Mag Rant
by Spennie    6/29/07

   OK, I can’t stand it any more, I have to rant a little after reading some of the posts on the Wind Surfing magazine forum right now.

   What is up with all the ancient Windsurfing gear being passed around endlessly? Do failed windsurfers pull their old gear out of the rafters in their garage every Spring and put it out in yard sales to be bought or given to the first unsuspecting passer-by who thinks it might be fun to try windsurfing? Some poor guy was trying to figure out how to TIE ON a boom, for Heaven’s sake!

   Don’t get me wrong, here, I’d be the last person on earth to discourage anyone from trying to learn to windsurf – Just last weekend, my wife & I were teaching 4 people how to sail, for free, on a board we bought just for that purpose. (a Bic 293, 205 liters, 79 cm. wide) No, we’re not professional instructors, just regular sailors trying to spread the gospel of windsurfing to the unenlightened masses, or “muggles” as Harry Potter would say.

   Someone trying to teach themselves a sport as difficult to learn as windsurfing shouldn’t have to try to figure out how to rig a triangular sail with all the stability of a pillowcase, then try to figure out how to attach it to that 60-pound hunk of soaking wet roto-molded polyethelyne that YOU sold him with a fin that looks like George Jetson designed it, then find 3 people to help him drag it down to the water so he can get a triple hernia trying to heave that giant pillowcase up out of the water, only to have it wrap around him like a giant Venus Fly Trap and dump him unceremoniously into the water behind him.

   Do the windsurfing world a favor and CUT UP that old crap before someone is turned off by windsurfing forever. Sure, I learned on that junk, and maybe you did, too, but that’s no reason to make some poor bastard suffer the way we did so you can squeeze another $20. out of something that should have gone to the landfill 15 years ago. Instead, buy an inexpensive modern (5 years or less) teaching board, and let anyone who wants to use it, along with that 3.5 sail you bought in the Gorge and haven’t used since. It’ll give you a nice warm feeling inside every time you “make” a new windsurfer.

--Spennie