Waiting For Joel

Lessons from surfing.

It looks like we’ve made it. Rumours of the longboard windsurfer’s death were much exaggerated. We know the longboard works, and we’re out there making converts. Manufacturers like Kona are pushing the concept. The Kona One, they say, is the world’s top-selling board. We may not be the biggest part of the windsurfing scene yet, but we’re not going away.

In a sense, it’s déjà vu. About two decades ago, longboard surfing was in the same position. There was a low groundswell of support, and the old walruses [Read more]

The Glide – the new sport of longboard wavesailing

Jeffrey Henderson, sailmaker of Hot Sails Maui, lives in the home of the shortboard. Waveboard heaven. High-wind nirvana. And what is Jeff doing for fun and for the future of windsurfing? He’s becoming a prophet of longboard wavesailing. Longboard wavesailing seemed almost like an oxymoron for years. Wavesailing meant shortboards. Longboards meant flat water. But as Jeff and a few other people realised modern longboards (like SUPs) under sails can be just as effective in the surf as longboards you paddle – and longboard surfing has long been the growth area of windsurfing’s sister sport. Henderson reckons longboard wavesailing can give the same boost to windsurfing.

[Read more]

The Word from the Worlds

The worlds showed a close contest between the Equipe, Starboard Phantom Race and Exocet Warp X 380. It’s a good situation for the class, because we now have new boards that are highly competitive but don’t outclass the old boards. [Read more]

Cruising a longboard

The island and the lake have been there for 15 years or more…..”there” in that list of places I have to explore one day. But through all the shortboarding, the slalom and bump and jump, that “one day” never happened. The island and the lake were always too far downwind, or too far upwind, or too shallow for a slalom fin, or the wind was too light.

It wasn’t until my lake sailing met the longboard renaissance that I finally got to sail to the island and the lake. A gusty, patchy nor’westerly was bringing an early promise of spring. Onto the water, up on the rail, twelve foot of board slicing through the chop.I love the way a longboard poised on the rail seems to meet the water, sliding it gently apart rather than slapping it down like a shortboard does when it planes.

[Read more]

Windsurfer OD Specifications

Most windsurfers are only designed for planing, so they either need strong winds or big sails so they can generate enough power to get onto the plane. The Wally is different. [Read more]

Tips & Techniques

One of the problems with the Windsurfer class in the past has been the lack of information on how to sail and own the old plank. Please submit any information you have to help to build up our version of Wallypedia. [Read more]

The Olympic circus

The move to dump the Mistral One Design from the Olympic games can be seen as a straight hatchet job on longboards. Many of the sailors, coaches and countries in the sport were happy with the MOD. The push came from others within the industry and sport, and from ISAF head Paul Henderson. He hadn’t seen many MODs being sailed just for fun, and he had a major issue with pumping (and Mistral as a company, according to some). He demanded a new “state of the art” board that fulfilled criteria like representing “current windsurfing” and which needed less pumping. He ignored the fact that not a single one of the other Olympic sailing classes fulfilled had all the same attributes; the boards were held to stricter criteria than other types. [Read more]

What is the ‘Windsurfer’ One Design

The WINDSURFER ONE DESIGN is the updated version of the original Windsurfer – the board that started it all, and still one of the strongest classes in Australia. The beloved “Wally” is tough, it’s cheap, it can be sailed in anything from gales to calms, and it’s one design. It’s suitable for everything from laid-back no hassle cruising, to racing against Olympians.

[Read more]

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