Committee’s medical center, that he would receive a diagnosis. It wasn’t carpal tunnel syndrome, the doctors confirmed. It was an autoimmune disease, something called myositis, which means, generally speaking, inflammation of the muscles that you use to move your body. It means Kryptnonite to the boy who grew up paddling, surfing, canoeing, playing volleyball, basketball, hiking – “just charging,” as he would put it. The boy whose life was, to that point, based on movement, was no longer allowed to move. “Basically,” he said, “I just had to shut it down.” Friends began to see changes in him. He wasn’t quite the same. Something was off. Because of course something was off. Bourne’s entire life, entire existence, had been flipped upside down and inside out. “You know when it’s raining and you have to sit in the house all day?” he said. “Yeah, that was me, every day. It was basically that. That’s what it was like. Everyone who knows me knows I’m pretty damn ADD. I come from a family that’s pretty much addicted to working out, that’s definitely a thing. Yeah, man, it’s intense. That’s why I had to go internal with everything because it was a lot, it was getting to be too much. It was, uh, it sucked. It sucked for a while, because I still had that drive, coming out of the Olympic qualifier, and my ego was just huge, I was ready to be the top guy in the U.S. “I was still ready to work hard, but what could I do? It was ‘Do nothing.’” He couldn’t surf, so he would body-surf occasionally, until his heart rate went too high and he’d have to sit back down. He couldn’t play volleyball, and watching film was almost as tortuous as blocking with the mitts. He couldn’t eat, well, anything. Anything that could potentially inflame his muscles – dairy, gluten, alcohol, just about everything not named broccoli, rice, and organic chicken breasts – was removed from his diet. The snacks in his pantry shifted spectacularly, from chips and salsa to dry-roasted peanuts and pumpkin seeds. His weight plummeted, nearly going south of 170 pounds.   “It was definitely one of the tougher things to see someone go through,” Trevor Crabb, Bourne’s partner for AVP Manhattan, said. “You can’t imagine missing out on a whole year and a half of your job and your love. Seeing him last year, when it first started, basically his muscles in his arms were as skinny as my legs. It was crazy just to see how his body changed so drastically.” It was, for an athlete who had competed in 13 different countries in a single year and took a bronze at the World Tour Finals, rock bottom. But that’s the thing about rock bottom. The only direction you can go is up.   ***   It began with the livestream. The AVP was expanding its coverage to Facebook live on stadium court. Bourne was asked if he might want to commentate. Seeing as he didn’t have anything else going on, sure, he could do that. It was an easy way to stay relevant and involved in the game, while expanding his skill set as a human being. What he discovered was that, while he may have been a little rough around the edges in terms of live commentating – considering he had never once done the job and had precisely zero training prior to his debut in New York of 2017, he did, objectively speaking, an excellent job – he found he quite liked talking about the sport. Later that year, he teamed up with a journalist and launched his own podcast, SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, which has since become a popular listen among the beach volleyball community, to the point that Bourne is now lightly chided about being the podcast guy rather than one of the world’s most formidable players. While his old identity as an elite athlete was one he missed, to be sure, it was also fun to learn, expand, grow. He began reading, picking up books on everything from Georges St. Pierre’s memoir to one titled “Becoming Supernatural,” which details, per the book description, “that we have the capacity to tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and receive more orderly coherent streams of consciousness and energy; that we can intentionally change our brain chemistry to initiate profoundly mystical transcendental experiences; and how, if we do this enough times, we can develop the skill of creating a more efficient, balanced, healthy body, a more unlimited mind, and greater access to the realms of spiritual truth.” Right. No book was off limits. He even wrote a forward for one, to be published later this year.   When Bourne was going to come back, he wasn’t going to return the same player or man he was. He was going to be something entirely new. His skill set continued to expand, enrolling in hosting classes to taking on a meditation challenge in which he had to meditate 45 minutes a day. The kid who couldn’t stop moving? Meditating 45 minutes a day? “Eventually I got the hang of it. It naturally progressed, and I don’t have that deep anxious feeling where my heart rate’s going up from being anxious just to do something,” he said. “It’s good.” The time for sitting and thinking is, to the delight of the beach volleyball world, over. Weeks ago, Bourne was cleared by his doctors to begin exercising again. Just light stuff. Nothing serious. But this is Bourne we’re talking about. He got in the gym, then in the sand. He felt fine, fine enough to register for FIVBs in Moscow and Vienna. He nearly pulled the trigger