Opinion
Waiting For Joel
July 16, 2008 ·
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... [Read more]
Ensuring supply of longboards
June 15, 2008 ·
The past 24 months has seen a number of new longboard windsurfers arrive on the scene. While, there are clearly some design improvements when compared to the longboards of old, in reality it is a clear recognition from the industry that they should have never stopped making long boards in the first place. Included in the new crop of boards are varieties of raceboards, the Kona family of boards and a range of SUP’s to mention a few. One thing that all of these boards have in common is that they are all longer than your... [Read more]
Light Wind Delight
February 5, 2008 ·
One of the great things about longboard windsurfing that seems so bloody obvious but still often debated is the ability for it to produce great sailing in fresh breezes all the way through to light winds. I continually read and hear from some parts of the windsurfing community that there is no point even rigging up if the wind is light and you cannot get the board on the plane. In a recent forum post on this topic I recall reading “The bottom line is light wind windsurfing is incredibly boring”. While I am the first... [Read more]
A growing sport, the longboard illusion?
January 4, 2008 ·
Are wave oriented longboards the future of the sport of windsurfing? Or is the future something else? The windsurfing industry seems to be putting lots of weight behind wave-oriented longboards. Will it pay off? If you open your atlas and check out where people live, where they have realistic opportunities to go for an “after the work sail”, then it becomes painfully obvious that places with a high people density typically have no waves. I have personally lived in Mariehamn (Maarianhamina, Finland), Espoo (Finland),... [Read more]
The Olympic circus
September 21, 2007 ·
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... [Read more]
The longboard revival
September 5, 2007 ·
Long abused and almost forgotten, the classic longboard is coming back with a vengeance. Mistral One Design, once Olympic Class Is the revival of the longboard taking the sport backwards? We hope so. We’d love to go back – back to the days when you have fun sailing anywhere at any time. Back to the days when windsurfing was the world’s fastest-growing watersport. Back to the days when tens of thousands of women windsurfed. Back to the days when there were strong racing fleets, at local clubs. Back the days when there... [Read more]
Lessons from other sports
September 5, 2007 ·
Lessons When sales of new boards started to decline, many high-wind fanatics blamed the drop on everything else in sight –the weather, the kids of today….. Others blamed the rising popularity of other sports, but that ignored the fact that one reason that sports like kiting and wakeboarding were growing was because (unlike high wind sailing) they didn’t demand good conditions. The resurgence of long surfboards was a perfect example. In the early ‘80s, those of us who surfed longboards were a mocked minority, like... [Read more]
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