Duotone Mag 2024

KEN WINNER – WING DESIGN Ken Winner looks back on a life determined by water sports. He started his Windsurfing career in 1975, winning not only national titles but also placing first overall at the 1977 and 1980 Windsurf World Championships. In 1981 he won the Pan Am Cup. Responsible for some groundbreaking innovations in Windsurfing, Ken’s contributions to the sport are well-recognized, he’s considered a pioneer in the evolution of windsurfing equipment. Among others he built the first 9’ board with a rounded tail in 1979 (other custom boards at the time had square tails) and using this board invented the carving jibe. He also designed and built the first foot-adjustable mast track and had the first adjustable booms. After 25 years of Windsurfing, Ken switched to Kitesurfing in 1998 starting to work as Duotone’s Kite Designer in late 2000. A driven innovator, Ken has a track record of groundbreaking designs and firsts in the kitesurfing world as well. Many of them are invisible to the average rider, yet are milestones in kite construction like installing Dacron for the leading edge and struts instead of mylar laminate or experimenting with 5th-line total-depower systems. Another 20 years later, in 2018, Ken designed his first inflatable wing, a 2.5-meter prototype, starting what today is one of the most popular watersport trends worldwide. “I’m like anyone who likes to try new things or improve existing equipment. It’s a life- long habit that started when I was quite young, building carts, boats, airplanes and, yes, kites, in the family garage. I couldn’t stop since. Handing kite design over to Sky lately, enabled me to spend more time on designing wings, which now is my main focus. Finn and Jeffrey Spencer assist me with wing development since they joined the Duotone team in 2022. They live down the road from me and I’m friends with their dad Henry. We test gear together and we talk about it. Sometimes we can make changes on the spot, like adjusting the back wing angle of a hydrofoil, or closing an adjustment zipper in a wing. Sometimes we may use Gorilla tape to make a change on the spot or we spend the time to sew takeups into a wing. The fact that we’re all here on Maui makes progress quick and relatively free of friction. There’s just no substitute for testing gear in the same conditions at the same time and discussing results in person.” Sky Solbach about Ken: “Ken is a very critical thinker with vast technical knowledge gained from many decades of hands-on experience. I’m impressed by his creativity when it comes to problem solving and his mental fortitude to grind it out when needed to reach his desired result. I’ve learned by observing Ken’s actions that being methodical and persistent when design challenges arise usually pays off and that there’s no substitute for doing the work and figuring it out. His dedication, work ethic and discipline are unmatched.” Finn and Jeffrey Spencer about Ken: “We usually meet up with Ken a couple times a week to test new wings and discuss the results and our feelings on them. Ken is very innovative and is always coming up with new ideas for the wings. It’s always fun when he has new prototypes for us to test because you never know what interesting features they might have. It has been a great experience working with Ken and seeing how much knowledge he has about wing, kite, and foil design. It seems like we learn something new every time we talk to him.” WING FOIL MAUI D U O T O N E D U O T O N E 92 93 W H Y R & D T E A M