Wing Foil interview: Mike’s Lab- Mike Zajicek and Stefano Moris on the Blue Planet Show episode 23

Mike Zajicek and Stefano Moris make some of the world's fastest foils. When I researched their foils to use for wing foiling, I could not find much information online. After many months of waiting, they were finally able to make time for an interview. The timing was great since I just received the 600 Mike's lab Foil from them that I ordered months ago. We talk about their background, how they started designing and making foils and go into detail on their foil design theories and construction. For more information on their foils, please visit: http://www.mikeslab.com

Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show, where I interview foil athletes, designers, and thought leaders and get lots of good information for all those foil crazy people out there, like you and me. This year I didn't post a lot of interviews, but I'm ending this year, 2022 with a bang, with two really good interviews.

Today's interview is with Mike's lab founder Mike and partner Stefano. They make some of the best foils in the world, the fastest foils in the world, hand-built in San Francisco and in Italy. The story, background story is really cool as well. know, Mike grew up in Czechoslovakia, communist Czechoslovakia, where he started building windsurf equipment and making it for his friends.

And then escaping over the border, risking his life to escape Communist Czechoslovakia, and ended up in the West and eventually in San Francisco, started making windsurf boards again for some of the top athletes in the world, and then getting. Foils at the time of the interview. I only had one quick session on my 600 mike slab foil.

Since then, I've been able to try it more and also use it on a really long downwind run in epic conditions from Hawaii Kai to White Plains where we winged like about 40 miles downwind. Super fun. And that's why I could really tell how fast this foil is. I went out with some really fast guys and was able to of smoke them in some of the runs just because the foil was really quick and easy to control and I was just able to make these big drops on these big bumps.

And so I had a great time with it. I might include some of that footage in this during this interview. And then also I have some really nice footage of Alan Kez using his five, I think it's a five 40 Mike's lab foil in Kailua. And got some cool drone footage of him going super fast on that foil as well.

I hope you enjoy the, this interview and next week's interview is gonna be with Ken Winter. He's the designer at Duotone and making some of the best wings on the market and also was really the first one to make inflatable wings for foiling. He's definitely a pioneer and a really good story.

Started. Windsurf professional, and then got into the design side of things. And he really shared a lot about the, his wing designs and philosophy and et cetera. So that's a really good show as well. And I'm gonna post that the following Saturday, which is December 24th, and wishing everyone happy holidays.

And without further ado, here is Mike and Stefano with Mike's lab. So welcome, Stefano and Mike to the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is about Mike's Lab foils. Thanks so much for joining me. I've been waiting for quite a while to get you on the show. And I finally got my own Mike's lab foil.

I've only tried it one time, unfortunately, but really really excited about it. So welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. And actually, let's start with where you are joining from, so we're spread out all over the world here. All right. I'm in Sienna, Italy, and I'm close to San Francisco.

Yeah. And then I'm in Honolulu where it's morning time. And I think for you it's Mike is midday and for Stephano, it's late in the evening. So thanks for making the time to, to join the Blue Planet Show. , my, my video is, Doing funky stuff, but, so anyway let's talk a little bit about your background.

I just heard Mike saying that you you basically had to escape from, or Yeah. Tell us about, a little bit about your background how you got to where you're now. Maybe start with Mike. Yeah, so obviously I have went grade school, then apprentice training for cabinet making, but high end cabinet making, the European stuff, which you make, eat for generations rather than the, whatever I learned here.

Kitchen cabinets with a staple gun, , very different. And then I went to like high school with kinda orientation for architecture, interior design and furniture design. And after that I worked for about a year in interior design in the office and also in the what is it? Shop shop. And we were catering to diplomats in Prague, taking care of the residences, preparing all that and.

About 1978 actually. Exactly. I started making windsurfing boards because that was one thing we were allowed to do because my brother took on hang gliding and that was a no-no, especially close to the border. So that quickly became somewhat outlawed except one little hill in center of Czech Republic.

So that's why me and my friends, we picked up wind surfing and, so 78 I made the first one, and that's how I actually introduced myself into epoxy and all that. And I kept making boards until 2012, actually more, that was the end of windsurfing boards, and then the kit boards went on for another, I would say three to four years.

But during the end of that time the foil came on and I was able to jump on probably the first sword foil, which was imported into America by Brian Lake. And he left for a week somewhere and he said, yeah, Mike, hey, he have at it  and I, it was a very interesting time. He couldn't quite do it yet. It was a skim board.

I put footsteps on it so I can even try because I hate boards without footsteps. And yeah, it was difficult. He thought he wasted his money  soon, very soon after he came back, he learned enough that he was doing the, I think it was Friday night races on kite boards. And very quickly he started winning the weather mark.

And so we knew this is the way to go. And so sorry to interrupt you, but this was all still in the Czech Republic, right? No. I escape in 1983. And what are we are talking about now? Maybe 2014. So there's 30 years between. Okay. But okay. So you were saying back, so back in the Czech Republic, you're doing an apprenticeship for building furniture and so on.

And then you started playing with hang lighters and building wind surfers, correct? Correct. That was all. So in the Czech Republic? Yes. And I'm sure that at that time you weren't really able to buy any goods from the West, so you had to basically build your whole rig and everything, or like, how, yeah.

How was, how did that work? So back then, yeah, we basically bought, it was actually a pre molded piece of styrofoam, but we didn't like the shape, so we reshaped it a little bit and then laid it up with fiberglass and epox.  and for, let's say universal. We had friends like machine fittings where the high pressure hose would fit into get screwed from the, from both sides with like heavy duty bolt, expand the high pressure hose into this little delivering housing.

That was our universal. And then we fitted aluminum MAs, which is just a piece of pipe, and same thing for the boom, which I found two trees and started bending my aluminum pipe to make a boom. And then I SCO end together. And I'm sure everybody started like that. Everybody in eastern Europe, right?

Yeah, because I grew up in, in west Berlin, but we had friends in East Germany and they had to basically build their own equipment unless we brought them something over from the west, . Yeah. But I recall the beginnings in Maui, like early seventies, and nobody was making anything and they were pioneering their own way.

Oh, so that, was that early you got into windsurfing, like back Yeah, I was 78 maybe just few years later and  certainly couldn't buy except those pre molded styrofoam blanks. Somebody was able to put together probably on the side in some factory. And yeah, that's what we bought and we could buy a park and fiberglass that was doable.

Okay. And then talk a little bit about how you escaped from the Czech Republic and made it to the us. So me and my wealth, our dad was always on a dissident side, but he never got too much in trouble except getting fired from pilot school. But his friends they were persecuted a little bit more to the point that some of them ended up in u New Mines, and actually two sons of one of this, these friends helped us later on.

But first we took a vacation in Yugoslavia and we contacted these couples sons over on my dad's friend, who in the meantime died as probably the result of the minds. So they researched an area how we can, or where it's safe to jump the fence between Yugoslavia and Italy. First we tried to sail from Yugoslavia to Italy across, like this Northern bay.

We were quickly stopped by boat and we were in the wetsuit, so they just sent us. . Then later on, I remember being in some kind of a police station. I think that's when we came up to the border crossing and they basically took us out and did little interview. And the third time, there was few days later, these friends from Switzerland came and we started talking, strategizing, and they had this city in US Lavia where some other check people were able to just jump the fence in the middle of the city.

And so that's what we ended up doing. And we abandoned our car on the US lobby inside and they basically loaded us into their car. And from dark midnight Italy, we drove all the way to Vienna refugee camp, which is Austria, where the waiting line was locked shorter. And we just had to lie to authorities there, that was the first country we stepped our foot on.

So we will be able to stay in a refugee camp and apply for asylum. Wow. So this was like, I guess this was before the Berlin Wall came down and things like that. Oh yeah. What year? What year was that? I, this was 83 and Berlin Wall came down in 89. Oh, okay. So that's when the borders were really still really strict and hard to Oh Cross, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So that, you're basically risking your life doing that, right? Yeah, if you don't do it in the right spot. So my cousin was actually in the army and he was patrolling the bo border, and there was like 50 kilometer dead zone, and they had machine guns, him and his body and dogs basically patrolling the, this dead zone with electrical fences and all that.

And my cousin decided to escape, this was like two years before I did it. So he knew that it was a bad area and he was so soft that his parents were actually just, his dad was allowed to go to the refugee camp, talk to him, and he managed to bring him back. And so he got little fill in how it goes, because he worked on the border and he escaped.

And I'm sure his body wasn't deep due to after, wow. His whatever colleague escapes. But anyway, so then you applied for asylum, I guess in, in Europe and then, but how did you make it to San Francisco? . So yeah, you apply, you wait few months we had a interview with Ambassador, US Ambassador in vie.

And once he okayed us, we in the meantime joined this American Fund for Czechoslovak refugees, which was financing the flights, to come to us. And we were asked where they were gonna send us to Boston, and we thought further away from Europe would be better idea. And luckily we got San Francisco, so we ended up directly to here.

They paid us first month's rent and after that we were on our own. Luckily we got welfare the first few months and yeah, after I, I literally started working in a company shop two weeks after arrival with zero English, , some French, enough Russian. And luckily a Russian guy hired me for his shop. So I was able to speak Russian to him at first, but he had three other young guys like me, and I picked up English from them within few months.

