Episode Transcript:

Luc Moore (00:01.518)
you

Welcome to the Wing Life podcast, where we talk about wing foiling and the lifestyles of those who enjoy this great sport. All right, Mike, my friend, hey, it's nice to see you again. And Hugh, it's great to meet you for the first time. Welcome to the show. I'm super excited to be chatting about you guys, with you guys today about Shift Lock and the Nova Pro and some other things. I know we're going to go down some rabbit holes and that's what we love about it. So super stoked to see you both and yeah, let's get into it.

Awesome. Great to see you gain, Luke. And yeah, loving what you're doing with podcasts. So just, um, you know, avid listener and I know a lot of friends are as well and love what you and Frank and the team are doing with the, just pushing all that information and sharing what is quite a technical sport with, with everybody. So really appreciate it. And yeah, stoked to have Hugh too. Yes. Awesome. Hey Hugh. Yeah. All right. First time meeting. Yeah, absolutely. First time meeting. Um, so maybe what we can do is, is, is give a brief intro.

as to what you do at North. Yeah, OK. Yeah, so I'm the director of design and engineering at North. So I kind of tend to deal with all of the tactile things that are either in your hands or on your feet, you know, bindings or whether it's handles or control systems or anything hardware based. That's me. So not the kite design or the wing design or the boards. And then I also.

We have a good development team. So I, I'm one of them and we oversee all of the products and the look and the feel and making sure the functionality is, is where it needs to be. So, yeah, that's beautiful. Nice. How long in your career have you been doing something, something of this nature? Oh yeah. I think it's, it's coming up. It's probably over 20 years now that I've been involved. So yeah, no, it's been fun. I've been in.

Luc Moore (02:02.286)
I've been at about four or five different companies over those years. And you certainly learn something from every experience, you know, from smaller companies where you're doing a little bit of everything right through to the bigger corporate companies where you just learn so much about the structure and you end up becoming a bit more specialized, you know? Because shift lock like that is very innovative, brand new to the market.

Um, I think that is a technology that could help revolutionize and push the wings in a completely different area. Like, how did you guys come up with this concept? Um, and did it come from riders, internal team, people, um, just riders? Like, let's, uh, let's check that out. Yeah. Yeah. So it was like a go the long story. I'll go for the medium story. So we've got a really cool community of, uh,

of Kites and Winners around us that, you know, we're always gas bagging on the beach, just talking about things. And this particular guy, Jerome, is actually a product designer also for a very successful New Zealand company, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. And he had this idea of why couldn't you, you know, have infinite positions of the handles because...

On the beach, we're always talking to people about, you know, short handles are better, long handles are better, but I like it further forward. Um, with our initial offering of Nova wings, um, everyone probably wouldn't notice we had quite long front handles and this was quite different to a lot of the shorter ones. So what we were kind of targeting was people getting into the sport by having the front handle come quite a long way towards the leading edge.

Then when you're on your board, on your knees, going from the front D -Power handle to reach that first handle was really easy. And we'd heard that beginners were struggling to do that. So that was kind of one end of the front handle. And then the other end was that we really liked to make sure that all of our wings, all of the sizes, if you held onto the back of the front handle, then it was perfectly balanced. So you could fly one handed for those occasions where you just chop hopping, you know, you don't want to...

Luc Moore (04:20.878)
you're riding chop or swell, but you're not necessarily riding a long wave on the front D power handle. So we were having these conversations and people were like, yeah, but then the reach to the backs too far or, or when I put my harness loop on, then, you know, it's not balanced right. So when Jerome sort of planted the seed, we were like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. And we all kind of discussed it internally and he was.

He's actually a sail repeater as well. And so to his credit, he, he actually went and made the first prototype himself and brought it down to Raglan. And we went out in the tide and tried it. And that was, it was pretty rudimentary for a start, but it proved the concept that it could work. And yeah, when we all discussed it, it was a no brainer. Wasn't it Mike? We were just like, yeah.

Absolutely. I think one of the biggest challenges we get from the riders is handle position, soft handles, hard handles, whereas everyone's so customized, everyone's got a different position where they want to put their hands along the strap. So from our perspective, it was like, how do we cater to this eclectic group of customers who demand and require such different settings?

for their wings. So yeah, that was kind of the design brief as we went into it. It's like, how do we make it affordable? How do we make it durable? And how do we make it easy to customize? OK. That makes complete sense. So then when the idea came and that concept came, how was designing that building? What kind of materials were you looking at? Because you're not just looking for innovate. It has to be functional. It has to last a long time. It has to not tear off.

Can we walk through some of those initial concepts and how it progressed? Well, what we really wanted to do is we didn't want to downgrade any of our wings performance. And I think that was probably number one. I can bring a new technology, but it has to move everything forward. You can't be digressing in some areas. So that was number one for us. And we really wanted to prove that, A, it was strong enough. And so right from the get go, we were actually

Luc Moore (06:41.838)
load testing, 3D printed and CNC parts and making up initial tracks and making sure that we could make it strong enough. And then another one of the concerns we had was that what if you lose that nice rigidity that everyone seems to be liking and that connection between your wing. We couldn't have the handles more floppy because of it. And so that was how we stumbled it across rather than having the single bolt rope.

And all of our designs, I've got a handle here, so all of our designs, it had to be really wide, the plastic parts to support and it was pushing on the strut. And we were worried that, you know, there'd be some wear points and things like that. So we pretty quickly discovered that a single bolt rope, well, it wasn't as stable. So we went to the double and then it was playing around with what was the optimal width between those double for, you know, all the different sizes of struts.

Definitely. Can I just interrupt for a second for the listeners? Because I think it's a good point is just explaining what is, what is bolt rope. I think anyone's been sailing, you know, you know, North has parent companies, North sales. So we kind of came from that sailing background, a lot of us within the development design team. So if anyone's been sailing, most people know what the bolt rope system is. It's the way that you hoist your mainsail through the mast and it's effectively a track system that Hugh's talking about. So.

Uh, you know, it's a proven robust method to fix the sales for mast. And, um, we just basically wanted to adapt that method to the wing, which is what he's been talking about. And instead of just doing a single boat rope, we went to a double boat rope. We call the system, the shift lock modular track system. But the reality is it's heritage is, is from sailing is from, and it's, it's a proven. Technology that's been around forever. Okay. That's really good for people to know. Yep. And within that.

You know, it was great that we stumbled across that with the, with the backing we have from North technology group, because we could call on, you know, some of the best sale designers in the world to help us out with what would be the best bulk rope material. And because of our affiliation with North sales, they already had all these materials in stock. And so, you know, it was, how do we figure out what size bulk rope is optimal because we didn't want the handles to sit higher. We wanted them to sit the same.

Luc Moore (09:09.582)
distance from the alley that it is now. And so there was, there was a whole lot of different areas we went down. And we also even, we even told up to make the bulk rope from, um, extrusion plastic, you know, we were like, well, maybe we don't use, you know, the traditional construction. And so we went down that rabbit hole even that was a couple of years ago now even.

Um, yeah, I must admit, if this, this hasn't been the shortest project since I was going to ask, how long has it been a marathon? Cause I think everyone had so many opinions. You know, we're super lucky. We we've got, um, Oli summer lat, who's our product manager for foils. Um, he's a, um, not a cool, um, engineer. And then we've got, uh, Steve Calder is one of the top North sales, um, big boat designers in the world. He's, he's an integral part of our, of our North North foil team.

And then Dave Little, he's done multiple America's Cups and is just an insane sort of material specialist, construction techniques, that sort of side. So we've been really unique to bring this eclectic group of people together to brainstorm. And everyone had so many different ideas and we went down so many different rabbit holes to kind of get there. But I think, yeah, I think the overall, I think it's now proven, you know, the system's durability.

And we did a lot of cyclic testing, load testing, um, off the water as well as obviously the on water testing, but, and we didn't get any sort of excessive failure or where, um, and I think we're able to, you can probably see it in some of the videos were able to go up to 700 kilograms on the, on the breaking load strength. So I was curious about that. Yeah. Between the two bar and 700 KG, but we also undid one bar end and pulled on the, on the, on a, only a single bar end at an angle.

