SOMEBODY CALL THE WOLF
As I wait for Dave to answer my call, I notice that his Skype bio says: ‘My name is Winston Wolf – I solve problems...’. I picture Harvey Keitel’s character’s ruthlessly efficient approach to cleaning up a gruesome murder scene in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and appreciate that it takes a certain amount of credence to be able to put yourself out there in that category, professionally.
While The Wolf orchestrated savage body disposal and clinical cleansing operations without manually lifting a sticky finger himself, DK is entirely hands-on. Impulsivity, however, is likely something they share more commonly.
After flicking through a wakeboarding magazine in a shop in Whistler Blackcomb ski resort, Canada in 1999, happening upon a double page image of Lou Wainman using a Wipika kite and a Liquid Force board with full wakeboard bindings, DK was sold.
“I had zero idea that kitesurfing was a sport. Everything I needed to know was in that single picture. I could go wakeboarding without a boat. I didn’t care about going upwind or jumping, I just wanted to get pulled across the water.”
Dave had a degree in electronic engineering and, while on that season in Canada, got a job back home selling computer chips for Philips Semiconductors. He returned to New Zealand and went looking for kitesurfing on his days off.
“In 1999 kitesurfing in New Zealand was 2.5 metre long quad fin Underground directionals, C quads on handles and back straps. When I saw those I was like, “Are you kidding me?! Have you guys not seen the wakeboard bindings and the two line kite thing? You guys are doing a lame version of windsurfing.” I returned to the shop a year later and the designs had started changing. I thought ‘this is starting to look something like I want to do’. They also gave me a copy of the first issue of New Zealand Kitesurf quarterly magazine. Driving home I was stopped at the traffic lights, opened up the magazine and there was a three page article about my best mate from school, Mike Holland. He was living in Queenstown at the other end of the country and I hadn’t talked to him for eight or nine months. In that time he’d got into kitesurfing and become one of the best in New Zealand.”
Mike and Dave had become friends aged 11 and both were given bodyboards for Christmas. Eventually skateboards came into the picture, as
