Windsurf · Foil era
2016
The big brands build foil boards
NeilPryde, maker of the Olympic board, unveils a foil board; by 2017 most major brands sell windsurf foils.
120litres
RS:X Convertible, NeilPryde's foil board, Eilat, February 2016
Seven years after the first windfoils appeared at boat shows, the maker of the Olympic board took them up. In February 2016, at the RS:X world championship in Eilat, NeilPryde unveiled the RS:X Convertible: a small board of 120 litres, 225 by 75 centimetres and about 6 kilograms, with a carbon hydrofoil underneath. It was presented as a candidate for the Olympic Games of 2024 and was to go on sale in 2017.
Other brands moved at the same time. According to Windsurf magazine, Starboard’s breakthrough came in August 2016 with an innovative racing foil, a racing geometry that the foil of the later iQFoil still uses.
By 2017 foils were no longer an experiment. The same magazine’s buyer’s guide to foils that year listed boards and foils from AHD, Fanatic, JP, MFC, NeilPryde, Naish, RRD, Slingshot and Starboard, and called foiling “well and truly the word for 2017”.