interesting seeing every one has a thumbs down.... all most

I'm a new windsurfer, and at 22 I reckon I'm probably in this age category NP talks about.

So why do I windsurf:
-Parents got me into sport
-Friend got me into sailing
-Did a few state/national campaigns in FlyingEleven class boat (youth skiff)
-Needed something to keep me sailing after high school

-It's an awesome sport, fast, adrenaline-pumping, colourful, hard to be good at but easy to learn
-No need for crew
-Less gear then sailing
-Easier to lug around

I've tried to teach a few mates, problems with windsurfing image (people think its):
-Too expensive
-Hard to learn
-Overly dangerous

To revive windsurfing for younger people:
-Cheaper gear
-Teach more people to sail, then then will filter into either dingy, yacht or sailboard
-Introductions to the sport
-Media (get in on telly, movies, etc - people have asked me if i'm kiteboarding before, because this is out there in the public more)

I agree with whoever mention cost of the sport, i'm just progressing to 100L short boards from 120L, but all the old gear that is decent costs ~$400 (thats alot when your at uni - the age where alot of windsurfers could be recruited)

I think DISM has pretty much hit the nail on the head. The thing I have noticed in Tassy is that it seems there are more kids surfing than ever before. In particular there are lots of girls. This is no doubt due to easier to use kit. i.e. softdeck min-mals, etc. Kids can go along to one of the learn to surf days, etc and catch some whitewater and stand up first day. I remember back in the 80s you couldn't get a mal and people had to learn on a shortboard. As has been indicated earlier in the thread in the boom days pretty much everyone who windsurfed had a longboard which you could also learn or teach people on.

yea mr pryde could sell kids rigs for zero profit, but he wont!!, the uk has a strong generation of young windsurfers, and many get into it thru sailing clubs and team15, i met the lady who runs rya windsurfing, basically it gets kids racing with any equipment, and they join a team which competes against other teams, sorta the same as surf clubs... it wouldnt work in aus, whos guna start it anyway?? not me im goin windsurfin!!

What about windsurfing computer games? It would probably be the only way i'd ever be able to do a forward or a spock

Yeah cost and transporting gear around is a killer Mr Pryde - plus your RSX board is a pig

Yogayak

You got it Mins

1.
You could ride a board without the need of a wave.
That single fact alone transformed and opened up kilometres of surfless, sh1tfull coastline and created numerous 'surfspots'.

This is exactly the reason why windsurfing is huge in Europe compared to places like Australia. The main place where you would windsurf in Australia is the ocean. Once you talk ocean sailing you are instantly competing with countless other water activities... surf live saving, surfing, swimming, diving, kite boarding.

Personally, I started windsurfing at the tender age of 13 (I am now 37). What got me into it was the fact that when my dad and I wanted to buy a catamaran after trying out a friends during a holiday in Greece my mom said not over my dead body. Instead I tried windsurfing... I hired a decrepit windsurfer for a couple of hours. I managed to stand on the wobbly thing and eventually achieved to unthinkable: I returned to the same spot from where I started. Do you have any idea what that meant in the eyes of a 13 year old? I was master of my own destiny! For the first time in my live I was able to choose where I was going and when I would come back without asking my parents for permission first. That's what got me hocked in the end... the sense of freedom. And it's that sense of freedom that I still love about the sport today. Waves or no waves.

I did play video games until the cows came home (remember Donkey Kong or the Atarti 2600) but still nothing made me feel like windsurfing...

I subsequently got into Snowboarding (around 1986) because it looked exciting and a few years ago tried kiteboarding (but stopped because some dickhead stole my car including kiteboarding gear in it).

I tried all of these sport because they looked exciting and new. Perhaps the ease with which people get hold of information today makes you feel like you know everything and have seen everything about a sport before you even tried it. Seeing images of Jaws is awesome but i think it does little for getting people interested in the sport. It's a bit like watching the a multi 100 million dollar formular one race team on TV. It's exciting yeah but so unreachable you wouldn't think twice about becoming a formlua one racer.

windsurfing is big pimping y0!

all my friends wanna try it hehe after i talk to them when i'm massively stoked after a good session. i guess the availbility of more cheap hire beginner gear would really help thou, i got heaps of friends i would love to intro into the sport, but i just don't have the beginner gear to intro them, and some hire gear is just too expensive :(

Yes to blame it all on Computer games is way too simplistic, and most people have covered the multiple reasons why kids don't take up w/s, and yes Mr Pryde could do something himself!!!!!!

I think the sport is coming back. There's a widespread recognition of the damage that just concentrating on one aspect of the sport (experts in high winds) has done.

Neil Pryde's comment that the gear is too complex is interesting - it sounds like he's finally realised that not everyone wants 50 battens and 15kg of carbon. Sure, that stuff is fantastic but what we need to do is to offer alternatives; simple gear, cruising gear, light wind gear etc.

It's poignant that the machinery and some staff from the original Windsurfer factory in California was sold to kayak builders when windsurfers went "high tech". Now simple cheap heavy poly canoes are selling in their gazillions, while windsurfers are much less popular.

The GPS speed challenge is an excellent idea. We have also got kids sailing at several sailing clubs on longboards. We get up to 16 for races and the kids love it so much that they have to get dragged off the water half the time.

Several of the kids tried Bic Techno 293s, but in light winds (which is what kids normally get since they can't easily get down to the water when it's windy) they are much slower than a longboard despite having much bigger rigs.

