JC: Do you do Facebook?
RN: A little bit! I have a fan page. I have an assistant who helps me with posting but the content is all coming from me. I am not one of those guys that goes on it everyday, I don’t think my life is interesting enough that people want to follow me all the time. I am not like Kai Lenny who has a bunch of sixteen-year-old girls following him, most of my fans are my age or of a later generation. If I have a good day at Ho’okipa and I get a bunch of good shots from Jimmie Hepp I’ll post some pictures. So I am quite random, sometimes it will be three weeks without anything and then I’ll post a whole bunch if the conditions are firing. It is kind of cool because I get a lot of very nice feedback from people. I have almost 50,000 people that are on there following me which is super cool. It is not a thing for me to go one every day and stroke my ego, like a lot of people who are wrongfully addicted to that stuff. People waste hours and hours on there. I try and spend as little time as possible on the computer when I don’t need to be. I would rather be outside doing something.
JC: Your video RIP is still considered one of the coolest windsurfing productions to date, what do you think was so special about it?
RN: It is still good! Windsurfing has progressed, changed and advanced but other than goiters and stuff but if you watch RIP it is still pretty current. There was a little story line. A little something leading in and out, it is not just action porn! RIP was made at a time when windsurfing was firing on all cylinders. Back then the characters and the riding was really at a high point. It was just at that point where the sport was really peaking. The type of riding even was as visually impactful as ever, even more so than now. They were longer faster boards. If you look at Polakow riding in the video it was all time. There was not as much flicking and tricky stuff, goiters and flakas. But the pure wave riding was better then than it is for the same guys now. Bigger sprays, more speed, vertical hits and plning! People actually planned back then because their boards and sails were big enough to get them out. It was very dynamic.
I am actually really seriously doing RIP 2 right now just as a fun project to revisit the same story in a new time. It would be a fun thing but with really good music and shoot the whole thing with RED cameras and make it killer. I am not dead yet it would be fun! I might as well do it while I am still able.