Strapped Crew also experimented with early kitesurf rigs, launching 60-foot slides before most people even knew the sport existed; they more or less invented the method of boarding a plane with foil, by cutting a hydrofoil out of a strange item called an Air Seat; and they are responsible for the revival of the ancient Hawaiian custom of stand-up paddle boarding.
Just as unusual as the Strapped Crew — there is no such group of people anywhere else on earth — for Lenny, they are larger-than-life local heroes, “like the Avengers or the Justice League,” as I said.
Lenny’s parents helped him compete with the Strapped Crew by buying the family a Jet Ski to go windsurfing, hiring a competitive kitesurf for family lessons, and purchasing one of the best boards. earliest foil.
Martin and Paula were worried that Lenny had missed out on childhood. “He was talking about fins, board development, sales,” Martin explained, referring to Lenny’s teenage years. “We thought, ‘God, he’s got to hang out with kids his age.’ We were going to force him to bed one weekend and he just said, ‘Dad, I really don’t want to go. All those kids did was play Nintendo. I’d rather windsurf with you guys. ‘”
That must have further damaged Lenny’s social status, as well as the fading popularity, in the early 2000s, for the Strapped Crew’s approach to multi-sport life. Especially windsurfing, the culture is lost, the cool kids in the waters of Maui almost give up this sport.
“All the kids he learned to windsurf with, all turned their backs on it and all went surfing,” says Martin.
Lenny, who never changed courses – except his personal course was all about constant changes, equipment and competitive focus – started losing surfing competitions first and foremost. those young professionals. Before long, he gave up minor surfing competitions.
By small, random surfing, I just mean the usual old competitive surfing — as in, Not big surf. There’s no hard line between the two, but regular competitive surfing, the kind practiced by Kelly Slater and every other superstar surfer, usually occurs in waves less than about 20 feet above the surface. The problem was that, by the 1990s, this type of competitive windsurfing was quickly becoming the main event in wind and wave sports. So Lenny’s abandonment of it was not without social costs.
Martin said: “I would find him mesmerized all the time. “And I asked, ‘Kai, you know, do you want to stick with just one sport, maybe just surfing?” And he looked at me, said, ‘Why would I do that? Dad, the sports I do are fun. I don’t want to give them up.” “Oh, my God,” he said, “that was the backlash.”
For a while, Lenny eliminated negativity through homeschooling, traveling the world competing in windsurfing and all of his other sports, and big surfing in Jaws — like like Hamilton, his childhood idol. However, Lenny was in her late teens in 2010, when other men and women at Jaws figured out how to paddle old-fashioned surfboards into larger-than-usual waves. maybe. Capturing 60-foot-tall guys with nothing but their muscular strength, that new Maui crew rekindled the popularity of traditional surfing.