I think we got up to, what was it? Here was up to about 250, wasn't it? No, no. It was still well over. Yeah. It was like, don't cry me on that. It was 400 or so kg still just on the one. Oh, wow. Okay. So rest assured that puppy's not falling off. Yeah. And initially we were happy because, you know, normally there's spread between two. Initially we were kind of thinking we'd be happy with 300 kgs, which is...

Luc Moore (11:29.902)
You know what we normally do for control systems is 360 for kites, so a similar sort of thing. And keeping in mind that you generally have two handles, except for the boom, you obviously have two connection points. But it exceeded all of our expectations and more this way. I think one of the second concerns, other than obviously the load testing, was attaching a handle. It's going to be floppy. It's going to be unstable. But Hugh, you kind of worked through that, didn't you?

Yeah, we made about 40 different prototypes. It seems really simple when you look at it now. You're like, oh, of course, you know, you'd do that. But it took us quite a few iterations to get to where we were now. And it is very, you can't tell the difference between our grip lock handles, so our ones that are screwed to an insert that is sewn to that strut, and these ones. They have the same amount of stiffness, and you get the same amount of control out of your wing, which is.

Which is so important because it's that really tight connection to your wing. You're looking for a really secure, direct feel. So what we've ended up with is if you can feel the wing twisting, you can feel all those micro adjustments as the wing, as a gust hits the wing, you can really feel every little movement. And I guess that's a large part of why the shape, like you with the oval shape, Hugh, maybe you want to touch on that? Yeah, like I was curious about, like in order to make that thing so it's as rigid as it is, I'm assuming there's...

There's height, there's width, there's how it ties down. Like are there any other factors that come into making sure that this thing's not moving around? Yeah, I mean, there's obviously the track itself. So the construction of that and how it was stitched to stay really rigid to the strut itself. And we didn't want to add any weight. So I know there's been a lot of questions online about, yeah, but it has to weigh more, you know? And you've now got this track system and the handles.

But that was also something that we made sure. This whole system with the handles and the track is actually lighter weight than our original grip lock handles, including the track. And so as I said before, we tried molding the whole track, but it was too heavy and it didn't fold down. It didn't pack down as well. So that was another big objective for us. And so yeah, we have been able to do a net.

Luc Moore (13:56.91)
That's taken the same length. Like say if you take two 500 millimeter handles on say a six meter wing and you've got two hundred five, you know, 500 millimeter grip lock, which is our previous system of rigid handles that we had on the regular Nova. Um, and so, yeah, we were stoked to be able to do that. Um, these are actually carbon fiber tubes on the inside that come as standard. And then.

what Mike was talking about the extra control we've taken from our navigator control system where we have a finger bar that is that is separately bonded to the tubing on the underside and on our control system because you're always riding on the same side of the bar it's actually offset but on the shift lock system it's symmetric because obviously you come in from both sides of the handle when you tack you come in from the other side.

But by having it overlaid, it is extremely comfortable. And it also gives you more, like if the wing is trying to twist when it's not just circular, then you have that extra added bit of control. And fatigue was a big one as well, wasn't it? Yeah, for sure. And that was why we didn't choose to do, make like an extrusion. We didn't, we chose not to make the carbon fiber that shape.

We've actually made the finger bar from another material which is really comfortable, like your hands kind of sink into it, yet it's still rigid enough to give you that twist control.

That makes sense. Okay. So then instead, so in order to make it lighter, you use better and new materials to do that. And then some new tech. Yeah. Okay. And the other, the other benefit is that having that small ridge is if you can see my fingers, sometimes you hold onto a, onto a bar and you really get tired, fatigued, front arm tension. A lot of people get really tired because you've got to remember you've got your hands up above your shoulders. All that blood flows below your heart.

Luc Moore (16:00.334)
And you start to get a little bit of cramping, RSI, that sort of thing. So we really looked at the ergonomic side is how do you reduce the amount of loading on your hands? And that was kind of the rock climbing. If you want to touch on that. Yes. Yeah, that makes, yeah. Yeah. It's just naturally your hands. They aren't perfectly circular. You know, it's more conical, your grip. And I think more and more people are learning rather than having the death grip on their handle. It's actually better to...

just hold it with a bit of a claw shape and just relax into it. And then you're going to last a lot longer. And once again, that was why we wanted a bit of give in that conical shape. We didn't want to, you know, extrude the carbon fiber in that shape because then it has no give either. So if you see rock climbers will quite often hold on to a ledge just with, with the fingertips and that's, that's the concept here is having that higher smaller ridge at the top.

is that you can hold on for longer without getting that arm fatigue. And having a bit of comfort, yeah. Just some little things like not having the seam on the bottom side, you know, because that's where you're gripping. So the seam is quite unique that we've made on here. You'll see it's actually stitched together before, and it's laminated to the inside tubing. And so that stitching, this is the part that will wear when your wing is upside down.

And some people put their wings up that way and tied off to a tree or something. And so we wanted, although that's where our join is, we wanted it to be really robust. So we did a whole lot of different abrasion tests and things between the different construction methods. And this part is made inside out and it's stitched. So when they turn it in the other way again, the stitching ends up being on the inside. And so you'd have to wear through all of that material before you would actually get to it.

And we've done. Easy on the hands. Yeah. Yeah. Where we get a scalpel and we cut away. And even if we cut that whole lot away, it's bonded so well that it still doesn't peel away. So we've put a lot of effort into. So Hugh, this is a tech side. This is why I love Hugh. I mean, literally this guy's gone through all the wear tests and literally measured how much more durable this is in comparison to a standard EVA with the wrap.

Luc Moore (18:23.342)
and a sand. One, it looks better, but most importantly, two, it's a lot more durable. And that all comes from, he was talking about a Navigator Pro kiting control system. It's just being able to leverage off Hugh's experience in the kiting side, it's been massive. Because I love the hard handles. I love them. But other brands that I have been able to try so far,

It's the shape of it that starts to hurt the wrists and forearms and different things. And it's also how stiff the outside feels. You want a bit of padding, you want a bit of a hook. So I can see how this thing would make it more ergonomic because that's the one thing I like about soft handles is that if it's shaped the right way, it's a bit more ergonomic and it's not as hard on my body, but you lose, there's one aspect of that soft handle that you lose. So this is quite, quite interesting.

We kind of call it the best of both worlds, you know, for us. And there's quite a few points on this control system where we kind of said, look, we are competing with soft handles and we all firmly believe in this. We call them hard handles, rigid handles, but the reality is they're designed to have some of the same benefits of the soft handle. Okay. Yeah. If we want to go into the ends a little more, you'll see this is actually an over -molded TPU and there's this ribbing, which actually, if you impact that, it will squash over.

And it has inherent give. And so this took away when the rigid handles first came out, first thing people were worried about was when they get onto their board that it's going to damage their board. So this stuff that you overmold actually does away with that. And the other thing it does is it makes a super comfortable position for when you're riding like this. We actually made this little thumb dimple here.

that you can just nestle your thumb into the end there and it feels super comfortable. So. And, and, and rigid, like it's, it's another key feature here is that TPU when wet provides a huge amount of grip. Um, so instead of bricking onto a carbon and or a plastic again, which is quite slippery. When you first ride the shift lock system, you'll be amazed. Like when you go into attack or you bring your hand or you're just riding in sort of pistol grip mode, you'll be amazed at how grippy.

Luc Moore (20:39.437)
the TPU is. And it's really important for us to have large, generous radiuses all the way through the inside here as well. So you can grab it like this for your pistol grip. Or we put a lot of effort into making sure there's nothing sharp. It's all quite smooth, this whole inner section. So you can grab it there if you want to. And so for folks at home that are just looking at this on audio, or sorry, listening to this on audio,

Uh, Hugh was just going, Hugh was going over the ends of the actual, uh, handle. And then we're talking about the softness of that. So, so that is where, but you can also hop on YouTube if you want to see, see this video in action. But, uh, if you're just on audio, that's what we're doing right now. Yeah. I mean, if, if anyone wants to have a look as well, just please feel free to check out the website, just have a look for shift lock or just do a Google search for North and shift lock. Um, most of those selling points, most of those features we've tried to list on the website. Um, just so you can.

so you can go through point by point. Beautiful. OK, so we've gone over the track system. Now we've gone over some of the basics of how you guys have created these new handles that are more ergonomic, lighter. So we've compensated in new tech, like creating new tech in order to be able to solve that problem. Our next phase then is snapping these puppies on. Like how easy is it to snap on? How easy is it to snap off?

