What the hell is going on in this thread? I haven't dared open it cause it's so depressing..
It's like some church group discussing how much better off everybody else would be if they just accepted 'Almighty Poo-Poo Head' into their lives..
Windsurfing is not that fantastic, it only makes sense in windy locations..
Look at the competition, windsurfing just doesn't cut it against activities like BMX or Surfing or even kitesurfing.. My best memories as a kid involved my GT-Pro series BMX, not my Tiga 273..
There are places in the world where windsurfing is the best activity, hands down.. I know people who have been windsurfing for two seasons in these locations who are better than 90% of windsurfers in Australia, because they get to windsurf every day..
Like Jesus to a Christian, windsurfing is a myth and is responsible for much time wasting and silliness ..
"That loop on a 12'6" IMCO Raceboard was done in waves, but the top guys could do them off chop as well. A lot of the time it's not about your gear holding you back!"
Not sure that boards a race board. Looks like a small slalom to me.
Chris,i don,t think that you can compare boats v windsurfers and their performance. Most races have a upper wind safety limit of 25kts with many boats breaking in this wind strength and at the other end you would time out before completing the course and of course you need 3 people to carry the thing to the water.
Can i sail with just 1 sail and board? Yes.
Do i want to ? Not really
People.....work out what you want to sail in first 0-10,10-20,20-30,30-40+
and get the gear to do so.
One of the Pit Crew has had for years 1 speedboard and 1 small sail and sails a few times a year.
You,ll never have enough for everything and having less means less of "What should i rigg"
For me ,OD for family fun and beginners,82l for 12kt-40kt,60l for 25-60kt
and 4 sails. Cheep fun for the whole year
Chris you cut the vid a bit short and left out JP,s comment Got the same vid.
Did a lot of racing in Sabers and 25kts was a blast,not so much fun in Quick Cats though [}:)]
I think your vid killed your point. That guy on his BMX bike is doing what, 10 ks or less most of the time? That's about 1/6th the speed we get in weekly road races.
And yet, as you say, it inspires kids. So there is a LOT more to attracting people than just getting them to go fast. You can do great stuff, just as in the vid (which seems to be the sort of thing Hans Rey was doing 20 years ago on MTBs) without reaching 1/4 the speed that 65 year old guys go on a road bike. That's not exactly proof that you need ground-breaking performance to attract people. You can do it in very simple, slow gear like a BMX bike.
That guy's bike is sort of the bicycle equivalent of a Techno 293 kid's board, it's no advertisement for high speed and "high performance" as being the way to get kids. You don't exactly see thousands of kids on Time Trial bikes, which are a pretty close analogy to a slalom board, because they prefer slower simpler stuff.
About "Kids looking for a sport don't want to plod around a lake in 5 knots."
Sorry, but many hundreds of kids do enjoy sailing in 5 knots on sailing dinghies, and they love it. It's just factually wrong to say that kids are only into fast sports. If high-wind windsurfing got more kids than all-wind dinghy sailing then you may have a point. But high-wind windsurfing gets a fraction of a percent as many kids as boats get, so your point is wrong.
Where windsurfing IS big with kids, in Europe, they get plenty of them sailing on lakes in 5 knots. That's the facts, no matter how you try to hide them.
"You just can't reach your own potential with windsurfing like you can with other sports (unless you live in a proper windy location).."
So Jessica Crisp, three time PWA world champ (including in waves) and Olympic class worlds runner up AND Aloha Classic Hookipa winner is a crap windsurfer, is she?
Sean is a no-good Formula racer by your standards?
Allison Shreeve's multiple world titles aren't good enough for you?
Olympic medallist Lars Kleppich isn't fit to sand your fins?
Jeezers, you must be **** hot if you can diss them and what they have achieved.
It's not all about kids, who make up a small section of the market.
