Words and photos by Kenneth Erlandsen

June, 2025

“7Bofora is the shop in Split. Branko. Call him for all the info.”

That was the answer that came through Instagram DM from three-time Olympic windsurfer Luka Mratović, when I hit him up in desperation in the summer of 2025. The reason: a foil board I’d hauled over from Norway to Croatia that kept trying to kill me. A classic secondhand-market blunder, a cheap inflatable light wind board with the temperament of a pissed-off rodeo bull with its balls in a vise. I couldn’t tame it and needed a new board, fast, because the wind forecast was solid and the holiday had just started. Was this Branko guy the man who’d save me?

Wing…spoil

I’ve written before about my love-hate relationship with wing foiling. Few, if any, board sports are more satisfying to nail than foiling. When it clicks, I love it. When nothing clicks, I hate the sport like the plague.

Then there’s the gear obsession combined with the price tag. It’s the part of this whole circus that appeals to me least. Everything about foiling is expensive. And it shows in who does it: mostly well-off men and women over 40. Add it up and the sport must wear the label “for the privileged.” Or wing-spoil, as I like to call it. A term wing foilers hate. But it’s accurate. In a global perspective, wing foilers are, and will remain, a spoiled bunch.

October 2023

Back to autumn 2023. I’ve just bought my first wing foil set up. The purchase lines up with the Norwegian autumn school break, and I’m in the family’s flat in the Croatian village of Slatine, on the island of Čiovo, where my in-laws had the foresight to buy a holiday flat many years ago. The hope was for a beginner-friendly Bora or Mistral wind to show up, both of which line up nicely in the bay between the mainland and Čiovo.

A week with no wind later, the gear bag went home unopened. I consoled myself with a good dinner at Bokeria in Split. Inspired by Barcelona’s La Boqueria market, Bokeria has served solid modern Mediterranean food since 2014, and the quality’s held up. I’ve eaten there many times and always walked out happily. Slightly less happy about flying home from Croatia without testing the gear. But that’s outdoor sport that runs on nature’s terms for you. You never know what you’ll get.

July 2024

I’m flying. For the first time since I picked up wing foiling, the jibes are landing. Flat water, solid northwesterly Mistral, and I’m looking down at the foil tips slicing out from the sides of the board in the crystal-clear Adriatic off Garma bay on Čiovo. I’m so stoked I’m yelling. On the beach, the same people who’d gawked while I rigged the gear are now watching, pointing, filming on their phones. Good. I like pressure. It sharpens me up. Same as in the skatepark where I skate better with an audience, I foil better with a beach full of eyes on me. Thanks, and respect to all the locals for playing along.

That evening, I hang out with the locals at the annual summer party in Miljenko Smoje park in Slatine, where Giuliano & Diktatori play songs everybody knows, except me. Still, I sing along as a local. The frontman of the band, Giuliano Đanić, has been in the Croatian Eurovision final selection seven times and is a pop-culture icon in Croatia. The vibe is electric, and the local chapter of Hajduk Split’s fan club, Torcida Slatine, lights flare and smokes out the whole neighborhood. I can wing foil, I’m at a genuine Balkan party, and life is good.

June 2025

So, what happened with this Branko guy, and Mratović’s tip?

Branko Aničić — full name — is a local wing foiler and owner of Extreme Shop in Split, which carries bikes from Specialized and foil gear from Duotone and RRD. I get him on the phone, and it becomes clear fast: I’m not walking away with a new board. On a limited budget, for a board that’s going to sit in the flat down here and get used maybe ten days a year, the price tags just don’t add up.

Foil boards, as it turns out, cost the same in Croatia as they do back home in Norway. And I ask myself how the hell wing foiling is supposed to get any real foothold in a country where the average monthly income is 1,500 euros. Once again it hits me how privileged wing foilers are, doing a sport that, pricewise, locks out a huge chunk of the world’s population. Wing SPOIL. Just saying.

I foil out the rest of the holiday on the rodeo-bull light wind board. Last session, I fall, slice my ankle open on the foil tip, and I’ve had enough. Pack the board home to Norway and sell it. A happy divorce.

September 2025

Autumn break in Norway again, and we’re back in Slatine. This time I’ve brought back my hard board. But the airline had other plans. Out of the bag comes a board with a smashed tail. Crisis.

I call Branko again. In his tiny shop in Split, right across from Nada Rugby Club’s home ground, the place is overflowing with Specialized bikes, parts, and watersports gear. They could easily double the floor space, because it’s tight in there. It smells like an action sports shop, the way only those places do. A mix of neoprene, epoxy, chain oil, tire rubber, you know the smell. I could’ve stood in there for hours just breathing it in. Only thing missing is a little TV on the wall running 90s surf films. Something like The Billabong Challenge from 1995, with Occy, Machado, and Slater. The ultimate surf-shop monitor loop.

“I only carry wingfoil gear from Duotone and RRD. They’re solid on distribution, dealer support, and parts are easy to get,” Branko tells me. Smart move.

Before catching the ferry back to Čiovo, I walk past my favorite piece of wall art, tucked in a doorway along the Split promenade. No title, but it might as well be called “Don’t Piss in the Alley.” Something the building owner is clearly sick and tired of.

The Gear Aid repair putty Branko sold me doesn’t look pretty once it’s on the board, but it sets in five minutes and the board’s back in the water in record time.

