Looking at all those old boards in the "Trip down memory lane" post actually makes me quite sick to think of the huge numbers of people who gave up windsurfing over the last few decades because it was too hard to learn on all those awful big, heavy learner boards of yesteryear.

New boards like a fleet of modern JP NewSchool and Funster 160 & 180 boards that we now use for a windsurfing camp I help run are SOOOOOOO much easier for anyone to learn on and so much less pain to use.

Soft decks and board edges, light weight to carry and wide stable platforms with small lightweight rigs are like night and day compared to the old mile-long, but narrow big boards with slippery shin-bruising decks and toe-stubbing deck fittings and big heavy sails.

We have just about everyone up-hauling, doing beach starts, tacking and sailing along virtually the first afternoon we get on the water. By session 2 or 3 we have most sailing upwind and even usually get a few into the harness and footstraps by the 4th or 5th session of the week.

We have had so many more people itching to go out in the weeks after camp and buying their own kit and improving in leaps and bounds in months rather than the years of perseverance it took people like me to learn 20 years ago with those nasty old boards. I could see a real resurgence in windsurfing if only people tried this new generation of gear.

I think the best thing that could happen to the sport of windsurfing would be for all those horrible old plastic boards to be broken up and buried and for more seasoned windsurfers to each buy one of these new learner boards to fool around on light days and get friends and kids to try out. I reckon our sport would see significant growth if that happened.

My 2c

-Mart