Fred Hope

Kitefoiler and Slingshot rider whose kitefoil riding is credited on the show with “changing the game” — instantly recognisable on the water.

• First pinned down at Slingshot’s Hood River offices (Ep 84).
• Returns to discuss Slingshot’s “Project Drag” board programme, the shape underpinning Liam’s home-made board (Ep 144).

What Ep 144 adds:

• Based in Hood River / the Gorge; his role at Slingshot is essentially product storytelling — he drove Project Drag, bringing Ken Adgate’s Maui board and a Tuttle-mast setup to production with Kyle Touhey and an in-house box-builder (“Michael”). Girlfriend is a wealth-management advisor.
• Champions radical transparency — set up the Project Drag Discord for direct designer–consumer contact and posts factory photos he’d previously never have shared.
• Fluent on the mast thinness-vs-stiffness trade-off and Tuttle geometry (15.95mm head); careful about managing Ken/Kyle/Michael as friends, not employees. Lost £170 to an AI-picked investment (a running gag into Ep 147).

What Ep 84 adds (the earlier, first sit-down — recorded live at AWSI in Hood River):

• Nearly left foiling altogether: he called Slingshot a few months before graduating (around what he calls his career peak, December 2021) to say he was quitting to become a marine biologist, but stayed on. At Slingshot his role is closer to product owner — he writes product briefs, works with R&D and designers, then writes marketing copy and works with sales through to launch.
• Drove the origin of Slingshot’s screwless OneLock foil connection roughly three years before this recording, starting from two practical problems — corrosion on the old Phantasm aluminium fuselage and fiddly beach setup for less dexterous customers — that only later turned into a drag-reduction project once the team realised how much drag the screws themselves added. Broke roughly 50 masts during development shrinking the carbon collar, forcing repeated (expensive) mold retools.
• Expects track systems (Slingshot’s current RTS/Rapid Track) to fade within about three years, but argues no single brand can move to a shared connection standard alone — cites Connor Bainbridge/“Ray Sir”/Isaac’s UK adapter board (Chewbacca/Levitas) as evidence of real demand, and floats a Tuttle-style shared slide-with-pucks idea.
• Close friend of Ken Adgate — rides Ken’s boards for fun despite them being narrower/more advanced than Slingshot’s general customer needs; echoes Ken’s view that boards need tail flex to allow pumping, backed by his own back-to-back downwind board test.
• Runs kite-foiling coaching: a clinic in Cabarete with guide “Andreas” (“Uncharted Kite Sessions”) and private coaching for ~5 clients worldwide, capped at ~6 weeks a year. Thinks kite foiling is shrinking as a discipline but was the catalyst that let foiling expand into wing/downwind/SUP. Personal kitefoil setup: 92cm mast, 750 front wing with a deliberately inefficient/low-glide profile. Most proud of the OneLock foil and the minimalist Hobie/Hopecraft Joystick and UFO kite-foiling gear.