Pretty okay. Especially, and it's just about work, it's not, it wasn't too bad. Wow. Yeah, now, and now your English is very good, so that's impressive. How old were you when you got to the United States? 23. Oh, okay. Wow. Yeah. Okay. That's a amazing story. And then, yeah, so then you got a job, and then how did you get into making your own foils?

First it was the boards. I jumped from that 78 back in check. I made at least six wind boards. And then here I am in San Fran, driving by Berkeley, where I see dozens of wind surfers having fun. And I go, I gotta, get back to it. Me and two other friends, we bought this production like horrible quality boards and started going out there and later on I realized, yeah, I probably have to make me my own board again.

And it was 1985 when I made my first board, maybe 86, 1 of those. And I managed to cut my finger pretty badly in that process, . And I finished the board injured, and three of my friends tried it, and they immediately said, yeah, we need something like that. We want same board. . So I had three customers before I could ever try my first board out here,

And I slowly shifted from cabinet making and little bit later construction because my Russian boss managed to fire me for asking him a question . So I went into short period of construction and from that I was able to meander into making boards. And so that's how you started basically you started your own business building boards?

Yeah. In 86 full-time. Okay. Definitely 87. And then, yeah. And then talk about, yeah. How that evolved into Mike's lab, I called it, believe it or not, Mike's lab. Then for the first board, just as a joke that I'm some big operation . It was, nothing. And yeah, I was making in inroads into the local scene, racing myself, pushing it.

And then local racers like Bar Chrisman and Steve Silvester, they noticed sooner than later they got their own boards made by me, even though Bar Chrisman was making his own. But it was too much work for him, , and now he's using my force. That's crazy. Literally, what is it, 37 years later or 40 maybe

Yeah. So I'm making boards and in 1996, Matt Pritchard asks me to make him aboard and he picks it up on the way to Hood River Nationals. And he wins by a long shot, like all bullets, by long distance. So immediately Kevin stepped in, then Kevin won his first World Cup, p w a beating beyond Dereck, interrupting his 13 year winning streak on my board, which was a big deal.

Wow. And I think it was 1999. And film again calls me and he goes, Mike, you gotta come over. Kevin's gonna do it. And sure enough, I just made awards and that was a lot of fun. . Oh, that's excellent. Okay. So Matt and Pritchard put you on the map a little bit with the Win Winston Awards and Yeah. Later on it was all kinds of other people like Phil Scott Fent, and Michael many others.

They all use Finian Min. Newberg who was, there was plenty of others. And the whole time, like basically you're not really sponsoring these guys, they're just buying boards from you because you make the fastest boards or were you making boards for free for some of those guys? No, they had to pay me.

I was still very poor, barely making it. To the top guys, I was trying to keep the price down so they can keep selling it. And they did, they sold the board for at least the same, if not more. But I didn't have to do the paperwork or all that, so I just Yeah. Collected money and they let them deal with it.

So early on, pretty much everybody had to pay me, but I was very reasonable about the prices, hopefully . Wow. Yeah, it's a little bit like I, I was talking to Mark Rappa horse who started S I c and all the best guys were buying his boards cuz they were the fastest boards available and he didn't really have to sponsor anybody because that's a nice position to be.

Yeah, that's where I . But it seems like to the, to this day, it's like you have more, like you, it seems like you have a long waiting list to, for these foils. Like I had to wait, I don't know, three or four months to get a foil. What's your wait time? And I don't know is that kind of how you try to keep it where you basically, you can't make as many as people want?

Or what's, yeah, what's your philosophy? Stef, I should men jump in here in let's say the waiting times and the list, but I would say boards, you can almost go in and, let's say have a mate in Cobra, which we did with the kite boards and they were pretty dang good. But I don't really see how our design could be successful and made somewhere in China without us looking it over.

And we did try to teach an outfit here in Michigan, I believe, and we slept through about, I don't know, six months, maybe a year. And it still wasn't, the quality wasn't there, so it's not so easy. So I step, Steph should jump in here. Yeah, actually okay. So actually Stefana maybe start talking a little bit about your background, like how you got into this business.

Sure. Okay. Mike is one of my best friends. I've known him since I was 18 years old. I'm 48 now. And I, yeah, time flies. And so I met Mike at the Berkeley Marina windsurfing because I caught the windsurfing bug when I was 17. And I met him when I was 18 and I was at the Berkeley Marina and I would see him and all these other guys just go up, up and down and upwind up to Treasure Island training every day.

And as a senior in high school at that time, I got off at around noon, just afternoon. So I was going to Berkeley every day. And I just saw that as a goal I wanted to achieve, to be able to, be as fast as those guys and be able to go up wind as fast as those guys. And I was on this super heavy polypropylene, tega windsurf board, and I was just, slug up there.

And I finally remember finally making it all the way up to Treasure Island and seeing Mike and the others dancing around playing, doing big jumps. And I chased them back down wind. And I tracked Mike down in the parking lot and we started talking. And then I, and for me, Mike's lab.  as a board maker and as a person was already a legend at that point in the windsurfing scene.

So I remember going up to him and oh my gosh, you got a new Mike's lab? Oh, when did you get that? And Mike was like, oh, I made it . And so that just started the whole conversation there. And Mike, gave me an awesome deal. My very first Mike's lab board was a one that had broken and taken up water and he was able to cut the whole thing in half and let it dry out and repair it.

So he sold it to me for cheap and I paid off by digging under his house an addition, an additional room under his house. Cuz as a high school student I didn't have that kind of money . And yeah, so that's how our friendship started is out there on the race course, so to speak.

And I'm a product designer, so I went to San Jose State and studied product design. So I'm right in the middle between mechanical engineering and fine art. And during my university days and on weekends I'd be working in a windsurfing shop. On the summers I'd be doing all the local race circuit and everything like that.

And often would fly myself at Mike's for dinners and jacuzzi time and just philosophizing on life. And that's how our friendship started. . And then in 2006 I met my Italian wife and I have Italian relatives too over here. And so I decided to move over here. And in 2014 is when we started the whole Hydrofoil project.

And since as a product designer, I have, I've been doing CAD and 3D and tool design and things like that since 1994. And I proposed to Mike Hey, let's, let's I knew the scene in San Francisco was already blowing up and Mike was already sending me messages about it and I wanted to get into it too.

And I'm just one of the people I, I love to just build everything. And I'm always more satisfied to be out on the water if it's something that I've made. So I was just saying, Hey, let's, start a project together just almost like a hobby, we'll design it together and Mike will do all the first layups.

I'll do all the tool design. I'll make the first mold. I should jump in quickly in here. Yeah, so I got it sort then soon enough I got spots, foil as well, l shortly after that, F four started making their own foil.  and I was hacking together literally hundreds of pieces with thousands of combinations for maybe a couple of years and never really figured out what it needs and where is the problem.

And I know I couldn't control the sort in pitch and spots in left. And I knew it could be combined. And I'm telling Stefano and he goes let's make our own. And there it was. . , yeah. Wow. So it started, so before you met, and I guess that was in the early nineties when you guys met when you were 18.

So before that, did you grow up in California or Yeah. Yeah. I was born in San Francisco and I grew up in the Bay Area. Yes. Oh, okay. And then, so basically you married an Italian wife, your Italian wife, and then moved to, basically moved to Italy. Yeah. And then, so now you make, basically you make foils as well in, in Italy.

Yeah so the whole development process with Mike is that, from TA 2014 when things started just almost as a hobby, but then quickly started getting requests and things like that I was always doing the design work, the tooling and we would always sort of hash out over at that particular time, Voxer, now we use what's up, but just chats to refine and go over the designs.

And I would then come over once or twice a year to work with him in his garage and help boost production because we quickly gotta to the point where we just could not meet demand. And we had to get some more man, hands in there so to speak. So I would come over. A couple times a year to do these production sessions.

And and at that particular time I was also teaching at a a university here in Italy, different design courses and curriculum. And then in 2019, the demand got so much where it justified me opening up my own shop over here. So from 2019, I've had my own lab, so to speak where I produce a lot of the foils that are then sold on over here in Europe.

Wow. Okay. Great story. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna share this these cool sketches that you emailed me. I'm gonna screen share it and sure. And can you see them? Yeah. Okay. So I guess at that time you guys were one of you was in the Bay Area and one is in and Europe and Italy.

And then you were making these for Kite, kite foiling. . Yeah. These first sketches are one of our very first designs. And we, Mike and I both have the philosophy where we just gotta try stuff and learn by doing, we are definitely of the trial and error philosophy.

And so this, these are sketches of our very first design, which had, the mass mounted directly over the wing. And I would often 3D print stuff and send it over to Mike so we could have it in his hands. And what you're seeing, all those little pieces, seven through two, and A, B, C, D, those were all the first sort of positive mold like that I sent to Mike because our very first design made negative molds by 3D printing them and backfilling them with resin and M D F, but it ended up getting lost in the shipping.

So then a few months later I had to send him the positives, which then he made molds of so just for a good laugh. That was our very first design. Okay, so these little pieces, you made 3D printed molds and then built the basically made the parts and then put 'em all together into to make one foil.

Yeah, those, I sent them all the pieces and he could put them all together and then make a mold himself out of fiberglass or whatever he did at the time. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. , and this is where you were a little bit younger still . Yeah. . But yeah, talk, here's sketches, where we're thinking about, how to keep the tips from popping outta the water.

Just what seems so obvious now. But at that time, these were all considerations that we were making. Yeah. And here's a little cross section of how I was gonna make the 3D printed mold to send them. And I, this, this was a, it was such a tragedy because I, for months, I printed all these pieces, made this huge mold, and it just literally got lost in shipping and just damaged.

