Windsurfing Now 02.3

02.3 

COLLECTOR’S EDITION 

WITH GUEST FEATURES EDITOR GRAHAM EZZY

T-7 HARNESS 

TYSON POOR 

GUANABO, CUBA 

PHOTOS: HAR RAI KHALSA 

HARNESSES. 

GEAR BAGS. 

ACCESSORIES.

DAKINE.COM 

3

4 · THE STORIES ISSUE

FORECAST 

H A I L 

CAESAR 

world-class freestyle is always a sight to behold, 

but every once in a while someone comes along 

who elevates freestyle performance to the realm 

of magic. With his impossible sail tosses and 

gravity-defying acrobatics, Caesar Finies is just 

such a magician. At the 2016 Rio Vista Grand 

Slam, where high winds proved fleeting, Caesar 

kept us all mesmerized with unbelievable feats 

of light-wind trickery. We held our collective 

breath as Caesar’s unhinged sail flipped wildly 

through the air and then somehow made its way 

back into his hands, only to be placed tip down 

in the center of the board so he could gracefully 

sail off into the sunset. The world, with 

its pesky laws of physics, turned upside down. 

—Leora Broydo Vestel 

Caesar Finies inspires a future freestyler. Rich Baum photo 

5


FORECAST 

T H E 

R O A D 

TO RIO 

i am stoked and honored to represent the U.S. at 

the Olympics this summer. Campaigning for the 

Games has been a challenging and gruesome experience, 

because of how physical the equipment 

is and how far behind I was from the top of the 

international fleet just a year ago. I’m excited by 

my progress, but am still racing against the clock 

to master Rio’s tricky sailing venue and the technical 

aspects of the RS:X. It’s this challenge that 

has kept me hooked on Olympic windsurfing, and 

I will give it my all. —Marion Lepert 

Marion Lepert racing in Miami. 

Jesus Renedo/Sailing Energy/World Sailing photo 

7

OFF THE TOP 

ISS. 2.3 


40 

Talk Story 

A welcome from 

Graham Ezzy 

42 

Intergenerational 

Growing older with 

Thomas Traversa 

44 

Meet Lucy Clarke 

An interview and 

excerpt from The Blue 

48 

Speed of a Dream 

An essay 

by Jeff Nunokawa 

50 

Waiting Games 

Alex Papazian tours around two 

European PWA stops 

56 

Welcome to P.T. Barnum 

A Hunter S. Thompson-esque 

adventure with Clark Merritt 

62 

Seventy-Five Bags 

Kevin Pritchard’s 

epic travel story 

64 

Interview: Robby Naish 

Graham Ezzy sits down 

with a living legend 

72 

Gallery 

Epic photos from 

the windsurfing world 

Opposite: Special guest features editor Graham Ezzy. 

Carter/PWAworldtour.com photo 

9

OFF THE TOP 

ISS. 2.3 

4 Forecast 

12 Launch 

14 On the Cover 

16 Letters 

18 Sessions: Kids of the RVGS 

22 In the Wind 

24 Swag 

26 Wellness: The Cervical spine 

28 Moments 

32 Travel Guide: Cape Town 

36 How To 

82 Regions 


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11

OFF THE TOP 

ISS. 2.3 

ON THE COVER 

VOLUME 2 / ISSUE 3 

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief 

Pete DeKay 

pete@windsurfingnowmag.com 

Guest Features Editor 

Graham Ezzy 

Advertising Director 

Rick Bruner 

rickbruner@gorge.net 

Art Director 

Joe Andrus 

joeandrusdesign.com 

Associate Art Director 

Jeff Middleton 

VictoryDesignCo.com 

Copy Editor Kate Rutledge 

Web Design Russ Faurot 

Social Media Director Kaeley Dawson 

Gear Editor Derek Rijff 

Instructional Editor Andy Brandt 

Contributing Illustrators Jerry King, Spennie Thompson 

Rider: Francisco Goya 

Photographer: Sofie Louca/Fish Bowl Diaries 

BEING 

INSPIRED 

We all want our next session to be the best, but I see this 

focus and the expectations it brings to be limiting, as 

we lose our sense of connection to the present and the 

amazing opportunities happening around and inside of 

us. I believe our nature is to enjoy the moment for what 

it is and to be open to what we can learn; this brings forward 

our A game. We all cherish so much these amazing 

and memorable sessions, like the day this photo was 

taken at Ho’okipa—one of my best sessions ever. Our 

sport is so amazing that it can still, after 30-plus years of 

riding, wake up every cell in my body and make me feel 

alive and connected, like a kid again. —Francisco Goya 

Contributing Writers 

Samantha Campbell, Lucy Clarke, Graham Ezzy, Ingrid Larouche, 

Marion Lepert, Clark Merritt, Jeff Nunokawa, Alex Papazian, 

Eddy Patricelli, Kevin Pritchard, Matt Pritchard, Phil Soltysiak, 

Torben Sonntag, Thomas Traversa, Leora Broydo Vestel 

Contributing Photographers 

Rich Baum, John Carter, Gill Chabaud, Stephen Datnoff, Ingrid Larouche, 

Sofie Louca, Yseult Marc, Clark Merritt, Grant Myrdal, Jesus Renedo, 

Markus Seidel, Darrell Wong 

Windsurfing Now Magazine is an independent publication 

published four times per year (Early Spring, Spring, Summer, Fall) 

by In the Wind Media Ltd. 

137 Nile St., Stratford, ON, N5A 4E1 Canada 

Phone: (519) 878-2321 

E-mail: info@windsurfingnowmag.com 

Website: windsurfingnowmag.com 

SUBSCRIPTIONS 

1 Year – 4 Issues $29.95 USD 

Please subscribe at windsurfingnowmag.com 

E-mail: info@windsurfingnowmag.com 

In the Wind Media Ltd. 

© Copyright Windsurfing Now Magazine 2016. 

All rights reserved. 

Reproduction of any materials published in 

Windsurfing Now Magazine is expressly forbidden without 

the written consent of the publisher. 

Printed in Canada 

12 · THE STORIES ISSUE 

Disclaimer: The athletes and activities described and illustrated herein 

are performed by trained athletes and could result in serious bodily injury, 

including disability or death. Do not attempt them without proper 

supervision, training and safety equipment. In the Wind Media Ltd. 

and the publisher are not responsible for injuries sustained by readers or 

failure of equipment depicted or illustrated herein.

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Photos: 

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13

OFF THE TOP 

ISS. 2.3 

it’s 1:30 a.m. in the third week of may 2004. 

Ben [Kurman] pulls his mid-’80s 

Dodge van into the all-night Kwik- 

E-Mart-esque store and gas station 

along highway I-80 in Reno, Nevada 

for one last fill-up before our threehour 

descent from the mountain to 

Rio Vista, California. I’ve been in the 

back since our last stop, trying to 

sleep while sharing the bed with Ebby, 

my 80-pound German Shepherd, and 

she’s never liked sharing her space. 

Ben and I are both pretty out of it, 

as we’ve been trading driving shifts 

for the past 42 hours straight as part 

of our bi annual trek from coast-tocoast 

teaching windsurfing for ABK. 

Ben fills up the van and heads 

into the store to pay and use the 

restroom. He’s a super nice guy, as 

shown by his willingness to—despite 

his obvious weariness—relieve me 

of the final driving shift and let me 

continue sleeping. We get back on 

LAUNCH 

HELLO… BEN? 

Illustration by Jerry King 

I-80, and after two more hours we’re 

almost to Sacramento. Suddenly, 

a cellphone starts to ring. It’s my 

cheap, burner-type phone sitting on 

the van’s center console. But Ben, 

in his sleep-deprived haze and with 

the radio playing, doesn’t respond. 

A few minutes and miles later, it 

rings again, with no response from 

Ben. Maybe it’s a lull in the radio 

chatter or the highway’s rumble strips 

that yank him into awareness, but 

Ben hears it on the third attempt and 

picks up: “Hello?” A voice answers, 

“Pete—he’s not with you.” Ben replies, 

“What? Hello?” The reply is the same, 

“Pete and Ebby—they’re not with you.” 

Ben snaps awake, “Who’s this? What 

do you mean? They are here… in the 

back.” The reply, “No they’re not!” Ben 

puts down the phone and calls out 

to us in the back, to no response. He 

pulls off at the next exit and gets back 

on my cellphone with the caller. 

Ebby is a picky pee-er. She prefers 

going male-style: lifting her leg 

and marking her scent over top of 

some other lesser dog’s previous 

piddle. While taking ownership 

of a prized strip of grass 400 yards 

down, I look up to see the van’s tail 

lights flash on and start to pull away 

from the pumps. I figure he’s going 

to park and wait for us. But no, he 

heads toward the lot exit and road 

back to I-80. I yank Ebby’s leash 

and we break into a gallop toward 

the van. “Stop! Ben!” I yell over and 

over, but to no avail. Bye bye, Ben. 

