Naish talk about their wings and foils

Foiling Magazine's Contributing Editor Steve Sjuggerud talks to Ewan Jaspan at the AWSI in Hood River about Naish's wings and foils such as Naish Wing-Surfer MK4,  Naish Wing Surfer Matador,  Naish Hover Compact LE and Naish MK1 Wing

For the full interview transcript, see below.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Hi, I'm Steve from Foiling Magazine. I'm here at AWSI 2022 with Ewan from Naish and we've got a lot of exciting new stuff from Naish's new wings, new boards, new foils. Let's get rolling. What do you want to talk about?

Let's get rolling. What do you want to talk about?

Ewan Jaspan:

I think we can start off with talking about our two wings and maybe the differences and why you would choose one over the other. We can start over here with our Wing-Surfer. This is our fourth iteration of the Wing-Surfer. We brought out the first production one probably about four years ago now. This is the MK4. It's pretty much all round wing. It's got a great wind range. That's one of the great things about it. It's got this new to this year, we've got a larger diameter leading edge and strut just to make it stiffer, but it still thins out into the wingtips to keep that wind flow and the balance nice. We've got new semi-rigid handles here, so they're still really controllable. You can control the wing with them, but they're not going to puncture the wing or hurt your wrists or anything.

We've got the added harness line attachment here, new power handle at the back, and we've restructured the windows so that they're not in the way of any folds or anything when you're packing up your wing, but still really great visibility through them. The wing's really stable, laughing out as well-

Steve Sjuggerud:

Absolutely.

Ewan Jaspan:

… which is really important for wave riding. We've added a dump valve on the strut as well for easier pack-down. The reason you'd take this over the Matador, which is our other wing, is really its range of use, its user-friendly ability, its speed, and for freestyle, it's a lot easier to throw around in rotations and stuff. It's got a much bigger top end than our Matador over here.

Steve Sjuggerud:

I'll tell you guys where I live have been using the six meter Matador in the surf as their low end. We have really light winds in Florida and even the top guys, they're using six meter Matadors in the surf. They just say it has a lot of good low end, but they can still throw it around.

Ewan Jaspan:

Exactly. It's got like this, it's got a deeper draft than the wing.

Steve Sjuggerud:

You can even see it from here.

Ewan Jaspan:

It's got a lot of canopy tension and a deep draft, which just means a lot of power basically. It's really, you can use a size smaller than say the Wing Surfer, which is great for surfing. When you're surfing on a wing, you want the least amount of wing to worry about while you're on the wave, so that you can focus on riding the wave. Also you want it to be really stable, which is something we've focused on with the shape of the wingtips to have it fly behind you really nicely. On the Matador as well we've just got three basic handles here. Pretty much all you need… These two in the perfect position for most riding, and this one's just an added for one-handed riding, or if you're really overpowered, you can grab that. There's no window on this wing either. Just to keep it minimal lightweight. It's all about just getting that grunt going lightweight. Keep the wing at the way when you're on the surf. What is an LT versus the standard Matador? Is this-

The LT is the light version on the standard Matador. It's basically-

Steve Sjuggerud:

Windowless?

… less handles, windowless and just really all you need just to go winging. All this is for is the grunt to get up and going on a small wing and then it flags out really nicely behind you.

Right. That's why the guys are using it where I live in super-light winds and surf 'cause low grunt and then flags out.

Ewan Jaspan:

Exactly. Which is pretty much for myself, what I do winging is only strapless wave riding downwinding and I just want that wing to get me up early. I want to use a small wing and then flag it out behind me. This is exactly what this is great for. It does work as well. This guy's freestyling on these wings really well and all that versatile wings. If you're more into flat water and versatile riding, then we'd go to the Wing Surfer. If you're really all about strapless carving around riding swell, you take the Matador.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Let's take a look at this board.

Ewan Jaspan:

Yeah.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Guys where I live have been using your traditional Hover. I've ridden it a few times and man, it does nothing wrong.

Ewan Jaspan:

Exactly.

Steve Sjuggerud:

It's like, well are you going to mess with something that does absolutely nothing wrong?

Ewan Jaspan:

We've still got the traditional Hover Elite, it's what I use a lot as well. It's just a really nice surfer shape. It planes really well. It sits in the water great. It does everything really well. But this one is kind of based more towards the freestyle guys. It's called the Hover Compact LE and it's basically trying to fit as many liters as you can in as small a shape as possible.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Basically if you want to rotate, this is going to rotate better.

Ewan Jaspan:

Exactly. You can get on… I believe this could actually be the hundred-liter board and it's-

Steve Sjuggerud:

It's crazy because it's very short.

Ewan Jaspan:

Crazy. The hundred liter is about the same-

Steve Sjuggerud:

We can just stand it up real quick and just see. I know it won't… Maybe not. That's a hundred-liter board. Look, it comes to my…

Ewan Jaspan:

Yeah. It's pretty crazy how many liters we fit in these things. It's great for being able to get out in light wind and still ride like a 4'4″ or 4'8″, which is really what the guys who are doing freestyle want. As you can see on the side, it's got a nice rocker for landing jumps as well in the nose. It's still got this nice flat section here so you can get going. Yes, it is going to be a little harder to get going than our standard LE boards just due to this rocker and the compact shape. The rocker here is just so you can really pierce down on landings and it'll come back up nicely.

Steve Sjuggerud:

There still has a lot of the DNA of the Hover. I can see just in the tail-

Ewan Jaspan:

Yeah. In The tail and the flat section here and the construction is the same as well.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Awesome.

Ewan Jaspan:

Our constructions are pretty bomber. They stand up to anything.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Super light, super strong.

Ewan Jaspan:

The Naish boards have been really popular for all that.

Steve Sjuggerud:

You want to talk about wings?

Ewan Jaspan:

Yeah. So this is our new range of wings. It's called the MK1. They're specific to winging. But we've actually found a really great crossover kite wing in the small size like this one. This is our 5-50. When you're winging you really want something that's efficient. That's a really big thing for winging. You don't want to be burning your arms out using a Foil that doesn't glide well. These things are really good for that. They also turn really well. We've kind of thinned out the tips, planted them, so they're a little bit shorter, a little bit lower aspect ratio than a true high aspect wing. What this does is really loosen up the Foil-

Steve Sjuggerud:

It narrows the turning radius.

Ewan Jaspan:

Narrows the turning radius. You can really get the wingtips out as well. Nice. Seeing as they still have a little bit of that high aspect DNA, they're still efficient. They pump well. the freestyle guys are really loving this because it's a wing that you can go out and downwind on, you can surf on and have efficiency, but you can really, really play around with it well. This comes in a 550, a 700, and 900, and 1100. A little bit smaller than a high aspect range, but because they do have a little thicker section, just specific for winging to get up and easy, you can ride a nice small, high aspect foil that still has early lift and nice turning ability.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Awesome. Fantastic.

Ewan Jaspan:

There are some of new exciting things in the winging range.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Thank you. Great.

Ewan Jaspan:

Hope you enjoyed that. And if you have more questions, check out Naish dot com.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Perfect. Thank you.

Ewan Jaspan:

Yes.