It's probably some buried in some warehouse in America somewhere. ? Oh, no. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So talk a little bit about this. Is this like your secret sauce or can you share a little bit about like, how you built your molds and if, are you still do using that same process? No, the not at all.

So this was in the beginning we used the 3D printing to make the first mold, but we quickly realized that it's just not accurate enough. When you're dealing with making and designing and making hydrofoils, you have to have much higher tolerances. And We quickly moved on to aluminum molds.

However, having said that, often in our design process between Mike and I, Mike is somebody that really likes to have something, between his hands, that he can of feel the profile and help visualize the connection. And so often I would print out little pieces and send them to him just so he could like, touch and hold them and give feedback on what he thought.

And that was these little pieces here kind of thing? Yeah. Or I don't know if, I don't remember if I sent a picture or not, but, our connections or sometimes profile sections and things like that. Yeah, wing section, wingtip, just to, for me to touch it and Yeah.

But, oh, sorry. I just picked up basically the dimensions from what seemed to be working from my thousands of experiments over couple of years. And I gave the rough dimensions and then Stefano would add it, make it into a final product. And then we had somebody, I believe, in Kansas making our first aluminum molds, which were, reasonably pricey, but for, as he said lot better tolerances and also option.

Cooking it in the oven to get the proper mask strength. We had to go the aluminum route and pressures, I we clamp our molds together. Everybody knows we do a wet layer process and we use really high pressures, which obviously 3D printing doesn't, can't hold up to it. . But these original molds, I guess the, this part here was the three pin 3D printed part, and then you put exactly resin underneath it and MDF boards, and then just Yeah.

Made your own molds out of yeah, out of 3D printed materials for prototyping, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And I since those early days, I have done this a couple more times when I want to do something that's just so ridiculous that it's not worth spending, a few thousand on an aluminum mold and then find out that it doesn't work, so I, I did a flying wing concept many years ago with this same process. Okay. And then I guess this picture here is like the, where the mass is right on top of the foil, but the foil is angled forward. Yep. Yeah. Looks like a good way to catch seaweed, right? Yeah, . Exactly. . But how did it work?

We I think we ended up not doing such a forward rake when we, I think this was like maybe one of the very first sketches. Yeah, just a sketch. I bet you it would turn really good. And I know brand did this forward. Oh yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Okay and then this looks like what year was this?

This kind of an older article. Huh? The world's fastest kite boards. Kite boards by day. Wow. So if it's a kiteboard, I bet you it's about 2014, maybe 13. And yeah, I went straight from winding making boards from, for Johnny Heineken, Adam Cook, and all these really fast guys. And again, they took it straight to the world championship winning.

Johnny was at least two or three times world champion on the three Fin Kitire boards. Yeah, right there, . And then this, I guess this was before foiling, right? This, these were just Exactly with a regular fin on the back and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Three fins. Yes. Oh, three fins. Okay. Wow. Which ironically turned into be perfect for learning Wing foiling.

Yeah. And then the, and then there's these asymmetrical speed boards. Huh. That's cool too. That's Rob Douglas, who was always, and he still is now pursuing speed on wings with my foils, and he's buying all kinds of wings, trying to go fast. But this was at the time when kites were actually holding the world speed record for sale powered craft.

And he was asking me to make his boards with his ideas, his dimensions for different conditions. I believe at the end I probably made about 27 of these for him. . Wow. So at the at that time, yeah, the kites held the world speed record for sail power. Who's holding it now? What is it?

Is it foils or still regular boards well be, so he got his world record, 55.5 knots, which held for I think a couple of years. And then the little boat, Ste. May know the name. I think it was some kind of attraction foil with a sail. Yeah. Vest. Sail rocket. Yeah. And sale Rocket disintegrated at the end of the run by, by obliterating that 55 55

Or maybe over 60, but it could never be repeated because the book was in, in pieces, . Oh, wow. And then that's still the world record, that's the current world record? Or did they get the world record with that run, or, yes. No, they did. They did. And then at the end of the run, the Bo boat, just self des or self-destructed.

Hon, honestly, I don't, I, I know the, when the Sail Rocket had their big crash, I don't think that was the record run. I think they went and re rebuilt and did the record run after that, but I believe they still have the record. And this, yeah, this image here is just, I have a portfolio site just showing a, the depth of my work. I've done everything from consumer electronics to toys, to, to clothing. A lot of people think since I'm involved, in the design side of Mike's lab, they think I'm, an aero engineer or, a naval architect.

But I'm not I'm really just as much an artist as I am a tinkerer. , if you would say, So even like first class airline seats and things like that you worked on . Yep. Yep. And what is this? A it's a little mp3, boom box from back in the day. And there's some other Bluetooth concepts there.

I was working for a design firm for a while where we did shoe concepts for Nike. I've done everything from, multimedia commercials to some c compositing work to web design and coding and things like that. So a little bit of everything under the creative umbrella. The slipper looks a little bit like a kite surfing foot strap.

Yeah. Maybe there's some subconscious influence there. What's this one? The Air Force water plane. Oh, I so I, all my life I've been into, radio control, everything and this kind of ties into the hydrofoil design. And I, it's the same with Mike in the sense that we've, all the things we've been into in our lives, we've always thought about just the way fluid flows.

So neither Mike nor I. Like I said, aeronautical engineers but we definitely lie awake at night thinking about flow. And so I've done, yeah, that was a scratch built radio control airplane I built and I've done discus launch and RC helicopters and I there was a period of my life where I was skydiving for about 14 years, and I also designed and built a parachute.

So I've even designed and built foil kites as well. So just flow, fluid flow. Interesting. And then this looks like a covid safe cafeteria design. Is that what it is? ? No, it's old fur. It's a old library furniture from a much old, just for privacy or yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So not not the covid flowing across the table.

Yeah. No. And since 2019, that's all I've been doing is the hydrofoil. So before 2019, I was mixing in consulting and, working on the hydrofoils with Mike. But since two, 2019 it's been just full-time hydrofoils, which Okay. Even then, even with Mike producing in California and me producing in Europe, yeah.

The wait list is still Optum 3, 4, 5 months. It depends on what model and where the person is located. Yeah. And then so the pictures in that portfolio shows Nico Par. And for about three years we were dominating the racing circuit on our kite foil and our waiting line just absolutely exploded.

It was pushing past two years, waiting time for everybody else, learn how to make proper foils. We were definitely there having very successful race design. And I think Nico Parley were at least two times world champion. Daniel Lamoro at least three on our foil, and maybe Johnny I think was as well, one once or twice.

Yeah. And I think it's really important to point out that, when people think of Mike's lab, they first think of Mike, and then sometimes they think about me. But the re the reality is it's really like a big team project. I If it wasn't for the valuable input and feedback of Nico and Johnny and Ricky Leche and Connor and all, just the whole slew of racers giving their input, then of course our hydrofoils wouldn't be where they are today.

So I just got this foil that bullet six and it's yeah, it's beautiful. I only tried it one time for a short time to test it out. It definitely felt fast and very efficient. But I'm wondering like, how many people do you have working on these and do you, did you actually do some of the work on this foil or like who who actually builds these foils at them?

Yeah, I believe I build this one and shift it to you, and the only thing I have done by somebody is to cut my pieces to be late inside the mold. So if you imagine a roll of carbon and I need to have the pieces precut, I have somebody doing that. But everything else I do myself. So the pre-reg carbon basically cut into into the pieces that fit into the mold.

It's not even pre-reg, it's dry carbon. It's dry carbon and then it's saturated by liquid resin. So the resin, do you like vacuum it into the mold or do you lay it out wet it out before the mold closes? How does that work? Yeah, exactly. Just wet it out piece by piece into each half of the mold and then the two halves come together and hopefully next morning it pops open with what you have.

It obviously needs a lot of cleaning after it comes out of the mold, but. . Yeah, so I guess this one looks like the whole, the fuselage and the whole front foil is all one piece and then it looks like the tail is molded separately and then connected here. Is that correct? No, it's all molded in the same time.

What you probably are looking at is our own mold connection. It looks like it's been connected, but no, it was all laid up in, in one time, one piece. And that's because we have to screw the wings to the fuselage from each end of the fuselage, right? So you can see the seam of the mold on the final product.

But other than that, it's all one piece. And our philosophy was back then trying to make a race foil. The less connections and the more in center the wings are in relation to the fuselage, the less, as Stephano called it, peak acceleration we gonna encounter. So if you have to screw the wing from one side or the other, you have bulk of the fage and meat necessary to, for the screw to go in on one side, and that's your unnecessary drag through the water.

So we decided to go this route and learn how to build it and it's reason. Efficient, making it this way that we don't have to spend time, making pieces there, machining them together, screwing them together. , this way we can find unit for the customer who may not have the ability, conditions or time to do it themselves, so they get something what's already fine tuned and you, the only way to really mess it up is to run the reef or something.

Oh, I know. And this foil looks so nice. I'm really scared of getting it scratched up. So the spot i g foiler is really shallow and then the mass I got is like 102 centimeters I'm probably only gonna use it in deep water spots. Yeah, I think you changed it from 96 to 1 0 2. . . Yeah.

No, for racing. It's definitely nice to, especially Darwin racing. I wanted to ask these has these little blue fibers in it. What is that and what, why are those early on? It was for me to I used to go to the border with up to six different boards and foils on shore and I would go in and out with a kite back then.