It's, it's a really, really good point, Luke. I think it was a, it was a large part that it's an interaction between the rider and the product. And, you know, you can, the great thing about the shift locks is you can just buy one set and save some money and use that. You can take it off and put it on each different size of your wing. So you can actually save a bit of money, um, by, you know, if you're going to buy two wings and just buy one set of handles, you can really easily detach it with a Torx T40.

And that Torx T40 comes free of charge within the pocket of your wing. So if you buy a Nova wing, the shift lock system comes complete on in the pocket of that wing. So we've made sure instead of sending, you know, you buy a couple of handles, you end up with a thousand tools. We decided efficiency wise, it was better to just put it in the pocket of the wing itself. But being able to take it off and put it on, you know, that we call it shift lock because, you know, you can slide it and you can lock it.

Luc Moore (22:59.245)
And that was the logic of behind the design. So yeah, just to be clear, the difference with this system, there's a few things. Initially in our design, you could only put it on when the strut was partially inflated. And we were just like, that's just annoying. Why can't you go on a tray down on the beach or your buddy's got a boom and you've got two short ones?

You want to be able to trade on the out on the beach super quickly. Um, so we kept on going until we got it. So you could install it with everything inflated. I know there's some other systems on the market where you have to deflate the strap to change out the handles, but we really wanted to make it that you didn't. All you have to do is undo a couple of screws and you can take it off. You don't have to deflate anything or, you know, there's, there's none of that messing around. We wanted to make it at this.

as easy as possible. It's a really good point you just raised, you know, it's keeping it inflated means that that you can snap it off and snap it on really quickly and really easily. We've actually found it's easier to do inflated. So just a you know, sort of a bit of a good time on this is, is it's way easy to inflate the center strut. It definitely helps if you if you do inflate the le at the same time, sometimes it you know, just a little bit of advice for anyone that's got one is sometimes harder to reach the rear handle.

But if you just tuck out of the wind a little bit, you can just lift that strap up towards you on the beach. And then it's literally right in front of your face. So it's super easy when you put that strap vertical. Um, for the listeners, it's, it's, it's easier to slide up and down. In fact, yeah, I would recommend always doing it inflated because if you can imagine, if you put the handles on when it's uninflated and then you pump it up, that everything elongates, even these super stiff materials we're using like the NW 45.

everything has a little bit of elongation as it is inflated. And so I think it's better off that you inflate it to your final pressure and then put it on. Because if you do it when it's deflated, it's actually everything's going to want to stretch and you're actually inhibiting the strut from inflating to where it wants to go. And you'll be putting more pressure on the connection points.

Luc Moore (25:19.533)
Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. Can we take a quick look now at how it actually snaps on? Are you finding some people are like, has there been any issues or concerns about where for snapping on and off? Because let's say my thinking is I got like two or three different sizes. Some of the thermal lakes that I ride on, the wind slowly picks up. So I might start off on a five meter at my start of my session if I want to do a power hour.

And then I could jump down to a four, jump down to a three. But my thinking is, is I would have one set of handles with three wings and I could just pop, pop, pop. Um, now is there a specific way that people should know about to install them to ensure? Am I going to wear the lip? All those kinds of little thoughts are popping into mind now. So yeah, this was also something in our early prototypes. It was a mission like you had to, every time you had to.

The screws weren't long enough that you had to try and line up the little side adjusters and you'd be fumbling to get the screws together and you know you could lose the parts on the back of your car or but the system once it's screwed up then you don't have to take everything apart ever again. All you have to do what I say this is getting a little bit complicated but on the inside of there you can see the end of the bolt.

So we over -mold a nut in there. Originally, the nuts were separate. And when you took it apart, the nuts would fall out. We were like, this just isn't good. So we over -molded the nuts permanently into these parts. And then you want the end of the bolt to be flush with the end of the nut. And that's as far as you'll ever have to undo the system. So from when it's done right up tight, if you undo it four rotations, then that is enough to be able to snap it on and off.

So just there is definitely I'll just step in to compliment what he's saying is there is definitely a little bit of a technique to this. But once you get it, it's pretty darn easy. I think he was mentioning just backing off that screw until that screw head is flush with the nut. That's the maximum you need to undo it at any time. And that that's it gives it that perfect distance that at all with a little bit of pressure, it'll snap onto the track and it will slide up and down. And just to give you a little more.

Luc Moore (27:43.213)
We're going to do some videos and depth videos about this in due course. But when you get the handle, when it's released those four turns, I do find it's easiest to kind of slide the handle backwards and forwards on the track. And that helps it seat into place on both ends. So there is a little bit of technique there. But once you can see that it's snapped on, then you can just do another couple of rotations.

And then it's definitely on and then you can move it to exactly where you want it to be. And we soon discovered that, you know, people are, if people get their wing, how are they going to have any idea of where to put the handles? And so this is why, yeah, this is why we actually print on the leading edge. This is our recommended center point for the four or 500 mil handles. So if you've been riding North in the past, you'll be used to the four or 500 mil handles.

So this is what we recommend as a starting point. Yeah, so a designer on every single size just marked two points, one for your right hand, one for your left hand, center points. So you always have that reference. So you can't really mess it up. So that's a starting point. And we also have a central reference in the middle of those two points for the boom. So if you put a boom on, then particularly on the larger wings, we've got a bit of.

back and forth, you can go boom, boom, maybe is worth worth mentioning, you know, we've got four different sizes. So I'm just assuming everybody knows us. We've got four different sizes, and we kind of refer to the larger size is still a handle. It's a shift lock handle. But we call it the boom, just because it is 1 .1 meters long. So 1100 cm in length, millimeters, and that covers the effectively effectively like a boom for a windsurfer.

We then have three other sizes that are smaller, a 500, a 400, and a 250 mil handle. So you can do any infinite combination of the 250, 400, 500, or you can go for the 1 .1 meter boom. The downside of the boom is that it is a little bit harder to pack away. So if you're putting it in a bag, then it does stick up a little bit outside the bag. But...

Luc Moore (30:03.309)
But we're working on bags for the future that we can kind of cover that. One, one interesting point about the boom though, is that it's actually the lightest option. Although it's the longest you would think, really? Oh, it's going to, it's going to weigh more, but because it only has two connection points, then it becomes our lightest option. And because you only have the two connection points and you don't have that extra hardware, you know, you've only got two screws and two nuts instead of four when you've got.

two handles, it actually becomes the cheapest option as well. So we expect this to be a really popular option. Yeah, we didn't coming into this, you know, we were all we were all having discussions, debates over beers after sessions about, you know, Hugh loves this small 250 and Jamie and some of the boys and I always liked the big 500s. And, and now we can, it's just you have all these infinite possibilities of what you what you like what you want. But I think we've all kind of

definitely come to the conclusion if you're looking for the lowest cost and lightest weight, then the boom is definitely a good option. However, it's not for everybody, you know, it's it's it's yes, it's good for if you want to put your hand or your or your harness line in the middle of the boom, or if you want to balance that balance point, but you can also achieve that with the smaller handles as well. It's just a just a preference. So just touching on weight again, before we talked about

This is actually slightly lighter than our original 500, you know, two 500s or if you had a 500 and a 400 before on your Nova. What this system does is it actually allows you to go even lighter again. So if you're someone who's all about weight, then you can drop down from two 500s to two 250s if you want, and you've saved a whole lot more weight. And in fact, the boom is even lighter again. So.

You've got options now. If you're all about weight, then you can go the smallest handles if you want. Then you don't have as much distance. And maybe this is a time, Mike, that we could just sort of touch on what our favorite settings are. I mean, I've really landed on, I love a 400 millimeter handle in the front because this allows me to still move my hand right back and fly it one handed. And then what it also does is that a

Luc Moore (32:24.813)
And then I have a shorter handle on the back, the 250. But the thing I'm finding I have the most control is if I'm flying, my flying position is at the back of the front handle. My thumb is nestled into that little thumb dimple. Yeah, that's unique. That's unique. In the front of the rear handle. And then I've got a lot more twist control as well by holding onto, you know, that vertical stanchion. And I find that that's just gives me so much control.

