Just letting others know that our windsurfing friend, Max, has passed away. Max mostly sailed at Elwood, Middle Park and Rye.
Max was about 82 (not readily known) and had helped me since 1991, when I took up windsurfing.
He was best known for re-inventing the wheel on numerous occasions and was convinced that mainstream board and fin makers knew nothing, so he made his own. He was happy with his 1985-era, narrow width, fibreglass, pin tail slalom boards and his numerous-layer, hi-tech fiberglass fins (although I found the fins to spin out very easily).
I passed my 115L SuperSport board and modern-era fin to him, in the hope that it would show him the error of his own designs, but to no avail.
His design for the mast connection/extension was something to behold (but keep well clear of).
Unknown to most Elwood sailors, is the fact that there are 3 Sirens (ex the Ulysses saga and whose names are Cecile, Susan and Sarah) living on the rocks/reef near the Point Ormond toilet block. Many times they would sing their songs and seduce Max into washing up on their rocks, usually when the wind died but occasionally when he suffered a broken (fibreglass) fin.
Being multi-talented, Max also had a theory that the speed of light varied if the light was travelling East to West, compared to travelling West to East. His colleagues on a science forum didn't agree with him (and said so), but as he said to me "what would they know?"
Will be sadly missed by this writer.