on Hermosa but decided against it. He had just begun a new treatment – “half great white shark, half puma stem cells,” he likes to joke – and didn’t know how his body would react. The initial plan was to wait for Hawaii, the AVP’s final, invitation-only stop of the year. But still: This is Bourne. He couldn’t help himself. He texted Crabb, his best friend since the days of the Outrigger Canoe Club in Honolulu, Hawaii. “It would be fun,” Bourne said in a text. That was all Crabb needed. He was in. They were in. Tri Bourne was back on the beach. “I was bored as hell this past year and a half,” Bourne said. “Trevor was the one friend who came over the most and spent the most time with me, and I was pretty boring, because I couldn’t do the activities we normally do. He’d just sit on the couch with me and just be dumb.” Because sometimes, being dumb is the best rehab a doctor could prescribe. They do not expect to win Manhattan, despite the last three Manhattan finals featuring one of them every year. Making a Sunday would be an accomplishment. It could be a long-term partnership or just a fun experiment, a welcome back party. It’ll likely be emotional, hearing his name called. His wife, Gabby, is already prepping for the inevitable waterworks to come. But when the first ball is served, the past year and a half is finished, done with, over. It may be a new Tri Bourne coming back to the beach, but he’s still here, he said, “to slay the dragons.”

Maddison McKibbin was finished. Finished with volleyball. Finished with being overseas. Finished with not being paid. Finished with the shady ownership of international volleyball teams. Finished with it all. He had played the game long enough, beginning at Hawaii's famed Outrigger Canoe Club then onto Punahou School, where he became a three-time state champ, which preceded four years at USC, where he made a pair of Final Four appearances. And now there he was, in Greece, looking at his bed, where a random Brazilian man was laying, fast asleep. Evidently, the owner of McKibbin's team had signed a new outside hitter. He didn't tell McKibbin, though apparently he did give the new Brazilian outside the keys to the apartment. That was it. McKibbin was out. He was going home. Was going to finish his Master's Degree. Was getting out of volleyball.  Time for something else.  Riley McKibbin, Maddison's older brother of two years, had other plans. He was going to play in Italy. Would Maddison want to come, just to kick it for three months, drink some wine and hang out in Italy? For that, sure, he could delay grad school for a few months to hang in Italy. So long as he wasn't playing volleyball, he was in. And then Riley had another idea. “What if we give beach a try?” They had the talent. There was no questioning that. They had been raised in uber-competitive Hawaii, alongside Taylor and Trevor Crabb, Spencer McLaughlin, Brad Lawson, Tri Bourne, competing occasionally against AVP legends Stein Metzger and Kevin Wong and Mike Lambert. Both of the McKibbins had played in FIVB Youth tournaments, and they proved they were good enough indoors to compete and make a living at a professional level. The transition from indoor to beach sounds simple enough. It's a similar game with similar skillsets, where the underlying principle is the same: pass, set, hit. It, of course, was not. They weren't entirely sure what the state of their beach skills was, so they bought a handful of AVP volleyballs from Costco and exiled themselves to a court in Venice Beach, a few zip codes away from any serious players. And so there it was that you could find two professional volleyball players, practicing in Venice Beach, legitimately mortified that someone might see them dusting off the rust of a game they hadn't played for the better part of a decade. “We couldn't even hit it over the net,” Riley said in an earlier interview. “The transition from indoor to the beach is so hard. We're both indoor players, and making that switch is a lot harder than people think.” Unless, of course, you're the McKibbins. In the first qualifier they entered, not long after scraping the rust off their beach games, in New York City in 2015, they qualified. And thus the Beard Bros were born. Their relationship is both like that of any other siblings – fighting and squabbling wrapped in brotherly love – and yet it is also nothing like that of any other siblings. The McKibbins are partners in everything they do. They're roommates. They're business partners. They're AVP partners. They shoot the wildly popular McKibbin Volleyball videos together. They vlog together. They play together. Even when Maddison won AVP San Francisco while Riley sat out with an injury, even when he was fielding calls from Reid Priddy, even when he had no shortage of partner options, there was never any question whom he would be playing with: Riley McKibbin. “Riley,” he said on SANDCAST, “is the reason I'm playing volleyball right now.” And so it is that Maddison, so long as Riley is healthy, will not play with another who's last name is not McKibbin. They're a package deal. Whether they're vlogging about the frustrations of volleyball, filming a tutorial from Kelly Reeves on the nuances of bumpsetting, or practicing against Sean Rosenthal and Chase Budinger, they're going to do it together.  The only thing, for now, that it seems isn't on their agenda?  Shaving.   