No one here said that windsurfing would ever be as big as cycling, or that it would be a majority sport. But a lot of us don't think this is a depressing issue. Some of us think that it's a problem caused by the sport's mistakes and therefore something that can be fixed. Of course a sport's popularity can be affected by factors like marketing and management rather than its inherent value. And some of us are doing things like organising the biggest multi-day event in the sport in this country (for kids and adults) instead of poking **** at the sport.
It's actually not hard to get adults and kids in with the right attitude.
I pretty much agree with Barn's comments about accessability and lack of appeal, actually. It's a pretty much the definition of un-sociable.
For myself, I used to let windsurfing rule my life, but now, I spend more time on my bike or skateboard, for exactly the reasons he has mentioned. I sail when it suits me now, and I'm happy to do other stuff even on good days, if I have other plans.
I also think that IF someone wanted to increase windsurfing participation numbers, it makes more sense to focus on adults, because they have the means to buy kit and transport it.
While plenty of parents will fit out a trailer and cart a kid and his motocross gear around the place, that's because they understand the sport themselves, and it makes sense in their cultural context.
FWIW, I nearly bought a trials bike after watching Danny MacAskill too. I may still yet. The dude is awesome.
On the one sail/one board thing, I could pick a 100L freestyle wave and a 6.2 wave sail as the rig likely to get me out more days a year at Currumbin.
However, despite being the best rig most days, it will not be the best rig on the best days. On those days, I would be overpowered and over-boarded.
Barn and DAM, I'm not saying most people will race, or should race. It's just that the fact that hundreds of kids race dinghies, often in light winds, indicates that hundreds of kids ARE interested in sailing that's not just about planing conditions.
If kids hate light wind sailing and slow gear then why are there more kids who sail slow dinghies in light wind than there are sailing fast boards in strong winds, even (as I understand it) in WA?
"You ask any kid watching a sport / activity they are interested in, and they are grabbed by the excitement aspect."
I've got four kids, and they and their friends are often interested in slower sports. Every sailing club is proof of that.
Not every kid is the same, thank god. Nor every teenager or adult. The fact that you or I as individuals may have preferred one sport doesn't mean that sport is better. If you guys preferred BMX to windsurfing, then great - but that means no more than the fact that I and my mates preferred windsurfing to BMX.
When did I say speed was a factor?.. Comparing that to road racing is like comparing wet'n'wild to triathlons.. Not even the same ballpark.. When did I say that you said that speed was a factor?
I assumed that was the point you were trying to make by posting the trials vid was that kids prefer thrill sports, because that seems to be your main point. It seemed that you were trying to say that because many (but not all) kids are out there doing tricks on bikes, then kids would only get into windsurfing if it's about shortboard freestyle or strong winds or waves.
But while it's always hard to draw analogies between sports, you can also say that low-speed trials riding is more similar to light-wind freestyle than it is to high wind windsurfing. Therefore if kids like trials riding (which I assume is the point you were trying to make) then they can also like light wind windsurfing - which plenty of them do. It's simply wrong to say that all the Euro kids on Technos etc are finding it's boring and giving up.
I really wish people would stop looking at the past and moaning about it. Get over it and move on.
Are many people moaning? I thought most people were trying to be positive and look for ways to make the sport bigger once again. That's positive, surely?
Windsurfing is a sport tailor made for kids.. There is just never any wind to keep them at it.. Errr, just a tiny contradiction, no?
Thats because there is no high wind windsurfing, there is never any wind.
There is wind, of course - get out in a boat on the typical day and there's plenty. It's the fact that windsurfing is so aimed at strong winds that it says a typical 8-15 knot day is "no wind" is the problem!
So what some of us are saying is, let's stop trying to pretend there IS lots of wind in most places, and let's promote the fact that the sport can be about more than just high-wind sailing. It's an indisputable fact that thousands of people (including many kids) are out there each weekend sailing boats that are no faster than a windsurfer, more expensive and harder to launch. There's no reason why more of them can't be windsurfing (like they used to) apart from the fact that they keep on getting the message that it's a hard sport only to be done in strong winds.