And then when I go into my tack, I just slide to the front and I go through with very little power. And then I'm back into my riding position again. And then with my rear hand, I can, if I'm going to go into a jump or something, or I want to power up to, you know, fly up wind, I just slide my hand back a bit on the two 50. And that for me, that's enough. And that's the light of Rick.

So that could be one thing that we look at with the difference between handles and boom then is just based on that or your ergonomic preference in writings in writing style in that nature. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And you're not going to achieve that same lock feel, you know, with a, with a boom, you're going to be in the middle of the boom. It's still really comfortable. And I guess the other upside is that you have a target you're aiming for the middle of that handle. So you know where to put your hand or as a boom, I think it's.

It's easier because you can just snag anywhere on that boom and you're going to catch it at least, but it's not necessarily the sweet spot for where you're riding, but you can just shuffle your hand, you know, forward or back. Yeah. Like are there different, and this is maybe something that you guys looked at when you were doing dev for different disciplines. Um, is there, have you gathered a bit of, so if somebody's brand new and they're like, well, what, what do I pick? Um,

Is there like a discipline for learning or discipline for freestyle or big air, whatever that makes a difference that you've seen? Yeah, definitely. Definitely a lot, a lot of feedback, obviously from the initial testing, you know, I personally, I like to sort of crank up wind and then just ride lumps and bumps downwind, maybe a little bit of wave riding. Um, and, and I quite like just being able to reduce the weight on the, the, on the trailing edge of the, of the wing.

Luc Moore (34:41.069)
So that I'm just trying to look for as little weight as possible. So I'm really looking for something that, you know, the boom from my perspective is something that just keeps that trailing edge a little bit higher and lets the wind get up under there and reduce the trailering weight as I'm de -pairing down the waves. But I think, you know, the freestyle is also they've, I think the, you know, Fabian Chucho and Marley and Francesca on the shoot. We just did one recently in the Philippines and...

Uh, their feedback was, was fairly mixed, but you know, some of them quite enjoyed the boom for freestyle in the sense that you can kind of put your hand, you know, you've seen those, those tricks. I don't actually know what it's called. We, you hold the wing Wednesday stationary, but you're actually doing a back loop and landing and your, your hands, they're able to put that hand in the middle of the middle of the boom. So, you know, there's, there's preferences for both. I personally, um, I've got pretty dodgy tennis elbows and getting older.

Dad bod kind of kind of thing and and I I I really enjoy having a harness line So for me all my setups a boom with harness and that means I can hook in it stays permanently attached And I can still fit my hand between the boom because that is a center point Between the boom when I want to ride down Down on the walk down a wave and I don't want to move to the deep power handle on the alley If I don't want to use that and I just want a quick little boost of energy I can

I can keep my one handed in the middle of the boom. And then I can direct that, that wing in front of me, almost like a joystick. It's literally, I want to go left, I go left. I want to go right. I go right. And I still got a little bit of left, a little bit of pole just, and especially when you're beginning learning to ride waves downwind or swell lumps, bumps, downwind, having that ability to put your, your front hand in the middle, the center pulling point on the, on the strut really helps.

But I think that if someone doesn't know what to get and they're a beginner, then I would still go with what our previous offerings have been. And we have a very clear table on the Nova Pro website under specifications. And it shows you, you know, if you're getting a four meter wing, then you get two 400 mil handles. I would go off that. And then as a starting point, I would center them off the points that we've printed in the middle of the wing. And that's a good starting point.

Luc Moore (37:09.293)
And the beauty is that in the future, if you want to go to a boom or you want to go even lighter and try one 250, you can buy just one 250 handle if you want, or you can buy a boom and you know, maybe then you can have both your wings set up permanently with the gear on. You don't have to take it off every time. Yeah. We've got a size chart on the website and on the back of the shift lock packaging. You'll find when you get the retail store, if you are buying in a store, you know,

It's got all the information and guidelines on the back of the packaging. So recommendations also listed on the website as to, you know, buying a four to what size, what size handle should I buy? And we kind of give that guide online. So it, you know, this is the first time I think anyone in the industry has been selling a wing only. That's really important to note from a commercial perspective or from a structural perspective is we're selling wing onlys now and you get to choose what handles you put with it. Same as

We come originally from a kiting background, setting background, but with kiting, you buy your kite and then you choose your control system separately. So it's getting that combo right. Now, what size kite surf bar do I get? Depends on the kite size. Same here, same sort of logic. Okay. All right. That all makes a good amount of sense. So starting, we got a bunch of different options. And then as you progress, you can move and shape and change and do absolutely anything that you want.

So for, for packing and storage and moving, like how, obviously you guys had to look at how flexible is this track? Um, like how, how is that progression with picking the right materials? That would have been kind of fun. Yeah. I mean, that, that was also something that we, from the start, it had to be able to pack down as they do now. And we weren't sure if we were going to be able to achieve that, but with the materials we're using, we definitely have.

There is no change for using a shift lock wing to using a regular wing. It's still, you can fold it. You probably don't want to fold it really tight and then put a really heavy something on top, but you don't want to do that with any wing, you know? But as far for all intents and purposes, it's the same. And the technique that we recommend is that when you're at the beach, when you're packing down, what I do is I actually hold onto the handle or the boom, whatever it is. And then I...

Luc Moore (39:33.901)
let the deflate go. But you're back to the wind. Yeah, with your back to the wind. Yeah. And the wing just collapses. I'll do that, Mike. So yeah, the wing just collapses inside out. And what that does, that's the opposite to how people might have been used to packing their wings. But what that does is allows you to go to your wingtips and fold up towards the strut and the handles stay on the outside. So when you fold it over,

those handles are on the outside and when you pack it in your bag, they're not going to be rubbing against your canopy. So it's like to be like a accordion. You kind of roll it up from put both wingtips together, roll it up, squeeze all that air out of the alley. And then when you get to the top, you can actually bend it on the, you can take the two handles and you can bend them in towards each other. So the handles are on the outside. So it makes sense. And that actually protects the wing during travel as well.

Okay, so instead of like normally what we're doing is we're well how I've always done it I guess is I've rolled it but with the handles inside the package now I'm gonna have two handles on the outside of the package which then will make that okay that makes sense all right and this goes for any you know any wing with rigid handles I would recommend that I mean these have the TPU ends that we discussed and it has EVA all over it so it is relatively soft but it's still something firm you know that if it was rubbing over time with something heavy

if someone just chucks their board on top and going down a gravel road and it's all bouncing around the back of the truck or something, get there. Okay, that's good to know. Now, what happens if somebody... We've packed down way too many wings. So now, for us colder folk, for example, we got some like, northern countries that might use this in the wintertime. Has there been any...

looking at that aspect of things. So if I take the shift lock system into minus five, minus 10, is it best to bring it home and let it warm up before I pack it away? What would be recommendations in that regard? I think it's still fine. It's still okay. The materials it's made of, it's going to be fine. We freeze tested in the labs. We did all the freeze testing for everything. We actually got some five mil gloves just for that. Yeah. And we now do the five mil glove test.

Luc Moore (41:55.597)
Yeah, for cramping and okay. That's fascinating. All the different, so I guess in essence, what you guys are going to do there is you're going to come up with a list of like a thousand different things and check it off that list as you go through your progression. And, and then, so just for folks at home, so are maybe a little bit less disconnect, a little bit more disconnected, sorry, from this kind of idea to concept to releasing it. How long would something like this take to bring to market? Too long. It's a cost us a fortune.

And honestly, we could have rushed it to market a year ago. And it's been over two years in development. But we could have come a year ago, but it wouldn't have had the customer ease of functionality. If we'd come a year ago, you still would have had the clamps falling apart, and assembling it would have been really difficult. You'll notice this little molded end caps on the ends of the shift lock. The grip got better. The over -molded, we thought of the thumb dimple because...

