Naish Trip

In 2017, the Trip is now very much a kite ‘of its time’. It came into the Naish range as a strutless kite for travelling when you needed to keep the weight down and use as little space as possible when there was the off chance of some kiting, or when you were off on a surf trip and wanted to slot a kite into your coffin bag. Skip forward a couple of years and suddenly the Trip can still do that, but it is now going to find a lot more users in another department: foiling! The lighter the kite the better for foiling and the Trip is a very light kite…

When you unpack the Trip you notice the exceptional build quality, and Naish have the High Flow valve which makes pumping up this strutless kite pretty much effortless. Naish have also added some small batons to the leading edge to help with the profile of the Trip and have further reinforced the tips to ensure even power distribution.

Once on the water, the Trip has a superb direct feel which is found across the entire range of Naish Kites, so it’s nice to come from a Pivot to a Trip and get a similar feel. The Trip delivers a very smooth progressive power and you can really feel the benefit of the weight reduction. The low end is excellent as you would expect, but the high end is also higher than you would think and the Trip remains responsive throughout the range.

We also tested it with the Naish Hover Foil, and together it was a perfect combination. Once up and riding on the foil the Trip keeps up with the foil and drifts nicely, there is also a very smooth depower which is confidence building for foiling. We did manage to put the Trip in the drink and this is where we did have a slight problem as it’s not an easy kite to relaunch in light conditions, so this is the price you pay for the benefits of having no struts.

The upwind performance of the Trip is very good and, with the reduced weight, the kite flies forward in the window nicely. We did a few jumps too and this was also pretty good with a nice mellow lift and float. For riding in the surf you can also expect good drift, so it would be excellent option for cross-off conditions.

In a sentence: The Naish Trip is a very well accomplished kite with great wind range, ease of use and is a fantastic option for foiling but with plenty of use beyond that too.