The middle of a May night in Reno 

(elev. 4,500 ft.) is chilly to say the 

least. I’m dressed in shorts and a 

T-shirt for comfort in the warm van, 

as this stop was supposed to be quick. 

I head back to the gas station, hoping 

Ben will realize he’s left without us. 

I can’t call him, as my cellphone— 

along with everything else I own—is 

getting a head start to Rio Vista. 

I get tired of hanging around the 

gas station and getting no help from 

the attendant, so we start to explore 

the area. I find an outside pay phone 

and formulate a plan. It’s simple: 

I’ll call home. I dial collect through 

the operator, and with it being three 

hours later East Coast time, my Dad 

answers from his sleep, “Hello?” 

Exhausted, my reply is right to the 

point, “It’s Pete. I’m in Reno, Nevada 

and Ben just left me at a gas station.” 

His sleepy response: “He did what? 

How?” I say, “Ben accidently drove 

off without Ebby and I, but I left my 

cellphone in the van. I hope it’s turned 

on and has some charge left. Can 

you please call my cell and tell him 

we aren’t in the van?” He wakes up a 

little more, “OK.” And I add, “Just keep 

trying until he picks up. It may take a 

few tries. I’ll call you back. Thanks.” 

As you know, Ben finally picked 

up the phone and returned to get 

us. What a night. I have countless 

stories from my nine years teaching 

windsurfing across the U.S. and 

Caribbean with ABK, but this little 

inane road tale just stands out for 

some unknown reason. I hope you 

enjoy all the stories in the features 

section of this special “Stories Issue” 

for which I’ve enlisted the talented 

Graham Ezzy to help compile. 

Do you have a story to share? Let 

me know via email and maybe we’ll 

get it in a future issue. —Pete DeKay, 

pete@windsurfingnowmag.com 


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OFF THE TOP 

ISS. 2.3 

LETTERS 

READER 

FEEDBACK 

What’s Happening? 

I love the magazine, and the newest 

issue [02.1] is the best yet. You and your 

team are doing a great job balancing 

between windsurfing’s soul and skills. 

Both of these aspects of the sport 

are important, and I am stoked they 

are covered in Windsurfing Now. 

For the soul, I mean articles like 

“The Zen of Longboarding,” “Beach 

Culture World Tour” and “Meet Chris 

Hope.” Mr. Hope actually reminds me 

a bit of my own father, who windsurfed 

at least three days a week on 

his Mistral Superlight into his early 

80s. For the skills, short articles like 

“Downhauling Improved” and those 

featured in the “How To” section help 

me become a better technical windsurfer. 

The awesome pictures and 

cool travel articles help inspire, too. 

One thought to consider is including 

a calendar with contact information 

for upcoming windsurfing races, 

festivals and clinics. For example, 

“Meet Chris Hope” was a great article 

about a windsurfer who has competed 

in the Midwinters for years, but 

when are the Midwinters happening? 

When and where are the Kona fleets 

going to race? How about the AWT? 

When’s OBX-Wind happening again? 

Thanks for the awesome magazine! 

—John Meitzen, North Carolina 

I like the idea of providing a calendar, 

and will see if we can make it happen 

for next year’s issues. —ed. 

The Return Trip 

Last week, I was windsurfing on one of 

the Great Lakes with a 4.8-meter sail 

and 84-liter freestyle waveboard. My 

problem was… safely getting off the water 

with everything intact. On this occasion 

the launch was no problem, but 

upon arriving back to near the beach, 

there was a rip current and a five-foot 

depth of water just before the shore. I 

got carried in the rip current, basically 

because I could not pick up my board 

and rig to clear the water and get up the 

beach. My board and sail got trashed on 

some concrete blocks farther down the 

beach. Luckily they are now repaired. 

I’ve been windsurfing for 35 years, 

with an annual trip to the Gorge, so I 

can handle high wind, but this landing 

was tough: no sandy beach and no shallow 

area to get my act together. Matt 

Pritchard gave tips in a recent issue 

["How To, Iss. 02.2] on how to launch in 

the waves. How about some tips on the 

return trip? —James Harwick, Ontario 

This doesn’t sound like much fun. With 

a strong rip current like that, it’s important 

to get the sail up and cleared from 

the water as quickly as possible. If you 

know it is deep water close to shore, I 

recommend sailing as close to dry land 

as possible. I would rather sacrifice my 

gear than hurt my body, so I’ll ding a 

fin before putting a hole in my foot. 

As soon as you get off your board, get 

the sail flying in the wind so the water 

can’t suck it around. Never let that clew 

drop, as that is what usually causes the 

problem; get it up and airborne by picking 

up your boom around the rear harness line 

strap and grabbing the front windward 

footstrap. The wind will usually assist 

you in getting the gear up and off the 

water as quickly as possible. I hope these 

tips help you out! —Matt Pritchard 

School’s Rule 

I’ve been following Windsurfing Now’s 

progress with the printing of your 

first few issues. Congratulations 

on an excellent job! Thank you for 

taking the time and energy to promote 

the sport we all love so much. 

I’ve read and reread the issues multiple 

times now, and am particularly 

excited at the breadth of content, 

from beginners to intermediates, to 

expert photos, stories and athletes. 

I operate a SUP and windsurf shop 

in Burlington, Vermont called WN- 

D&WVS (wndnwvs.com). We spend a 

lot of time sailing on Lake Champlain 

in the spring, summer and fall months, 

then head down to our surf retreat in 

Rincon, Puerto Rico in the winter for 

a few weeks (villaplayamaria.com). 

Our most successful contribution 

to the resurgence of windsurfing 

is the camp we run in the summer 

months in Vermont. We host six kids 

per week for eight weeks and sell out 

each summer. Our head instructor 

this year is Arismendi Gonzales (a.k.a. 

Cuquito) from Cabarete, Dominican 

Republic. He’ll be up here for the 

summer teaching kids from the ages 

of eight to 18 how to rig, sail and have 

fun on the lake. We’re also proud 

sponsors of the AWT and Sam Bittner. 

Just wanted to let you know you have 

some big fans here on Lake Champlain. 

—Russ Scully, Vermont 

Windsurfing Now is a big fan of 

all the school programs across 

North America, and we are looking 

to show it. If you work for or know 

of a program and can put together an 

interesting story about it, email us at 

info@windsurfingnowmag.com. —ed. 


photo: Jimmie Hepp, rider: Graham Ezzy, location: Peahi (Jaws) 

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17

BY LEORA BROYDO VESTEL 

PHOTOS BY RICH BAUM 

SESSIONS 

KIDS 

RULE 

AT THE 

RIO VISTA 

GRAND SLAM 

Expert sailors hailing from some 

of the top windsurfing spots in the 

world, from Hood River to Bonaire, 

found their way to low-key Sherman 

Island in June to compete in 

the thrilling afternoon sessions of 

slalom, speed and freestyle of the 

Rio Vista Grand Slam. However, in 

the mornings, it was a group of local 

kids competing in a “mini slalom” 

event that dominated the scene. 


Zev tacks like a pro. 

19

QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

SESSIONS 

The Grand Slam is a natural extension of what 

the kids love to do: sail in the playpen with 

their friends and chase each other around. 

The Grand Slam launched in the 

summer of 2015, and inspiring kids 

to windsurf has been made a main 

focal point. As a result, interest in the 

mini slalom is growing, with even 

more young windsurfers participating 

this year. The kids’ races take 

place over two days in the “playpen,” 

a safe harbor of sorts that runs 

parallel to the challenging flows of 

the Sacramento River, providing an 

excellent spot for aspiring windsurfers 

of all ages to develop their skills. 

The Grand Slam is a full-fledged 

hit with my kids, Mira (age 12) and 

Zev (age 10), in no small part due to 

the involvement of the pros who are 

on hand to cheer on mini-slalom 

competitors at the starting line and 

as they round the turns. After all the 

heats are finished, the kids eagerly 

line up to get the pros’ autographs. 

Zev talks about Tyson Poor, Wyatt 

Miller, Caesar Finies and Alex 

Mertens the way other kids talk 

about their favorite pro baseball 

or basketball players. During the 

Grand Slam, he gets to hang out with 

his heroes. When Wyatt signs an 

autograph for Zev that says “Slow 

down, Zev, you’re going to beat me 

next year!” the influence is palpable. 

Such missives “make me feel like 

I’m getting better,” Zev observes. 

The impacts of rubbing elbows 

with windsurfing stars cannot be 

understated. Prior to the start of the 

event, Dutch pro Arrianne Aukes 

spent the night at our home in San 

Francisco before heading to Sherman 

Island for the competition. During 

her visit, Arrianne helped Zev rig a 

new sail in our livingroom. She also 

took the time to answer questions 

about windsurfing, and was especially 

encouraging to Mira, as she’s big 

on getting more girls into the sport. 