This Creating CoPOWERment® Radio episode features Robyn Singh, the author of "Paddling Home: A Journey Back to Self," an auto-biographical and spiritual journey, a personal story of synchronicity, healing and reconnection. In Robyn's words: "Outrigger canoeing was not just a competitive sport for me, It was an ancient and cultural remembrance, a feeling of Oneness, and the chosen vehicle that would transport me back to biological roots, my spiritual home and more importantly an awareness and awakening to my higher self." To connect with Robyn: http://www.rubyksingh.com; Haumea Creations on FB. Born in Brisbane, Australia, Robyn was adopted from birth and grew up on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Blessed and raised by loving parents her family was a global mixed plate, consisting of several different cultural backgrounds, including Indian, German and Maori roots. In her early 20’s, Robyn found her way to Hawai‘i through the sport of Outrigger Canoeing. It was not only a sport for her but the vessel that would eventually bring her back to her biological roots, back to her beloved Hawaii and to an awakening and awareness of the higher Self. Through a journey of intention, synchronicity, healing and remembrance Robyn shares her interesting story as an example of how spirit weaves through our lives and can guide us through our personal story if we stop long enough to take notice and lead us to what we are seeking, essentially the essence of our Self. A bit like putting the jigsaw pieces together. Robyn has been paddling since 1990 and raced in Australia, Tahiti, New Zealand and Hawai‘i. With twelve Moloka‘i to Oahu crossings under her belt, and two back-to-back Moloka‘i Outrigger World Championship wins, during this competitive period, her Outrigger paddling was enhanced by training and racing Olympic Flatwater Kayak in Australia, also competing internationally in New Zealand and Sweden to widen her experience. Eventually transitioning from competitor to coach, as a Physical Educator, she coached a High School Sports Excellence Program and eventually moved to the islands as Head Coach of Hawaii Canoe Kayak Team for 5 years. Accompanying the youth paddlers of Hawaii to National Championships on the mainland, she was also on the coaching staff at the USA Junior Development Camps held annually at the Olympic Training Centers in Chula Vista, CA and Lake Placid, NY. Robyn also coached women’s outrigger at the Surfer's Paradise Club and a season at the Outrigger Canoe Club of Hawai‘i. Robyn is a teacher at the core of her being, is versed in several healing practices and is currently sharing her love of yoga and meditation with others. Recently immersing in the practice of Nia, she has just completed a white belt certification and continues to enhance the joy of life, through movement, dance, paddling and being in nature.

Greetings, Succotashians! I think this may be a record of time between episodes for the show. Apologies for the delay. Work, mostly, and I'm three weeks into a new diet which took some reconfiguring of my energy reserves to get the show done. Good news is that the diet's going well - dropped about 15 pounds in 3 weeks - but now Succotash is bloated. This week's epi runs about an hour and 15 minutes. We have much clippage to share, a funny song by Britcom Isabel Fay that's burning up the internet, a classic spot from our friends at Henderson's Pants, and our Burst O' Durst with our Ambassador to The Middle WIll Durst. The core of our show this time around is my interview with Hawaiian comedian David Lee. I first heard about David from his father when I was vacationing on Oahu last year. His dad's a bartender at the Outrigger Canoe Club and as we got to talking, he seemed a little less than pleased that his boy was pursuing the comedy, and was doing it in Colorado Springs of all places. Being a supporter of those who have chosen the noble profession, I was determined to get David a little attention, so I tracked him down and we got this epi's interview recorded via Skype a few days ago. His journey to the comedy stage is an interesting one, especially when you consider that not many stand-ups get their start as a drug dealer. David reveals that and more in our chat. I wanted to give a nudge to some of the places you can get Succotash nowadays, in addition to the omnipresent iTunes. Stitcher Smart Radio is a great way to stream our show to your device, whether you're on an Android