Back to the Future

Windsurfing! 

Windsurfing off of Annapolis City Dock 2019

This is from a Facebook post I recently did in the Old School Windsurfing Group :

"In 1985, the girl I was dating at the time, and I loaded up her VW GTI and headed to Bahia Honda in the Florida Keys from the Washington D.C area. We had our two Windsurfers and a brand new “state of the art” Tiga that a friend loaned me for the trip. We camped, we sailed, we ate, we drank, we loved, we had fun. 1985 was good time to be a windsurfer. It still is."

Rigging up in Bahia Honda Key 1985

Gybing in the Florida Keys '85 

When I first started Windsurfing in 1980 or 81 it was just another way to go sailing. It was difficult to get a Laser or Sunfish off the roof of the car by yourself, but it was easy to load and unload a windsurfing board. There was nothing high tech about windsurfing, it was  a simple way to get out on the water. Just you, a board, a sail, a little wind and you were good to go. Doing it with a couple friends, and you were having twice as much fun or maybe even a race. We would take trips to new places just to go windsurfing. Small lakes all around the country, and around the world were filled with people windsurfing. Then windsurfing got high tech, high performance, high wind and wave oriented. It was still fun, but it got expensive and it got time consuming. Peoples lives revolved around chasing wind and chasing waves, buying tons of gear. Towns like Hood River, places like Maui boomed with windsurfers. Unfortunately, as the performance envelope got pushed, the gear for learning and light wind sailing  just sort of disappeared.  As the gear went away, so did new people learning to windsurf. People dropped out of the sport.  A kitesurfing friend joked,  "Windsurfing Has Been Cancelled" 

For some of us, it wasn't really a funny joke.
Fortunately  in 2017 Cobra Manufacturing teamed up with designer Bruce Wylie and set out to create a board that  so simple it could be picked up off the beach and enjoyed by a first-time sailor as well as offering superb tactical fleet racing to a more advanced sailor. They ended up creating the board now known as the Windsurfer LT. They became available in the US in 2019. I bought one.  Even with a smallish soft sail, that can be rigged in minutes, the board is super fun to sail in the light to medium winds we get on the Chesapeake and in most real world places. If there is no wind at all it works great as a Stand Up Paddle Board. The new lighter weight construction makes it even easier to get on and off the car than the 80's version.  
I have had fun Windsurfing for 40 years. With the addition of the LT to my collection of boards,  I had more days windsurfing locally last year than I have in a long time, it was fun.
 WINDSURFING.....It's Back! Back to the Future.

2019 Windsurfer Lt Sailing