The Grand Slam is a natural extension 

of what the kids love to do: 

sail in the playpen with their friends 

and chase each other around. But the 

formal nature causes them to focus 

Zev learning from Caesar. 

Mira cruises in the light air. 

more on strategy—starting strong, 

making good turns, maneuvering 

around pileups on the course—and 

as a result, participating has kicked 

up their skills several notches. “It 

makes you want to go faster, because 

it’s a rare experience,” Zev 

explains. “You have to do well.” 

Most surprising to me is the impact 

the races have had on Mira, who, in 

the past, has characterized windsurfing 

as (gasp!) “boring.” After 

this year’s Grand Slam, where Mira 

showed great improvement, she now 

sees the sport in a whole new light. “I 

get an adrenaline rush,” she observes. 

“And I like adrenaline.” 

At the end of the competition, 

Arrianne approached Mira at the 

event site and presented her with 

one of the many trophies she won at 

the Grand Slam. Arrianne said she 

was really inspired by how well Mira 

windsurfed and encouraged her to 

continue. “It was really cool,” Mira 

says of the gesture. “I felt proud.” 


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QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

NEWS AND RESULTS 

NEWS: Girl on Wave is an exciting 

upcoming documentary starring top 

female waterman Sarah Hauser. 

They are still editing and collecting 

footage, so expect the release date 

sometime in late 2016. We checked 

in with Sarah to find out more about 

this project: “I’m super excited about 

Girl on Wave on so many levels. It’s 

been a lot of fun and work being part 

of the production, helping during the 

filming and now with the editing. I 

can’t wait for the movie to be out there 

and for people to watch some windsurfing 

in 5K, captured on a RED Epic 

camera. It’s rare to have this quality 

of imagery for anything other than a 

Hollywood production. I hope people 

are gonna like our message and our 

story, and feel inspired to follow their 

dreams after they watch our movie.” 

Go to girlonwave.com for more info. 

The 2016 Olympics in Rio should 

be underway as you are reading this. 

Congrats to U.S. windsurfing representatives 

Pedro Pascual and Marion 

Lepert. And coming from north of the 

border to represent Canada in Brazil 

is… no one. Wait, how is this possible? 

IN THE WIND 

We asked Canada’s top female RS:X’er 

Olivia Mew to fill us in on the situation: 

“Sail Canada has decided to not 

send both RS:X athletes to the 2016 

Olympic Games. Despite achieving 

the impossible and finishing fourth 

in the Weymouth World Cup after 

two extreme health challenges, this 

result was considered irrelevant in 

my selection. I’ve put in a massive 

amount of hard work to get to where 

I am today. My performance this year 

should not be undermined by the 

recent Olympic decision from Sail 

Canada. I believe I completed all the 

necessary qualification standards for 

the Games, without actually being sent 

to compete in them. I know I fought my 

best and fought until the very end.” 

RESULTS: There has been a ton of 

competition action since last issue, 

and what better way to start than with 

the 2016 U.S. Windsurfing Nationals 

returning to Corpus Christi, 

Texas in epic fashion this past May. 

The men’s slalom crown was taken by 

Phil Soltysiak, while the women’s 

fleet was won by Margot Samson. 

Samson put on an impressive showing 

in the Kona Class, taking the overall and 

women’s titles, while her father, Jerome, 

placed first in the Kona Men. Xavier 

Ferlet took down the Formula class, 

and Myles Borash won amongst the 

raceboards. Finally, the winners of the 

long-distance race were Enes Yilmazer 

and Angela Rhodes. For complete 

results, go to uswindsurfing.org. 

The American Windsurfing Tour 

season began with a May stop in Essaouira, 

Morocco. This new venue excited 

the pros, and even some amateurs 

made the trek, as it was the perfect way 

to experience an exotic wavesailing 

location. Winning the pros was local star 

Boujmaa Guilloul ahead of Morgan 

Noireaux and Kevin Pritchard. The 

women’s crown was taken by Ingrid 

Larouche, and the only other result was 

the Grand Masters, won by Colby Deer. 

Next up for the AWT was Gold Beach, 

Oregon and the Pistol River Wave 

Bash. The conditions were light at first, 

but improved for the weekend enough 

to get solid results across all divisions. 

Noireaux took the pro title ahead of 

his recent podium nemeses Guilloul 

and Pritchard. Winning her second 

consecutive event was Larouche ahead 

of Hauser and Tatiana Howard. Upand-coming 

star Max Schettewi won 

both the amateur and youth divisions, 

and Sean Aiken took the Masters and 

Dana Miller the Grand Masters. 

David Mertens deserves a lot of 

credit for organizing all the windsurfing 

competition in both the Rio Vista 

Grand Slam and Gorge Beach Bash. 

This second year of the RVGS had less 

wind than last, but enough to get results 

in all categories: Jesper Vesterstrom 

(Slalom A), Vincent Fallourd (Slalom B), 

Christophe Sabineu (Freeride), Wyatt 

Miller (Pro Freestyle), Sam Hartshorn 

(Freestyle), Arrianne Aukes (Womens 

Freestyle) and Boris Vujasinovic 

(Speed). We have to give special mention 

to the Kids’ Mini Slalom, won by Takeyasu 

Kohama ahead of Zev Vestel and 

Kenny Shirley. The GBB was a huge 

party with plenty of windsurfing demos 

and competition. The slalom was won by 

Vesterstrom ahead of Bruce Peterson 

and Soltysiak; the innovative tandem 

race was taken by Team Crown Crazy 

(Soltysiak and Ferlet), while the freeride 

race was won by Kevin Johnson. The pro 

freestyle event was moved to epic conditions 

at The Wall site, with Soltysiak 

winning over Miller and Tyson Poor. 


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QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

STUFF 

WE LIKE 

SWAG 

WORDS BY 

DEREK RIJFF 

— 

BIC TECHNO 240D 

What’s most important to 

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construction provides ample 

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weight. As an ideal learning 

board, it’s also available as 

the Bic Nova 240D, with more 

deck padding and even more 

durability features. 

bicsport.com 

— 

MAKANI FINS 

HB CONCEPT 

It’s always cool when equipment 

manufacturers draw inspiration 

from the natural world when developing 

product ideas. The team 

at Makani Fins has been doing this 

since Day 1, and a great example of 

this is their latest wave fine, the HB 

Concept. Windsurfing Now checked 

in with Makani designer Louis 

Genest for more details on this new 

innovative wave fin. 

“The HB Concept has definitely 

been inspired by nature, and 

specifically, the humpback whale. 

Looking at their front flippers, you’ll 

notice they have tubercles (round 

nodules) on the leading edge that 

help these massive mammals catch 

their prey by drastically enhancing 

their maneuverability. We took this 

idea into fin design to help eliminate 

spinout while improving upwind 

performance and maneuverability. 

The main advantage of this 

HB concept is that it keeps the fin 

from stalling (i.e. no spinout) by 

increasing the angle of attack, 

which allows the rider to be able to 

go upwind like never before. 

The HB concept allows you to ride 

a smaller fin, resulting in less drag 

(by having less fin surface) and 

the ability to go faster with more 

control. The maneuverability is also 

increased a lot by being able to do 

radical carves on the board without 

losing the lift of your fin, as you 

would normally when you spin out. 

As for the why, let’s say the mechanism 

of this effect is that the tubercles 

generate a flow pattern that 

produces vortices with a particular 

spin so that the flow going over the 

tubercle is energized and accelerated 

to maintain the lift of the fin at 

high angles of attack.” 

makanifins.com 


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QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

WELLNESS 

FINDING NEUTRAL PART 3: 

THE CERVICAL SPINE 

WORDS AND PHOTOS 

BY INGRID LAROUCHE 

AND SAMANTHA CAMPBELL 

almost everyone aspires to have better posture and spinal alignment. The following three exercises 

will help correct head and neck position, which can become forward and extended from activities 

like driving long distances, staring at electronic devices and, yes, holding onto the boom. 

+ WALL LEAN: Stand against 

a wall, drawing your shoulders 

back and down away from your 

ears. Keep the back of your head 

against the wall, looking straight 

ahead (think of elongating your 

neck and avoid looking up). Now, 

step your feet approximately 

one foot away from the wall, 

pushing with the back of your 

head against the wall. Maintain 

perfect neck/shoulder alignment 

and hold for one minute. If this 

is well-tolerated, progress to 

holding for up to three minutes. 

Wall lean. Scalen. 

Field goal. 

Ingrid Larouche is a pro 

windsurfer who also just 

happens to have over 15 

years of experience as a 

physical therapist, and 

Samantha Campbell, 

ATC, CSCS, LMT, owns 

Deep Relief Athletic 

Training Center on Maui. 

