Andi Lachauer's career was usually on a knife-edge. First on the edge of the board as a young trickster, then on skates as a young professional. And now on delicate wings as one of the best foil stylers in Germany. The Upper Bavarian from Walchensee has two missions: He wants to show that everything that is possible on a classic freestyle board also works on a foil board. And he firmly believes that experienced windsurfers who are still unfamiliar with flying will be able to float across the water after a week of training. A house call at Walchensee.
Water is just melted ice
The Bavarian mountain navy was previously regarded as a mythical creature similar to the Wolpertinger. But they really do exist - the speeding torpedoes that fly back and forth on the mountain lakes like the echoing sound between the mountain walls. We have seen such a projectile, it was not a phantom, but it was phenomenal. It didn't plough through the water, but hovered over the waves like a cormorant in search of fish. And it seemed very peaceful in its silent flight.
The man on board was perhaps Germany's best foil styler, Bavaria's filigree answer to the Formula racers with their gorch jib sails. Andi Lachauer, former freestyle pro, shows the windsurfing world the future of the sport.
"Floating on a small wing is a real game changer," says foil pioneer Andi with the persuasive power of a preacher, "you can double or even triple your days on the water on a foil board. You no longer have to organise your whole life around the wind forecast."
Does this mean that the days of mainsails for giant musclemen are over? Could windsurfing on wings become a summer sport for the snowboard generation? Snowboarders are people who hate material battles: Two boots, two bindings, one board. That's it.
Sales Manager Christian May, who has been working for the Pryde Group in the surfing scene for 20 years, can well imagine that snowboard sliders are interested in foil surfing: "All you need is a 5.5mm sail, a 120mm board with a foil."
Perhaps Andi Lachauer has also become a foil fanatic because the rigs are much smaller when surfing with wings. The Munich native has always been petite in stature. It's astonishing that an almost delicate boy, who you'd rather put in a boys' choir, should take up ice hockey of all things. Not just on the frozen lakes, but in a famous club with a great past. He played in the school and youth teams of SC Riessersee (Garmisch-Partenkirchen) until the age of 16. "It was a school for life," says the still slight 30-year-old, "where others used strength and physicality, I had to counter with sophisticated technique."
At 16, the day of decision came: a professional career on the ice or freedom on the water, the artificial light of large, cold halls or the warm sun on his skin during water sports. "I decided against the dark halls and in favour of the sun," he says with a hint of happiness on his face, "it was the best decision of my life." The beach, sea and wind have now replaced the cold ice. And by saying goodbye to ice hockey, the Munich native also saved his school leaving certificate: "I would never have got my A-levels with ice hockey."
Interview with Andi Lachauer
As a four-year-old, little Andreas was already standing on a surfboard with water wings, which is probably when he caught the surfing bug. He later spent six weeks every summer with his parents on the Cyclades island of Paros. The agility and stamina that Andi had learnt on the skates helped him with windsurfing: "Thanks to my ice hockey skills, I learnt up to 30 freestyle manoeuvres in a year," he says, and he doesn't sound a bit boastful. Skating like a dream seems to be a very good basis for doing tricks.
Young Andi dreamed of a professional surfing career. So it was a good thing that his brother was doing an apprenticeship at the Pryde Group in Taufkirchen near Munich. Relationships are as important as movement talent.
Because he is a visual person, he needed many role models. He travelled around with the American hot shots and soaked up everything the Hawaiians exported to Europe. The Munich native never made it to Hawaii, the dream of all up-and-coming riders. His workshop was the shallow water spots of Dahab in the Sinai. In the desert resort, which Corona pulled the plug on last year, the wind blows over a nose of land onto the water - the finest H2O marble lies close to the shore; no wave disturbs the freestyle laboratory. The other freestyle pros set the training plan: "Look, look, look was my recipe. I had to try everything the others created straight away." Talent plus hard work plus wind equals success. Andi made it into the top 10 at several freestyle events, and Upper Bavaria's greatest windsurfing hope had arrived at the top of the world.
At ten he could do the helitack, clew first on the ledge and similar tricks, six years later the challenges were called spock, air jibe, flaka and other tricks.
However, because top-class sport is not just about talent, but above all about money, the young hot shot soon realised: "If you always stay in the top 10, you'll get good contracts; if you don't, you can live off the sponsorship money, but you can't build anything up." Andy therefore didn't put all his eggs in one basket, took the precaution of doing his A-levels and then travelled the world with the PWA. Because his bourgeois reflexes were not even damaged by wind and sun, he preferred to study to become a teacher after his World Cup career. Teaching, he believed at the time, was a combination of retirement and passion.
