S - Ep 073 Klaas Voget Duotone

Windsurf legend and Duotone Foiling Division Manager Klaas Voget joins Liam and Freddie — brought on, semi-jokingly, to “set the story straight” after the hosts had needled the brand on past episodes for being “the winner” everyone loves to hate on. Klaas talks through his windsurfing career, the accidental Fanatic/Duotone foiling merger, and current Duotone gear, before a lighter closing segment on his young son’s start in the sport.

In brief

Klaas is a 20-year windsurf World Tour veteran (Kiel, northern Germany) who moved into R&D and marketing for Fanatic windsurfing around 2005-06, caught the wing bug at an early-2019 Boards and More dealer meeting in Tenerife, and was pulled into surf foiling by Sky Solbach in Maui the same year. He now co-runs Duotone/Fanatic’s combined foiling and wing-foiling division. Most of the episode covers the business history behind why Fanatic (boards/foils) and Duotone (wings) merged into one wing-foiling operation under Duotone, Duotone’s positioning against F-One, Axis and Armstrong, and current product detail on masts, the Whiz front wing and rear-wing tuning. It closes with Klaas’s son’s early start on foils and a Room 101 segment.

Key topics & claims

• Klaas’s windsurf background (Klaas): started windsurfing at 12-13 on a lake in northern Germany, moved to Norderney, competed on the windsurf World Tour for roughly 20 years — his first-ever World Cup heat opponent was Robbie Nash (the heat never ran, no wind). Studied medicine alongside the tour for several years before going full pro. Windsurfed with Keith Teboul in Maui.
• How he got into wings and foiling (Klaas): joined Fanatic (under parent company Boards and More) around 2005-06 as head of windsurf R&D, later added marketing. Got one of the first wings in his hands at a Tenerife dealer meeting in early 2019 from Duotone’s kite/wing designer “Ken” (transcribed only as “Ken” — likely Ken Winner). That trip, working off Sky Solbach’s early sub-foil board shapes, he and colleagues cut a board down to surfboard-length dimensions, creating what became the first Fanatic “Skywing” wingboard. He was introduced to surf foiling separately that year by Sky Solbach behind a ski in Maui and became hooked after a two-minute first wave ride.
• Why Fanatic and Duotone merged their foiling lines (Klaas): the two brands were developing near-identical gear under separate prints — the trigger was a new front wing designed for wingers that kitefoilers also wanted, meaning the same wing would ship under two brands/mountings. Klaas argued for one wing-foiling division rather than splitting effort; the CEO asked him to run it (with Craig Gürtenbach, a 25-year Fanatic veteran, handling sales). Klaas calls the move a relief operationally but a “heavy heart” personally, given his own 30+ years riding for Fanatic since 1992; he says windsurfing forums gave the brand grief for “killing” a nostalgic name.
• Boards and More company history (Klaas, prompted by Liam/Freddie): the umbrella company (also home to IOM and bike brand SQlab) traces back to old windsurf brands F2, Mistral and Fanatic, plus the North / North Kiteboarding licence (Duotone is North’s post-2018 rebrand). Klaas credits the CEO’s strategy of consolidating in-house-competing brands — dropping Arrows, focusing sails under North, boards under Fanatic — with Boards and More becoming the largest kiteboarding player.
• Competitive landscape (Klaas): in wings, F-One was the strongest early competitor (good riders, established programme); Duotone tracks relative market share via the GWA group’s pooled data rather than exact numbers. In boards, Duotone leads by “quite a bit,” though Klaas flags Gong for an early, price-attractive combined board-and-foil package that brought in a lot of entry-level riders. In foils, he names Axis and Armstrong as the main competition, crediting Axis with being first into the dock-start/pumping scene and pulling much of the local downwind crowd onto its gear.
• Why Duotone was “slow” into performance foils (Klaas): the brand prioritised bulletproofing its carbon mast/baseplate system — having watched rival carbon masts fail publicly at events — over rushing out a more race-oriented foil, and concedes competitors picked up solid market share in that window. New foil-range products are teased for autumn/September 2024.
• Mast construction (Klaas): three current carbon masts — a glued, hollow, full-carbon “D-Lab” baseplate mast, and a quick-mount version with an alloy foot on the same quick-mount baseplate (available in carbon or alloy shaft). The two-part, bonded-top-plate construction is framed as a stiffness/weight optimisation of the main shaft.
• The Whiz front wing (Klaas): brief was a prone-oriented wing with loose roll, easy pump and a low stall speed for coming off waves at low speed without stalling — achieved by turning the wingtips up rather than down, unlike most designs. Designed with foil designer Jerome and simulation engineer “Polo.” Klaas says it superficially resembles the F-One Spitfire in outline but rides very differently, and clocked 25 knots on it despite the low-stall brief.
• Rear wings / stabilisers (Klaas, in response to Liam’s own recent rear-wing experiments): the Whiz’s stock stabiliser is low-angle-of-attack, efficient and low-power for pumping; the faster “Car” front wing pairs with the more powerful “P” stabiliser (more angle of attack, more downforce, more front-foot pressure) for higher-speed control, at the cost of drag/efficiency. Confirms, on the record, that swapping rear wings does meaningfully change a foil’s character — running joke through the episode after weeks of the hosts’ own tail-shim experiments.
• Downwind (Klaas): picked up downwind foiling over the preceding winter, describing the learning curve bluntly (“you’re basically a piece of shit” at first) but calling it hugely rewarding once it clicks. Prefers a hardboard for serious downwind sessions (board weight matters for pumping up) but genuinely rates Duotone’s inflatable downwind board — his favourite board from a recent gear photoshoot — for ding-resistance and value, despite giving up some performance.
• His son (Klaas): started windsurfing at 5, winging at 6 on a small board with a comparatively huge front wing, now also doing his first downwind runs; part of a small local kids’ group at Klaas’s home spot in Kiel. Klaas is emphatic that a parent/guardian has to be in the water with young kids and that it can’t be pushed — “if they don’t enjoy it, forget it.”
• Room 101 (Klaas, Liam, Freddie): Klaas names hopping “foil scooters” as visually unappealing to the sport’s image; the hosts note the seated ski-tow “air chair” predates the sport so can’t be mocked. Closes with a story from Liam’s past life about towing a guest air-chair rider whose first backflip only clicked after a rear-wing shim change — echoing the episode’s rear-wing thread.