And I figured out how to mark them visually for me, because if you go in and out, you forget which one felt what and why.  and I had this color coding type. Visuals. And I remember, oh, the orange one felt this way and felt good. Let me look how I build it. What is the pitch when I came home or to the shop the next day?

And I think it also gives it a little bit of a character. When people have the same foil, at least they can recognize which one is theirs. Especially running into the wrestling line. Sometimes people would grab somebody else's board In the past, if you can't believe it, like wind surfing boards, I made so  this way.

It was a little bit, recognizable in the first glance. Okay. So that this is basically the color, just so you can each foils a little bit different and you can recognize which, which ones which. Yeah. And then, yeah, I noticed there is on the, and it's fun for us too, just it changes things up.

I like to use pigments and tins too when I'm doing mine. And it's fun cause you can see the difference between my ies and mine and just changes.

Yikes. Your connection is really slow now, I think. Yeah. We're breaking up a little bit, but, and then, yeah, on the mass too, it has these little colors and stuff like that. So it's just yeah, make it little bit unique. Each one. Each piece. Yeah. And the colors could be almost any color. I get a fiber in different colors and the pigments in different colors.

So yeah, it just can be limitless. And then the other thing that I found really interesting is the connection between the mask and the fu fuselage. And basically rather than having it like a lot of foils have almost a box, a little bit like a tule box where the mask goes into the foil.

But it looks like you try to it's more like you're maximizing the surface area where they're connected and and getting, that's not only the surface area, it's also not weakening the fuselage. The fuselage has to be super strong. And others using the mini total, if you can really pay attention, for example, lift, right lift foils, they do the mini total.

And if you look at the fuselage size on their foil, it's massive. So I don't know if they ever will be able to go top speed, even though they do pretty well. But the disadvantage of the mini turtle is that your fuselage is too. Yeah, it definitely introduces a weak spot. Like on my access fuselages there's like several that had got a little cracks right here, like right at the end of the mast where it inserts into the board because that's just like a, the sides are relatively thin, right.

Next to the box. So I guess, so basically part of it is just to have more strength right here in that connection. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. It transfers a little bit too much stress. That's the, and then explain how this little screw works. Cause I guess the whole, with this screw, you can change the angle of the tail a little bit.

Is that correct? Can you explain how that works? Because I haven't really tried that yet to put a washer or something in here. Yeah, you could, but it's not necessarily Yeah, go ahead. But I think we gotta take two steps back here because a lot of people that are probably listening to this, that are coming from the wing foiling or the prone or surf foiling, and maybe I've never heard of Mike's lab before.

This connection system that we develop has been copied by many other brands, which is a testament to how well it works and. The design the crux of the, of designing a hydrofoil is you have to marry what would be the hydrodynamic ideal with what is mechanically required in order to just support the stresses involved.

And so that's why we very quickly are very first foils. Yeah. We had a detachable, front wing and detachable rear wing. And then we quickly realized, as Mike was saying, that there's just way too much drag there in order to be able to house all the extra hardware, so on and so forth. So that connection system is to be as efficient and small as possible, but still be mechanically sound enough.

And another misconception that a lot of people have is that little screw is used for the incidents, but it's actually not when you would, like with our kit oils, when we were, we had smaller diameter fuselages we would use shims and we still do with the kite foils. And you can literally you're bending the fuselage in order to get an angular change in incidents.

So it's not so much that you have to have a little screw, but you just have to have material in there that then you're actually flexing the whole fuselage. Okay. Ba basically basically the foil is being held by these B three big screws in the. , but, and then this one is to hold a washer if you wanted to.

No. The little stabilizes the fuselage going towards the back wing. We are using the mask and strength to keep the fuselage attached as long as possible before it has to go on its own to hold onto the back wing. And early on when I was testing a kite forests, the little screw wasn't there.

And I could not quite, I didn't like it. It was all over the place as far as stability. As soon as I added the little screw manually into one of the foils, it improved drastically. So the legal screw is there for stability mainly, and Okay, got it. It became an advantage that the pitch of the incidents on the back wing was adjustable by putting reasonable tension without damaging something, we could lower the incidence of the back wing right there on the beach and, go back out.

Okay. So if let's say I, if I wanted to, if I put a small washer in here in between, that would lower the incidence of the tail flow. So basically, if you want, if you wanna go faster and have, basically have less lift at high speeds, that's what it would achieve, basically. Or is it the other way? ? No.

You are correct, but I don't think you need to do that. Yeah. It's already pitched to go really fast. You may wanna experiment. I don't think it's gonna help you with speed or anything like that. In fact, it's gonna force you to move your footstep maybe an inch back. But it, I don't think it's gonna buy you anything.

It's probably gonna lower the stability if you go lower than the pitch you have. I don't think you're gonna see any good results. Okay. That's good to know. It's good. Measure it and it's around two degrees up to 2.4. I wouldn't ship it at all. And if you go below two degrees, at least in Kite Falls, we found that the four stars golfing, if you go really fast downwind, it loses the stability.

The back wing is not helping to stabilize the fronting downwind at high speed. So you're saying the the built-in angle of incidents of the tail wing is about two degrees, is that correct? Ye between two to 2.4. And then what about the front wing? Oh, that's neutral. That's always neutral. Neutral zero.

Okay. Yeah and it depends also what back wing it is as well. Cause we have different back wings. . Yeah. Because it's that's a little bit of a misconception is sometimes yeah. Really what matters is the difference between the front angle of the front and the back wing. So yeah.

Correct. So basically your front wing is at zero angle of incidents. The back wing is like two degrees two to two and a half. Yeah. And and just to be clear, zero angles for a front wing does not mean neutral lift. It's still giving a lot of lift even at zero degrees, right? Because of the shape of the profile, right?

Yeah. Yes. And I found it was relatively easy to get it up. I was worried that it would take really high speed to get up on foil, but it wasn't too, it worked fine and it just came up just fine, it wasn't like a big thing. We I mean I tried to erase it last Sunday and none of us were able to get going because the wind was too light and we ended up having to get a bo to take us back in

But but yeah but it had nothing to do with the foil. Was this not windy enough? I should mention that my friend, my buddy has the same exact foil you have and that's his favorite. And he just arrived to Los Baja and he was gonna go out. And he did. And he said, oh my God, this s water is really wild and it's a little bit less stable.

And then he comes in and he sends me a message, I'm so stupid, I put on a kite foil . So he went out on his standard kite foil on a wing board and thought, everything is good. And then he comes in and he's totally shocked that he was able to do it. . . Yeah. So talk a little bit about the tips here.

Had, it's like a little bit, what do I call it? It's like downward, but then has a little bit up, up curved at the end. So what's the theory behind that Is say down and then back up again? Yeah. Right here in the tip. To make sure that the ventilation doesn't, if you breach a tip so that the ventilation doesn't propagate back down the wing.

I see. So when the wing tips comes out of the water, this tip doesn't create ventilation at the tip. Yeah it doesn't allow the low pressure or the detached flow from the top of the wing tip to then propagate down towards the root. It helps shed that sort of bubble and shed that ventilation.

Okay. And then I noticed on the tail wing you have these little winglets. What's the purpose of those? Yeah, all those curves on the front wing, which go straight button, then down, and same thing on the back wing. They bring stability and directionality. So for example, our most accessibility kite trace wing, front wing had a lot of these curves and it was very stable.

So yeah, you could make a straight wing straight across, but it's gonna be pretty, it's gonna feel like a banana peel stepping on. So that the first purpose is to get it away from the surface, right? If you curve it down, then you don't bridge the first surfaces often, and then the directionality and stability comes from that as well.

And then the tip is relief that as step said, it shut the. . Okay. And then, yeah, it was three . So the other question I had like the tule bo tu mount I guess all your masks have tu mounts and it seems like in, in surf foiling and wing foiling, most like the new standard is the plate mounts, right?

Yeah. The plate mounts with the two, two US boxes. Why are you sticking with the tu mount and yeah, what's the theory behind that? Yeah the, Mike will give his opinion, but my opinion is that the total box is in incredibly rigid, in any well-built board where you have tracks, you have to tie it to the top of the deck anyway, and the total box does that by itself anyway.

So from my standpoint, a 240 gram box is a lot lighter than tracks. And that's not even talking about hydrodynamic issues of the plate underwater versus the total box as well. Okay. Okay. So it's more efficient and you have the connection to the deck of the board and like the whole box is basically different, stronger, yeah.

A lot less draggy and it's lighter. Yeah. Yeah, I in, luckily in our floorboards we have the foil strong box, we call 'em, it has both ATU and a plate mount. But some of my newer boards, like the, this one behind me only has the plate mount. So I guess I'm gonna have to either use a plate mount adapter or just use just for this prototype.

But I'm gonna have to start putting total boxes in all my boards. Again,  or bo, have both, but we also sell adapters and I also make custom carbon plates for clients that really want to have the plate. I'll do it. It's not like we're we don't do it, but Right. We just prefer the box.

Makes sense. Yeah, it's, it, I think it would be pretty difficult, at least for me to build in the plate because you can imagine the resonant fiber running out of the end of the mold now on a vertical situation. So the tunnel is a lot more simple and a lot stronger, and I think it's the correct way to go.

The plate has a huge advantage by adjustability back and forth. In fact, I think even Nickleson from Lift gave me the credit that I was the first one to put two tracks side by side because he used to use four balls drilled through the board.  and attached, from the deck, that's how he was attaching this plate mount system.