Sure, it's hard to learn to windsurf fast in big winds or waves. So? Lots of sports are hard at the high performance end, so don't expect everyone to do the high performance stuff. It's like sailing, bike riding, kayaking etc - if you welcome people who just do the easy stuff then you get a few who go on to do the hard bits.
Sure, not everyone will windsurf, but no one has been saying it could ever become a huge sport - all we're saying is it could be bigger if we do what guys like Naish, Sven Rasumussen and others are now saying. There's surely no reason why we can't get at least as many people on boards as there are on sailing dinghies, which are (for their size and cost) generally slower (often even in light winds),more expensive and harder to handle ashore.
Anyway this discussion is going nowhere. Barn isn't going to convince me that my friends and I have actually been having a ****ty time when I've been windsurfing in light winds, he's not going to convince me that all kids are adrenalin junkies who hate light winds when there are many kids who are not adrenalin junkies and lots of kids who like light winds, and I'm not going to believe that windsurfing is as narrow and limited as some people say.
PS - yeah, I didn't check to see if it was a trials bike or exactly how high tech it was, because in your preceding post you'd mentioned BMXs. Your point is..??
I don't think it's depressing that numbers are dropping. It's not like the sport will disappear. Kiting will never take over windsurfing, they are very different sports and there are things you just will never be able to do with a kite that you can on a windsurfer. I've played a lot of different sports and pretty much tried most 'extreme sports' (I hate that wanky phrase ) and the only thing that comes close to windsurfing, for me, is snowboarding. And even that finishes second. Trying to encourage kids to choose windsurfing over kiting is hard. The gear is more expensive, it's bigger, you probably need a car, you need more wind etc. But I think in the future there are going to be some severe restrictions placed on where you can kite in WA. The numbers are just too big and the accidents, near misses, rescues etc becoming more and more regular. You look at surfing in the metro area - I was down at Trigg in June, 2 foot onshore slop - 40 guys out... I didn't bother and I'm sure a lot of others didn't either. People will do the same with kiting, it's no fun for windsurfers or kiters when there are 50+ kiters on the water. You'll find a lot of poleys that jumped ship end up coming back.
“nothing is cool” not windsurfing, not skateboarding, not yoyos, not anything though some things have cool in their DNA. There are only two decades in the last ten when cool things were created those being the 1950s and the 1970s.
So many things that began in the seventies have disappeared, things like seamonkeys, floppy discs, Atari, mood rings and lava lamps and then there are the survivors….Recombinant DNA technology, Test Tube babies, Barcodes, Smiley Faces and best of all Windsurfing..
So mad props to the survivors.
I was watching this vid, thinking, whats so special. I can pretty much keep up with what he was doing. That was until the first big skid, at 31 seconds. Then after that, he pretty much would be better than me I reckon.
Is the popularity of BMX declining?
When I was a kid in the 80's everyone had a BMX, BMX bandits was a top film, and shops were full of them ..... Now everyone seems to have mountain bikes, road bikes are super popular around here and my local bike shop has about 10 BMX compared to 70 -100 mountain bikes.
Finally does anyone really care?
Page 10?
he can't walk the wire but he can sure ride it. pretty cool.
And what is all this babble about. It seems this is only going on because some people either like to practice their typing,
or because they like to read what they write
As much as it kills me I have to agree with Dr J on this one enough is enough.
Really guys lets give it up.
Windsurfing holiday on B-Bay ? Come on, that's a low blow, there's no holiday or resorts period on Botany Bay
Seriously, I wonder how many people go to resorts like Bonaire and others to learn, and how many that have done so end up taking up the sport? I suspect very, very small %...
You hear often "was on holidays and took a lessons", that's about it.
IMO new sailors will come from local teaching - private, clubs, rentals.