The world’s first folding wing foil board by WAKA debuts this week at AWSI
Sep 05, 2024
Hood River, OR— The world’s first performance folding wing foil board will be launched this week. The inaugural product from the water-sports innovation company Waka, the WAKA Glide folding board is a breakthrough in technology for water-sports enthusiasts. On the water they get a high-performance all-carbon board, and when they are ready to travel to their next destination, the board simply folds in half, making adventure travel a frictionless experience.
After 12 months of intensive R&D the WAKA Glide folding board will be unveiled in Hood River, Oregon on Sept. 6th. The patent-pending technology leverages advances in precision composite manufacturing often found in the aerospace industry, resulting in a performance board with no weight penalty for the additional structural elements.
“The magic of the WAKA board is you don’t even know that it can fold in half. It looks like a sweet, all-carbon board. But when you remove the titanium bolts it can fold onto itself. This changes the game for adventure travel. No more hassle with the airlines or trying to jam your boards in a rental car, it will even fit in the trunk of an Uber, and when you arrive at your destination, you can assemble it in 30 seconds,” says founder and CEO Nigel Thompson.
“The secret sauce is our patent-pending carbon/kevlar hinge and frame. We spent a lot of time working the problem, we rejected lots of concepts, we looked at previous inventions for sectional boards, we looked at what the aerospace industry was doing. We knew the solution had to be lightweight, strong, and super simple, and we think we have come up with something special.”
WAKA will begin taking pre-orders for their wing foil boards that will be delivered later this year with 6 sizes of the WAKA Glide range (77L, 88L, 99L) and beginning early next year will release their WAKA SuperGlide range of longer mid-length boards.
About WAKA: The company was founded in late 2024 after extensive R&D by the founder Nigel Thompson, a native of New Zealand based in the US, a serial entrepreneur from the software industry. The company is focused primarily on building their own line of folding performance foil boards and travel luggage, and will explore licensing opportunities in the future.
Media Contact:
Mattea Fleischner
Website: https://waka.surf