+ SCALENE: Place the fingers of 

one hand just below your collarbone 

and apply a light downward 

pressure. Tilt your chin away 

from your hand, towards the 

opposite shoulder and up to the 

ceiling until a stretch is felt on 

the front of your neck. Hold this 

position for 20 seconds. Repeat 

two to three times on each side. 

+ PRONE FIELD GOALS: Start by 

kneeling against a stability ball 

with your belly button engaged 

towards your spine. Place your 

feet shoulder-width apart against 

a wall and roll onto the ball by 

extending your legs slightly. 

Pinch your shoulder blades 

together and bring your elbows 

and hands back until they are in 

line with your torso. Then, while 

keeping your body and neck in a 

straight line, pull your shoulder 

blades down and back while maintaining 

the field goal position 

with your elbows. Hold for 10 

seconds and repeat 10 times. 

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QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

Olivier Jallais in the lead. 

Margot Samson. 


MOMENTS 

PHOTOS BY 

YSEULT MARC 

U.S. NATIONALS 

IN CORPUS CHRISTI 

IN MAY, THE 2016 U.S. Windsurfing Nationals returned 

to Corpus Christi’s Oleander Point with great success. The 

wind blew all week long, allowing for results across all 

categories. Here are a few moments from all the action. 

29

QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

Zane Wewerka. 

Wyatt Miller. 

Hydrofoil action. 


MOMENTS 

PHOTOS BY GRANT MYRDAL/ 

GORGEWINDSURFING.ORG 

Tandem race. 

GORGE 

BEACH BASH 

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY make a massive beach party filled with gear demos, 

recreational and competitive slalom races and live music, all held at Hood 

River’s Event Site and Waterfront Park, better? How about an epic freestyle 

contest at the iconic, super windy and massive swell site known as The Wall? 

31

QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

SPOT GUIDE 

WORDS AND PHOTO 

BY INGRID LAROUCHE 

CAPE 

TOWN 

SOUTH AFRICA 

When you’re established on Maui for the 

winter, why go anywhere else? I didn’t want 

to leave what I already consider paradise, 

but having the objective to learn port-tack 

wavesailing, I had to make a move. Several 

other PWA ladies train in South Africa, so 

South Africa it is for me, as well. 


CAPE TOWN SPOTS 

View from Chapman’s Peak. Arutkin photo 

Departing with excitement, my 

attitude changed the second I landed 

in Cape Town and met the man I 

had prearranged to rent a vehicle 

from. He walked me to a little car 

that required multiple trials to start; 

driver seat on the right, clutch to the 

left, gas tank empty. I had to find 

my way outside of the airport going 

against all my driving instincts, 

without using my iPhone’s GPS to 

tell me where to go. I knew then and 

there that I was in for an adventure. 

THINGS I LEARNED 

IN CAPE TOWN 

Come for no less than one month. 

The flight is the main expense of this 

trip, so make the most of it. Once 

here, you can eat and live like a king 

for a fraction of what you’d pay living 

anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. 

The jet lag alone took me a week to 

recover from, so give yourself time 

to get settled and see and do some of 

the numerous things the Cape Town 

area has to offer. It seems as though 

many first-timers (myself included) 

end up extending their flights. It’s 

wiser to avoid adding to airline costs 

by planning for a longer vacation. 

Bring a light wetsuit. I was told the 

water is freezing, so I only brought a 

4/3-millimeter suit. We had so many 

days with the air temperature around 

100 degrees, and I was steaming. 

A few sailing spots are colder than 

others for sure, but not once did I 

feel cold. I mostly felt too hot and 

wished I had brought a 3/2. If you’re 

at all into freestyle and plan to sail 

the lakes, then you definitely need 

to bring a shorty wetsuit, as well. 

When the tablecloth (the blanket 

of clouds) settles over the region’s 

iconic Table Mountain, rig quickly 

and go, because you’ll be overpowered 

if you wait. When it eventually gets 

too windy, pack up and head north. 

Also, if there is any prevalent southeast 

wind forecasted close to town, 

don’t drive south—unless you want 

to be sailing in 40-knot conditions. 

SUNSET BEACH: Wind will pick up here before anywhere 

else around Cape Town. This is always a great 

spot for a first session, until the wind is too strong and 

kicks in farther up the coast. Waves can be choppy, 

but the southeasterlies are cross-offshore and nice for 

riding. The beach is friendly, with no rocks in sight. 

TABLE VIEW BEACH: The wind is onshore and the 

beach extends for miles, with parking everywhere along 

the way. You can take your pick of where to sail if you 

want to get out of the windsurfing crowds (and don’t 

mind a few kites around) to improve your jumping. 

BIG BAY: This is the jump spot. The wind is sideshore 

and the waveriding is really fun on bigger swells, although 

it often seems like there are no right-of-way 

rules around here. Big Bay is the most crowded spot, 

as the bay is relatively small and filled not only with 

windsurfers, but surfers, bodyboarders and even kiters. 

It’s an awesome spot for watching pros going big and 

nice for hanging out. There’s a restaurant right on 

the waterfront, showers and a grassy rigging area. 

HAAGAT: This is the best pure waveriding spot around 

Cape Town, with amazing down-the-line conditions. It’s 

ideal for riders with a little more experience, as the wind 

doesn’t always fill in and there are rocks by the peak. 

MELKBOS: This nice, long beach break has several 

peaks and is more exposed than other spots, so it will 

often have waves even when there is no real swell. It’s 

good for both waveriding and jumping, but probably 

not the pick on a huge day, as the whitewater will 

stretch as far as you can see, making it hard to get out. 

Ingrid Larouche top-turns at Big Bay. Cas Smit photo 

33

QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

The scene at Witsand. 

SOUTH SPOTS 

When the forecast calls for no wind 

in Cape Town, or any direction 

other than southeast, a road trip 

is in order. Note: Now, you’ll need 

your 4/3-millimeter wetsuit. 

PLATBOOM: Approximately an 

hour and a half south of Cape Town 

is Cape Point National Park. It costs 

R125 ($7) per person to enter, but 

is quite picturesque with its white 

sand, aquamarine sea and incredible 

wildlife. The wave is best at low tide 

and is heavier than other spots, but 

it makes for some amazing riding. 

Cape Point is rocky and the beach 

completely disappears at high tide, so 

it’s better suited for more advanced 

sailors. If the wind is blowing from 

the north, the beach just around the 

corner is the spot for starboard conditions. 

Watch out for the baboons! 

WITSAND: A half-hour before entering 

the national park is Witsand, 

a beautiful, sandy bay just down 

from a cliff that’s great for highwind 

jumping. Beware of the few rocks in 

the middle of the bay and a bit of a 

shorebreak. The wind is strong here, 

and it felt like I was back in Pozo. 

Witsand works for both southeast 

and northwest wind directions. 

SCARBOROUGH: Just down the 

road from Witsand, this is the place 

to go in a large swell for some fun 

turns. There is a big, rocky kelp 

point to the left and some rocks to 

the right. It’s a small bay that gets 

crowded fast, so get here early. 

"...the beach just 

around the corner is 

the spot for starboard 

conditions. Watch 

out for the baboons!" 

NORTH SPOTS 

If the swell gets really big, then a lot 

of riders drive north for the incredible 

down-the-line conditions. 

YZERFONTEIN: I didn’t get to 

sail here, but apparently Yzerfontein 

is a place to consider 

when the wind is nuking and 

waves are big (over mast-high). 

PATERNOSTER: Located two hours 

north of Cape Town, this spot also 

needs a big swell to work. Wind is way 

offshore on a southeast, so it is actually 

best on more of an east-southeast. 

To me, it feels like a port-tack Punta 

San Carlos: a point break in front of 

the rocks, to then chase down a bowly 

section that’s perfect for aerials. 

ELANDS BAY: This is another spot 

I didn’t get to experience (the threehour 

drive kept me away), but I hear 

it’s worth the trip when the swell is 

really big. Thermals will kick in late 

afternoon on a southeast or southwest 

wind, and this chunky point 

break is only for the experienced. 

5 OTHER 

THINGS 

TO DO: 

It was quite windy during 

my trip, so I spent most of 

my time on the water, but 

here are five non-windsurfing 

activities I did get to do 

and strongly recommend. 

1. Take a road-trip detour 

along the coast on 

Chapman’s Peak Drive 

for breathtaking scenery 

on your way back from 

an afternoon of sailing 

at Witsand. Then stop at 

Café Caprice in Camps Bay 

to enjoy dinner, drinks 

and the ultimate sunset. 

2. Make the drive south 

early and stop at Simon’s 

Town to see the little 

African penguins before 

the wind picks up. 