. And I just, I looked at it and I go, oh, I've been using the windsurfing pin boxes long enough that this could be a lot more elegant and adjustable and it wouldn't leak. And sure enough it worked and then everybody adopted it . Interesting. Yeah, what you said makes sense. Basically, when you're laying up the carbon inside the mold with the total, you can keep all the layers going straight and basically the strongest direction versus having to curve them out in a plate mount.

So is that And resin dripping out , sorry? And resin would be dripping out. Oh yeah. Yeah. So you would have a big mess when you're try to lay it up. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And then I guess why there, why are there so many holes? Is it just cause so that it's adaptable to different types?

OFTU boxes, . Okay. That came from kite race foils. The foot strap had to be incidentally right over thet box. So that was a disadvantage. So people who had tracks for kite race foil, which was very bad sock, unstable, flexible, but they could put a footstep anyway on it. On the deck.

So once we had to deal with the th with the tunnel, I figured, hey, we can go to one, at least one of the inserts or mounts for the footsteps straight into the tunnel. And that's why this is adjustability for footstep mounting. I see. You can, so basically you can put the foot strap, the one that goes through the footstep into the mass in different positions.

That makes, now do kite racers, you just use two screws or do you sometimes use multiple screws to hold it in the total box. I was gonna say that. So for winging, I do two screws up front and one in the back. Not only, it makes it a little bit stronger if you hit big fish, like people hit whales out here, , or I hit a dolphin and some other people actually broke off a wing not mine.

I think it was spots back then hitting a dolphin. Anyway, so the two screws put it in with lot more strength, right? Because even wind first, you imagine the big wind board with a rig and rider on it if they hit a sea or rock or anything. Now the foil is at the bottom of whatever. So if they can use more than one screw, it helps.

But they are still using at these locally little string for the center screw. , if you really hit something and the foil falls out, it, it hangs on the little piece of rope of the center screw. And also, I like the system because if people damage the barrel, not, or if it breaks the barrel not breaks, they can just pop one out and put it in the appropriate place, the damaged one.

So it's like a spare  built in spares. , yeah, exactly. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to ask you, like with the total boxes, one of my pet peeves, and I'm not sure if I'm just not doing it right, but it seems like no matter how tight I put it in, like sometimes, like when you're on the water, you're pumping or whatever, all of a sudden you get that little, and it loosens up a little bit because I think it just slides a little bit deeper into the box.

Like how can prevent that from happening? It doesn't loosen up, it actually tightens up so the connection gets more secure between the foil and the board. But your front screw may be a little bit loose, but nobody cares until you hit something like a big fish, right? Because there is always pressure going up from the front way.

So you don't care if the screw is a little bit loose at this point. And that's why two screws, because I can crank them against each other, one and the back one and you can hear it cracking and going in and maybe. If you would use two screws, it may not happen. The little cracking what happens to you.

And oh, sorry. Ahead sfa. I was just gonna say, a little bit of candle wax rubbed on the side of the head. Also gets it into the box with very little friction and allows you to tighten it from the get-go really easily as well. That's a good tip. I'll try that. And Johnny also developed this technique for the race fos.

He really wanted the total sitting Absolutely. Exactly how he wanted it. So his board height at the deck for the front foot would've to be in literally millimeters. He hated it if it was even colder in chalk. So he would put it in, put screws in, then he would grab the foil, put a board upside down and hit the nose of the board, the deck side against the ground, like grass.

And you could hear this crack, what you describe happens to you on the water. So he would prepack it on the beach and retighten the screws so nothing could move afterwards. Ah, okay. Yeah, that's another technique, . Basically attach the foil, put the put, put it with the foil down on, and then have the board on top and push it upside down.

Okay. And just hit the gently and just. The front of the wing holding the foil like this and just top the nose of the board. Oh, okay. Like you are stepping on it type thing. Okay. You will hear this crack and then you can reit the upcr. Interesting. Check with your board maker too.

Yeah. That . Yeah. Yeah, I mean I'm, we make most of my own board but I guess another misconception too is like that I guess if you hit something, most of the pressure obviously is on the front connection, on the front screw. But when you're riding the Yeah, the lift of the front wing, actually the most pressures on that back screw.

The back screw. Because this lifts up and the back screw gets pulled down basically. Pulled out. Yes. When you're writing. But the huddle box is designed so that the radiuses, the vertical radiuses are taking the load. So it's not really, it shouldn't be the screws that are bearing that load.

They cinch it in there, but once it's in there, it's not depending on the screws. Okay. So just to be clear, like you're saying the kind of these, the, this sites takes the vertical load. Yeah, because it gets wedged into the board basically. Yeah. Yep. And then, yeah, another thing too, people sometimes say oh, my board thet box doesn't go all the way in, but basically there's supposed to be a little gap in the bottom of it, right?

Like the, basically it sits tight on these ends and then the sides are just parallel, right? Yep. Yeah. That was the design with this by Larry to have those radis at the ends, jamming in at 10 degrees each side, and that's where the load was basically taken up. And yeah, there must be a gap between the top of the tunnel and your board deck of it, because if there was not, imagine your full body weight would be pushing out a little nomination detail out through the deck, and you would just cause leakage.

But in the meantime, starboard brand for foiling windsurfing, they had so many problems with the total box, probably not built properly, that they ended up using the roof, basically the top of the box and issuing the shims. So you would install your box just the right way. So as Johnny was sensitive to the height of the deck up front for the front foot, now the top athletes for windsurfer are doing the same thing with shimming, the top, like you said, on top of the tunnel, and they can adjust the rake of the foil itself against the board.

Ah, okay. So by, by basically shimming this top, you can change the angle of the mask slightly kind of thing. But in my opinion, it totally defeats the purpose of the radiuss getting jammed into the box. But their box kept stretching so bad that they had to do this. So now you don't have the ends cinched, or only the sides are holding the foil and it's sitting on the top.

It cannot go any deeper, which I think it's crazy, but they are doing it . Okay. Interesting. Interesting. All right, thanks for thanks for that. Something, I'm gonna try that like you were saying, Johnny Heineken just like cracking the foil on the beach before getting on the water and retightening it.

That's a good idea. They should, you use two screws up front, the two front ones, and if you smack it and you crank both of them, no way you're gonna do it by sailing it anymore. It's gonna be okay in there. And for the, to put in the second screw. My box only has two screws in, it's, two holes in it.

So I just, I guess have to just mark the exact spot and drill a hole through the tu box basically. Correct. I don't know. We use quarter into G 10 on top of the tunnel, so we can actually put the screws in anywhere we want and counter seeing them. So in case you are not using the pad, you can still comfortably step on it.

So in case you do have some solid support for your second screw, yeah. You can just drill it one and one eight back from the front hole, and you're gonna be exactly in the right spot. Actually I was just thinking like on my, on most of our boards, the deck is thicker than the tunnel, so there's a hole for the screw to go into the board.

Into the board. But anyways, yeah something to play around with, oh wait, are you using like Alexis boxes? It's similar to the Gulf Foil boxes. Yeah. We make our own with a full strong box, but oh, and does it have the screws vertical, like 90 degrees or are they Originally it's taken from total design.

It's it's like like the straight, like the Gulf foil. Yeah, so be careful when you are first putting in your foil, you need to rotate the barrel notes by those few degrees because original total design is about 10 degrees right back. So yeah, that could be a little issue. But yeah, I'm trying to give enough space for the front and back to be countered back by 10 degrees.

It was originally designed for windsurfing and windsurfing decks for slalom boards. They were sloping down. They were getting thin as you go towards the tail. So that's why that 10 degree slope. Yeah. I'm just sharing like this is what our, we have a box that combines like the tunnel and the interesting the plate mount together and then the top has this only the two holes though.

Yeah. Then just use the two holes. Don't bother with there's screw. Good enough. Yeah. No, I mean it seems to work fine. I think just like getting it super tight before you get on the water is the key, I think. Or even maybe breaking it, bringing in a screwdriver. Yeah, tighten it on the water if it's necessary.

But as I said, you never need to tighten it on the border as far. Having a secure connection. The only reason to do it is if it feels uncomfortable stepping on it, if but it's never bad. It shouldn't even matter. I think like when you're pumping, when you're pumping and there's a lull and there's no wind and you have to pump through the lull, sometimes that pumping will it's right.

But yeah, then you don't want that rocking thing of your mass rocking. Oh, so you are saying it actually goes back out until it hits the screw? think yeah, like you said, it goes a little bit deeper, but then the screws loose. So when you're pumping there to be a little bit of wiggle back and forth on so you can feel the foil doing this.

Yeah, I've never seen that. Never. Yeah. I dunno. Yeah. Maybe didn't put it tight enough, yeah. Title box should be tighter than that. It should go in there with a friction, and that friction should stop this. If the back through is tight. I don't think it'll pull out the front, but I never heard of it yet, okay. Okay. All right. And then I also noticed that the whole thing is pretty light. I know I also have access to access foils and it just it just a little bit more weight. And the this whole foil feels pretty light. So how do you achieve that, I guess you just minimize the amount of materials needed by just making that smaller or like how Yeah.

How do you keep it light? . For starters, our sections are much thinner than what people are usually used to out there. When I see the profile thicknesses of some of the other brands that like 15, 16, 17 millimeters we're at 12.3 13 millimeters, so already there's less volume there.

