This is a story about a group of fanatical windsurfers in the early days of windsurfing – the 80’s …..

Our garage was littered with half-finished projects. 

But one, one actually reached completion – it was a slalom windsurfing board, handmade at home – and it worked! Beautifully!

This was in the early days of the windsurfing phenomenon that started in the late 70s, and the project was my older brother Geoffrey’s first attempt at creating our own boards. 

A group of us young men at the time discovered the sport when we were students in our early 20s. We quickly progressed from the standard original and ground-breaking Windsurfer, to the lighter faster and way more fun slalom-style boards. At the time there were some available – Rocket 99, Tiga Gybe, F2 Comet,  Mistral Dimond Head, Kleppers – remember them?  – all icons of the time when the sport was growing so rapidly and evolving at a phenomenal rate. For us enthusiasts these were exciting times and interesting times. It is true that there is an intangible joy being part of a pioneering movement when something develops. Just think windsurfing, mountain biking, skateboarding, BMX, drone technology, social media, paddle boarding, foiling, kitesurfing, etc. etc. – even flying. Just imagine the dreams of possibility that Orville and Wilbur must have had? Priceless.

The trajectory is often the same – pioneers prove the concept and create the things needed in a rudimentary fashion. They have a lot of fun, break them, fix them, build better, make new things, build more and better things and these progress to attract more pioneers, early adopters and enthusiasts. We learned a lot from that first board of my brothers. How to shape the polystyrene, how to strengthen it with plywood strips. How to lay the glass fibre sheets and how to apply resin, and then eventually how to paint, style and protect the board. This was all using readily available and cheap non-industrial materials and tools. 

But let me say something about the result — man! Did she fly! Faster than the other bought boards our small group of five enthusiasts already had. We were all well impressed by the project. It worked!

However – not everything worked. This first board was a bit flat and the curve not curvy enough. It sometimes bounced and sometimes got caught in the choppy water. It became awkward in a small way. It needed improvements. So, we all got to work and each of us started our own projects – each a little different and hopefully a little better. And they all worked. The second third and fourth boards were greatly improved and we used them a lot. Our fellow board sailors were impressed, and one of them went on to build two more boards of his own – as did we make a few more. I built a shortboard, coloured red of course. My brother made a speed board – long and thin. This however we hardly used since it needed different conditions to what we had. It required very very strong winds and very flat water, like that found in Namibia. But Namibia was much too far. Our Mecca was the Sterkfontein Dam, a dam situated at the top of the Drakensburg escarpment in central South Africa. This dam is part of a large water catchment scheme and pumped storage power generating facility. For us it was perfect – no facilities, few people, remote, and a vast area of water with often very good wind. We could visit as often as we wanted and free camp for days and days. It became a tradition that every Easter a whole contingent from our hometown would stay and camp. It was, in a way our tiny version of Woodstock. Each group would have new toys to show off every year. We would ooh and aah accordingly, be smug when they weren’t better, and go quiet when they were. We would sail and sail and sail when the wind was blowing, only stopping when the sunset shut us down. Conversely, when the wind was absent we were greatly unimpressed even though we were never out of luck with so many other things to do. We lit huge bonfires lighting the sky at night, made with driftwood scavenged. We tried trout fishing off the sailboards, paddling out and sometimes successfully catching magnificent fish to barbecue. 

I remember one time of extended no wind and great frustration when we had our own version of the Burning Man ceremony. One of the guys decided to sacrifice his failed home-built windsurfer board that didn’t quite workout. We built a massive bonfire and perched the windsurfer standing up in the middle. Burn baby burn.  At other times when the water was low, we would create a very very long ski rope and tow a skier sitting on their sailboard along the shore with our beaten up cars. You just had to keep the board firmly pointing offshore lest you’d run aground and end up poorly. Through all of this our sailing skills improved greatly, and our boards just worked brilliantly. Having said that, of course,  sometimes they broke through use, but were instantly repaired. That smell of fibreglass resin still conjures up good memories for me and I’m sure for all of us.

It was good to be a part of those pioneering days.

I wonder where those boards are today? I wonder where those people are? I hope they have similar warm memories to those of mine.