Longboard windsurfing in Finland

A Couple years ago the future of longboard windsurfing looked really bad here in Finland, as it probably was around the world. New Olympic Class was too expensive and perhaps too technical for hobby racers, nobody produced the 380 boards etc.

Same thing with sails, all we could use was Formula sails, and for 9,5m2 Raceboard Class you couldn’t find sail at all. So most of RB competitors sailed in the Open Class, which meant that your size or amount of sails was not limited in anyway and you could also use formula hull if you felt like it. That created situation where RB class was the most expensive class to compete in and rules were too complicated. Just the opposite what we originally wanted and we lost lot of competitors to other classes.
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Longboard windsurfing in Germany

All shortboard and longboard windsurfing classes are organised under the roof of German Windsurfing Association DWSV. DWSV has over 700 paying members, about 65% of them are longboarders.

Germany was one of the first and largest longboard markets in the world.

Longboard racing has accordingly a long tradition in Germany. The first Regatta with the original Windsurfer was 1972 at Sylt. Today 35 years later, after the golden times in 80´s and 90´s, there are still 40 DWSV factorised longboard racing events, which count for the yearly ranking list. The participant fields vary between 10-60 sailors at each event.

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Windsurfing in Singapore

In July 07, midway through the southern hemisphere winter months, I went travelling through Asia which included a couple of weeks in Singapore where I visited my Sister and her family who moved there a few years ago. Like most mad windsurfers I had to check out the local windsurfing scene. I wandered on down to the East Coast where I was told that most of the sailing and windsurfing happened.

I came across the Peoples Association Sea Sports Club which is a fantastic facility set up on the shores of the East Coast of Singapore. This facility I was reliably informed, is provided by the Singapore Government as the vast majority of the population live in apartments and have limited storage spaces for windsurfing equipment.

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