And then we also have core materials in order to get, good compaction. So it's not solid carbon all the way through. So that's, do you use wood inside, wood or foam or what do you use inside the foam? Is it secret? That's proprietary.  proprietary. Ok. We got some, we have secret sauce.

Secret sauce, yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. I respect that. . Okay so the, and then what, like on this mass, it has a little strip of unidirectional part of the way I think it stops at some point. Oh, that's just for fun. That's another one of those pictures. . Ok. That's another thing along with these co funky colors and stuff like that.

Yeah. . Okay. Cool. All right, so yeah, what else about the foils that's, that you wanna mention that's unique about your foils?

I'd say what's unique is you don't have to do anything. They're plug and play. In, into as Mike was saying before, the incidents, you don't really have to adjust it, especially not with wing surfing relative to kite surfing. The speeds and the balance is a little bit different.

So the, our foils are definitely just go have fun. And in my opinion, the less you do something to it, the better. A lot of people ask like, how should I sand it? How should I, eh just don't do anything. The less is, the less you do, the better. . And then I would say one unique characteristic that a lot of people tend to say or be surprised by is just how easy they are to use.

I think a lot of people since they know we come from a racing heritage, are maybe afraid that, oh, maybe the foils are like, difficult to use, or something like that. But the reality is a good race foil is easy to control cause that gives you the confidence to then push it and go fast. And it's no different with all our wing foils as well.

They're just easy to use. . Another thing is I'm basically demoing the foils to anybody who's interested to hop on it and usually. , all it takes is once and some people have to order it right in and there because it's lot speedier, less drag, more stable, more fun just to use it than anything they tried before.

I, we have people which claim they have tried everything there is on the planet made and they say, yeah, we just buy yours and  multiple models just because it feels unique. Yeah, Alan Ez actually on this interview he talked about the Mike's lab foils and winning a race with it last summer on Maui against all the young guys and stuff like that.

So that kind of convinced me that, okay, I gotta try one of these foils. . And yeah, definitely what you said about the, being able to control it. Basically every foil has that kind of a max, it seems like a maximum speed that's built in almost. And you want to try to get as get and stay as close as you can to that maximum speed and then Yeah, the how easy it's to control it at that speed is really important because yeah, I mean it's hard to push it to that limit if it's really hard to control it at high speeds.

Makes sense. Yeah. . Okay. And what about the fuselage length? I guess that's just something you tested and came up with a good length there. That may have been the worst design feature because again, we have to have it made out of aluminum to be able to properly assemble the mold and build it and cook it.

And coming from very short fuselages on kite oils, wind surface will try to use and they were not happy. So it kept growing from super short kite fuselages to super long over one meter for windsurfing, fos. And then winging came on the scene and now we started trying the windsurfing on a wing board wing foil, and that was way too long.

So this whole harmonic, the fuselages was very frustrating because I had to have so many molds made and then you still have to test it and people get better. The wings sizes, like the foil wings get smaller, bigger, and they work differently with each other. And then the wings, handheld wings, they get better, faster, and different size.

Push differently on a four. So that's definitely very frustrating or worse. But now it settled in for each wing. I like to use certain length and it seems to work. Yeah, that's not to say it's not gonna change still, but hopefully. And yeah, and I mean there's different geometry configurations based on what front and rear wing we have.

And then one general comment I'll make a big difference between wing foiling and kite foiling is there's just so much more based on people's local conditions as well. In the sense that with kite foiling, when we were developing the stuff, the kind of mentality was if it can work well in San Francisco, it's gonna work well everywhere.

But the reality is with wing foiling is you've got, one guy who wants, a shorter mass because the amplitude of his waves. And then you've got another one who wants open season high water, another guy who wants a longer fuse because that's what he likes and is used to, and another guy who wants a little bit of a shorter fuse.

Yeah, on one hand things are settling, but it's never gonna settle like it was with kite foiling where you have a very sort of specific size that everybody can get into. I think personal preference plays a huge. Roll here. Interesting. Also, whether it's saltwater or freshwater, that, that makes a big difference in that amount of lift or like the, a little bit, but that doesn't affect our geometry shorts. That does, that's never affected, like what front wing we're gonna pair with what back wing and what fuselage length. But us generally speaking for freshwater, you probably need a slightly bigger foil a little bit with a little bit more lift.

Is that right to or because it's hot water's denser, or is that not really that Sure, yeah. In, in, in theory. But then at the same time, it's all trade-offs. So you're talking about such a tiny little window to play in right there. That, that, okay. So it's gonna be a little bit faster in the freshwater then.

So yeah, since I keep going between Sherman Island, which is a freshwater location, and Chrissy Field constantly switching between fresh and salty, it did have some effect on a kite foil, especially when Sherman Island, the water would be murky with a lot of mud flying in. Then the lift felt a little bit underwhelming.

One inch adjustment on the footstep would usually fix it, or, deep pitching for Chrissy Field also would fix it. But for winging, I don't even feel that at all. So it's all the. Okay. Interesting. And then basically, like you're saying earlier, basically that this little scene rack here is where it's a one piece mold, but you can like basically unscrew the tailpiece and put a different tailpiece on there, or maybe a different fuselage length or something like that.

Correct, exactly. Oh, okay. That's smart way to do it. Interesting. All right. So can you talk a little bit about like your process of, when you come out with a new design, like how do you test it, like what, how do you get feedback and what do you Yeah.

What's your r and d process? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, it's either Mike will come to me with an idea or I'll go to Mike with an idea. And I think a lot of the success of our designs, because a lot of times we disagree, so we talk back and forth and try to get clear in our heads about what we are thinking about something.

And I would say earlier on in the r and d, there would be a lot more analysis. We've never done any, full blown C f D or anything like that. But I used to do some basic analysis, but now we've done so many foils and we're such a fan of just trial and error, get out, get something out on the water and and evolve our designs since we have such a solid foundation of so many foils that we're, we know how well they work and it's, we can predict really well how something will work out. So we'll generally do a design and then tool it up and then lay it up and test it ourselves, but also with, our trusted clients that love trying new stuff anyway, and our great kind of benchmarks.

They know since they've tried all of our other foils too, if something's an improvement or not. Nice. So do you have a big pile of old molds that you don't really use anymore? Or not at Mike House. Yeah. I should have taken a picture and shared it with you. It's a por under my carport.

Oh my God. Yeah. . It's gotta be cup of tons of aluminum there. . Can you recycle those? Or I guess you could melt them down and make new molds at some point. Maybe. Yeah, somebody probably could. I didn't get to schlep it outta it. You could. Yeah. No. And last time I was with Mike I remember looking into the price of scrap aluminum and it was pretty underwhelming.

It was almost, it's not worth all the labor to bring it, better leave it. Yeah. Leave the graveyard there until it becomes more valuable.  Maybe maybe it'll come back into fashion. It's clothing fashions come back maybe go back to the foils you had in, back in the two thousands , early two thousands.

Scrap price of aluminum goes up. . Yeah. What's new? What, can you share a little bit about what you have in the works without, without giving away your secret sauce obviously, but what are you working on right now? The last thing that we did is developed an 1150 high aspect wing.

We already had an 1100, but I wanted to make something that's a little bit more efficient in that same size range. And it's based off of the plan form of our five 40 wing set, which was really successful. And so that's in production now and extremely pumpable, it's very high aspects, so it's not gonna be the tiniest thing, but it's super pumpable and super efficient.

And in terms of, moving forward and things down the pipeline, we're always trying to, make our connections better. Our masks differ. Just subtle changes. Nothing revolutionary. So 1150, is that the square inch surface area? Square centimeters. Yeah. Square centimeters, yeah.

Sorry. And the five 40 is 540 square centimeters? Yes. What about we have foils as small as 410. So speed foil that we also do a toe in version of that for surf, and that's gone as fast as 46 knots in terms of speed under kite traction. Wow. And we go all the way up to a 1600.

So how, what's the surface area of the bullet six? Because I couldn't really find that. This is not, that's an 800, that's an 800. No, it's a 600 I believe. Oh, okay. Bullet six. Yeah. No, it's not a bullet six. It's not, it's a no. Oh, it's a 600. Winging or windsurfing foil. Oh, okay. It's true size. I believe Stefano said it's six 30, but we call it 600.

Okay. Yeah. It six is a completely different, lot smaller, tight foil. Oh, okay. So this is, okay I'm not even sure which exactly. I thought it was the book. Bullet six. Oh, this is a 600 wing. It should say on that. What does it say? 680 span. So 600 is the square centimeters, 80 is tip to tip.

Oh, okay. And fuselage measurements, which measure from the center of the middle. Big screw. If you take a night pressure and go to the back wing and send to the front lane. Ah, okay. So you have your front lane size area and span. You have your fuselage length forward, backwards, and then you have the type of a back wing all on the label.

Nice. Okay. Got it. . All right. I guess the other thing I wanted to ask you about is how you're the state of your business and let me know if we're running out of time here, but I'm, I just get, always get caught up in the conversation and kind of go along.

But if you have to go, just let me know. But I wanted to ask you like, during the pandemic, wing foiling just been booming, and it seems like everything was in short supply, long time you, it's like super hard to get anything. It's hard to get the new wings and the new foils and the boards.

And then it seems this year it's everything's back in stock and slowed down a little bit. A lot of, I think a lot of manufacturers of overstock now cause a lot of brands are trying to get rid of their old inventory. So it seems to change from being super short supply to being a little bit of oversupply maybe.