Wally's (are) is not a visually exciting part of the sport.

I spent 10 years in the media. Art directors, who are specialists trained in the visually exciting, love bright colourful sails and hate monofilm. That's why you so often see '80s sails in ads for TVs and other things, as people often complain about.

On the typical day in most places, the wind is light so longboards are actually often moving faster. They don't look as exciting in good winds in many ways, but I do notice that they look a lot more accessible. I get many more people asking about windsurfing when I'm sailing my Wallly than I do when I'm on any other sort of board.

When it comes to what is visually exciting, I'll go with the people who earn their living working it out, and they like bright colourful sails and don't give a rat's about how new it is and how fast it planes.

It has been there from the start and has done nothing to improve numbers on the water

Sorry, but when the emphasis was on cheap simple longboards we sold 25,000 boards per year in Australia. That did one hell of a lot to improve numbers on the water.

Yes, that part of the sport faded, largely because manufacturers specifically attacked them in their marketing so that they could create artificial obsolescence. Other dickheads used to call them "goat boats" and the original boards were not easy to sail in strong winds. Now those dickheads are out of the windsurfing business.

I wonder if there's any more active group of windusrfers outside of WA than the main longboard fleet in Sydney, which gets about 30 sailors each Wednesday in summer and 15-20 each Saturday, plus getting out when there's a good wind. That's not bad numbers for one little corner, twice a week.

To prove a point, many schools in Brisbane have a longboard and rig stored away somewhere including the school I went to but they are seldom if ever used.


That doesn't prove the point; many schools and unis have Lasers which are never used but the Laser class is at record levels around the world and in Oz. Many, many, houses also have a shortboard that is never used - that doesn't prove that shortboards are crap.

Many of the old longboards were not all that well designed and most rigs were bad. All you need to get those boards out is someone with a positive attitude and good sails.

I spent more years on slalom, wave and raceboards than on Wallies, but longboards are a vital part of the sport and the kid's programme on Wallies is doing okay. If you can do a better job another way, please do so.

I fully agree with most that's been said, but just to add an opinion a bit right-field, I reckon the actual weather has alot to do with it (stay with me here!).... starting at an older age, I thought it'd be good to get the family to the beach, the missus was for it, so I got a board/rig started going to the beach on a regular basis.....great when starting out...now, I go to the beach alone, because the family (wife, 4yo, 2yo) don't particularly like being sandblasted by 30kt winds, and these are the days when I prefer to be doing nothing BUT w/surfing.

It's a tough one to crack, but comfort-wise windsurfing (speaking about victorian weather mainly) is best done in s___ty weather conditions, when the trees are bending at right angles....most people would prefer to avoid the coastline!

Perhaps on the mild days, when most people want to go to the beach, we should take our big gear, and invite some friends/family to 'have a go'. Instead, the days when there's little wind, the beaches are packed, people sitting on the sand, bored, wanting something to occupy them.....we're all somewhere else, looking for that 20-30kts, or working on substituting these days working for windier days later in the week/month.....

Don't know if there's an answer, but cheaper gear (yes), commercial advertising (yes), easier way of transporting gear (yes), but personally, I think the climate that suits the sport is something that we have no control over, and unless we can encourage people outside and to the beach on those days that WE dream of....I don't think there'll be a large growth of popularity for the sport!

hopefully I'm wrong!

A most entertaining thread. But I still don't see what the urgency is about promoting windsurfing. If everyone quit windsurfing tomorrow (as long as they all didn't buy kites) I would have the water to myself!! I do enjoy the comradery but if the wind picks up and I am the first one out with the whole place to myself it's great. The outcome of windsurfing becoming a hugely popular sport again would make it seem feel the safety bay lagoon on race day. Windsurfing is not a team sport, you don't need 17 other guys with 4 on the interchange to participate! (although if you guys all quit this would be a boring forum)

Couple of comments:

> I would have the water to myself!

That's nice and social, but me not. 3 reasons. First is economical: the more people sail, the less expensive the gear is, and the more choices. Selffish, huh?

Second: I like windsurfing, and I like my fellow peers enjoy something like that. Perhaps it's my altrustic side. I like teaching (hand-picked) newbees once in a while. I charge beer too for it.

Lastly: I've known the era of crowded lakes and clubs and lotsa people, and I've competed in well attended regattas, and it was one hell of a party. That's my social side.

Sometimes I feel asocial and wanna be by myself - water or home. But usually I enjoy company and sharing and lending and borrowing, etc. That's me. Your way is equally respected here, mate. Tell me where you sail and I won't go ;-)

> Longboards the answer

Donno if Chris said that, and I wouldn't share if he did. However at the other extreme, at least 90% of the guys I've seen teaching in the last 15 years have done it on too short boards, failing pretty much all the time. One wonders if they really wanted the newbee to learn, he? (Sometimes their own GF...)

Larger or wider gear and better conditions are required to teach, else don't bother. That's why by the way teaching used to have at least a 95% success rate in the 80s: everyone that would pick it up would learn. That's why it was so crowded.

Once people learn, they can choose the short-only gear, mixed gear, "I'm too good for below-20 knots" approach, quiver equipment, matching bathing suit and sail colour, whatever.

But larger gear of sorts must be used for teaching.

For those who decide he/she doesn't wanna sail alone all the time.