KA Sails has just celebrated the biggest success in the company's history when Marine Hunter won the World Cup on Sylt with its blue and yellow sails. Shortly afterwards, the brand announced that the products will be offered under the name Tribal Windsurfing from 2024. This name has so far been used for the Finn lines, which come from the same company. Behind both brands is the Dutch company PWsurfsport, owned by Peter Weitenberg, who used to be the European importer of KA Sails and then took over the brand completely (see history below ).
"We have completely redesigned all our sails and of course we have taken some learnings from our KA years when developing this completely new series," says Talitha Dijksman from PWsurfsport. "For the Tribal brand, this was definitely the next step towards the future to bring all our activities under one brand name and to be able to focus more on the brand, riders, events and marketing."
The sail lines will therefore now operate under the name Tribal Windsurfing: the KA Koncept will continue as Tribal Omaha; the KA.Race as Apache-R; the KA-Killer as Tribal Helix; the KA Kamikaze as Tribal Kiowa; the KA Kross-X and Kross-X as Tribal Kross-X and Kross-X. There is also a slalom board line called Radix with seven sizes and a freerider called Libero in five sizes. The portfolio also includes a speedboard with five different gradations.
The KA Sails name will remain present in the Moth sailing class, which founder Andrew McDougall spun off from the windsurfing business some time ago.
New sailing software and new lines at Tribal
The new start also means a departure from KA's McSail sail design software. This was once developed by KA and has been the standard in sail design for almost all major brands for many years. Tabitha Dijksman: "For some time now, we have been working on a completely new setup for sail design in our self-developed sail design software." The first models that have been developed with the new software are already on the water.
And where is Tribal Windsurfing heading? "We are planning to gradually expand the brand with a global network. We already offer a complete range of fins for every discipline and are now working on adding wave and foil to the board and sail range."
The history of KA Sails
The roots of KA Sails lie in the Wild Winds brand, which was founded in Australia in the mid-1980s. Andrew McDougall, an engineer and windsurfer, teamed up with Ian Mort, who was already producing booms and accessories under the Wild Winds name. The brand grew quickly, built a loft near Melbourne and dominated the Australian market. In 1989, production moved to Fiji, and later the Italian importer bought the brand. A few months later, Wild Winds was bankrupt.
Founder Andrew McDougall then teamed up with the Japanese importer and founded KA Sails - KA is the sail number abbreviation for Australia. The first team rider was Tom Luedeke with the sail number KA-1. One of Andrew McDougall's key innovations was the conception and development of CAD sail design software. This later became McSail, the industry standard design software that is still used by the leading brands in the windsurfing industry today. This software, owned and developed by KA Sail, enabled designs to be conceptualised quickly and minor changes to be implemented rapidly.
The concept brought new momentum
In 1998, Ben Severne joined KA Sails as a sailmaker before founding and developing his own brand. The brand then became increasingly quiet until Andrew McDougall produced the first concept in 2004. The freerace sail was a great success and gave the company new momentum. At the same time, a sail for the Moth class was also established, but this branch was discontinued shortly afterwards.
In 2012, European importer Peter Weitenberg from the Netherlands took over the brand after lengthy discussions with Andrew McDougall. The sail design remained with Martin Love, and to this day all sails are developed and tested near Melbourne. However, the headquarters are in Leiden in the Netherlands. Since 2013, fins have also been offered under the name Tribal Windsurfing in collaboration with Chris Lockwood, which is now being applied to all divisions.
- More info at tribalwindsurfing.com