My thumb, our thumbs were resting there anyway, like all these little bits and pieces that would, you know, these little add -ons that just, I think it makes the whole product, although it took too long to come to market, as Mike said, I think it all adds to being a really refined product that we're still first. Yeah. We, we, this is patent pending.

in Europe and the US. So it is unique technology to us. So we kind of we had our bases covered there. So I think getting the IP on this first gave us a little bit more breathing room so we could really engineer the product, really refine it and make it as intuitive as possible. You know, it says it's at you can get 90 % there, but it's that last 10 % that sometimes takes takes the longest amount of time to to fine tune.

And I think having really engineered, refined, insured of products is sort of a key part of the brand's DNA. And that makes sense. And then from a user's perspective, like I would just had Balls Mueller on and we were talking about winter winging and there was a mitt that was made that was super thin on the palm and it was like a five mil on the outside. And then what was the problem and what was the killer for that? Warranties. So it's like users were

Luc Moore (44:12.525)
I would say we would have to have a bit of discretion from our side of the fence, understanding that if we want this kind of tech, like you were given more time in order to refine all those things, but like it is costly as well. If you're going to put out a product at 90, 95 % and then all the headaches and nightmares that come along with it. It's huge. Like as a brand, as a business we measure. So with, with every warranty, it could be the tiniest little screw, but that has.

a couple of hundred dollars associated with that, a warranty for a small little screw. You've got the customer who's dissatisfied, really frustrated with the brand. You've then got the retailer that has to service that customer. Then it goes to the agent, then it goes to the brand, we're all the way through in customer service. We track every single warranty in the business. So no matter how big, how small, we then go back with that information. We track that information. We go back to the suppliers.

And we work with the designers, the engineers who work with those suppliers to ensure that we reduce those warranty issues. So as a brand, it's just, I've seen over the years, we've been doing this for too long is that the, the, the, the effect, the knock on effect, you spend your life putting out fires instead of designing, developing new products. So we've, we've been really focusing hard as a brand to make sure that, that every product we bring to market has a really super low warranty rate. In fact, we're super proud it's below 1%, which I think is well below most of the industry. So.

You know, you know, when you when you're getting a North product that that it is, it is going to be really engineered not to hopefully not to break fingers crossed touchwood. Yeah, no, that that takes some time, but I thought that would be an interesting point as well. Moving forward now so we can find this on the new Nova Pro. Are you guys thinking of releasing this kind of system with any other wings? Any other products?

Yes, I'll answer that one if I can here. I think, yes, absolutely. We've decided to keep our traditional Nova, which is releasing in a couple of weeks time. The new Nova for 2024 is coming with our traditional grip lock handles. And these handles are just proven. They're also little, we're trying to keep the cost as low as possible on the Nova so it makes it more affordable for people to get into the sport.

Luc Moore (46:36.141)
So that's the reason we've kept the grip lock on the Nova Wing. Plus also beginners are not necessarily sure what size of handle, maybe they're not as confident to go and buy in a shift lock modular track system, because maybe it's a little bit over their head. So we decided to keep on that base model, was just try and keep the grip lock handles. Moving forward, obviously, with the Nova Pro, which is a new model that's just released, just launched a campaign about a week ago.

You'll see the shift locks all over that and it will be on all new models moving forward. So anything that's a pro or an ultra product, that next pricing tier level up for more discerning customers who are looking for that performance, looking for that customization, we've offered it on a more premium models. What can you, how easy is harness lines and stuff to attach like obvious?

There's a whole bunch of questions regarding that stuff as well for going up. Like you can, easy enough to do it with handles or. Yeah. I mean, one of the other points is like, I've always found in the past when I'm, some people like putting the harness loops on either end of their handles. And so they're not really getting in the way, but I have found with some wings I've used, I've had to say slide the harness loop, you know, like an inch or two forward and it's kind of starting to get in the way.

But by having infinite positions that you can put the handles in, you can do it. You can put it in the perfect spot for your harness loop to be just on the end of your handles. Ah, OK, OK. Yeah, so you can really, and that's the refinement. And I know that's going to take a little bit of playing around with. And that's why it is just the one tool that you use. And it's a Torx T40. And this tool.

is the tool that you use for all North foil products. Even our original BripLok handles, you can take them on and off with the same tool. Any of our foil wings, our foil fuselages, our masks, they all use this same Telox T40 tool. So this is where we've tried to make it as simple as possible. And maybe here, Mike, you could show we've got a bit of a future product coming out. We have a little, tiny little tool that you can take on the water with you.

Luc Moore (48:58.669)
So this is a prototype at the moment, but it's sorry, prototype packaging. I'm not quite sure how to finish that, but it's effectively a cool little, you'll see there's a leash here that can go around your wrist and you can tuck it in under your wetsuit or you could put it in your pocket or you could attach it to your wing if you want. But that's that tool. If you can see the image has a little talks T 40 head here. So you can do this with your fingers while you're.

Yeah, if you're instead of traveling back up to the car to go and go and get your talks to 40 big tool. This is called the micro tool. So it's a micro T40 that it should most retailers that should be available for most of our retailers. We're working really hard on and again, all the information on the back of the packaging as well. OK, so for folks just listening, tuning in here, it's in essence just a smaller version. It looks a little bit like a drum, you know, like a drum kit. Yeah, like what you would use to such as a little tiny screwdriver.

with a little tiny head on it there and ergonomic for that sense and then so you can easily tuck that in. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Put it into your wetsuit pocket or something. Let's say you're riding somewhere warm, a pair of board shorts, you can normally just tuck it into one of their small pockets. Okay. Yeah. All right guys. Is there anything else? If you are on the water as well and you want to adjust your foil, you can use the same tool to both do your sonar foil system and your, and your, I mean, we ultimately we've done this in the kiteboarding side as well. It's just making sure that.

One tool covers everything, all sizes. Just trying to keep it as simple as possible for the customer, not getting confused with having to carry an armada of tools in the back of your truck. OK. Is there anything else, guys, you want to touch on shift lock that you've seen within your community of questions? I know we covered a breadth of them. But, oh, OK, so we just got a camera mount here that we can attach. All right, let's talk about this.

Yeah, so I've seen so many different contractions that people have tried to fasten GoPros and things to their wings and with this track system, it allows us to fasten basically anything. So although we offer this action camera mount, which you could put, you know, anything on with that. I guess GoPro came with it first, that type of fastening. You could even fasten like a Garmin.

Luc Moore (51:28.269)
watch or something onto that as well. Or if you wanted your, you know, tracking details, you could fasten that onto it, your speed and a GPS device. We also offer another unique product, which is our, uh, pedal mount. And we're just going to ask for downwind. Yeah. Okay. If you're doing downwinders, um, you can fasten rather than using any of our handles or berms, you can use a pedal as your handle. And so.

that comes in a kit as two different fastening points. And this could also be used, although it's called the paddle mount, it could be used for a pole mount for a GoPro or an action camera as well to stick right off the back of your wing or the front of your wing. And then just due to the nature of this being another connection point, you can wrap things through it. I'm already thinking you could wrap your watch strap through there.

and have it up in front of you if you wanted, you know, to have live data or whatever on there. There's so many options and we've been playing around with, you know, numerous ideas of what we could do. And I'm sure this is just going to grow in the future. Yeah. If I can just compliment what Hugh's saying there, I'm just showing that for the video side of it, this is effectively what it looks like. So it's exactly the same connection with the traditional GoPro fitting at the top.

which means it should fit anything that's already out there for pretty much any action mount camera in the world. And Hugh kind of touched on, you can put anything in there, you really can. You don't need to also have a rope tied off to hold your GoPro or to hold your action camera because this just isn't going to come off. We've load tested it, you're not going to lose a camera. You don't need that additional bit of rope flying around in the view when you're creating.

And saying that there is a little hole through there in case you did want to triple check and put a lanyard through there. So. And tie it to a handle or something. Yeah. Yeah. And I think people are just going to find more and more options for, like, we're just starting really with what the opportunities are with a kind of modular track system like this. And I think, I think that the big one for me also is this, I think the paddle.

Luc Moore (53:48.621)
shaft mount is going to be exceptionally popular. You're being told that want to go out. They don't you know, you can't your wife friend mate isn't always available to gun for downwind or something just be able to crank do what we call upwinding. So you just go upwind pack take your cattle off and now because there's no handles that that Nova Pro wing packs down even smaller.

