Taking a look at the CORE Foils line-up at the AWSI

FM's Contributing Editor Steve Sjuggerud joins CORE rider Steven Akkersdijk for a look at the recently released CORE wing foil line-up…

Products featured:
CORE Roamer
CORE XC Wing
CORE Spectrum foil

For the full interview transcript, see below.

Steve:

Hi, I'm Steve from Foiling Magazine and I'm here with Steven from CORE Foils and CORE is extremely well known in the kitesurfing world, but CORE has just launched itself into our world of winging and wing foiling and with the quite incredible product launch here. And so will you take us through it a bit?

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah. Thanks for having this talk. We're super excited to be joining this entire wing market. Foils are not necessarily something new to us. We have been in a kite foiling business, so we took a lot of the things we learned from the kite foiling business into this wing foil market. And we might not be the earliest to the game, but it also means we had a moment to look around and see what we really wanted.

So I would say that from the get go, our goal was to get a wing foil set up that's very accessible, very easy to ride, and that will take you from, as a beginning rider, you can start off on it and you can grow all the way to a very, very advanced rider and still have a lot of fun on it.

Steve:

Yeah, I mean your product shots were some serious advanced riding, so if they're riding this stuff, that's pretty incredible actually.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah, it was amazing. We went to Mauritius and got proper waves. It was quite scary, I have to say. Usually I kite that, and now you're a bit more vulnerable out there. But it's amazing and it's been quite a long process. Also with the foils, like getting them in Cape Town first… I think in the end it worked out super well.

So I would say we just start off with the Spectrum, which is our wing foil. So the Spectrum, again, what we try to do is make it accessible. You have a lot of brands out there that have so many options. You look on the website in there, it's like you have this front wing, that front wing, but you can mix it with this stabilizer and that stabilizer. And our goal was to make a very easily understandable foil setup. So you can change the entire front wing setup. And it always works with the same stabilizer, which in my opinion is just really nice for the end consumer. You don't need to shim, you don't need to worry. It's set up. Our foil designer, Jan Termöhlen, he took care that once you are out there, all the foils are going to feel the same from when they lift off the water and once you're flying.

So the front wings range from a 950 up to a 2150…

Steve:

And this is a 1250 and this looks like it's usable by everyone, really. Right?

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah. We didn't want to go very high aspect, obviously. Probably you guys know, but the higher aspect you go, the harder it is to control. Yes, you get more glide and more performance, but the drawback is the control. It's going to be hard once it tips over, your stalls going to come more at an instant and you're going to sink through. And what we tried is accessibility and confidence inspiring foils. So the first time I took this out to get with Willow in Cape Town we were both super surprised to be out there and riding this and it feels very similar to our kite foil.

Steve:

Oh wow.

Steven Akkersdijk:

And I'm so used to that being that straightaway like, “Oh hey man, this feels like super good and easy.”

Steve:

So just looking down here. I mean this is a very unique mast base. It looks like you're trying to save weight. And can you tell me about what we're looking at down here from the mast and the mast base?

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah, so we decided to go first of all with the aluminum mast. And that is mainly because again, the accessibility part, we found that if you have a very high-quality aluminum mast that it didn't have that… It's actually really on par with weight with carbon and it is still very stiff.

Steve:

For sure.

Steven Akkersdijk:

It's not as reactive, but it will filter out the small impurity [inaudible 00:04:09] water, which I actually really enjoy. And it actually allows you, as well, to have the mast and the mast base separate. So let's say that you buy yourself a 60 centimeter mast, which is our shortest mast, because you want to learn. But then you want to get a longer mast. If you bought a carbon mast, that means a new carbon mast, which is also connected to the mast base and that's going to get expensive.

Steve:

Expensive, yeah.

Steven Akkersdijk:

For us, to upgrade from 60 to 70 mast is very affordable and you can use the same mast base. So that's quite a unique selling point, I think. And also we try to cater to the people and make it an accessible product.

Steve:

Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. Can you tell us a little about the board?

Steven Akkersdijk:

Absolutely. So over here is the…

Steve:

Going along with the same principles, it's basically a one board line that morphs in its use, right?

Steven Akkersdijk:

Exactly. So it's again a one board line-up. This is the Roamer. It goes from 55 liters, which is our smallest, all the way up to 130 liters. And I mean if you look from the front, what you'll see, it is quite a compact board. And we went for the wider till just for that low wind. That low wind, easy off the water. We worked on a till design that doesn't stick… And rock right out. Once you're riding out there and you're going to have a little touchdown, that it's not going to dive.

So especially riding waves out there, there's going to be a moment where you're going to get a little bit of ventilation on your wing once your wing comes out and you might touch down, but the board will recover really nice from it. And that's something I enjoyed a lot.

I think something that is also very unique to our brand, is actually our inserts. A lot of the brands they work with plastic inserts and a self-tapping screw. But we found that if you take a self-tapping screw and push them in, take them out, push them in, take them out, then after off how it is very likely…

Steve:

You'll shred that insert, basically.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah, you shred the thread and we went for aluminum inserts and therefore they're going to last a lot longer. They're threaded and you don't have to worry about having them loosening up.

Steve:

Yeah, fantastic. Exciting. Well, let's talk about the wings.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah, I think that's a very good plan.

So this is our XC wing. We try to, from the get go again, same direction we wanted to go. A wing that is easy to ride, easy to handle.

Out there, the first thing I noticed is that on some ways you're riding and all of a sudden you get, I think it's called back wind.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah.

Steven Akkersdijk:

You're riding out there and your front hand gets pushed down on a gust. And that's something that threw me off a lot. And especially as a beginning rider, if you're expecting pull and you get push, that's most likely going to throw you off your board. So we really tried to minimize that and it's near to zero with this one, I haven't had it.

And if you look down on the handles, you'll find stiff handles, so that means the hand… You're going to have a lot of control on this wing.

Riding characteristics, it's a very [inaudible 00:07:44] wing, so I love it when you're riding and it's easy to steer the wing around and it's just playful. It wants to play. And that's what I like. It's what I like in kiting and what I like in winging. Play around with the elements.

Steve:

So I got a question for you. This is my first time seeing your wings and is this a dump valve? Is that for just… So this little yellow thing right here, what are we looking at there?

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah, so one thing with winging, how do you dry your wing? Most of the time. Do you hang it?

Steve:

Just pack it up last. That's what I do.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Pack it up last.

Steve:

That's it, yeah.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Okay. So obviously you can leave it drying out, but a lot of people will hang their wing or they will pump it when it's still rolled up. And because it's such a big leading edge, the bladder easily twists inside and then you get a warp wing. If your bladder twists inside, it's going to get warped and it wants to pull into one direction. So we inserted those valves, which are, it's not a valve, you can't open it, but they lock the bladder into its position so the bladder will not twist inside of the leading edge.

Steve:

Oh, that's a nice innovation.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Yeah, it's just something we noticed that made sense to us.

Next to that, we used a lot of our kite materials, so we've been developing a lot on our own kite materials, which is the ExoTex leading lead in the cortex canopy. We made sure they're very stretch resistance, as light as possible. And overall I think this will be a wing that everybody is going to enjoy. It's not just made for one person. Everybody can enjoy this setup.

Steve:

Awesome. Well, fantastic. Well I look forward to trying it someday here. So thank you so much, Steven. Appreciate it.

Steven Akkersdijk:

My pleasure.

Steve:

Absolutely. Yep.

Steven Akkersdijk:

Cheers.

Steve:

Cheers.