3. Hike up Lion’s Head 

Mountain for an out-of-thisworld 

view of Cape Town. 

4. Visit some of Cape 

Town’s wineries for 

sensational (and ridiculously 

cheap) wine. 

5. Go on a safari and get 

close to the Big Five: lion, 

leopard, rhino, elephant 

and Cape buffalo. 

On my next trip, I hope 

to add cage-diving with 

the white sharks, visiting 

The Elephant Sanctuary 

and climbing Table 

Mountain to this list. 


35

QUICK HITS 

ISS. 2.3 

HOW TO 

WORDS BY 

MATT PRITCHARD 

CATCHING A WAVE 

It’s blowing, the waves are up and all your friends are out. You see everyone blasting around as you frantically 

rig, wave after wave ripping down-the-line, smacking the lip and hitting the big aerial off the end bowl… 

and then you get out there and the ocean goes flat. Not a single wave to be found. Nothing. What gives? 

Don’t worry, it’s not just you; this is a common theme among newbies searching for their first waveride. 

when people ask me why it looks like I 

get all the waves, my answer is simple: 

I wait for them. One of my favorite 

ways of describing how to catch a wave 

is thinking about a surfer. Surfers 

paddle out into the lineup and sit for 

hours. They wait and they wait and 

then they wait. You don’t see surfers 

paddle out, then paddle in and back 

out again. They wait. They study the 

ocean. They pay attention. Otherwise, 

they’re going to waste precious hours. 

As windsurfers, we have the advantage 

of standing up, which makes 

it easier to see ocean swells. We can 

move faster to get to the right spot. 

Why do you think surfers give you 

a hard time for being a windsurfer? 

It’s far easier to catch waves and a 

lot more fun if you pay attention. 

Before you hit the water, take 10 

to 15 minutes to watch the good guys 

who are catching waves. See where 

they line up and follow their lead. 

Look for sets and follow them with 

your watch to figure out how much 

time lapses between them. This will 

help you establish a pattern for getting 

out and being patient, knowing that 

every seven-and-a-half minutes a set 

of two to four waves will be coming. 

Be sure you are on the outside ready 

to go, rather than stumbling your 

way back out wishing you were on 

the wave that just flattened you. 

Once on the water, go out and get 

comfortable with your surroundings. 

I like to line myself up with something 

on shore so I can easily find the same 

spot where I caught my last wave. Normally, 

waves break in the same place, in 

the same way, at a consistent location. 

Just because you have made your 

outside jibe and are on the way back in 

doesn’t mean you have to blaze back 

to the beach. Why the hurry? Take a 

deep breath or two, turn on your “wave 

brain” and start hunting. 

You don’t have to be planing and you 

don’t need to panic; wait for a wave. 

Schlog upwind to find that landmark 

you set up earlier and figure out your 

zone. Learn to hover (stalling your 

board into wind and balancing while 

going nowhere), just like a surfer sitting 

in the lineup waiting. There’s no rush. 

Getting a bigger wave just makes 

things easier. For one, you can see it, 

and secondly, once you catch it, you get 

more speed, as you have more room 

to go down the wave face. With speed 

comes maneuverability. Ever tried to 

turn a bicycle while barely moving? 

It isn’t that easy. It’s the same with a 

windsurfer, and I stick to the theory 

of speed being your friend. One of my 

favorite sayings is, “When in doubt, 

gas it!” That got me into a lot of trouble 

as a motocrosser, but in windsurfing, 

it has saved me more often than 

not. Speed is always your friend. 

Perfect position to catch the last wave 

of the set. Photo by Si Crowther/AWT 

Your exercise now is to get out 

there, find the waves and get on 

them. Make sure they are big 

enough to let your friends know 

you are a wave hunter. When the 

waves are up, we are wavesailing 

(yes, this is different than windsurfing). 

Think of it as a different 

sport, a new challenge. Planing 

around everywhere is not mandatory, 

so don’t work too hard to 

plane. Instead, get yourself out 

there, be upwind at the peak and 

get ready for the ride of your life. 

As a wavesailor, you can’t beat 

the feeling of getting that next big 

one. People spend their entire lives 

in search of a bigger, better, faster 

and more perfect wave. Does it really 

exist? Only you will ever know. 

Next issue, we’ll talk about riding 

your first wave and what to do 

once you have caught the big one. 

Former world champion Matt Pritchard teaches private lessons and 

clinics on Maui and around the world for pritchardwindsurfing.com. 

He’s sponsored by Gaastra, Tabou, Dakine, NoLimitz and Streamlined. 


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39

Talk Story 

WORDS BY GRAHAM EZZY / PHOTOS BY RUBEN LEMMENS 

A 

zebu bull, all four limbs 

bound together with rope, 

lay on the sand in front 

of me, a machete-sized knife resting 

on its neck. Ruben Lemmens 

and I were the only white faces in 

a group of 30 or so Malagasy men 

and women. The men had all been 

drinking since sunrise, when the 

ceremony started, and they were already 

drunk; they sang and drummed 

and clapped their hands. No one 

was allowed east of the zebu. 

I was instructed to make a wish 

on the zebu, which was so exhausted 

from panic that it looked 

dead. I knelt and pressed honey-soaked 

money—three bills for 

200 ariary, each equivalent to 60 

American cents—against the warm 

body of the zebu. The zebu’s heart 

drummed against my hands. 

I have trouble with wishing in general. 

What is the best wish to wish? I 

wished our trip in Madagascar would 

be successful and windy, and I wished 

my brother would do well after graduating 

college. Oh, and there was a 

girl I couldn’t stop thinking about. 

During my third wish—the one 

about the girl—the zebu struggled, 

and the knife, which had been 

balanced on the bull’s neck, fell to 

the sand. The drumming behind 

me increased in manic intensity. 

The crowd of people came alive. 

The zebu threw off the knife because 

he wanted to die, they said. 

My host told me, “For us, the zebu 

will not die. His spirit will go to our 

ancestors.” There is a Malagasy saying: 

“Build your house out of straw 

and your grave from stone.” The 

body is only a vessel in Madagascar. 

My host’s grandmother—the 

oldest, most wrinkled person at the 

sacrifice—headed the ceremony. Her 

robes were a patterned array of white, 

blue, and orange. She could have 

been 60 or over 100. Her wrinkled 

skin sagged over sinewed muscle. 

The zebu came from her herd. 

The zebu is a humped cow with long 

horns found in Madagascar. The zebu 

is sacred and, allowed to roam freely 

over the land, beaches, and roads. 

But the zebu is also a beast of burden, 

used to pull carts and play the role 

assigned to the donkey in Europe. 

A zebu herd acts as the local form of 

bank account. My host’s grandmother 

lived in a simple one-room hut, but she 

estimated her herd of zebu to number 

over 1,500. On average, zebu sell for 

between 300 and 500 dollars, depending 

on factors such as age and sex. 

Those who can afford it eat zebu meat. 

Legend says the zebu came to 

Madagascar from out of the ocean 

onto the northern tip of the island—a 

place called Babaomby, not far from 

our sacrifice. The legend also says 

that people descended from the zebu, 

making the zebu both ancestors and 

cousins in addition to everything else. 

My host sacrificed that zebu to 

gain favor with the ancestor spirits. 

Ancestor worship is important all 

over Madagascar, and each of the 22 

tribes makes tribute to their dead 

forefathers with different rituals. 

My taxi driver in the capital, Antananarivo, 

700 miles to the south, 

described his tribe’s worship: “Each 

family digs up the bodies of their ancestors 

every year and puts clothes on 

the corpses.” I asked how the process 

works once the body is just bones…. 

“After five years, we put everyone 

altogether in one bag,” he answered. 

Spirituality can be practical. 

The zebu’s blood flowed into 

the sand from its slit throat. They 

told me the sacrifice must be 

performed on wet sand with an incoming 

tide so that the water spirits 

could come to claim the blood. 

After the zebu bled out into the 

sand, the butcher used a machete to 

hack off the top of the skull, along 

with the horns, which was placed 

high in the branches of a sacred tree. 

The scene quickly transformed from 

ritual to butchery. The zebu meat was 

divided amongst everyone present—a 

gift from my host to their neighbors. 

Did the wish I made on the zebu 

come true? Was the trip a success? 

Well, a steady 25-knot wind blew till 

the day I left. In most places, winds 

come and go: thermic winds die at 

night and frontal winds last only as 

long as the storm. During my time in 

Madagascar, the wind was immortal—a 

windsurfer’s fantasy come true. 

But this was a nightmarish amount 

of wind. Every night, I listened to 

the wind wail and whine outside the 

shaking hut in which I tried to sleep. 