So it's you're able to get that pack size down. You know what the swing weight's like when you're, when you're downwind and you've got this big weight on your back and that's swinging around. If it's got handles, it's a lot of additional weight. So being able to pack that down super small, super light, crunch all the air out of it, get it as close to the core of your body as possible means there's a lot less swing weight when you're paddling and then you can get back down to back down to where you started with the pedal. So I think, you know, the,

For anyone who's upwinding, downwinding, that's definitely a must. And you should be able to put any, Hugh's made it so you can put any paddle size you can. Hugh, do you just want to talk about the inside of that paddle mount? Yeah, so it is actually, the webbing on there has 3D silicon printing. And so it won't rotate. And then the mount, where it fastens to the rigid plastic part, we also have a silicon insert there.

So it's nice and soft. It's based off what is pretty much an industry standard of a 29 mil shaft diameter. But because it's Velcro, you could go a few mil either side, no problem. Or if someone's got an overlaid handle or something. So Hugh's really focused on making sure that that handle doesn't rotate when you're riding upwind. And you wouldn't want it sliding forward or aft either.

Yeah, that makes sense because we did a 10k downwind yesterday and then a 5k back upwind. And like here in La Ventana, it's like downwinder capital. It's safe, it's easy. But we got a drive up, but the drive made me more nauseous than the wing would have made me to go up. So like something like this would then allow me to enter into the downwind space a little bit easier, right? Because I don't have to kind of lean on anybody to do that. So that's cool.

Luc Moore (56:06.285)
All right. I hadn't thought about that potential for this system, but I guess it is true. Like with it, there's a lot of new things. I'm sure you guys are going to think of some new stuff coming out too then. Hence the name, you know, we call it shift lock. So you can shift it lock it and modular track system, meaning modular. You can put pretty much anything you can imagine on, you know, Hugh had a great idea the other day is like, why don't we, why don't we put some crazy designs out there and have a competition of you can print, you know, quite a few people who got 3d printers at home.

He wants to print up some of the crazy ideas. So actually I can't claim that one. That was Tucker from Mac. Yeah. I think it's a brilliant idea, but you know, I'm sure we've already had some pretty funny comments on, on some of the social where people are like, where's the beer cooler? You know, after that comment, I did a 3d printed a can holder. I'm not sure that that will ever see the light, but.

Yeah, we're not endorsing alcohol and riding. It can be like, oh, it could be water, whatever you have a little light enough on there. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I think you touched on it before. Also, for a lot of races of people that are tracking upwind, you know, you've got these dry cases for your phone. So being able to attach your phone and put that on the forward side of your track. So when you're riding upwind, it is literally at your eye level, you're able to see your BMG.

angles you're tracking at, you'll be able to see the sort of maps and systems. Because obviously with foiling, people are adventuring more, you know, unlike kiting and some of the other sports, we kind of stay in a tight area. With foiling, you're able to travel such large distances and people are putting on those adventure flotation vests and they're going, you know what, we'll go with a friend and we're going to go around that island. We're going to...

We're going to go and venturing or fishing or whatever it is. And I think that adventure aspect, these fittings could really help us. And we've only just touched on it. I think the imagination of our customers will be far greater than ours. So yeah, we're looking forward to seeing all the crazy ideas of how people put it onto this track system. It's been amazing. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Most people are mounting those on their board now. So they're having to cast their glance downwards to the front of their board.

Luc Moore (58:23.469)
So if you're locked in racing, then and you're glancing down, you're losing that line, you know, to have to glance down. Whereas if it can be right where you're looking anyway in front of your face, I can only imagine that that is going to be a lot more optimal. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I can see that because then I'm just looking a little bit, right? It's the same thing as a GPS in your car if it's way down or if it's way whatever. Keeping it in that sense.

Is there anything else you guys want to touch on this before we hopped into a bit of the new Nova Pro as well? Yeah, just one last point. I think from our perspective, this is technology that we've introduced. But I must admit over the past week, I've been approached by, or we've been approached by a few different brands and just saying, hey, look, you're open to licensing this. And this is something that we really need to entertain as a team. Are we prepared to put this out and kind of make it

for a bit of a small mini industry standard if people were interested in this. So it's starting to snowball. You can just start to see that adaption coming on really quickly. So yeah, we've got a few decisions to make moving forward. For sure. I just wanted to touch on one more thing that I forgot, Ashley, which was quite a full cool thing that just fell out. By having this track system on the strap, it's actually made the whole thing stiffer as well, which is really cool. So yeah, it's actually...

You can feel it's really efficient for pumping. Good point, actually. Yeah, that was one question. OK, yeah, very good point. You're right. But I do want to touch on that it's not so stiff that it changes the pack down. It's still very flexible when you don't have the handles on it. Still folds over and it's still very robust in that regard. And one other question we have had is, you know, what do you do with the boom? And so Mike touched on it before. If you've got a boom, you can leave it on there.

And I would pack it inside out like we described before, roll it up. If you put it in your bag, it will fit in your bag. It would just stick out the top a little bit. So you'd have to be a little bit careful. And then of course you can take it off just with a few turns at each end. It's so easy to take off and on. It's fine. It really is. I guess that is one down for one of those. Yeah. Yeah.

Luc Moore (01:00:48.461)
Alright, so I heard that the new Nova is quite interesting as well. So Mike, do you want to kind of give us some highlights of you as well, I guess, what you guys put into developing this one? Because so far, Frank and Matt just got it. They are really liking it. They had their first sessions in Germany and they were very happy with the wing. These guys do quite a bit of testing and they're pretty...

They're not shy to share with me their actual opinions. So I'm stoked that they're loving them so far. And yeah, so let's get into that one. We are frothing about the Nova Pro. It literally is. I mean, we built on this Nova, I think, in its fourth generation now. And this Nova Pro is that next step up. It's kind of like a Nova on steroids, is kind of how we described it internally. It really is still a complete free ride win. So.

free ride we mean it does a little bit of everything. It's good for wave riding. It's good at getting up bottom end power. It's got a good top end power. And it's got a really wide wind range, which is critically important for this model. And it's still reasonably stiff because it's got a, I'll go into details why in a minute, but it's an easy to use wing that still you can really push the push limits. It's kind of we're in a.

We kind of talked to this as writers who are sort of bored of mowing the lawn. Um, and those who just want to get there and kind of carve it up in the social swells boosting, you can freestyle on it. You can jump it. Um, it kind of covers a wide range of, of different disciplines. So we're, yeah, we're, and feedback's been incredible. We're, we're super, super happy with the feedback so far from writers to everybody. Okay. When Dan, I was just done an amazing job.

That's just a well balanced wing. Yeah. It's okay. Don't know. Don't know. See if anyone has met him. It's just, he's been around for a long time. Um, but Dan has been a wing designer for the past four years, I think coming up and, uh, he's based in North of the Philippines. So he's in the, what they call Typhoon alley between Taiwan and Northern Philippines. And he's incredibly lucky to live in what I call paradise. It really is absolutely stunning. It's got reef breaks. It's got.

Luc Moore (01:03:07.757)
Open Ocean swell, it's got flat water and sometimes it's only him and a few friends out. So super lucky to be able to have Dano on the team and working obviously with Steve and with Dave and the rest of the crew. Obviously our product manager, Uli, the iterations that have gone into this have been incredible. Like it's, as I said before, it's getting that 90 % there and then getting that last 5 -10 % sometimes take the longest amount of time. So...

They with this has been really well refined. And I guess that's my, my biggest takeaway is it's, it's that. Can we go into, can we go into a little bit about what those changes are, uh, for somebody potentially looking to get a new wing? Yeah. Um, absolutely. Well, um, it kind of touches on the materials a little bit because the materials affect the performance. So maybe if I can flip that a little bit, if that's okay, Luke, Oh,

maybe we could talk about materials a little bit first is that we've been really stoked with, obviously North Sails is known for its material development and we've been working internally on these materials for many years now. And we introduced N -Wave, I think in 2002, and then, oh sorry, 2003, and then 2004 model year. So in calendar year 23, we introduced the second version of N -Wave and we called it N -Wave 45.

