Duotone Mag 2024

KAI HOPF – WINDSURF SAIL DESIGN Originally from Australia, the former professional windsurfer and World Cup winner Kai Hopf is the mastermind behind Duotone Windsurfing sails. He is one of the most influential sail makers worldwide. Kai started designing Sails for Duotone in 1992. Since then he has been responsible for some of the major innovations in Windsurfing like the 1998 Dura Tech Foot Piping, the 7.Battens.Only Sail in 2011, the Hyper.Cam 2.0 in 2020 or the first glued Windsurfing sail Super_Hero SLS in 2023 . “I first came to Maui for the Aloha classic in 1984. I pretty much travelled extensively from 1986 onwards and spent more time in Maui than anywhere else. Close to 30 years ago I bought my house here. Before working for Duotone I had my own small brand, building mostly sails and boards. Back then we pretty much made everything at one time or another including booms, fins, foot straps, harness shorts – just everything we needed to go out and have fun on the water.” Ken Winner about Kai: “I’ve known Kai for so long, I honestly can’t remember when or where we met. After being on Maui off and on since 1980, I moved full-time to Maui in 2010. Kai and I have bounced design ideas off each other ever since. He is smart, hard-working, very skilled at sail design and superbly knowledgeable about windsurfing sails. I know this in part because I have a long history in Windsurfing and over the years have helped with windsurfing sail design and testing – however, kite design is quite different from windsurfing sail design. There’s not a lot of overlap. That said, we’ve discussed the pros and cons of different materials and seaming techniques. Wings havemore in common with windsurfing sails, so Kai has some valuable insight to offer to me in that area.” Sky Solbach about Kai: “The first time I worked directly with Kai on a project was in 2010. I was deep in the development of formula kite racing boards, struggling to make a good fin set for our production race board. Kai volunteered to make me a fin set based on some of his windsurf racing fins. The very first set of fins he made for me turned out to be the best fin set I had ever tried. Kai later helped design my custom CNC machine and also prototyped and designed the Duotone kite surf fins currently in use on our surfboards. Kai is an incredibly skilled and knowledgeable designer with decades of experience in sail, fin and board making and has been at the forefront of windsports design for many decades. His knowledge and experience simply cannot be over-stated.” WINDSURF MAUI MARCO LANG Product Manager Windsurf Sails Marco competed in the World Cup Slalom from 2013 to 2021. During his World Cup career, the Austrian was already head tester for sail designer Kai Hopf, especially in the race segment. For the past two years, the career changer from professional sport, has been responsible for the Duotone windsurf sails, including masts, booms and extensions – and is living his dreamof turning his greatest passion, Windsurfing, into his profession. Prototypes, which are designed on Maui and sewn in Sri Lanka, are quickly brought to Europe for testing on the water so that Marco always has the decisive edge in development. His credo: products that are as easy to handle as possible for the widest possible range of customers also offer advantages to the professional team because they are quick to make or easy to handle in the waves. Marco is currently drawing a lot of inspiration for new material developments from the transfer of know- how from his colleagues in the wing and kite sector. DANI AEBERLI Product Manager Windsurf Boards Like Marco Lang, the Swiss Dani, a trained mold maker, came to the development department of his sponsor Duotone via the competitive sport of the Windsurf World Cup. Today, he develops the windsurf board range in close cooperation with long time Duotone Board Shaper SebastianWenzel. He pools input from both the athletes’ team and recreational surfers and translates it into board and shape concepts. Tests together with Marco crystallize the best concept, which is then implemented in production. Dani, who used to build prototypes himself and therefore has all the material know-how, also carries out strength and breakage tests andexchanges ideas onmaterial innovations with the developers in other areas – this led, for example, to the D/LAB design of the new windsurf boards. R & D MUNICH D U O T O N E D U O T O N E 88 89 W H Y R & D T E A M