An interview with Kyle Stoneham

Kyle Stoneham is a prominent figure on the International Moth circuit, whose been busy competing all over Europe over the summer. We finally got the chance to catch up with him, and were excited to hear all about what he’s been up to…

 

So Kyle, you’ve had a busy couple of months! Tell us a bit about what you’ve been up to…

It’s been a fantastic summer and I have managed to cram quite a lot of sailing events in! In June I headed to Dutch Moth nationals with my Exocet, followed by Ronde Texel with The Vampire Project. The biggest catamaran race in the world; a challenging circumnavigation of a north sea sandbank. A brilliant week culminating in the namesake race, we led for a bit but unfortunately lost a foil halfway round and finished 4th on the water.

A week later I headed to Lake Garda for foiling week with the Moth, where I was competing with a development rotating wing mast and soft sail. The rig is still in the early stages but showing a lot of promise and with a few more tweaks I believe will be a step forward from the camber-induced windsurf style rigs you see on the boats now. The UK nationals, which I organised on behalf of the UK Moth Class, were at TBYC (my home club) and, thanks to all of the volunteers, sponsors and competitors, were a huge success.

August was due to be a bit of downtime, but that didn’t really happen! I headed back to France for the Costamoricaine which is the F18 long distance World Championships, 6 races where the scoring is the combined time taken to complete each leg. Going into the last day, after over 20 hours of racing, we were just 60 seconds from first place, great racing along a truly picturesque coastline.

Next stop was Lake Como for the Nacra 20 Europeans, my 2nd consecutive non foiling event, and after just missing out on the podium on the f18, I was really fired up for a good result here. We didn’t make it easy for ourselves and needed every race and discard to grind out a win in the last race and take the event win and European Title on countback from the current world champion.

For the August bank holiday my Fiancée and I headed to Cardiff as guests at the Extreme Sailing Series courtesy of WTC Logistics and sponsored by Zhik. One of the guys onboard Team Wales fell ill and as luck would have it my sailing kit was not far away. The GC32 is an incredibly physical foiling catamaran and the racing is high octane on a tight course which was right up my street! I joined the team for the remaining 3 days and we even got a pitchpole in on the Sunday during a tight top mark rounding in a huge gust. 

(Read our blog post here from a competition winner who joined Kyle on the boat!)

 

A huge congratulations from all of us here at WSO for all your achievements this season! What’s been your proudest moment?

Thank you, there have been a few days that I’ve come off of the water grinning from ear to ear – one of them was the first day of completing foiling gybes on the Vampire in Spain with my good friend Rich Mason in February. This was the reward of a few days of boat tuning and trying different techniques until we cracked it.

Another cramp inducing smile was winning a light wind race at the UK moth nationals, all of my moth race wins have come in 12+ Knots of breeze and I had really been working on the 6-10knot wind range.

My proudest moment of 2018 is yet to come, that will be on 14th September when I get married to my wonderful Fiancée in Lake Garda!

Did you face any challenges or setbacks whilst competing?

Many things do not go to plan, overcoming obstacles and preventing disasters is an essential skill if you want to make it to the top in any sport. There are so many variables in sailing, especially highly technical foiling boats, that you must focus on isolating as many of them as possible.

 

Let’s go back to the beginning…How did your love for Moth sailing develop?

It was quite a radical step going to a moth from a purely catamaran background, I have no monohull pedigree to fall back on like the majority of Moth sailors so a lot of the basics I had to learn from scratch. The draw for me was the speed and agility, the perceived difficulty factor and the challenge. There is a huge feeling of satisfaction when the learning curve is so steep, flying around with other mothies speeds up the process and that’s what gave me the bug!

 

We know you are quite the sportsman. Tell us about other exciting sports that you’ve done, and how they compare to the moth.

Yes I must say at the time I may not have considered it as a sport but I spent a lot of teenage years riding trials bikes, we’re talking mountain bikes jumping up walls, across railings and off of phone boxes with my mates. It was adrenaline fuelled and I don’t think we were really allowed to do it but the satisfaction came when you pushed the limits, nailed a new line or increased a PB.

That lead me into resistance training in the gym to be more explosive on my bike and deliver more power, the balance and bottle from trials riding has stayed with me and definitely helps with sailing the foiling boats.

Towards the end of my trials riding days I took up Muay Thai or Thai Boxing, this was kind of a natural progression from training in the gym and gave a bit more purpose for all of the effort I was putting in. Again, you become surrounded by a group of people all striving for the same goal, you go to the trenches with them and that pushes you harder than you thought possible.

Most of my cardio work now is still Muay Thai as I can always dig deep in that mindset but I work that into other training at the gym concentrating on how it all transfers to sailing boats faster.

 

What advice would you give to anyone who wants to give moth sailing a go?

Anyone who sails a moth will say ‘I wish I had started earlier’ no matter when it was they first tried, if you are thinking about it now take the next step. There are foiling schools where you can spend a weekend having coaching or you could just buy one and jump in at the deep end like I did.

The UK has just won a bid for the 2020 Worlds, they will be in Weymouth the home of the 2012 Olympic sailing in just over 2 years from now! With a little bit of help from the class, even if you have never set foot on a moth before you have time to get one, learn how to sail and race it and if you are a good enough racer qualify in Gold fleet for the 2020 worlds and line up against the best of the best.

The class website is having a revamp very soon and much more information will be announced shortly.

And lastly, what’s next for Kyle Stoneham?

September really is a non-sailing month set aside for our wedding and some time together, I haven’t looked in fine details past that actually but the following events are still to come this year…

Irish Moth Nationals, UK Moth Inlands, Weymouth Speed Week on the Vampire, Martinique foiling regatta on the Moth.

Off the water projects are the 2020 worlds organisation, creating and adding more content to www.vampire-project.com , re-structuring the moth class website, further developing the moth wing mast rig, moving over to a decksweeper sail on the Vampire and whatever other exciting opportunities pop up!

--

Many thanks to Kyle for the interview.

Shop our sailing collection here.

@wetsuitoutlet