Gear / brands mentioned

Duotone (Whiz, Car front wings; P/S stabilisers; D-Lab and quick-mount carbon masts; inflatable downwind board), Fanatic (windsurf boards, early Skywing wingboard, sub-foil boards), F-One (Spitfire), Axis (dock-start/pumping hardware, 1300/1201/1101 front wings referenced by size), Armstrong (pro-model flat foil for the “air chair” creator), Gong (early combined board+foil package), North / North Kiteboarding, Mistral, F2, Starboard-style old-school windsurf brands referenced in passing, IOM, SQlab.

Notable quotes or takes

• Klaas, on downwind foiling’s learning curve: it makes you feel like “a piece of shit” at the start no matter how good you already are at other foiling disciplines — and that’s part of why it’s so rewarding once it clicks (paraphrased).
• Klaas confirms, deliberately “on the record” as a running joke, that changing a foil’s rear wing does make a difference — a callback to the hosts’ own recent rear-wing tinkering.
• Asked to describe Duotone as a car brand: Klaas says Mercedes, for build quality, while admitting he was previously a Mercedes-sponsored rider so may be biased.
• On his son and other local kids picking up winging so young: Klaas says it’s “the best thing that can happen if your kid picks it up,” while cautioning it only works if a parent is in the water with them and it’s never pushed.

Mentioned

Klaas Voget · Duotone · Fanatic · Liam · Freddie · Keith Teboul · F-One · Axis · Armstrong · Wing Foiling · Downwind · Masts · Front Wings · Fuselages and Rear Wings · Pumping · Kite Foiling · Prone Foiling

Auto-transcribed (faster-whisper, unreviewed), with no speaker labels — speaker attribution above is inferred from context and may be imprecise in fast exchanges. Several names are uncertain in the raw transcript: “Ken” (Duotone’s kite/wing designer, likely Ken Winner, is never given a surname on air), the simulation engineer “Polo,” and foil designer “Jerome” (surnames not stated). “Robbie Nash,” “Sky Solbach,” and “Keith Teboul” (transcribed “Keith to ball”) are rendered here as the most plausible real names but are not independently verified against the audio. The umbrella company is referred to throughout as “Boards and More”/“boards or more” — normalised here to Boards and More.