But children and classrooms were not his world after all - Andi needs the fresh, preferably accelerated air to live. It so happened that a charming wooden hut on Lake Walchensee, just a few metres after the Herzogstand valley station and the legendary Café Bucherer, offered itself as a surfing station - separated from a large bathing meadow only by the road. After the old operators had retired, this was a unique opportunity to settle down at home. He and his girlfriend Rita call the new hideaway in the shadow of the Herzogstand and within easy reach of the fresh, green-blue mountain waters of Lake Walchensee SUKI.
Lake Walchensee is considered one of the most beautiful lakes in Germany. According to the Upper Bavarians, when God created Canada and there was still a bit of it left, he plopped this remnant between the Bavarian mountains 80 kilometres south of Munich.
The former surf editor Steve Chismar, who also saw himself as a local poet, dedicated a true hymn to the mountain idyll: "The alpine lake is a dream, as green as an emerald and as pure as spring water. The wind is its breath, cool and alive. The sun is its heart in the pulse of time. Very few windsurfers realise that Lake Walchensee is a place of myths and monsters, crashed bombers and car wrecks."
The backdrop of mountains standing around the green water like marvelling tourists makes it a postcard cliché.
However, the lake has become the favourite destination of all Bavarian surfers as a weekend replacement for Lake Garda: the mountains produce thermal wind. It is not a westerly front like on Lake Starnberg or Lake Ammer that pushes the sails here, but the incoming air, which replaces heated, rising aeropacks.
With a north-easterly current, the fair-weather thermals build up in the north of the lake. The first perky whitecaps appear in Urfeld Bay between eleven and twelve o'clock.
But there was no room for Andi's surfing station up there - the main road squeezes through tunnels and galleries on the narrow strip of shore between the mountain and the lake. Next to the asphalt strip are perhaps Germany's most sought-after car parks (except in city centres). Whoever can squeeze their campervan into one of the few spaces here is the king of the day. The distance from the car roof to the water is 15 metres - over the steep bank.
Andi's pretty alpine hut with surf centre is on the south-west shore - the thermals arrive later here - it's a bit like delivering the post to a farm in Upper Bavaria.
Lake Garda surfers based in Navene or Malcesine are familiar with this phenomenon of wind diaspora. You stand on the shore, look to the north and see the first sails flying over the water. At your location, however, the ducks are splashing about. A kingdom for a large sail, but you don't need it in the wind zone.
So it's high time for a new invention that makes cruising as easy as on a yacht with a monster keel.
Keel is the key word. A long, sharp centreboard under the board, with two wings attached to the end, is the solution to the problem: foil surfing is the logical continuation of Jim Drake's invention, windsurfing.
Freestyle freak Lachauer, who hates big sails, was "awakened" by his mate Balz "Radiculo" Müller. The Swiss Müller, one of the best freestylers in Europe, introduced the new sport at the 2018 World Cup off Sylt. Since then, Müller has only known one goal: to transfer all freestyle tricks with normal boards to the foil board. Müller in a surf interview: "Please set your watches forward one hundred years." The foil style emerged from the challenge of taming this hydrofoil. "There is now hardly a windsurfing manoeuvre that I don't try with my foil wing."
The fact that Andi and Balz got on like identical twins straight away during training in Tarifa should come as no surprise to anyone. "Every trick that works with a normal surfboard also works with a foil. The only difference is that you need less wind with the foil board. You can jump as high at ten knots as you can with a planing board at 20 knots," promises Lachauer.
The standard manoeuvre of the wing faction is the shaka. "But even a glided jibe, a three-sixty or the stylish duck jibe will ensure you get curious looks from the audience," promises Andi.
He firmly believes in the foil future, but doesn't he forget that windsurfers are actually a bit more conservative than kiters, for example?
"Experienced windsurfers who have been on the board for 20 years and jibe like clockwork learn to foil surf in a week," Lachauer has observed in his school, "and intermediates with a secure footing in the loops can learn to fly in a month or two."
What could go wrong for windsurfing, which is experiencing a new future thanks to the little wings. Surfing is coming home.
Want to give it a try?
Andi Lachauer gives courses and private lessons at the SUKI Surf Centre Walchensee (70 euros per hour). andi.lachauer@gmail.com ; www.surfcenter-walchensee.com
