Freedom Foil Boards 2023 range at the AWSI

Our man Steve takes a look at the exciting new Freedom Foil Boards 2023 foilboard collection at the AWSI event in Hood River.

Products featured:

Tom Carroll Pro

West Coast Foil Club JATO

West Coast Foil Club Frequent Flyer

The Nugget

The Wingnut

The Whup

The Rubix

The Fusion

FTW Pro

Halcyon Foils

Phoenix Foils

For the full interview transcript, see below.

Steve:

Hi, this is Steve from Foiling Magazine and I'm here with Blaine from Freedom Foil Boards, and we're here at AWSI in 2022. And Blaine, there's a lot of exciting stuff coming out from Freedom this year. Do you want to give us a little rundown on what's new and exciting?

Blaine:

Yeah. I'll give you guys a run through of the boards here, of what we're really excited about. I'm going to start with over here on our left side, starting out with this, one of our biggest and most proud team riders, Tom Carroll, maybe you've heard of him.

Steve:

Of course, Absolutely. World Champion. Yeah.

Blaine:

Yeah. We're stoked to have him on the team. And this year he's having two pro models with us. So he has a 4'0″, which is his tow board, which we're looking at here, the Tom Carroll Pro. And then he has a 4'4″ prone board as well. If you want to check that out.

Steve:

Yeah, gorgeous. Yeah. So really soft on this edge here.

Blaine:

And so he's doing some-

Steve:

A legend. Yeah.

Blaine:

Big wave towing and yeah, so this is all his design. His friend drew the fish here and then he's got his logo down here on the bottom. Yeah. We're stoked on this. Tom's going to be representing with us and just super amped on his boards, how they look and how they turned out. They're a different look than the rest of our boards. Everything's really techy, kind of sleek looking a little bit brighter, Tom's style.

Steve:

Absolutely. And Tom's a legend and congratulations on having him. Because you know that Tom Carroll wouldn't settle for anything, right?

Blaine:

No, yeah, it took a lot of iterations to get this board, that he was stoked on. And so yeah, happy to have him on the team and happy to have a pro model for him.

Steve:

That's so cool. So what else you got here? So we got the West Coast Foil Club board, which is an exciting story.

Blaine:

Yeah. The West Coast Foil Club, some of the OGs out of Southern California. The Brady-

Steve:

The Loyal to the Foil guys.

Blaine:

Yep. “Loyal to the Foil”.

Steve:

Oh, there it is. In the same font and everything, right?

Blaine:

Yeah. Which is so sick. Yeah, we're stoked to have these guys on these two boards. So these guys also have two boards. We've got the JATO here, the Jet Assisted Takeoff, so this is their tow board. So you've probably seen Brady Hurley pumping around, pumping for days on this. So just nice little pocket tow board, super stiff, just go forever on this thing. This is a 3'10” on the JATO. And then we have the Frequent Flyer and we've got this in a 4'2″ and a 4'6″. Again, “Loyal to the foil”. So yeah. Nice-

Steve:

What's the volume range on these?

Blaine:

What is this? This is a 26 on the 4'2″, and the 4'6″ I believe, is 29. Yeah. So nice small boards.

Steve:

Yeah. He's what, 17 or something?

Blaine:

Yeah, 17. Not much bigger than myself. And so yeah, good small person, real [inaudible 00:02:41].

Steve:

So ripper board. Yeah.

Blaine:

Yeah, definitely a ripper board. So stoked to have those guys joining up and have some pro models for them as well.

Steve:

And are those out now or are they coming out in 2023?

Blaine:

All these boards are going to be 2023. So yep, you'll start seeing these pop up around in about a month or so.

Steve:

Okay, fantastic.

Blaine:

Yeah, so we're real excited about those. And then me personally, I'm from Hood River, so this is the one that I'm really excited about. This is our Nugget, which is our new winged foil board. Really excited about this one. Got the longer tracks on this and this crazy pulled in tail, which it's really nice for winging to not connect with the water. It just keeps the rail a little bit farther away from the water. As well as this crazy design when you're coming out of the water, it kind of shoots you out so it releases really easily and shoots you out of the water. So you can get away with a pretty small board. And we've got this in a 35, 40, 45 and 50 liter variation. And then on this too, our wing full board, we have the Y-

Steve:

Strap inserts.

Blaine:

Yep, yep, yep. We've got the strap inserts, so you can go one down the middle if you want, or you can go to the two, which a lot of wing people enjoy as well.

Steve:

Awesome.

Blaine:

Yeah, amped on those.

Steve:

And then in the back there, is that-

Blaine:

Oh! So yeah, so we've got the Wingnut, which is our getting going, or lighter when getting into wing foiling. This behind me right here is a new one for 2023. The 120 liter Wingnut. So we've had a lot of requests for people wanting both-

Steve:

Both big guys and beginners to get going.

Blaine:

Yeah. Or light wind. Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons for those boards.

Steve:

Yeah, for sure.

Blaine:

So yeah, we're excited to have a 120 and then we are carrying over our 90 liter and 65.

Steve:

What's the rough specs on it? It looks about six feet.

Blaine:

Yep. It's about six feet, 27 wide. Yeah.

Steve:

Okay. So it's still narrow and fast.

