Where's the Most Unique Place You Have Windsurfed?

Dahlia

Kited

Sailed around a deserted island at the top of the yasawa chain in the late 90s . Felt pretty cool at the time, probably an exclusive resort built on it now.

Sometimes it's what you have as your local that's underrated , rigged up in Blairgowrie last Saturday in 15 knots perfect for my kit got on the water and after 5 mins of fun drops off to 10, stayed out for a while and was joined by about 10 Dolphins that shadowed me around for the next 20 mins putting on a private show.
City of 4 million people and it's just me and the Dolphins .

Bob ya bastard!!!
Middle of Long Reef golf course in the same type of storm Sydney just experienced in the late 80's. Huge rain and winds filled up a lot of the middle where the small lakes are so we mucked around trying to sail it. Didn't do much but was pretty cool sailing in a storm like that. Sort of a stealth mission

Well I think windsurfing near volcanoes takes the cake - wow! My meagre effort is sailing on a station dam north of Broken Hill. When time permitted I would drive 3hrs SE to sail on the Menindee Lakes. In hindsight, completely irrational and definitely not worth the effort

Its pretty hard to top the Volcano location....how about this vid from Max Matissek....

HF that story is UNREAL wow!

Lord Howe Island was one of the most beautiful (if a little cold spots I've sailed), great people too

www.google.com.au/maps/place/Lord+Howe+Island/@-31.5541929,159.0712027,15436m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x6c7c1a4045be045f:0x253cb3d4e84fe28b






... along with Northern Fiji between the mainland and NanaNui-i-Cake stayed on the super laid back island of Nananu-i-Ra (mind out for Bounty Rum, it hits HARD!)

www.google.com.au/maps/@-17.3335945,178.2184293,8637m/data=!3m1!1e3

Yeah totally! The guys who ran the hire center were awesome had so many kingfish steaks over there i almost couldnt fit in the plane, blew everyday/ The lagoon was just magic

I thought the giant turtles were actually tortoise and didn't go in the water
Agree it must've been quite a unique experience.

best place I've windsurfed is just around the corner :

Good story Panda, but this one is true. HF's experience is unlikely to be topped however. Amazing!

My story is not the most unique place to sail but it was the most exciting sail I've had in terms of the events surrounding it, and it was the first time I sailed at Boundary Island.

We decided April, being a lovely sunny month with calm winds was a good time for an idyllic houseboat holiday on the Mandurah Estuary. When the time arrived there was a bit of wind expected so I packed my windsurfing gear, but there wasn't much room on the boat for it, so I left it in the car.

One day out it is windy, so we head back to the Marina to pick up my windsurfing gear. The plan is, I go to Hardie’s run in the car, with windsurfing gear, have a sail, then phone the others to meet me back at the marina. In the meantime they were going to the bakery and then out for some fishing. A win win situation for everyone.

Returning to the marina was a bit of an adventure in itself, the boat ahead of us became grounded after cutting a corner instead of going around the navigation marker, then we had to navigate through million dollar boats (houseboats are very cumbersome and slow to respond to steering and not easy to drive), and it took a few attempts to dock in the strong crosswind. When we arrived back at the Marina the houseboat renters said “What are you doing here?”. I explained how I’d come back for my windsurfing gear and what our plans were. With a look of unbelief at our naivety and stupidity they said “We’ve just heard on the radio that we are to expect cyclonic winds with in a few hours “.

“Whooppeee!” I am thinking.

“We want you to hot foot it out of here and get upriver to more sheltered areas asap.”

“I can’t do that!” I said, "It's going to be really windy. Not without a sail first!”

“We don’t want you coming back here” they said. (We don’t want you amateur skippers in amongst all these million dollar boats in that sort of crosswind they implied)

I agreed to take the windsurfing gear on board so I could go for a sail and said we wouldn’t have to come back to the marina until tomorrow, but the storm was predicted to last for a few days and the houseboat people didn’t want us coming back tomorrow either.

I said “We have to come back tomorrow to pick up some friends.”

They said “The road crosses the river at Ravenswood, you can get them to meet you there.”

I said, “They can’t. They are teenagers and don’t drive. They are coming by train.”

“We will meet them at the train and bring them to you (That's how keen they were for us not to come back to the marina). Just get out of here and up river asap. Don’t even stop for windsurfing, “ they said. They were serious. This was just a couple of weeks after a big hailstorm that caused a lot of damage so everyone was nervous.

I loaded the windsurfing gear onto the boat. All of it. Didn’t want to not have the right gear. We head off. Did we go straight upriver? NO.The family were still salivating from their thoughts of going to the bakery and they weren’t going to pass that up so we crossed Mandurah to go to the bakery first. The Houseboat Owners (HBO) had satellite tracking on all their boats so they must have been horrified that we were not immediately heading upriver. My son was feeling stressed after navigating the boat through the marina so we let my Dad have a go at being skipper.There were 3 docks at the bakery. Dad aimed for the leftmost one. The cross wind was so strong we ended up in the right most one. We quickly dashed in to the bakery and dashed out again. We were trying to get out of town and upriver quickly, we just had a few things we had to do first...

