My Windsurfing History
I had my first windsurf on the island of Skiathos in Greece in August 1979 while on holiday from Holland, where I was living and working at the time. After watching some guys doing it in a gentle breeze I hired a board and had a go. Back in Holland and living in Den Haag, I waited until the spring of 1980, drove down to one of the lakes in South Holland and joined a windsurfing school. Thus hooked, I bought my first rig, a Mistral Kailua (below), and practised.
But soon sailing on a windless lake got very boring, and I discovered that my home beach, Scheveningen, had a thriving windsurfing community (below). I was there like a shot! These pictures are from around May 1980.
In 1980 Holland was a progressive windsurfing region and I learnt a lot about the sport and the rigs. So before I left Holland I ordered a Windsurfer Rocket to be delivered to SA. When I returned to SA in August 1980 the windsurfing scene was pretty active, with lots of Windsurfers and Dufours and Hi-Fly's, with all the "main manne" sailing at Zandvlei next to the Muizenberg coast. Soon my Rocket arrived, the first in the country, with its footstraps and blistering speed. I thought I was pretty cool!
Once again boredom set in and a couple of blokes (I forget their names, but Michiel Stalling was one) ventured into the sea at Muizenberg, which because of the mushy on-shore conditions never appealed to me. But around the same time another group of guys (Chris King, Clive Wilson, and others) discovered The Dump at the Milnerton Lagoon mouth. This spot offered good waves and, unlike Muizenberg, a nice cross-shore breeze. I got to know about it from Clive when I bumped into him at Forries one night, and it became our go-to spot. Sadly, I don't have a single photo from Zandvlei.
The discovery of the The Dump gave sailing in the sea its initial major boost; sailing at Muizenberg never really caught on because of the prevailing wind direction was either offshore or onshore. I'm a bit hazy on the time line, but I think we moved from Zandvlei to The Dump around March/April 1981 (never to return, by the way). I remember sharing a bottle of Old Brown with Chris and Clive late one Saturday afternoon and it was already getting dark.
Then in August 1981 my friend Eric Newton and I decided to go and explore further up the coast and discovered Big Bay, Blouberg. I believe we were the first to sail there because for the first few times we went, there was nobody else around notwithstanding the perfect conditions. We both had Windsurfer Rockets and Kombi campers which we parked right at the water's edge.
So the crowds began to grow as more and more sailors heard about Big Bay. There were days when the wind was howling and the surf was so big and that no one wanted to be the first to go in (it was usually Johnny Paarman!). I lost more than one rig there, but that was usually due to poor wind rather than big swell. One of the highlights of those early days was the beer and "slap chips" at Georgie's Tavern on the Table View beach front after sailing hard on a Sunday afternoon.
The Western Province Boardsailing Club was founded in 1981 and I was on the founding committee. The main objective was to organise competitions and so in March 1982 the inaugural WP Surfsailing Champs was held at the Milnerton Lighthouse, sponsored by Radio Good Hope. The weekend of the finals the sea was huge, but handful of us went out to test the conditions and decided it was too damn dangerous, mainly in getting out. The competition was postponed for a week and the first winner was Bruce Hamilton who won a Dufour Show for his troubles. The picture at the top of this page (the cover of Yachting) was taken during this competition, as was the one below.
These were still very early days, probably still around 1982. Then we started moving to shorter boards as seen in the right picture below. Indeed, not long after we were sailing seven and eight-foot boards, although the one below seems to be some intermediate barge. How we got those 12 foot Rockets out of the water without doing ourselves a mischief is a mystery.
Unfortunately, I had to step back from serious sailing between 1983 and 1986 to pursue my studies and missed all the major competitions, such as the Gunston. Nevertheless, I still kept in touch. Another reason for my stepping back was because I wasn't here!
In June 1983 I took a 6-month sabbatical at Brown University in Rhode Island, USA. On arrival, it being summer holidays there, I decided to go to Hawaii. I found a room to rent in a house with a bunch of young Canadian windsurfers in Kailua, a short drive from Honolulu. So I went down to the bay, hired a rig, and set off in what could generously be descibed as very light winds. Half way across the bay I bumped into a guy trying to water-start, and on closer investigation it turned out to be my mate John Lazarus (who unbeknown to me was also on sabbatical at the University of Honolulu - lucky swine!).
I hired a car and a Rocket 88 windsurfer and drove up to the North Shore. Approaching a lifeguard I enquired where the famous Banzai Pipeline was. He said: "Bud, you're looking at it!" Just around the corner is Waimea Bay and it too was as flat as a pancake (I include this interesting info for the surfers amongst you). Nevertheless, I rigged up and went out at a place next door to Sunset Beach which in those days was called Backyards, where I broke a skeg. I headed back to Honolulu and had a go at Diamond Head. Here you have to climb down a very steep cliff and face the most flukey wind in the world. It was horrible!
Next I was off on a day trip to Maui in search of the famous Ho'okipa. It looked pretty treacherous to me and I was relieved that I didn't have a board to sail. In fact I passed several delightful looking spots but decided to rather spend my time drinking cocktails in a bar over the water in Lahaina (about which Loggins & Messina wrote a great song). As a sailing adventure Hawaii was a complete failure, but having drinks at the Waikiki Canoe Club, meeting Robbie Nash in a Kailua pub, and seeing the North Shore made it all worth it!
The Summersail Circuit was organised by The Boardsailing Association of South Africa (BASA), which was formed in mid-1983 by Terry Wyner. According to the brochure above, the first Summersail series was held in 1984, although there was apparently a Gunston event in 1983. Unfortunately, I never took part in any Summersail events but I did keep some momentos.
In the late eighties I had Johnny Paarman make me a fun board (that yellow beauty in the pic below). Whilst still sailing quite a bit at Big Bay, we also did fun events like the Langebaan Dash or just roaring up and down the Hermanus Lagoon. I had nothing but bad luck in Langebaan: one year I had to abandon at the Mykonos Resort due to high winds, and in another I ran out of wind somewhere in the middle. I don't think I ever finished one successfully.
I continued to windsurf sporadically right up until 1994. For example, when we went to Hermanus on holiday we would sail on the Lagoon. But by then I was seriously into triathlons (and the Argus Cycle Tour) and there wasn't much time left for sailing. I think I ultimately gave my rig away...