Equally difficult were the days 

spent trying to windsurf the windy 

seas of Babaomby where masthigh 

winds swell barreled onto 

shallow lava rock. The following 

passages come from my notes about 

a day of filming on this trip: 

With us so near the equator, the sun 

hangs on the top of the sky all day and 

then falls so quickly down past the horizon 

that the entire afternoon sprints by 

in not much more than an hour. Night 

and day exist, but not the steady flow of 

time to which we nail our western lives. 

Today, we spent the whole day till dark 

filming from a city-block-size uninhabited 

island made up entirely of the sharpest 

black lava rock I have ever seen. If lava 

dries quickly enough, it becomes the 

sharp edge of broken glass. Two kinds 

of bushes grow on this rock island—no 

trees. One is a shrub with inch-long 

thorns that sprawls about the island 

like a spiky, bushy vine; the other plant 

is green, leafless, and looks like it should 

grow underwater, like a sea anemone. 

This second plant breaks easily when 

walked through and spouts a milky sap. 

After a day of filming from the island, 

with the sun already set and a treacherous 

two-hour boat ride without lights ahead of 

us, we loaded the camera and windsurfing 

gear into the boat’s hull. All of us were 

covered in cuts and that milky sap. Once 

on the dangerous sea journey home, the 

skipper turned and said, “Don’t get the 

white stuff in your eyes or you’ll go blind.” 


I suffered on that trip to Madagascar, 

but now it makes for a 

good story. When I was a teenager, 

I hosted camps with SoloSports 

in Baja during the summers, and 

there I met Clark Merritt, one of 

North America’s original windsurfing 

raconteurs. Clark told me 

the only windsurfing story worth 

writing is the one where everything 

goes wrong. “Misadventure 

sells,” he said. And sure, who does 

not love to read about suffering? 

While Clark’s words hold wisdom, 

I believe the secret to a good windsurfing 

story is simply to leave the 

windsurfing out. The most annoying 

and boring stories tap into the youshould-have-been-here-yesterday 

nostalgia of a windy day you missed. 

Pete DeKay, the editor of Windsurfing 

Now, asked me to work with 

him on an issue focused on stories. 

In the following pages, I’ve compiled 

seven stories about windsurfing 

that completely ignore windsurfing 

itself, but rather focus on the 

details that create the life around 

windsurfing: the people, the places, 

the process. Did you know Robby 

Naish attended Punahou—Hawaii’s 

most prestigious high school—with 

Barack Obama? Or that he was married 

with a daughter at 18? I asked a 

friend of mine, Alex Papazian, who 

does not windsurf, to describe the 

World Tour from his perspective as 

an outsider. Lucy Clarke is a successful 

novelist who also windsurfs. 

In Hawaii, we say “talk story.” It is 

a pidgin idiom that could be translated 

as “chew the fat” or “shoot the 

breeze,” but that would be to miss 

the point. Talk story is an attitude 

more than an activity. Talk story is 

the belief that stories can be light 

from which we see each other. Here, 

you will find stories that show the 

lives of every kind of windsurfer. 

Enjoy. And send us your own. 

41

Intergenerational 

WORDS BY THOMAS TRAVERSA / PHOTO BY JOHN CARTER/PWAWORLDTOUR.COM 

E 

very now and then I see a classic 

windsurf video pop up on the 

Internet, and I enjoy so much 

watching them. These vintage videos 

portray windsurfing in such a different 

way; the vibe is just so different to what 

it is nowadays: Windsurfing is new, 

it is fun, it is modern and simple, it is 

affordable, it is for everyone. There is 

a clip from the ‘80s (or ‘70s?) simply 

called "Windsurfing Hawaii” that starts 

with a young Robby Naish freestyling 

and cruising on a massive board. His 

sail almost looks wider than it is high, 

but one thing is sure: he is having fun. 

More than 30 years later, the 

same Robby Naish rides waves at 

Ho’okipa and wins heats in the Aloha 

Classic. And from what I see, the 

guy still has a lot of fun. I guess he 

has just as much fun as we all do 

when we get to the water, and I like 

to believe that we all enjoy the same 

feeling: the wind in our sail, the 

water under our feet, the speed.... 

These feelings come to my mind 

when I imagine the day I teach my 

daughter how to windsurf, if she 

ever wants to try, of course. To teach 

her, I would tow her on her own 

equipment behind me, as they do 

it in some windsurfing schools. I 

hope she will enjoy it and not be 

scared of the ocean. Hopefully she 

sees the sea as the coolest place on 

earth, as I did when I learned. 

My dad was not a great windsurfer 

when he taught me—he could barely 

waterstart. But as I improved, he did 

also. We learned to jibe together. My 

best memories are from all the spring 

and summer days we went sailing 

together. We would just cruise for 

hours, from one bay to the other. 

Or, we would go really far out. 

It was incredible being 11-yearold 

and having the possibility to go 

wherever I wanted to on my windsurf 

board. At sea, there is no one to tell 

you what to do, or how to do it, or for 

how long or how far. Exploring the 

surface of the sea— with no rules 

or limits—is really what hooked 

me. I felt so lucky and special to 

have the sea as my playground. 

I’m not sure if it is because I became 

a dad last year or if my feelings come 

from getting older (I turned 30 last 

December), but I appreciate more and 

more the history of our sport. The 

many innovations, the many pioneers, 

the many generations of boards and 

sails, and the many generations of 

talented and inspiring windsurfers. 

During my first years on the PWA 

Wave Tour, I competed against the 

likes of Josh Angulo, Kevin Pritchard, 

Nik Baker, Scott McKercher and Jason 

Polakow, just to name a few. They were 

the stars of our sport at that time—and 

the guys to beat. I was part of a group 

of kids trying to find a place on the 

big stage. My generation included 

Kauli Seadi, Ricardo Campello, Victor 

Fernandez, Alex Mussolini, and Robby 

Swift. For most of us, the Freestyle 

World Tour offered the opportunity 

"...we don’t have to 

worry for the future." 

to get our first significant results, 

which led to financial support from the 

sponsors, which allowed us to travel 

more, train harder, and dedicate our 

lives to being professional windsurfers. 

The older guys quickly disappeared 

from PWA freestyle tour. Winning in 

2002, at 29 years old, Matt Pritchard 

is the oldest freestyle world champion 

of the last 13 years. While the older 

guys still dominated the Wave and 

Slalom Tours, the freestyle circuit 

became a place for my generation 

to do well. Soon, many of us started 

to compete on the Wave Tour too, 

where our generation introduced 

freestyle to the waves. With all our 

competition experience from the 

freestyle tour, we began to win heats, 

competitions, and even world titles. 

I will always remember my first big 

heat win on the Wave Tour. I beat Peter 

Volwater in the double-elimination of 

the 2005 PWA World Cup in Guincho, 

Portugal. It was one of my first wave 

World Cups, and he was one of my heroes 

and a great waverider. To win against him 

was big for me. But at the same time, I 

felt bad for Peter because even though 

I beat him in that heat, he was a much 

better windsurfer than I was back then. 

Now, we are the guys to beat. The 

wave tour’s top ten consists of names 

from my generation. We are all thirty 

or older, and five of us have small 

children. I am very curious to see who 

the next generation is going to be and 

what they will be like. I am only talking 

about wavesailing because it is the 

part of windsurfing I know the best. 

There is so much talent in the younger 

guys: Köster definitely changed and 

continues to change the standards of 

jumping; Jaeger Stone offers a unique 

snappy approach to waveriding; Morgan 

Noireaux is one of the few people in 

history to win back-to-back Ho’okipa 

World Cups, and he is only twentyone; 

And let's not forget the two core 

wave riders—maybe not yet completely 

mature for contests but very strong and 

stylish waveriders—Camille Juban and 

Graham Ezzy. Even if we do not know 

what direction this new generation will 

push the sport, I guess we don't have 

to worry for the future. Every year, this 

young generation and my generation 

compete in the Aloha Classic at Ho’okipa 

with Robby Naish, the original pro 

windsurfer. (To compare with surfing: 

Robby is both Duke Kahanamoku 

and Kelly Slater at the same time.) 

And this is the point I wanted to 

come to: windsurfing is not nearly as 

big as it used to be; there are fewer 

competitions and each has less prize 

money than before, but at the same 

time the equipment gets better 

and easier. Because windsurfing is 

now such a small sport, you only 

meet very passionate windsurfers 

following the fun and freedom our 

sport offers. I am really looking 

forward to seeing what windsurfing 

looks like for the future generations, 

and I know I will always belong. 


Thomas Traversa won his first world title in 2014 in the wave discipline of the PWA World Tour. He lives in Marseilles, France— 

where he grew up and learned to windsurf. When not windsurfing, he loves being a dad to his daughter, who just turned one. 