So that's effectively a woven UPE, 200 woven UPE, which, and with a film on top of it. And in that film, we have the crossweave. And that crossweave is on a 45 degree angle. And that means that we've really reduced the twisting and made the material very, very stiff. So it's coming in at about 105 grams, which is, you know, Lula's 80.

This is 105, a standard Dacron's about 160 grams. So we're able to take out a huge amount of weight and make it really, really stiff. And we've put that in weave 45 material into the strut and into the T section on the alleys. So that critical T joint between the alley and the strut, that's where it sits. So if you look at it plan view from above, you'll see it kind of looks like a T where the in weave 45 is.

Luc Moore (01:05:29.549)
And then towards the wingtips, we've put our traditional Dacron out towards wingtip, trying to keep the weight down, trying to keep the cost down is one of the key factors. But to counteract that, this is the exciting part. For the first time in the industry, we've added a unidirectional carbon tape on the inside of the wingtips. Most people haven't picked up on this yet. It's the...

The Nova Pro has these strips of that. It's kind of like, it's very similar to what we use in the 3DI cells and North cells to lay down the 3DI cells. So we've put that on the inside, which means these wingtips, when they bend off, they snap back really quickly because carbon's just got a much faster response in it. And you feel, you can feel the wingtips bending off. And then when the, as soon as that gust come through, they can snap back into their optimal position. So you're able to load off and let some of that.

bleed some of that extra power and snap it back on when you need it. Yeah, so I think like as you know in our mode wing that's all N -Wave and that's an incredibly high performance wing. Whereas I get the feeling I'm not always wanting to go for it. I like a little bit of give in my gear and I feel like yeah having that hybrid leading edge and having the slightly more forgiving wing tips it gives you a bit more.

upper end if the wind picks up. But the coolest thing has been all of our team riders that were freestyling, they were all on the mode pros because they wanted that performance. But what they've found is using the Nova Pro and having that little bit more give and twist off in the tips is that they're actually landing their tricks. If they're not landing perfectly, it's actually got a bit of give in it. But after it gives, as Mike said, because it's got the carbon tapes inside, it goes bang and it snaps back.

in an instant back into that rigid position. And so. So these carbon tapes just run. They don't run all the way through the alley. They start about a third up from each wingtip. So we're able to control the flex and control the wingtip. So for folks on audio and you want to check this out, just go to NorthKB .com and then check out the Nova Pro. And so it's carbon UDI tech knowledg.

Luc Moore (01:07:49.581)
So there's a little section on that which explains everything, which is actually pretty, yeah, that's pretty interesting. So for pumping and whatnot, how have you found that in your testing? Because there's like, there's so many different things that come into making a good wing pump. And it's not just tightness of canopy and making that bed sheet as tight as possible. Like that doesn't necessarily produce a lot of power, which we saw in some of the early, some brands came out with something like that and it just didn't work well.

because you have to have a bit of pterodactyl, kind of a bit of spring. So is that what you're finding with this? It's helping a little bit with that? So true. OK. Yeah, so true. Yeah, a lot of brands at the moment in our, and Hugh and I were talking about this before, it's like they make a wing look beautiful on the beach. There's no wrinkles. There's no deformation on the beak. And it's a really tight canopy. But.

Once you get on the water, quite often that canopy will deform and you'll develop wrinkles. And when you get the wrinkles and you get the increased drag, and you just don't have that clean geometric profile that we're looking for. So our designers are always focusing on what does it look like in flight, not what does it look like on the beach. That's a huge run. Yeah. And I know it pains them to see comments.

hear people talking about, oh, that's a nice wing. It's so tight, you know? And they're like, yeah, but what's it like when the tips, you know, give a bit when it's under load? That's when they want their profiles perfect. And often, really tight canopies, once you get load on them, they can develop a hook in the trailing edge. And that hook, although it feels like it's really powerful, it's not efficient for going up wind. So.

Yeah, it's one of those things that. Well, one thing, yeah. Well, one thing from our community, actually Frank and Matt had gotten wings from another brand and it was super tight like that. They took it out for a few sessions. The Ellie actually, the tips folded in and then the wing was done. So like that was one thing, the rolling of those wing tips and then it just begged the whole thing out.

Luc Moore (01:10:05.197)
And, and then, well, yeah, they're riding over pros now. So it's not gonna have that issue. But that was one thing, right? The really common thing, like, obviously, you know, we kind of try and test any any products of notable note in anything that's, you know, get good feedback and try and get out on those straight away and benchmark. What we've found over the years is a lot of brands are going for a really tight trailing edge. And what that means is you've got you got a lot of trucks, you got a lot of pull.

When you're trying to get up on foil and that's great. It's like a, almost like a shopping bag. It's just got this big pole and gets you up on the foil. However, once you're up on foil, then you're looking for that balance point and what we call oscillating where, where, where you want a wing to drive forward. You, you want to be going forward and upwind as much as possible. So you can crank it down and have some fun. You want to get back upwind as quickly as possible, as quickly as possible. So when you've got a tight training edge, what you find is you're actually getting pulled off downwind.

You're not getting driven forward. So all that power is, is actually going into your arms and burning out your arms super quick. It's not lifting you forward upwind. And you can feel these, these wings with a tight trailing edges. They don't know if they want to go forward or backwards sometimes. They kind of, they, they oscillate and just pull you downwind. So that's we, with these wings, we've really focused on having profile, nutty profile forward canopies, um, canopies profiles throughout the wing, which really carry you upwind.

The other big thing we focused on is in transitions. A lot of people now, you know, once you got your jive kind of down pat, you're getting a little bit more confident. You think, right, I'm going to, I'm not going to give one of these tax ago. Um, and I've just been, I've been loving myself learning, you know, many years ago, but, but more recently with some of my friends going through that transition of learning how to tack, realizing how important it is to have a wing that doesn't blow down on you. So.

As you go into attack and you've got the wing over your head, a winglet that is either neutral or lifts you up through that tack is really, really important. So, um, yeah, I mean, there's a whole bunch of, we could go on for hours about all the features that characteristics will be looking for, but ultimately just looking for something that's really, really balanced and easy to use, but still super high performance. Okay. I think that's kind of.

Luc Moore (01:12:28.109)
Also, you started with the materials, but we've only really talked about the frame. Like the Nova Pro features a heavier canopy in the back kind of half of the canopy. And that I think you were talking about before, if the wingtips pull in and then traditional canopy materials, they can bag out over time. Whereas we have a much stiffer, three times stiffer material in the trailing edge. And it is slightly heavier. So we're not.

We're not trying to make the lightest wing and the industry because I think that is just, that's one feature, which is good to consider and try and do. But I think you really want to, or we really want to make wings that are going to last for a long time and people, and they're going to have a resale value. You know, we don't want to make the lightest wing, which is amazing for a couple of sessions. And then can be just all bagged out. So I know a lot of people have been asking for what is the weight.

But I would just, I would love people to also consider these other metrics of wing design and one's the balance. One is how long it lasts, you know, surely if you're spending all this money on a new wing, you want it to last a good amount of time. Honestly, like some, some of the, you know, some of the, the lighter weight canopies can, can bag out if you're, you know, if you're going out a couple of hours, three, four times a week.

you know, really passionate about the sport, just getting really into it. You can, you can blow through a wing in six to nine months before it's just bagged out and just not, yes. And just not performing the way you wanted to. That's why we introduced this new material last year, which is called Matrix. And that it covers about two thirds from the trailing edge towards the leading edge forward. And then we've used, um, uh, in tier.

in HTRS material just along the top third. And that's where the profile, where the shape is. We need a little bit more stretch. And you do want it to conform to the shape of the leading edge, which is why we made that material, kept the stiff material at the back where you don't want it to bag out and kept the material that's got a little bit higher elongation along the leading edge of the strut. And that's made a huge difference to the durability of these wings. Now here's an extremely basic question for a brand new person.

Luc Moore (01:14:41.069)
Now, when you're flagging this wing out, is it more ten, the tendency is it to sit straight? Is it going to weave a little bit? Does it fly a little bit? Move around left to right? Is there a reason why some wings are doing that and the purpose behind it? Yeah. So we call it oscillation quite often. So when you're using the deep power, some people call it the toe handle. Um, so when you're riding or you could just be walking down the beach to get into the water.