or iOS gadget. And each episode gets rebroadcast over at Clutch & Wiggle Entertainment Radio, so you can pick us up there. Then there are a couple of other apps to check out as well. I've been talking up Podbay, which taps directly into iTunes' podcast library and stream whatever you select to your iDevice. And now Apple has just launched their own podcast app, which allows you to select, stream and/or download your favorite shows. Enough biz. Let's get to the stuff. Here's what's what on Epi28: Probably ScienceYour affable podscientists Matt Kirshen, Brooks Wheelan and Andy Wood return, along with their guest Bil Dwyer of TV's Battlebot fame. Thesse guys have such a good time kicking around some every day sorts of stories that this clip doesn't even get into the meaty, sciencey part of the show. (Incidentally, I'm reviewing this particular epi of PS as part of This Week In Comedy Podcasts over on Splitsider this week!) I Am IdiotHoward, Ben and Keith continue to crankout the p’casts and give us Yanks hope that not everyone in the UK is as sophisticated and cultured as that English accent would have us believe. Proudly ResentsBilling itself as “The Cult Movie Podcast”, this show tends to be pretty funny, thank to host Adam Spiegelman and his guests, who are frequently comedians. In this case, guest Bobcat Goldthwait gets together for Part 1 of a two-part interview. The clip we have features Bobcat talking about how some famous people got in (and out) of his directorial debut, the cult curio Shakes The Clown. Rob & Joe ShowRob Maher and Joe Robinson do their show live every Monday night on http://RobAndJoeShow.com. They’ve got features and guests, just like a real radio show. In the clip they've sent along, they’re talking about a potential new snack food: Dolphin! Sal & Angelo PodcastLocal (to me) podcast by San Francisco comics Sal Calanni and Angelo recently featured an interview with standup Kellen Erskine. We feature a clip with Kellen relating his perspective on the topic of auditioning for TV shows like Last Comic Standing and America's Got Talent. Thank You Hater by Clever Pie & Isabel FayPeople complain that the internet has become a place where people get away with posting outrageous things to others, mostly because they’re anonymous and there’s no retribution. Isabel Fay is a comedian in Britain who has decided to go after her faceless detractors in song. I wonder how many of the trolls Isabel is talking about in Thank You Hater have seen her video? <p><p>Electric Bonnoland (3:21)<br>Chris Bonno w/guest Dean Haglund<br>That last clip was actually from a video and so is this next one, although Chris Bonno has done podcasts before. This is going to be a very weird three minutes and twenty one seconds because this is truly meant to be seen – but truthfully, even then, it’s pretty odd. Chris’ guest is friend-of-the-show and TV’s Dean Haglund, from the Chillpak Hollywood Hour. The video’s on YouTube but I’ll have it posted at SuccotashShow.com as well.</p></p>   Electric Bonnoland Comedian/musician/artist Chris Bonno has done audio podcasts before but Electric Bonnoland is video and truly weird. Chris’ guest is friend-of-Succotash and TV’s Dean Haglund, from the Chillpak Hollywood Hour. We've got the meaty part of the audio on our podcast, but Electic Bonnoland has to be seen to be...seen. Mimberz & The A-Hole (2:41)<br>I don’t know a lot about Mimberz and The A-Hole, a couple of guys podcasting “proudly out of Tampa, Florida”. But they’re past 50 epis now and they’re not afraid to talk about anything. Here’s a taste…   Mimberz & The A-Hole I don’t know a lot about Mimberz and The A-Hole, a couple of guys podcasting “proudly out of Tampa, Florida”. But they’re past 50 epis now and they’re not afraid to talk about anything. Click in for a taste of MATA… The Rigid FistNew to the podcast scene is The Rigid Fist, an offering from Britain hosted by Kat Soren. (CORRECTION: The show's from Australia! Sorry, Kat!) I don’t know a whole lot about it, just that it’s getting some early talk up from some of the guys that like us — Royal & Doodall, Gee & Jay — the usual suspects. It seems to be Kat by himself but I’ve gotten the one clip. According to the homesite, there’s Uncle Morty and then various random guests. Kat sent in a rather sketchy boyhood tale. That's pretty much going to do it for your load of Succotash this time around. Don't hog the plate - when you're done, be sure to pass it around! — Marc Hershon