CHARLES BERTRAND

Hey Charles. So, how did you end up in the world of foil design?

I believe it was my background in naval architecture and my interest in all kinds of watercraft that helped me get hired by Raphaël (Salles – the F-ONE chief) six years ago. I spent about a year dialing into F-ONE’s approach to R&D before I took over board design. Designing the foils was the next natural step for me.

When did you design your first foil?

I actually started designing foils in 2014, and then started kite foiling myself in spring 2015. I design based on feedback from the testers and following either Raphaël's or my own intuition. This works really well as long as my own experience of the sport is enough for me to understand how things work.

How did that first foil design pan out?

Well we started the development in 2014 with some prototypes that were fully CNC’d from solid aluminum blocks. The weight and the trailing