Now, has that affected you at all or have you noticed that, I guess you've always been had more supply than demand but has that affected you at all? Yeah that sort of contraction and expansion that you're talking about, I think is mostly supply chain related stuff coming out of Asia.

Cause a lot of the big manufacturers are not made, domestically or even in Europe. But. From the pandemic. I personally have seen, some costs of my materials go up due to those same supply chain problems and cost of shipping to get the materials to, whether it's the loom that's gonna weave the carbon fiber or what have you.

In terms of actual demand, what was interesting for us and the pandemic and the timing of the pandemic is it was shortly after we had just been kicked out of the I K A. So we were on track to with a third party producer to large numbers of kite foils, and then that didn't happen. And then the pandemic hit.

So we saw a big slowdown in the request, not to zero, but a big slowdown in the request for a product up towards the following winter, but not so much the pandemic, it was just because of a lot of our kite foil customers, had to make the choice and buy another brand's kite foil. But now I'm sure Mike would probably agree with me I would say 95% of our client base is they're all winging, everybody is winging now.

. So things have just taken right back off and just exploded. Excellent. Can you I'm not, I don't really follow the kite foiling scene that much. I'm more, more into wink foiling myself. But I'm just curious and I saw something on your news in the, on your website about that.

Yeah. So what happened and why aren't they allowing your foils in the racing? Just curious. To make a long story short they put us into a position where they demanded what we consider our intellectual property. And if we were to give that to them, we felt that it would not be in the long-term interests for our business.

We would be shooting ourselves in the foot, essentially. It would be like a cooking competition saying, okay, everybody make your best soft drink. And Coca-Cola's doing it. And then they demand the recipe from Coca-Cola. Yeah. Like Coca-Cola would never give away their recipe. . So we put our foot down and said, look, we'll give you, a, b, C materials, but we're not gonna give you X, Y, Z.

And they said, okay, you're out. Wow. Interesting. So they wanted to know exactly all the materials that go into the foil or something like that. And their position and the data sheets. Huh. And themselves video taping the process. They wouldn't even let us do it. They would've to do it watching us, filming us doing it.

Wow. That, yeah, that seems very strange. Unbelievable. And then basically, yeah, that, that seems strange that they would make that a requirement, but yeah. And then basically all the other manufacturers complied with that. Yes. Yep. Interesting. Wing foiling is that something you guys do too personally?

Are you both into wing foiling? Oh, absolutely. , yeah. So tell us a little bit about your, like your favorite boards and wings. What do you use and what kind of conditions do you go out in and what foils do you use? Yeah, so I'm 90 liter board. I've tried as small as like 78 liters, but I'm just happy with 90 liters.

 I'm six four I'm 185 pounds. And I love just mowing the lawn, like back and forth. Like I'm a happy guy. I do races over here in Italy, in Europe. I just got second in the old man Grand Master category at a big race in Lake Garda. Nice. So I like to turn on the heat once in a while, but I don't I can.

Pump all day long, like some of these younger guys. But I my favorite lately is I'm usually on the 800, wing set. That's, and then I'll pull out the 1600, in really summertime light winds because I'm in very different conditions than Mike. I have the Mediterranean coast, and then I'll go up to Lake Garda sometimes.

But sometimes we have really light thermal winds, holy winds, and that's when sometimes I'll need a little more surface area. So with the 1600, you're able to get up in really light winds and stay up pump through lulls and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. How much do you give up on your top speed, like when you use a 1600 versus a 800 or whatever?

Our 1600 is not like any other brand's, 1600 in the sense that it's an extremely thin profile. It's it takes a couple knots more to get going than maybe like other brands of the similar surface area. But then once you're up, it just goes and goes as lower drag. Yeah. I can do 2022 knots, 23 knots speed with a 1600.

That's not bad at all. And then what size wing do you use and which brand what wing do you use for light? For light wind, like a six meter I've had ozone, wasps. I'm also tinkering with my own design of a wing, so I'm off prototypes. So six meter is the biggest. Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that like sometimes when you go bigger, like especially the wider wingspans, it gets so wide that you can't really drop the wing enough to get it go get forward momentum from it, right?

Yeah, that's yeah, I def I definitely feel like there's a point of diminishing returns and then tax become almost unbearable due to leading edge diameters and things like that. . Okay. And then what so for racing, like what, how long is the boy, you said about 90 liters. How long is, are your boys, do you use a little bit longer boys just to be able to get going easier or?

No, I it's I don't, it's 152 centimeters long in inches. I don't know what that is, but yeah. Okay. I'll have to get off the calculator myself. Okay. Yeah. What about you Mike? I guess I'm lucky. I live in pretty windy area, so I did learn on a 1300, pretty original one we made.  and I plugged it into the three and raise board, which you showed a picture earlier and I learned on that and it worked pretty good.

And I still see people using that kind of a combination. But then within few months I made my own board still floaty, but something a lot more oriented and turnable as far as winging goes. Then I made another one and then couple local guys. Johnny Heineken is one of them. They asked me to show them how to make boards and so they could make their own, and they sure do ever since.

And then the third one was Kenny. Shortly after that, and Kenny, I went back and forth on WhatsApp and he started making boards. He even built his own shop right next to his house because he has other job, a lot better  than building boards. Anyways, so I made two boards and after that, Kenny took over and he's supplying me with the best boards in the world.

They are ridiculously light. People cannot even believe it when they pick it up. They're like seven pound range for, I don't know, 75 liter board. And yeah I don't have to worry about boards and I guess I supply him with the foils.

Oh, this is one of your wing boards. . Oh this is one. This, no, this is one I made for Jan bla. This is a picture from, not this latest Garda race, but the one before last. He won the Grand Masters there. Uhhuh. , yeah. It's pretty, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And what about board weight?

You were saying the board's coming out super light. In, do you feel like light is always better or is there in some, is in some cases having a little bit of more weight in the board, can it be helpful in some cases or you just always try to go as light as possible? Yeah, always as light as possible.

I could see some like surfing big waves. Possibly the heavier board will help you, but we never tried it. We are not into those conditions. So for winging proning, sopping, the light of the board, the more effective you're gonna be pumping it up and down. And the less work, the front wing the foil will have to do.

To bring you back up or go and keep going forward. Basically do the motion up and down the heavier boat. The longer the boat, the worse it's gonna be for the foil to overcome. . Yeah, I listen to an interview with Dave Kalama where he is saying, for the down downwinders, when he's going really fast, he likes to have a little bit more weight in the board cuz he feels it's easier to control or, and I I've found that too when we're downwind racing.

I'm u I'm using a slightly he heavier board and it feels it's a smoother, it like it has momentum and it's, it like at high speed it feels a little bit easier to control it. But I don't know if that's just my imagination, but that's interesting. I guess I've never been in that situation.

It may be dampening some bad habits from the foil itself. It'll be, once you get used to the 600 you have, it'll be interesting to see if it feels the same. You're talking about downwind? Yeah. For us here on Oahu, most of the racing is basically we're joining the outrigger or, standup paddle races that are just like a down, straight down one run from wa kai to Waikiki or whatever, and it's just downwind.

And then at the end the wind dies off. When you come around diamond head there's you get into this wind hole and then you need to be able to pump through the laws and make it to the finish somehow. But but yeah, so it's different than mo Most races you have to go up and down when for us is just basically going downwind and then trying to pump to the finish,  And you are talking just with the paddle, not the wing, right?

No, with the wing. We're doing that with w with yeah, not, know, do wind sub foiling is a, is another thing. But I'm talking wing foiling doing, do wind races with the wing. Yeah. That's of what we're doing. I cannot imagine with that foil you have there having heavier board being an advantage if you plug it directly into the tar box and send it.

And if you have to pump, I think in my opinion, lightweight is the way to go. Okay. Yeah. That's good to know. Yeah. All right. So what do you see as the future of the sport? Like where do you see everything going and in terms of gear, technique, competition, growth, potential, racing versus freestyle, those kind of things.

Like where do you see it going? And what's your role in it? Step Take it on. That's tough. All right.

It's definitely exploding. We all know that. However, I really think it's important to keep things as accessible as possible. Like I, I un, I understand our, it's a luxury product, it's an expensive product. But I already start to see some of the signs of some of the equipment and secondary equipment starting to get pretty stratospheric in prices.

And that's you asked like where we would want to take this and I personally would hope that it doesn't go in a direction that reduces accessibility to the support. I think it's so important to make sure that there are options that young people can afford, that there's a good solid used market as well.

, there's always gonna be the debate between open class and one design, and there's always gonna be people into racing and there's always gonna be people into freestyle and all this kind of stuff. But at the end of the day it's still a sport where competitions like the first place winner brings home barely enough to pay for their plane ticket if that.

And so I think we should all be focused on growing the sector as a whole making sure it remains accessible so that as many people can get into all aspects of falling possible. Okay. Yeah, that sounds like a good goal. Especially considering that you probably make some of the most premium foils on the market.

In, in all of this, Mike and I have been incredibly stable with our prices. There was a time when our kite foils were selling on a used market for more than we were charging new foils because the demand was so high. I even had to write some emails to certain athletes saying, I totally disagree with this because you're shooting accessible.

You're shooting yourself on the foot with accessibility. You killed a sport by doing that. And in, in other words, what I, I guess what I'm trying to say is I, I. Hope, whatever decisions are made by manufacturers and that are made by governing bodies whether it's like wing foil sports or GWA or whatever, there's already starting to be talk of, limitations on equipment or this or that.