43

Meet Lucy Clarke 

INTERVIEW BY GRAHAM EZZY / PHOTO BY JAMES BOWDEN 

Lucy Clarke is an English novelist who windsurfs. The paperback 

edition of her third novel, The Blue, will be released in North America 

this summer. While the novel does not directly feature windsurfing, 

a sailing yacht is at the center of the plot. 

What was your first experience 

with windsurfing? I was at 

university in Wales, and I decided to 

join the University Windsurfing Club. 

A minibus filled with freshers was 

taken to a freezing lake in the middle 

of winter, handed damp wetsuits that 

were 10 years out of date, and shown 

how to rig a sail. Despite the cold and 

the poor equipment, we had such 

fun windsurfing up and down that 

lake—and then thawing out in the 

pub afterwards. How good are you? 

I am an eternal learner. However, 

when I do windsurf, I absolutely 

love it. Writing is my passion, and 

windsurfing is my husband’s (James 

Cox), but it’s a wonderful feeling when 

we’re able to sail together and share 

that experience. A novelist married 

to a professional windsurfer.... 

You two carry a lot of cool clout. 

Who gets more attention at 

cocktail parties? I would love to 

know—but we’re never invited to 

any. We’re more likely to be found 

cooking up some food on the beach 

with a few old friends. Is writing 

similar to windsurfing? At first, 

they appear polar opposites: the 

dry-land, seemingly static process 

of writing versus the salt-soaked, 

heart-thumping roar of windsurfing. 

Yet, on another level, there’s a 

true commonality: both are about 

pursuing a sensation—being at our 

very best, finding our edge—and 

pushing it. When I write, some days 

the words flow easily onto the page, 

but there are other days (plenty of 

them) that are filled with frustration 

and false starts. Windsurfing can be 

awash with those same highs and 

lows: the conditions aren’t right, 

the move you made a few days ago 

is now eluding you entirely, you 

rigged the wrong-sized sail. Yet it’s 

precisely these very challenges that 

make you want it even more. Is it a 

coincidence that all three of your 

novels involve the sea? I grew up 

on the south coast of England, so 

the sea was always a huge part of 

my life. Cities are wonderful and 

exciting places to be, but after a few 

days, I feel an almost gravitational 

pull towards the coast. I like to set 

my novels in places that excite and 

"My husband and I 

spend as much of 

each winter as we 

can abroad... we are 

both lucky enough to 

be able to take our 

'offices' with us." 

inspire me—and for me, that always 

involves the sea. Maui, Western 

Australia, Bali and Tasmania…. 

My husband and I spend as much of 

each winter as we can abroad. He 

is a professional windsurfer, so we 

are both lucky enough to be able 

to take our “offices” with us. Over 

the past few years, we traveled to 

Chile, Hawaii, Western Australia, 

Tasmania, Fiji, New Zealand, Canada, 

Sri Lanka, the U.S. and Europe. 

Whenever we’re away, my travel 

journal comes with me, and often it’s 

during those times that inspiration 

arrives for a new novel. What scares 

or excites you most about the sea? I 

love its changeability. On a calm, 

glassy morning, I can be gliding 

on my paddleboard, watching fish 

dart beneath me, and then—in a 

matter of hours—the clouds roll in, 

the wind picks up, waves swell and 

groan, and suddenly I am dealing 

with a completely different beast. 

That’s when my husband picks up his 

windsurfer—and when I’m happy 

to retreat to the shore with a cup of 

tea. What does a work day look like 

for Lucy Clarke? I write Monday to 

Friday, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. I turn off the 

Internet, silence my phone, put on my 

music and write furiously. I always 

write my first draft of a novel by 

hand—after that, everything else is 

done on screen. When I’m in the U.K. 

and the weather is warm, I’ll often 

write from our beach hut, which is my 

favorite spot in the world to think. In 

the afternoons, writing is put aside 

and I hang out with my one-and-ahalf-year-old 

son, Tommy. And what 

about your most recent novel, The 

Blue? With a spin of a globe, best 

friends Lana and Kitty escape their 

lives in England and journey to the 

Philippines. There, they discover 

“The Blue”, a beautiful yacht manned 

by a group of wanderers. When 

they’re invited to join the crew, they 

slip into an idyllic routine of sailing 

and snorkeling around the isolated 

islands of the Philippines, embracing 

a way of life that makes it easy to 

forget the secrets they left behind. 

But the tide turns when death creeps 

quietly on deck. A dangerous swell of 

mistrust and lies threatens to bring 

the crew’s adventures to an end. 


45

Excerpt From The Blue 

(MEET LUCY CLARKE) 

L 

ana stood on deck, looking 

down into the turquoise 

depths. They were anchored 

in about thirty feet of water, but the 

seabed shelved off deeply, the depth 

finder reading over one hundred 

feet as they’d sailed closer towards 

the tiny fleck of an island—the 

only land they’d seen for days. 

There was something daunting, 

a primeval fear, about diving into 

the unknown, where sharks or other 

predators could be lurking. Without 

giving herself time to hesitate or 

delay, she unhooked her dress, 

tied it around the lifeline to keep it 

from blowing away, and dived in. 

The water felt cool against her 

skin as she cut through it, her fingers 

and toes in a point. She opened 

her eyes underwater, and blurry 

blue light filtered around her. 

She let herself gradually float to 

the surface, the sea carrying her 

gently upwards. Then she began 

to swim, her arms slicing through 

the calm water with smooth, 

steady strokes. It was surprisingly 

wonderful to be moving—not just 

within the constricted space of 

the yacht—but freely, fluidly. 

She swam away from the yacht in 

the direction of the island, feeling 

a pleasing ache building in her arm 

muscles. It was a relief to be doing 

something physical, and she felt 

immediately better for it. The water 

beneath her grew shallower as she 

swam over reef, coral waving in 

and out of view. She should have 

brought the mask and snorkel. She 

dived under and stopped kicking, 

hovering there in the still blue. 

She wasn’t breathing, wasn’t 

thinking, wasn’t swimming—just 

gliding through layers of ocean 

and salt water. As her lungs began 

to tingle, she heard a rumbling 

sound. Her thoughts drifted around 

the familiar shape of the noise, 

wondering what it could be out here in 

the empty ocean. Sounds underwater 

travel five times faster than in air, so 

Lana knew that whatever it was must 

be farther away than it appeared. 

Suddenly her eyes flashed open 

to the salt sting of the sea as she 

recognized the noise: it was the sound 

of the boat engine starting up. 

She kicked hard, splashing to 

the surface and taking in a gulp of 

air. “The Blue” was still positioned 

as it had been before—about five 

hundred meters away—but she 

could see the shape of someone 

standing at the bow bringing in the 

"As her lungs began 

to tingle, she heard 

a rumbling sound. 

Her thoughts drifted 

around the familiar 

shape of the noise, 

wondering what it 

could be out here in 

the empty ocean." 

anchor. Perhaps it was dragging 

and they’d decided to re-anchor. 

It was eerie to know the anchor was 

being pulled when she was this far 

from the yacht. She chided herself for 

swimming such a distance. Deciding 

to head back, she swam in front 

crawl, keeping the rhythm steady. 

The engine noise increased, 

a throbbing sound that bubbled 

through the otherwise still air. As 

she watched the yacht, she became 

aware of the bow turning away 

from her, pointing in the opposite 

direction—out towards the horizon. 

She guessed they were reanchoring, 

but it was unnerving 

to see the yacht turning away from 

her. She swam harder, thrusting 

her arms through the water. She 

kept expecting the yacht to turn 

back, to see its bow swinging 

towards her as it found a new spot 

to anchor—but oddly it kept its 

course, heading towards the open 

ocean, the dinghy tied to its stern. 

Surely they wouldn’t anchor far 

from the original spot where Lana 

was swimming. They must just be 

making a wide turn. She swam after 

it, her arms beginning to tire—but 

the yacht didn’t swing around. It 

was getting farther away from her. 

“Hey!” she shouted. “Wait!” 

She could see some of the crew 

on deck—just silhouettes where 

the sun was behind them—but 

no one turned. No one heard. 

She was exhausted, panting from 

the burst of front crawl, and she 

had to tread water for a moment 

while she caught her breath. It was 

hard to judge distances or speeds 

without landmarks, but it seemed 

that the yacht was already two 

hundred, maybe three hundred, 

meters from where it had been 

anchored. She waited, still believing 

that the yacht was going to turn 

back—but a minute passed, and 

then another. The Blue didn’t turn. 

Then she realized: the position 

the yacht was now in was too 

deep to put down the anchor. The 

crew weren’t finding a new spot 

to anchor—they were leaving. 

“Wait! Stop! Stop!” she cried, the 

pleas scratching at her throat. 

With a sickening sense of dread, 

she remembered that she hadn’t told 

anyone she was swimming. Her dress 

was tied to the lifeline—surely one 

of them would see it and realize? 