The Bura wind, though, did not play along. The autumn storm gusted up to 25 meters per second, and optimist me was rigged with nothing less than a 5.3 wing. Waves and wind threw me straight back toward shore. With total respect for the sea’s power, I accept it: the ocean has spoken, and the ocean is the boss. I gave up. A healthy attitude I suspect the local fishermen would back me on.

And since we’re one the subject of Croatian winds, let’s run through the ones that matter most for wing foiling.

Wind of Change

Croatia has three main winds for wing foiling.

The Maestral (northwest) is the main-season wind. A thermal wind that builds from around lunchtime and peaks at 6-10 m/s (meters per second) in the early afternoon, before dying off toward sunset. In Split Bay and the channel by Slatine, it’s often boosted 2–4 m/s by the funnel effect between Čiovo and the mainland.

The Bura (northeast) is a brutal, gusty wind rolling down off the Mosor mountains, capable of swinging from 8 to 25 m/s, with gusts from hell. It hits hardest near Split and Kaštela Bay, and can cause quite some damage to boats and the coastal line.

The Jugo (southeast) is the slowest and wettest of the three, typically 5-10 m/s, building over several days and bringing long swells and unpredictable gusts.

In my experience, the Windy app gives the most accurate forecasts down here. It’s also the one the local fishermen, sailors, and watersports crowd trust most, an experienced Croatian sailor told me. Always listen to the old salts.

Croatia is…Croatia

So why do I love to travel to Croatia and wing foil? Because Croatia is a lot of what Norway isn’t: laid-back, unpretentious, unbothered, unorganized, and just enough self-sufficient and happy-go-lucky attitude that it borders on a modern-day hippie atmosphere.

Even though the country joined the EU in 2013, and things have gotten a bit more streamlined since, it still feels like a refreshing counterweight to structured, efficient Norway. Park in the ditch because the lot’s full? No problem. A few euros short for the ferry? Fine, just get on board. Time restrictions on beer sales in stores? Don’t exist. A three-day, round-the-clock electronic music festival right in the middle of apartment area in Split? Hell yeah! I could go on.

Croatians are chill people. They always seem to be having all the time in the world, shuffling around in sandals with a cigarette dangling from the corner of their mouth. Then they get in the car and suddenly have an instant hurry. What they’re in such a hurry to reach, I have no idea, but they’ll happily do 20–30 km/h over the speed limit on narrow coastal roads, forcing pedestrians to leap into the ditch to survive. Then they arrive, step out of the car, light another cigarette, and suddenly have all the time in the world again. A driving culture I will never understand.

And speaking of cigarettes, if you are under the impression that all Croatians are smokers, it is not far from the truth. The latest survey from Croatian health authorities put smoking rates at around 40% of the population (in Norway, it’s just 7%). Please cut down on the cigarettes, my dear Croatians. I beg you.

Then there’s the waste management. Or rather, the lack of it, to be precise. There isn’t a single foil sesion, SUP paddle or swim where I don’t spot plastic in the water. On land, it’s even worse. Sure, they’ve rolled out bins that sort plastic, paper, food waste, and general trash. But nobody seems to care which goes were.

Cigarette smoking and garbage everywhere. Driving culture from hell. Beer sales as long as the shop’s open. Yep, it`s f…. paradise.

Why Foil in Croatia?

Because the water temperature and wind patterns are custom-made for foiling.

Because it’s just two and a half hours flight from Norway, and tickets are cheap outside peak season.

Because the seafood and craft beer is excellent. Try the Plavusa Blonde Ale from Brlog, or Baltazar from Pivovara Medvedgrad. Both perfect for an after-foil hangout at the beach.

And did I mention the airport in Split? It is one of the best looking airports in Europe. Does that matter? To me it does. Cause I love looking at great arcitecture while enjoying an espresso waiting for the flight home.

July 2026

After landing at Split airport, a message drops into my phone, the kind you hope you never get. A buddy from the wing foil community back home in Norway has died. The air goes straight out of me, and any motivation to foil disappears with it.

Later that same afternoon, the Mistral shows up right on schedule with a fine afternoon breeze. I pull myself together, rig up, and paddle out of Garma bay, only to watch the wind die completely. I sit on the board for an hour waiting, then give up and paddle back to shore. Considering my friend’s passing, I decided I’m never going to complain about a failed foil session again. It’s wild how little you care about other stuff when real tragedy hits.

On the beach, a young, local Croatian comes up to ask about the gear. He’s genuinely curious about how the hydrofoil works with the wing and the board. He tells me he would love to get into it himself, but the look on his face and his body language when he heard the price of the equipment left no doubt. Way outside his budget. Once again, I feel a bit embarrassed to be doing this sport. Wing-spoiled, as I am.

Somewhere between the curious Croatian who’ll probably never get to foil, the friend I’ll never foil with again, and a windless, failed session, the afternoon turned into a strange mix of grief and joy, tangled up together. Why? Because it finally nailed down what wing foiling truly is about for me. It is about being present and in close contact with the ocean. Cause the ocean has always had an enormous pull on me. No other activity gives me the same physical and mental calm as I get after a foil session. And playing around in saltwater has a tremendous positive effect on my mental health. That’s why I love to foil.

And when I get to do that in a country where I don’t understand the language, still haven’t cracked all the cultural codes, and where the culture runs on its own chaotic course, I’ve found a sociocultural framework that mirrors my own personality pretty well — a bit unstructured and messy, unusually fond of the sea, of wearing sandals all year long and drinking excellent craft beer.

I don’t ask for more.