Five Minutes With

Recognising the market need for dedicated foil boards for standup and prone take offs that are more specialised than adapted truncated SUP designs, Sky Solbach, shaper at Fanatic has created the fortuitously titled Sky SUP and Sky Surf boards. We caught up with him to find out about the development process and what it means for the end user i.e. you and us.

Where and with whom did you do the testing for the Sky SUP range?

We developed the Sky SUP Foil board range on Maui last winter. With such a huge variety of foil waves around, there is usually some kind of wave to foil somewhere or at least some strong wind for doing downwind coast runs. I did most of the early testing together with Ken Winner as well as various local surfers and later on in the process also involved Airton Cozzolino.

In terms of versatility of the SUP foil equipment, do you find there is less need for an extended range of kit when you compared other sports? Does it make your job in R&D easier?

The incredible thing about foiling is that you don’t need good waves. In fact, you don’t even WANT good waves. The best foil days are when the waves are small and crumbly and slow. The simplicity of foiling and lack of gear needed to have a lot of fun in mediocre conditions makes it an amazing sport on its own and a great compliment to other sports like surfing and wind sports where you ideally want to have good waves and the right wind. In terms of R&D, yes, it’s easy to focus on the finer details when you don’t have a such a huge range of equipment with a lot of moving parts, and you don’t need to find the perfect conditions to test your latest prototype.