Unifoil’s latest foil range at the AWSI

At the recent AWSI event in Hood River, Toby from Unifoil walks Foiling Magazine's Contributing Editor Steve Sjuggerud through their current foil range, including the new Hyper2…

*Apologies for the sound quality!*

Products featured:

Unifoil Hyper

Unifoil Hyper2

Unifoil Vyper

Unifoil Katana

For the full transcript, see below.

Steve:

Hi, I'm Steve from Foiling Magazine and I'm here with Toby from Unifoil and man I'm so glad to be with you here. Unifoil has been an early innovator in foiling for a long time with Cliff as your designer, just doing some incredible foils early on, high performance stuff but that was the Unifoil the past. Where's the Unifoil of the future? Can you tell me a little about the story?

Toby:

Yeah, so for those that don't know, our claim to fame with Unifoil is we designed the very first high aspect surf wing. Our designer Clifford, is based in South Africa. We've been known as a surf brand. We're pushing into the wind wing market too, but mainly surf prone toe and freestyle and anything kinda wave related is what we specialize in, and we're a high-performance foil brand, and that's kinda what we want to focus on is the high end of performance.

Steve:

Fantastic, and so you've got a variety of different things. There's Hypers, there's Hyper², there's Vipers. What do we need to know to kind of get our hands around the range?

Toby:

Yeah, so the Viper range, that's for surf, for prone freestyle like I was saying, that's kind of been our biggest seller. It was designed by Adam Bennetts. I consider one of the world's best prone foilers.

Steve:

Absolutely.

Toby:

And we've had really good feedback on that wing. It's really user friendly, It's really stable. A lot of people describe it as buttery, like very smooth, very buttery but also turns really tight, and yeah, it's great for tow. We start at the 90, goes from 90 to the 190 and as you go bigger, it's better for pumping wind wing and the smaller sizes are better for tow.

Steve:

And then what's a Hyper² versus a Hyper?

Toby:

Yeah, so like I was saying before, our first ever high spec wing was a Hyper. That was in 2017, so it was time for an update. So now we're out with a Hyper² and if I can show you.

Steve:

Absolutely.

Toby:

So basically we've refined the original Hyper. This was our best selling foil for a long time. So what we've done differently is we've added dihedral.

Steve:

Yeah just a bit of dihedral right through here yeah. Y

Toby:

Yeah so just for easier roll side to side, it's more refined, the wingtips have been thinned out. So for breaches it's much better, much breaching and it's just faster, it just has a higher store speed though. So this is our kind of win wing specific foil. We don't really recommend it for prone as much as the Hyper. Got a project with Eric from Progression Project, that's going to kind of sit in between the mid aspect Viper and the high aspect and that's going to be for the guys that want to pump around and surf and turn so, yeah. So one of the things that we've been working on is going away from the all-rounder and going for discipline specific foils. So like if you want win wing, you'll ride this one, if you want to surf, you ride the Viper, if you want to pump around and have the middle, then you'll ride Erick's, which is going to be called the progression wing.

Steve:

Nice, Yeah, awesome.

Toby:

And we're super excited. All our team riders are really loving that wing.

Steve:

Oh, right, Okay, great. So they've tried Eric's upcoming wing.

Toby:

Yeah, yeah.

Steve:

Oh, fantastic and then you've got a couple different masts here. You want to tell me a little bit about those?

Toby:

Yeah, sure. So there's quite, we've found it's kind of two schools of thought. There's the guys that just want super stiff, they come from the kind of alu mast. They don't want any flex in the system and then there's the other guys that don't mind a bit of flex. Like for example Adam Bernetts, he doesn't mind a bit of flex in his…

Steve:

And more of the reflex of carbon really that kind of propels that.

Toby:

Yeah. So we wanted to listen to both sides. So originally we had one mast, some people were calling it [inaudible 00:03:58] I think the previous mast we did was a little bit flexy. Now we've gone super stiff. So we've got three types of masts. The standard one, which we use on the Viper, it’s fast, I'll just show you.

So this is our standard mast. You'll see the cords pretty thin, it tapers down. The profile is 14 mils at the base, tapering down to 12 mils at the tip. And this is what we recommend for the Viper, it's our fastest mast. However, we've had a lot of feedback from people wanting thicker masts. So we've created the Katana and you can say that the cord is thicker. Also the profile's sicker, so it's 18 taper and down to 14. So this one's probably 50% stiffer than our standard mast and this is for the Hyper two. So this comes standard with a Hyper two for the guys that want more stiffness. And then also we wanted to be more inclusive with uniform because we are kind of always priced at the high end and we want more people to ride unis, encourage them to try it. So we've come out with an alu mast as well. So this allows for a competitive price point and also so stiff as well. So now we've got three different types of masts for people.

Steve:

Fantastic. Do you want to cover the tails just a little bit?

Toby:

Yeah sure. Another thing that we've done this year as well, we listened to our customers and we're giving them more tail options. So we've come out with a three pack of tails. I'm pretty sure we're the only company to do this but basically it comes in a three pack. It's called the shiv shake in the shunt. To the naked eye the profiles are different, the outlines are the same. So basically the shunt is more front foot, the shank is more back foot, and the shiv is neutral. So even though they look very similar, they ride completely differently.

Steve:

Oh, amazing.

Toby:

And what we want to do is encourage experimentation. We've also, we have seven shims that come standard as well. Oh wow. And also the wing bolts, the titanium wing bolts,

Steve:

They come Oh, so you can move your mass base on the water?

Toby:

Yeah. So basically what we find is people coming into the sport, they just want to plug and play. But as you get better, you want to start to experiment with the mass placement, different tails, different shimming options. And really it's a game of millimeters for sure, as you guys know. It's like you change the tiniest thing and it completely changes the foil. So we want to give at riders option to really experiment and really fine tune the gear. And that's why we come with six new tails. These are the 14. It also comes in 13 as well. And another reason for a three pack is we want allow guys to chop it up and experiment and still have other tails to ride.

Steve:

And are these G 10? Is that what they are?

Toby:

Yeah, G 10.

Steve:

Yeah. Fantastic.

Toby:

Another good thing about G 10 is it has a different flex pattern. So some people prefer the G 10. We were just speaking to John Sason who's got his own set of G 10 tails and he was saying he actually prefers the G 10 over the carbon stuff. It just has a different flex pattern and it's just easier to get products to amongst it. Like you don't have to do it with steel mold and everything. You can cut it with the C and seeds. Literally we can have a new tail in a week instead of having to do the whole molding process setting.

Fantastic. Well thanks Toby. Thanks for going through everything. It's pretty exciting, man. I love all of the choices for us as users to tweak our gear. This is even this right here, just this, right? Yeah. Such a simple thing. So thanks so much.

Toby:

Yeah thank you. Absolutely.

Steve:

Appreciate it. Yep.