Chris Trappy: Co-Founder of Fin & Foil and Foil Drive North America Representative

Chris Trappy co-founded Fin & Foil in Fort Pierce with his brother Brian. He is also one of three people running Foil Drive's North America operation, where he handles warranties and supports dealers. He came to foiling with no watersports background, and that is still how he teaches: he knows what it is like to be the only person on the water who doesn't know what they're doing.

Ask Chris how he and Brian split the business and he'll tell you they're “yin and yang” or Cheech and Chong, depending on who you ask. Brian came out of school into sales, big accounts, and travel. Chris went into public accounting, and by his own account it taught him one thing above everything else: relationships matter, and you'd better get comfortable delivering bad news.

The accounting brain didn't stay in the office. When Foil Drive first started invoicing dealers in Australian dollars, most shops wanted nothing to do with the currency conversion. Chris didn't blink, he'd been doing that kind of math for a living. He'll also tell you, unprompted, that he corrects Brian's word choice constantly, because in this industry, a word doesn't mean what you think it means, and it drives Brian nuts.

What he won't claim is that any of it made him organized. By his own admission, he's probably the least organized accountant in the world. Inventory still gets buried in a bin somewhere and forgotten about for a month until somebody remembers there's a stack of t-shirts nobody's selling.

Wing foiling is really two separate skills. There's board and foil, staying up and balanced. And there's handling the wing itself. Foil Drive gave Chris the first one. It never gave him the second. He still hasn't jibed.

For a long time it genuinely wasn't fun. He'd go once, then not again for four, six, sometimes eight weeks. No progress, not enough wind, just falling. And the whole time, his brother was out there doing laps around him. Chris still isn't sure if Brian was being a smartass or actually trying to help.

The embarrassing part wasn't just falling. It was who was watching. Chris would spend the week in the shop selling people their gear, and then show up at the causeway on the weekend to actually ride, only to find his own customers already out there, already foiling, while he couldn't. He still deals with it.

There was a point where he told Brian he'd just stay in the shop and let him be the face of the water side of the business. But that's not how it played out. He kept going. He got better, slowly, the way most people do, by putting the time in. His own read on the sport: “it's hard enough that the reward isn't instant, but not so hard that nobody can do it.” That gap is what kept him coming back. It's the incremental breakthroughs, at all skill levels, that keep people so addicted to this sport.

Chris isn't a wing foiling instructor by trade, but he still ends up on the beach teaching it, most recently at a freshman orientation day for incoming FAU students, alongside Brian and a few other local riders. His version of a lesson starts before anyone touches a board: how to hold the wing, how to stop muscling it and let it find the power in the wind instead.

For a total beginner, he keeps it simple. Pull the trigger halfway, go half speed. If you feel yourself falling, don't fight it, jump off and jump the other way.

What he leans on most is his own beginning. He knows what it's like to think you're the only person on the water who doesn't know what they're doing.