When it comes to riding a foil board, there aren’t too many who do it as well as Adam Bennetts.
He didn’t grow up foiling — it wasn’t exactly a thing when he first began riding waves — but he spent a few years living in Bali as a professional surfer. When foiling first began to pique the interest of the surfing public, Bennetts wasn’t all that enthused about it. He was just into getting barreled in Bali, but things changed when he moved back to his native Australia.
Just on a whim, he decided to try something new, so he hopped on a foil and gave it a shot. And from there, he never looked back. “I’m a core surfer at heart, but the thing I love about foiling is how it amplifies almost every aspect of surfing,” he told me. “You get way more speed while up and riding, you get way more ride time – 1-3 minutes per ride compared to 10-15 seconds when surfing. And finally, and maybe the most important, you get away from crowds, so you always fill your cup and never come in frustrated after a session.”
Now, he’s got a new toy, and he’s loving it. It came by way of a company called Fliteboard. Bennett’s surfing on a foil caught the eyes of the brand’s CEO, and Fliteboard decided they’d like to have the ear of one of the best foilers in the world.
“David Trewern (Fliteboard’s CEO/founder) saw some videos of mine online and hit me up to come on board and help develop and promote future products,” Bennetts explained. “It’s an amazing company that he has created and is so far ahead of the industry, so naturally I wanted in on that!”
The board in question — and in the video above — is called the AMP. According to Bennetts, it’s something special that might just change the whole game.
“This new AMP board is designed to ride the impossible,” he said. “It has a removable jet cartridge in the board that provides 25kg of thrust handsfree (no remote) so you can catch unbroken waves or wind swells. It feels like a normal prone board so you don’t have a big cumbersome board and foil like you normally would need to catch these kind of waves, which means you can rip it way harder in any kind of conditions.”
As far as what the future holds, both for Bennetts and the general surfing public, Bennetts is betting that foil surfing continues to gain steam.
“I can see foiling kind of being the future of surfing to some extent,” he said. “Or at least a massive extension to it. Surfing will always be at the core of riding waves, but foiling allows you to tap into energy that we never thought was possible meaning we can now ride endless bits of ocean (or any body of water with Fliteboard’s electric technology). Ultimately it means more fun and more time spent on the water which is a win for anyone.”