Blaine:

Yeah. And some of our crew from our parent brand is here and learning on that and having a great time.

Steve:

Awesome.

Blaine:

Yeah, it's been cool to see the success on that just over the last few days, of people learning-

Steve:

Man, that's a busy lineup right there.

Blaine:

Yeah. Yeah. And then over here we've got a few other boards. So we've got our Whip here, which for 2023 we're going to have three sizes in the Whip, the 3'9″, 3'6″, and a 4'2″. So we're excited to have those different options. In 2022, we had a lot of success with this board and people are really excited about it and wanted more sizes in it for taller people, for shorter people. Just to have that variation so you can have the perfect ride-

Steve:

And this is tow, wake? Yeah.

Blaine:

Yep. Tow, wake kind of does it all. We've had a lot of people using these behind a boat.

Steve:

Yeah. They're awesome.

Blaine:

Yeah, they're loving it. It looks good out on the boat. Just the black carbon's real sleek.

Steve:

Yeah.

Blaine:

The Rubix, that's a carryover for 2023. This is one of the boards that Chris first came up with the design, just radical shapes, kind of like the Nugget with the extreme cutouts, just to allow for those aggressive carves on the wave. Just really get you close to the wave without connecting to the wave.

Steve:

Right, right. A little concave deck a little bit or is it-

Blaine:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. A slight concave. But yeah, this has been a fun board and we're having that again.

Steve:

Yeah. Lots of curves. Yeah.

Blaine:

Yeah. And then up next we've got the Fusion. So this was kind of designed as a bigger wave prone board. So we've got a bunch of different sizes in this. And we've got a 4'0″ 4'3″, 4'6″, 4'9″, and a 5'0″.

Steve:

Oh, wow.

Blaine:

So bigger wave. And then the bigger size are nice at crossover-

Steve:

And so what makes it better for bigger waves? Is there a more pulled in outline?

Blaine:

A little bit thinner and little bit less contours on the bottom, so it just paddles a little bit more efficiently, getting out to farther breaks as well. And then this year for 2023, we're going to add two new sizes to this, a 4'2″ and a 4'5″, which are a little bit thinner here. So we've had some of our team riders requesting a little bit thinner. We're kind of seeing that go that direction and so we're making those for some of the requests that we've had.

Steve:

And then this-

Blaine:

Oh, everybody's favorite.

Steve:

Yeah. Well he's my local back in Florida here.

Blaine:

So this is that the world Foil The World Pro, FTW Pro, Brian Finch's pro model, and he's here joining us this week. So we have our 4'2″ and our 4'5″, which people have been loving. So people in Florida are loving this board and-

Steve:

Yeah. We watch Brian fly over our heads on this board all the time. So yeah.

Blaine:

Yeah. So this one, Brian's riding style, he's airing, he's smacking the wave, he's all over the place. This is kind of his do it all. And then this year we're adding a 4'4″.

Steve:

Nice.

Blaine:

And again, like I was saying on the Fusion, it's a bit thinner and a bit more advanced even than the 2022 Foil The World. So yeah, we're really excited to offer the 4'4″ this year.

Steve:

Awesome.

Blaine:

In the Foil The World.

Steve:

Fantastic. And I know you've got a few new foils that you're excited about too.

Blaine:

Oh my gosh. I am beyond excited about our new foil lineup. We've got our Halcyon series and our Phoenix, so we've got the 1030, which this is our bread and butter. I kind of call it, the gateway into high aspect foiling. Okay. So it's predictable, it's user friendly, it lifts easily and control. Very fun. All carbon, sleek. It just-

Steve:

Do you want to tell me about this connection here?

Blaine:

Yeah.

Steve:

This is unique too.

Blaine:

Yeah. So backstory on this, the crew were primarily a prone surf foil brand. And so the design focus on this was in the surf. So those guys are so technical, they're so aggressive. The connection, the mast, the fuse, everything had to be extremely stiff for what they needed.

Steve:

Right.

Blaine:

Out here winging, I could ride something and be like, “This is great.” And they would be like, “This is garbage. I don't feel safe. I'm not riding that again.” So it took a lot of time and prototyping to get to something that was this stiff and light.

Steve:

Awesome.

Blaine:

So we're really excited about the connection.

Steve:

And so I'd only see one size on the website, but did you mention there were two sizes?

Blaine:

Yeah, we've got two more. So we've got our Halcyon 1250.

Steve:

Okay. Yeah.

Blaine:

Which this kit is coming with our longer mast.

Steve:

Oh, okay.

Blaine:

Yeah, so this kind like our light wind winger kit. So this one lifts super easy, controlled, pumps really well. We're really excited about this one. And then our Phoenix kit, which is a lower aspect foil, it works really well behind the boat or in waves. This thing just carves super aggressively. Really fun. And I also enjoy it with high wind winging as well.

Steve:

Oh, nice. Yeah.

Blaine:

Yeah.

Steve:

Super control.

Blaine:

Yeah, I think that wraps us up.

Steve:

Awesome, Blaine. Nice meeting you.

Blaine:

Steve great-

Steve:

Thanks for the roundup for the 2022, 2023 Freedom line.

Blaine:

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for stopping by.

Steve:

Absolutely.