Hey windsurfers!! Here’s an article I wrote several years back; an oldie but a goodie worth posting here.
The windsurfers of Rhode Island a few years back never noticed the caveman frozen in a big block of ice slowly melting at the beach. It was actually me who was from the frozen north in that big chunk of ice.
Neon Sail
I always have a little chuckle when reading in this magazine about the board test team memebers’ many years of sailing. Suzi Shortboard, 4 years, Expert; Bob Billabong, 7 years, Superior; Frank Finn, 11 years, Super sophisticated. I wondered how many years I had on a board. I was sitting there trying to do what felt like advanced math in my head, when the sum of years formed a number; the magazine dropped from my hands ….Gooood Gaaaaaaawd!! 35 years! How did that happen? It’s true, I can actually remember rigging up a teak boom to a perfectly triangle sail. Roto-molded plastic boards were cutting edge. In the beginning you couldn’t just go to a shop and purchase something hi-tech like a harness because they simply weren’t available, so I used to try and make my own on my mom’s sewing machine. The hook I used; it was a REAL hook from the hardware store. Then one day in the early eighties the windsurfing scene suddenly exploded and the equipment advanced at a dizzying speed. You could buy a fin and it would be outdated by the time you installed it on your board. Remember the Football Fin? It was an exciting time to be a windsurfer.
To be fair about my “years of windsurfing”, I did take a little hiatus from the whole scene for about 12 years for a number of reasons. Long gone were the days where I would show up at the beach to see hundreds of boards laying in the sand, and all my sailing buddies hanging out. Most of my friends had dropped out of windsurfing one by one. It was sad. It was also about this time that I took on a real job and could no longer spend each glorious summer day at the beach waiting for the wind to come up. Aaaah those were the days! But the finial straw was the extremely narrow wind range the equipment had. Sailors would drive themselves mad trying to rig up their new hi-tech gear with the right combination of board size and sail size. There were guys who honestly spent a whole beautiful windy day rigging sails to try and match the wind speed and board size. And rigging those first generation RAF sails was somewhat of a time consuming task. Enough of this, I eventually said, and went off to race on big sailboats.
Years went by and I hadn’t given windsurfing much thought. Once in a while I would get a sharp pang and think back, “man that was SO much fun, what happened?” Then one year I relocated to Rhode Island, and I discovered to my shocking amazement that windsurfing was still alive and well. I felt like the Grinch when he discovered all the Whos singing their song. People were windsurfing, and not just a few but a LOT of them. My people!!! I have rediscovered my people!
I took a closer look at “my people”. At least I thought they were my people, but after a closer look I wasn’t so sure. The windsurfers all looked like somebody’s geeky little brother all geared out. They were wearing helmets, goggles, rash tops, gloves, elaborate harness system, special shorts, booties, and one guy even had a wide hat with an inflatable brim. Perhaps the inflatable brim helps with water starts. My people used to windsurf in nothing more than a pair of jams and a small waist harness. I was going to have to get to know this new breed of windsurfer.
The next windy weekend I excitedly went on an Easter egg hunt of gear through out my garage. I was going windsurfing again, WHAO HOO!!! After I scrubbed off all the years of garage dust off my boards I hustled down to the beach where a good crowd of windsurfers were beginning to gather. My car exploded board parts and neon colored sail. The first guy I met I asked him what size board he was going out on because I was thinking about using my 9’-6”. He tilted his head to the side like a dog when it looks at you confused and said he wasn’t sure what I was talking about, but he was going to use his 130 L board. I replied back, “Oh, of course, a 130L board. Good call, man”. What IS a 130L board I wondered? My pile of ‘80s neon parts were waiting to be assembled. I was tying my boom on when I quickly realized most had already rigged up a sail and were heading out in the time it took me snap together the right lengths of boom sections. One woman walked past and commented on how colorful my sail were and that she had never seen one quite like that. I wasn’t sure how to take that comment, but kept rigging. Eventually I got put together when I realized I had the boom height wrong. Damn! I had to take everything back apart and retie the boom a little higher. It came back to me the irritating amount of time it took to get a sail rigged up properly. I could see gear had evolved for the better while I was gone. Continue reading
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