There had to be a better way
How one too many airport check-in desks turned into the world's first folding foil board — and a brand built to take the friction out of the trip.
Foiling pulls you to new places. The trips are the whole point — getting there was the problem.
Turks and Caicos. New Zealand. La Ventana. Cape Hatteras. The Gorge. Different water, different crews — the same magic every time.
The not-so-good part was what it took to get there: hauling six- and seven-foot boards through airports. After getting hassled at one check-in desk too many, Nigel started asking — there has to be a better way. That's how WAKA started.
A product designer, not a board builder
Nigel's background is software, not composites. But the principles of design are universal: you strip away complexity until what's left is elegant.
The composites he learned from scratch — forums, master builders, a lot of CAD. Then he bought the first CNC, set it up in the living room, and started cutting foam inside the house.
What if it just folds in half?
Six months of sectional prototypes confirmed the same failure modes: complexity, weight, flex. Nearly ready to throw in the towel, Nigel said it out loud.
A conventional hinge causes every one of those failures. Then he caught himself — what if the hinge wasn't mechanical at all? Aerospace had used composite living hinges for years. That was the angle.
Industrial testing has passed over one million folds with no compromise in performance — and the magic of the WAKA Glide is that you don't even know it can fold.
From a living-room sketch to the water
"Probably a huge compromise." Then they rode it.
Before going wide, early boards went to our partners Jeff and Tucker at MACkite for a private review. A few sessions in, the tone had changed.
Off the plane, grabbed a car, on the water
A small team, the right partners
WAKA is headquartered in Snowmass, Colorado — a Rocky Mountain town, admittedly an unlikely address for a watersports brand. The year follows the water: summers in Hood River, winters split between La Ventana and New Zealand.
Lean by design, not by accident
We're not here to be
another board brand
We're doing this because adventure travel is what makes this sport great. If we can take the friction out of getting there, more people get to have those experiences.