I All that's fine as long as it's thought about are we growing the sport this way or are we arguing amongst ourselves and shrinking the sport.

Nice. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about okay, my one last question. Okay. So talk a little bit about the foiling community and and do you have any message for the people that are still listening on this to this long interview?

All right. To the foiling community. Let's see. I think there's I think the timing is right to develop a new connection system. But I strongly believe it should be an open source project. I don't think if any one manufacturer comes up with a, some interesting system that's like ATU, but like a plate and it's adjustable and all this kind of stuff, if any one manufacturer comes up with some sort of patented system, I doubt any other manufacturer's gonna adopt it or want to pay licensing fees.

And even if they did, it would take years for that technology. To be adopted. Whereas I think if the community, the foiling community, there's a lot of smart people here, got together and created an open source project complete with a forum and a timeline. A year timeline, everybody could pitch into it.

And because it would be open source and the enthusiasm would be there, then I think a lot of manufacturers, ourselves included, would start to see the momentum and start to be willing to gear up with tooling for that timeline, whatever it is. Let's say a year from now, let's, in one year from now, let's come out with a new connection standard.

If it's an open source project, everybody would jump on board and manufacturers would tool up in time and we could get something new and innovative. The total box has been an amazing thing and it's, but it was designed in the, what, 80, 82 or something like that, maybe before that. Yeah. So all I'm trying to say is that it's time for a change, but I don't think it's gonna happen if it's proprietary to one company.

And the plate mount, you just feel like it's not it's not good enough to be a a good you don't like it enough to use that because it seems like that's become the standard system. Is the plate mount, right? Yeah, I think it could be. I think it could be improved. If there was something that was Easy to manufacture and friendly to the water, hydro, more hydrodynamic then I could see it.

But the combination of the plate itself and tracks is quite a bit heavier than a total box and a total head.  And I even think it's a little bit more flexible unless it's done super properly in carbon. And I know F four does it pretty well, but then it grows significantly towards the board, so it's gotta be a little bit slower.

I think our solution is to have a specific adapter, very shallow to fit our very shallow tunnel base. Tunnel head is pretty good solution. It definitely is more flexible and it's not ideal, but it's there. It's available for plate mount system. If somebody has that kind of a board, yeah, they can totally grab that.

I would not recommend it for 1 0 2 mask. It's just too long, too flexible. For 96, it will extend it to 100, which is still pretty good. But yeah, 1 0 2 is too long to use the adapter on. Really? Yeah. So because then it becomes, what's about, how many centimeters does it at? About four centimeters or 1 0 2 plus four, so 1 0 6.

Now you are too high and the wing is too far away from you to control properly. The foil and it also, we can easily measure that the numbers, the torsion and flex are a little bit too far to be comfortable. Maybe that's where your heavy board could be an advantage. I wouldn't know. I doubt it because our trip and race board used to be somewhat heavy for this purpose, and I remember I did not like it, following around, controlling the foil by its own weight and I had to put too much input to correct.

Never. I wanna go, I guess when you're downwind foiling, a lot of times you're we, we end up going actually faster than the wind cuz you're getting on a bump and you're just like flying down this bump and you're holding the wing so you don't get back winded holding it over your head and you're just like, yeah, shooting down this bump.

And it's like a little chop on the surface. You have to make up for that or you're gonna just breach at full speed, and you're really maxing out the speed of the foil and it's not, you're not really using the wing anymore. It's just like you're riding the op open ocean bumps going straight down wind.

And that's where it's all about just being able to control it and keep the foil in the water and not breach. And I've actually used an axis 1 0 1 0 5 mask, I think. And that one I thought worked well. Because the more time you have to react to those chops or to Okay, keep it from breaching, it seems to help.

I'm not saying it's too long. I'm saying combination of adapter and 1 0 2 becomes a little bit too soft. So we do have a 1 0 8 mask for kiting and  people use that constantly, but it goes directly into the board for winging. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that makes lot more secure connection and keeps the measurable numbers where the wink can def reflect.

still pretty low, but once you put 1 0 2 into a tier after, in my opinion, it gets, I know youngsters they can put up with anything. Me being a little bit slower on the reaction, I'm not too crazy about it. . Okay. Okay. Yeah, the, so that's a really interesting topic, the whole connection between the foil and the board and what the future holds for that.

So that'll be interesting to see. But Mike, do you have any message for the FOIL community? I really don't. My specialty is to make something, be able to use it myself with confidence and yeah, I'm pretty picky. And then pass it on and see if somebody else likes it. And I really, it makes me very satisfied to give people something they like as much as I do.

And that's just my like philosophy or job. That's the way I see myself. So as far as pretty predicting and directing the flow of the industry, no, somebody else can do that. . And you're basically planning to just keep keep running the business the way you are building the foils yourself mostly and just you're happy just keeping it.

A little bit smaller. Are you thinking about doing get, getting more into production or having manuf having it manufactured in mass production or whatever? If I could foresee that somebody would be able to do it properly in production setting? Yeah I'm open to it. In fact, I had a very nice options slash idea, at least for the mask, how somebody can actually do it for us.

So even if we had mask, mask produced somewhere in China or wherever, they would be able to do it properly, yeah. Then we can concentrate on the wing sets and the volume we could make would be lot better. I, with the current technique for the wings set, it would be difficult to outsource it. And I also just want to add too that a lot of sort of the Mike's lab business too, it's just Mike and I and we have personal relationships with all of our clients and we really like that.

And we really value servicing our existing client base more than getting more clients in the sense that we're, Mike and I aren't here to gain market share, so to speak. We're just too humble guys, too humble artisans that just love, making our product and. Having these relationships with our clients.

And I feel that, a lot of people say, oh, why don't you scale up or this or that but that's not easy to maintain those relationships we have now and the quality of service and support that we can do now at scale. And to build quality too. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Totally. Mike, so Mike how many foils do you build and who builds more foils? Do you build more in, in Italy or does Mike build more in San Francisco? Mike builds a bit more in San Francisco. His kids are growing up and my kids are still small. So  at the end of the day, yeah, have a little bit less time but yeah.

Yeah, and I'm sure it's a lot of time that, that you put into it and like you said, like you have kids and family. So how do you manage that, like your work life balance? One of my goals is just to have more time to have fun, cuz it's it, life shouldn't just be about working all the time, right?

So how do you make that work and is work fun for you and Yeah I'll go first. Yeah, no I love making things. I'm always making stuff my relationship here with Mike it's great because not only am I, producing the foils, but then sometimes I'll dedicate certain days to doing design and CAD work and things like that.

So it, it changes. So it's always interesting. I definitely don't get on the water as much as Mike does, but I'm not complaining at all because I'm of a hermit crab. I really like to go into my corner and just create and build and design so that, although I have fewer sessions on the water, they're always on something, but that's like I've made and we've designed and yeah, so I'm happy.

Excellent. What about you, Mike? Yeah, you could say that I work too much or I don't have time for too many other things, but I definitely do not cut myself short from going out and in the season here for eight months, 10 months. It's windy every day and I get out pretty much every day. So that really, between work and that doesn't leave too much time for other stuff.

But as far as me and work, I really seriously this foil work. I don't know what it is about it. I keep improving little details constantly. Obviously testing, that's a part of it too. And, Fantastic testers. Johnny Kenny, when they are on the water somewhere, it could be Hood River. People literally stop and they go what the hell am I looking at?

Because they are synchronized treking. It's impressive to see. Yeah. Yeah. Those two are basically testing whatever we can come up with. Yeah. It would be great to get them on the Blue Planet Show too, and that have an interview with them, so maybe I'll try to get your, their contact from you later, but yeah, that would be interesting.

Yeah. But yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time. I know we went over the hour. You you  you said you had, but oh, good. Really appreciate it and I'm sure everybody that's listening is gonna love this too. I couldn't find that much information about you online, so I think this'll be really helpful for people that wanna know a little bit more about Mike's lab.

So Appreciate it. Yeah. We're very bad about updating our website. This will be an excuse to do something . We also have to be careful about not promoting too much because we already are a little bit in trouble as far as waiting. And time deliveries. So yeah, we have to keep it just right.

Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of Mark Rappa Horset cuz when he, after he sold s i c he started like the Flying Dutchman and he just builds boards himself. He's the only one who does it. And he, he, so he has like a six month or one year wait list and it just keeps getting longer the more he promotes it.

So it's yeah. Yeah. You What's the point in promoting it if you can't supply it, but that's a great position to be in congratulations and thank you. I appreciate it. And yeah, thanks for being on the show. Oh, thanks for having us. Thank you. Have a good night, Stefano.

And a good day, Mike. Okay. Take care all. Bye bye. All right. Thank you everyone for watching this episode of the Blue Planet Show with Mike's lab. I thought this was a really great conversation and I want to wish everyone happy Holidays. I'm posting the Ken Winter interview next Saturday, December 24th hope you can check that one out as well.

And I think it's a great end way to end this season of the Blue Planet Show. And then next year in 2023, I'm planning to interview some more great athletes, designers, and thought leaders. And just always hungry to get more information, especially in the sport that's changing so fast. And if you're still watching, you're one of those people that just can't get enough of it.

So thank you for sticking around. You're the ones I'm making the show for have a great rest of your year. Happy New Year's and see you soon. .