Adam Bennetts in front of a perfect background staring down a perfect foreground. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
When someone like Adam Bennetts jumps on a foil, it can be easy to watch him and think that it’s easy. Let me assure you, though, it is most certainly not. Grant “Twiggy” Baker, a man known around the world for his big wave riding expertise, once said that foiling makes him “feel like a kook again.” But Bennetts has almost entirely gone from surfing a standard surfboard to surfing one with a wing on the bottom of it, even when the waves are very, very good. And in his new short film with Ben Tayler, Cold Therapy, the waves are just that.
“I foil exclusively these days,” Bennetts told me. “In fact, I haven’t ridden a surfboard in nearly six years since I started foiling (except for two waves at Uluwatu last month). I am at the point now that I can pretty much surf a foil like a surfboard and so to me, it feels like surfing and it just feels so much better in every element. It’s like surfing on steroids.”
Bennetts and Tayler decided to take a little road trip along Australia’s South Pacific ocean in search of perfect, empty waves to make the film you see here, which is never an easy task. If you’re focussed on the wrong thing — the actual finding of those perfect, empty waves — it can often lead to disappointment, but if you’re looking at it like the searching itself is the fun part and the finding of those perfect, empty waves is just a cherry on top of a cake… well, you can’t fail.
“I generally try and find waves where there is no one out because it just gives you so much room to move and properly have a crack at surfing the waves like you would on a surfboard,” Bennetts said. “One day, I would love to have access to some iconic waves with no one out to try and see what’s possible on the foil — waves like Bells, J-Bay, and even Snapper.”
Of course, foil surfers do occasionally run into a resentful surfer here and there, but that’s often less about the foil itself and more about the surfer riding it. Bennetts is one of the best foilers in the world, but he’s both aware enough of his surroundings and talented enough to do things safely.
I asked Bennetts if he ever runs into surfers in the lineup who are less than happy to see him foiling. “Sometimes, but I usually don’t paddle out or take a jet ski where there are surfers out of respect,” he said. “Unless of course it’s more of a foiling wave, like Wategos (in Byron Bay). If I’m in a lineup of surfers, I always show respect and don’t go close to them. Most of the time they are actually stoked to see what I can do on a foil and usually are inquisitive on how to get into foiling.”