Or you could be riding down a wave and, and just trying to have a wing that has a lot more of a free twisting leech. So as on the, on the leech of the trailing edge, that is that it just pour it, it dumps that, that wind that's coming across and have a little bit more dihedral really helps. So just having a hint of dihedral and, and allowing that. And obviously, and having a handle that's really secure and solid, you'd be amazed how many.

Brands don't have a really rigid connection for your toe handle because that also helps reduce that oscillation. OK. Good to note. Hugh, any additional points? A really flat wing is going to oscillate a lot more. It's a basic way of looking at it. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Feedback, is there? If you have a look at our side profile of our wings, you'll see the alley is actually pretty straight. But it's as you transition towards the wingtips and as you

transition towards the trailing edge, that's where you start to see the dihedral kick in. OK. All right, guys. I'm looking forward to trying it. So far, like I said, Frank and Matt came up with some pretty good reviews, but I'm looking forward to trying all this stuff out for myself soon. But I think it's going to be pretty sick. Are you guys having some sessions coming up? Like, what are your next weeks and stuff looking like?

Oh yeah, we're always testing new gear. This almost seems like old news to us. We were testing this a year, a year and a half ago. By the time it sees the light, we're already onto one, two seasons ahead. So we have to bite our tongues a bit on these podcasts because there's so much exciting new technology coming out of North Foils. We're just super excited for it to see the light.

Luc Moore (01:17:01.741)
Oh, it's been amazing. Just catching the amount of messages I've had over the past since launch. As a team, it's just been interaction from the customer. I think we've really hit a home run here because there's so many people who've come back and said, that's what I was looking for. And the excitement behind the product is far beyond anything we've ever experienced before. So it's really nice to finally get to a leading position.

where we're able to introduce these technologies and really share that with customers. That's what we get fizzed about. It's like when you get all this amazing feedback from writers and friends and just go, oh my God, I just tried it and it's awesome. It's everything you said it was going to be. So, and more, you know, the feedback we get from them is sometimes we don't see how these products are going to ride or how they're going to interact. And we just haven't envisaged this and we get this awesome feedback. So really excited about that. But also the testing, you know, we just have the development week here where we

everybody in for about 10 days and just riding and brainstorming and seeing where we're at for the season and what we've got coming forward. It's exciting. The sport's going through such an incredible, innovative curve at the moment. I think there's so much more opportunity of where we can go and how we can make it easier, how we can make it higher performance. I think we're still only scratching the surface. I know we're only four or five years into this, but...

The opportunity is massive. And we feel it. That's why we get so hungry, thirsty for it. As engineers, designers, we can all see the potential that's there. And of ways to completely change the way you ride. And that's what we've been excited about with this new Naver Pro is that so many people are coming back and saying, well, that changed it for me. That actually made a difference for me. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's good to hear.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, whatever. And I like the little refinements and stuff and all the little thoughts and processes coming into shift lock because there's some things that I hadn't thought of. But different kind of mount options are good. Packing was another question that I had all those kind of things that that took the time. I appreciate. Yeah, I appreciate that for sure, because there's so many different little things and you have to test in order to figure them out. So.

Luc Moore (01:19:24.461)
Yeah, I mean, don't underestimate the little things like the harness lines. You know, Hugh's made these rigid harness lines, 22, 26, 30 inch harness lines to be on the bar. So I'm getting all technical again. But they sit on the bar and they can come out towards your hook, or he can literally push with them and he can rotate them up against the canopy. So you can ride a harness. When you get upwind, you just rotate that harness.

lying around and it can sit up against a canopy and then it's out of your way. Like it's all these small little refinements that that's that's been the most fun I think. Yeah just to give you an idea when we go out testing we sometimes have like like 10 different wings that we have to back to back and try and we're on the water for like six hours plus. When there's wind you gotta go you know so Mike and I are both in harnesses now because we've had dodgy elbows from you know just putting the hours in so.

Like we have down to the nth degree, we have designed the harness loops how we want them. Cause originally we were all just using windsurfing harness loops, you know, and they were really big diameter and we were like, we don't need that when you're pumping, they whacked you in the face. So we've used the smallest diameter possible for our harness loops, but a lot of the connections are really floppy. So you kind of, you swung them into your hook, whereas we've made it completely rigid. And so you can virtually just pull and it's straight into your, into your hook.

And like Mike was saying, we've got silicon printing on the inside. So it really sticks where you want it to the grip. But when you don't want it, with your thumbs, you can roll it away. And then it stays out of the way because it's locked on there solid. So we do put a lot of thought into these.

these little bits and pieces and products as well. So we're going down another rabbit hole. This is the level that we're always trying to cut corners if we can. But we basically make things that we want to use, you know, like we're out there all year round. We get wind all year round. And the only difference between summer to winter for us is that we put on another millimeter of wetsuit.

Luc Moore (01:21:37.933)
So we're three twos during summer and we go to four threes in winter, but we're running all year round and we're in, you know, we've got wind all year round. We're lucky in New Zealand though, you know, we've got this development hub for America's Cup for many years. Obviously with the background of the company, but most importantly, just having a long skinny country that's kind of sitting partially dipping its toes into the roaring forties and sort of subtropical up north. We've got a...

But there's always surf, there's always when there's, you know, we're lucky. We're super lucky to be where we are. Okay. All right, guys. Hey, thanks a lot for coming on today and just introducing this new. This is first one out and I think first one of the gates for this new tech. And it's awesome that we're going to be able to share that with our community and help people just learn a little bit more about that versatility. Because I think as this, I can see this becoming,

Well, that's the exact same thing. Everybody's recording. So there's all these different things that you guys have thought about. So thanks a lot for taking the time today and sharing that with us. Well, it's a pleasure. Yeah. Absolutely, Luke. Thank you for doing what you do. And Frank and the boys really appreciate it. And we're just excited. If you get a chance to test it, please go online, share it with us. We're all active on social as much as we can be.

and really appreciate the feedback from the customers because we just want to keep making this better. So for everybody, everybody at home there, if you guys have bought this system, if you got comments, questions, just fire us on Instagram. You can reach out to the team at North as well. But if you reach out to us, just send them some DMs at Wing Life Podcast. More than happy to put you guys in contact and as well and help kind of answer some of those questions because we are trying to gather as much information to make winging and wing foiling as easy as possible to get into.

And sometimes some of these little questions would be great to know. Yep, go ahead, Mike. If I could just add one last thing. We've worked really hard. I just don't want to waste it. We've got what we call DNVs, or Designers Notes videos, on our website. So please, for the shift lock and the Nova, please go and check out the Designers Notes videos. They're normally at the bottom of the landing page or the product page. And they just watch you and what we just talked about. You kind of go into really in -depth.

Luc Moore (01:24:00.781)
detailed knowledge with and you can see the product in real life and in action. So hopefully if you are interested, you can go a little bit deeper. So Mike, you are recommending people go check out three pages on your website, right? If you go to FOIL, go down to Wings and then there's the Pro just below Nova. And then also if you are there as well, you can go over to Shift Locks. You can read everything about that.

Was there an additional page as well that you recommended? I think we said there was a, I was trying to remember myself, sorry. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. If you click on or scroll over foil along the top menu, and then you can go to shift lock or Nova pro on the far right. Both of those got landing pages. And then you can third page, you can go into the actual product page, which has a lot more detailed specifications. So if you're looking for weights and that side of it. Oh, and one last thing, don't buy on weight.

It's something of just a pit industry peeve, which I'm trying to get everybody to get their heads around is don't buy the lightest products on the market. Buy the ones that are that are that are balanced. It's it's yeah. Sorry. My last two cents. Yeah. Yeah, I know. The wings are like, yeah, if you're going to spend a decent amount of money, you want something that lasts more than a season. Yeah. Yes. All right, guys. Well, hey, thanks, everybody, for tuning in tonight. And or maybe it's in the morning or maybe it's in the afternoon.

But thanks a lot for tuning in and we'll catch you all next time. Thanks, Luke. Absolutely.

gear talk

North ShiftLock System & Nova PRO Wing Release - Gear Talk Episode #1