Description Waka introduces the world's first folding foil board, representing a significant innovation in the water-sports board market.
Foiling is experiencing remarkable growth across multiple disciplines, with enthusiasts embracing winging, kiting, surfing, windsurfing, and paddling. The sport offers an exceptional experience on the water and has flourished at premier locations worldwide.
One of the primary challenges users face is the logistics of traveling and storing their boards. With many boards exceeding 6 feet in length, transportation becomes particularly challenging when checking equipment at airports or arranging local transport to riding locations.
While inflatable boards have served as the conventional travel solution, they often require compromises in performance and riding experience. The Waka Glide elegantly solves this challenge through its patent-pending folding architecture, delivering both outstanding performance and unprecedented portability in a mid-length foil board.
This innovative design combines advanced engineering with practical functionality, setting a new standard for transportable foil boards while maintaining superior ride quality.
Innovation Our design objective focused on creating a sectional board that would combine superior performance and lightweight construction with outstanding portability, for easy assembly and disassembly for riders.
Over 18 months, the Waka team explored diverse prototype designs, ranging from 2-piece boards featuring interlocking carbon frames to 3-piece configurations with removable foot pads and various other innovations. The pivotal moment arrived when founder and chief designer Nigel Thompson envisioned a simple yet powerful concept: a board that could fold open naturally.
This insight launched an exploration into the possibilities of a folding board design. Moving beyond conventional hinges, which posed challenges with weight and environmental exposure to salt and sand, the team drew inspiration from aerospace technology. The solution emerged in the form of an integrated living hinge, crafted from kevlar and carbon composites, seamlessly incorporated into the board's architecture.This design achieves an ideal balance: offering riders an intuitive, straightforward experience while meeting rigorous standards for performance, structural integrity, manufacturing efficiency, and durability.
Product Detail The Waka Glide combines advanced materials in its mid-length design, featuring a lightweight EPS core encased in carbon fiber construction.
The innovative folding mechanism integrates a robust carbon/PVC sandwich architecture with a sophisticated carbon/kevlar living hinge.
This engineered hinge system functions as an integral structural component, delivering exceptional mechanical load capacity and durability that extends beyond the expected lifespan of the board.
Specification For its North American market launch in early summer 2025, Waka will offer the Glide mid-length foil board in six distinct volumes and lengths:
55L - 5'9"
66L - 6'0"
77L - 6'3"
88L - 6'6"
99L - 6'9"
111L - 7'0"
The Waka Glide features a lightweight EPS core encased in carbon fiber construction, with a sophisticated carbon/PVC sandwich architecture and the innovative carbon/kevlar folding mechanism. Each board comes with a premium insulated day bag and toolkit, with an optional Rolling Waka travel system available.
Waka uses a direct-to-consumer sales model to keep prices competitive while maintaining premium quality materials and construction. Additional sizes and board variations are planned for future development.
Bio Waka is a startup in the water-sports market that is creating highly innovative foil boards using modern composite technology to create performance boards that are incredibly portable due to a patent pending folding architecture.
This is a breakthrough in the industry making travel and storage of boards incredible easy as a 6-7' board can easily fit in the trunk of the car or be checked as regular luggage for air travel. This is a major unlock for water-sports adventure travel.