After seeing Dad’s attempts at parking the boat my son decided he better drive again, so off we went. Not stopping to eat but munching his pie as he drove, my son expertly navigated the canals and channel and berthed perfectly at Boundary Island this time. I just had to go for a sail and had determined the wind was onshore at Boundary Island and the water mostly shallow (We had a map showing depth soundings for the whole estuary which was very useful), so a pretty safe crosswind run. I didn’t want to risk ending up somewhere down wind and not being able to get back.

I was ready in wetsuit by the time we stopped, and rigged up as quickly as possible. I was slowed somewhat by my decision to change down one size of sail, but I was on the water as quickly as possible, sailing in a 20 knot northerly. The black clouds were looming ominously to the north and west. With each run west I could see they were getting closer at an alarming rate. I kept saying “Just one more run”. Eventually I decided I couldn’t put the boat and crew at further risk and I came in. I hadn’t had enough, I just thought it wise to stop, and just as well. Everyone on board was getting a bit up tight in the face of this wall of black cloud.

My son helped me de-rig and throw the gear on board. He had the boat untied and idling ready to go as I jumped on. We turned out into the main channel and headed for the estuary and “Big Red”, the navigation marker signalling the junction between the main boating routes. As we rounded Big Red and headed east toward the refuge of the Murray River we could see rain was already falling heavily to the south west. It was going to be a race to the river mouth.

The navigational markers are quite far apart and difficult to see even in clear conditions. If the rain closed in it would be impossible to see where to go. The estuary is really wide (you can only just see the other side) and we had little idea of where on the other side the river mouth was. Added to that, is the opening of the Serpentine river is at the same point as the mouth of the Murray River, but the Serpentine is too shallow to navigate by houseboat. Most of the estuary is very shallow too, and you risk running aground if you stray away from the safe water markers.

I monitored the max speed of the houseboat using my GPS - 4.5 knots. Not easy to outrun anything at that speed. We had at least an hour’s travelling just to cross the estuary. The rain was closing in. It was on our right, on our left, and behind us, but miraculously not in front of us. We could still see the navi markers. Just. As we passed into the open estuary away from the protection of the windward shore the water became significantly rougher. We weren’t being tossed about but it was no smooth sailing. Slogging eastward we went. We had “Riverdance” playing on the CD and it was fast and exciting, echoing our tension and our desire to get out of there fast.

We mentally ticked off each navi marker passed and breathed a little easier. The rain stayed to our sides and rear until about two thirds of the way across, then it started to blow in front of us. Dad and I were helping navigate but we couldn’t see the navi markers anymore. Fortunately my eagle eyed son could. It was a good thing the rain wasn’t any heavier. I comforted myself with the knowledge that I had my GPS with me and if necessary we could radio in our exact coordinates and base could guide us to the river. As we approached the river mouth the navi markers became closer together and that made navigation a lot easier as it was really pouring with rain by this stage. We made the sanctuary of the river and my son decided he was feeling a bit stressed and had done his bit, so he would have a break. Dad took over the driving and I went to have a shower. I had been standing in my dripping wetsuit all this time.

We thought the worst was over, but the rest of the holiday turned out to be no less eventful...

My dolphin story from last weekend is starting to look pretty fkn lame!!!

1990 Big wet in Nowra. Shoalhaven river overflowed into the carpark for the local shopping centre. A mate and I called a sickie but where caught out when we the picture of us sailing the carpark ended up on the front page of the local rag.

Lake Ponchatrain New Orleans 1983, sailed to the pub

Check out this travel windsurf video from Argentina which I came across today.

Ya beat me to it bob! This is well up there for me, as a unique place sailed! Just the mission to get there and enjoy a great spot with only our selfs in mad cams boat!

I didn't seem too enthusiastic talking in the video haha but man did I have a blast, out on the cay!

Zaca Lake, which is in the mountains about 10 miles NE of Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch in central California, it looks very much like The Lagoon Denham Shark Bay, except it is smaller and surrounded by mountains. No good windsurfing winds show up there, but I had a board in my van when we went up there to go camping, so I figured why not try, it was pretty breezy.
I managed to sail all the way around the perimeter of the lake without making a single jibe.
Turns out that that area is very popular of glider flying, they get towed up into the air from a small landing strip near by and then go over the lake to hit a wind vortex that rises up so they can gain altitude. Evidently that vortex starts down at the lake level, enabling me to sail around it w/o jibing.
Pretty unique in my book.