With ragged breathing, she trod 

water, watching as the boat motored 

farther away into the distance. Panic 

sparked and thickened. “Why aren’t 

you checking I’m on board?” she 

screamed across the empty ocean. 

Then a shot of fear pierced her 

thoughts. 

What if they had? 


Kevin Pritchard photo 

Excerpted from Lucy Clarke’s The Blue, which is available in paperback and hardback by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. 

Copyright © 2015 by Lucy Clarke. Reprinted with permission from Touchstone, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 

For more information about Lucy Clarke and her novels, visit www.lucy-clarke.com. 

47

Speed of a Dream 

WORDS BY JEFF NUNOKAWA 

“The ancients believed that Homer was a blind man.” 

—Jasper Griffin, Homer on Life and Death 

W 

hen he was a boy, my father 

must have swum without 

his glasses. My father 

was a surfer when he was young—he 

carried a longboard—but once the 

glasses grew too thick for him to ever 

be without them, he stopped going 

into the water. My mother, a problemsolver 

by nature, tried to persuade him 

to get goggles with corrective lenses, 

but such a concession to his handicap 

was a nonstarter for my father. He was 

annoyed by the very suggestion, just 

as he was, years later, by his second 

wife’s proposal that he give one of 

those “low vision” centers a try. 

By the time I knew him, all his 

surfing was done by his sons. (My 

sister surfed too, a lot better than I 

did, but she was a special case—more 

of a civilian, or a one-girl auxiliary 

unit.) My brother and I would be 

ordered into the water, where we got 

our basic training shouted to us from 

shore. It was actually a lot more fun 

than it sounds—good fun, as the kids 

used to say where I grew up. Once 

we learned the rules of engagement 

with the surf, we knew how to turn a 

roaring enemy into a friendly force 

that would carry us, at the speed of a 

dream, all the way in from all the way 

out. He taught us the tricks we needed 

to know to defend ourselves against 

its wily ways; worst case scenario: 

you could always dive down and 

wait for the wave to pass over you. 

Of course there was that one time 

my little brother, who’s a whole lot 

braver than I am, did something 

stupid that required my father to 

jump in and save him from a broken 

neck or drowning. (My father knows 

the swiftness of the windy-dark 

tides.) My father calculated how 

little time he had to extricate my 

brother from the danger that would 

have brought him down forever, and 

he acted accordingly, sacrificing 

his glasses to the operation. 

With his glasses lost, he was 

blind. The rest of the day was pretty 

miserable for all of us—my mother 

had to lead him around, till he could 

get new glasses (for some reason he 

had no backups). It was a Sunday, and 

there was no way to get my father a 

new pair of glasses till tomorrow. True 

to form, he made himself as unlovely 

as possible, effortlessly assuming the 

Unfair, Grecian Attitude of a blind, illtempered 

tyrant, whose sight no one 

could stand. I thought his only motive 

was to ruin everyone's day of rest. 

But that was only once. All the 

other times were pretty smooth 

surfing. If we wiped out on one 

wave, that was OK. We knew to just 

get up and go for the next one. 

After a while, with the occasional 

exception, when we went too far or 

not far enough, our father’s voice 

disappeared in the sound of the surf 

and in the feeling of jet propulsion and 

in the sense of our own strength in the 

face the waves. I never became a real 

surfer—not like my board-certified 

brother. Now though, when I write, 

and the words and my fear for them 

come at me like a tide that threatens 

to rip me apart, I remember a basically 

blind man shouting me into believing 

that I could never be silenced by 

anything a wave had to say. 


Jeff Nunokawa teaches English Literature at Princeton University. He writes an essay every day, often in the hours around sunrise. The topics 

include literature, philosophy, his mother’s dog, and his childhood in Hawaii. The style is a combination of opposites: conversational yet academic, 

confessional yet universal. Nunokawa is also the author of Note Book, a 325-page collection of these essays, published in hardcover on April 27, 2015 

by Princeton University Press. For more information about Nunokawa and to read more of his writing, visit facebook.com/jeff.nunokawa. 

49

Waiting 

Games 

WORDS BY ALEX PAPAZIAN 

PHOTOS BY JOHN CARTER/ 

PWAWORLDTOUR.COM 

W 

hen people find out I grew up in Hawaii, they ask, 

“Do you surf?” The problem is I’m not a surfer, so 

I must choose between being dishonest and being 

disappointing. A guy from Hawaii saying “No, I don’t surf” 

is roughly equivalent to an NBA player saying “No, I don’t 

dunk”; it diminishes whatever sheen there might have been. 

Sometimes—most times, really—I answer with a Clintonian 

triangulation: “Sure, I surf, sometimes, but it’s not a 

main hobby,” or even “Well, yes, but also no. To be a surfer in 

Hawaii means you’re basically pro. I’m definitely not pro.” 

I like windsurfing better than surfing, even though I 

have only tried it twice. Hauling up the sail when I dropped 

it was the worst part. A strenuous and humiliating task: 

squat, mind your balance, and tug at the submerged sail, 

which seemingly tugs right back on you. Mostly, the sail 

wins, leaving you in the water, struggling and slipping like 

a toddler to climb back on the board so you can get back 

to squatter’s tug-of-war. But once up, with the sail under 

my command, I was whipping across the water with all the 

wind’s power in my hands. And there is a cognitive challenge 

in addition to the physical one; reading the wind, 

becoming one with it, adds so many layers of complexity. 


Alex Papazian recently finished a masters in Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics. He currently 

lives between Maui and London while he looks for a job. To offer Alex a job, email him at alexander.papazian@gmail.com. 

51

(WAITING GAMES) 

This past autumn, I visited the 

PWA World Tour in Denmark 

and Germany to see my friend, 

Graham [Ezzy], compete. We drove 

from Hamburg to the upper reaches of 

remote Denmark. Since our iPhones 

no longer had service across the 

border, we used old-fashioned fold-out 

maps in conjunction with the road 

signs. This was especially laborious 

because the Danish towns had names 

like “Vejle” and “Middelfart”—either 

impossible to pronounce or impossible 

to stop saying. And, of course, we were 

heading to a town called Klitmøller, 

pronounced roughly like “Clit-Mauler.” 

To compensate for these challenges, 

I took photos of the map with my 

iPhone, so I could look at the route 

with the familiar comfort of a screen. 

We arrived at night, picking up the 

keys for the rental from a lockbox 

attached to the side of a small warehouse 

building. The night was foggy 

and very dark. A single tall street lamp, 

or rather parking lot lamp, or perhaps 

even a town lamp, emitted a weak orange 

light that was losing the struggle 

against the fog. The town felt empty, 

but the roads and buildings were wellkept, 

as if the town were not simply 

left behind but entirely artificial. It was 

a strange form of creepiness. Before 

the trip, Graham described Klitmøller 

to me like this: You can leave the 

front door unlocked at night and 

feel confident in your safety and the 

security of your belongings, but you 

can’t escape the suspicion that there is 

a torture chamber in someone’s cellar. 

All the people are friendly, but 

friendliness is not the loudest feature 

of each day. Rather, it is a distant-relative 

kind of friendliness: enough talk 

to establish warm civility, and no more. 

The first windsurfing-related activity 

was in the gear tent, which served 

as the main base at the competition. 

The weather was uncooperative, so 

the tent was also a shelter. Here, the 

sailors saw each other for the first 

time, caught up, and set up their rigs. 

They made for a jolly bunch, yet it 

was not hard to detect the sizing-up 

between competitors. Scattering 

gazes quickly measured sail sizes, 

and much of the catching up was a 

comparison of recent accomplishments. 

When the rigs were ready to 

go, the next step was to wait for the 

proper conditions to materialize. 

I had excellent—even, I thought at 

the time, superlative—soft ice cream 

at a restaurant near the ocean. It was 

unflavored: just sweetened cream, 

making the idea of flavored ice cream 

seem gaudy, unnecessary and a superfluous 

concession to the unrefined 

palates of the unsophisticated, like 

marshmallow vodka. We drove up the 

coast a short distance, beyond a fish 

packaging plant, which emitted an 

Awestruck, we 

stopped the car in 

the middle of the 

highway, got out, 

and enjoyed a few 

minutes of taking 

pictures and 

admiring the view. 

uniquely, unforgivingly offensive odor. 

It too looked abandoned, but I concluded 

that it could not be because in 

general, such a stench requires recent 

activity. On the drive back, we came 

upon an immense rainbow. Awestruck, 

we stopped the car in the middle of 

the highway, got out, and enjoyed a 

few minutes of taking pictures and 

admiring the view. Then we drove 

back to Klitmøller. This concludes the 

list of activities during the five days of 

waiting for the competition to run. 

Which is to say, there was much 

waiting around. Every sport has more 

to it than what may be observed during 

the spectacle of competition. Athletes 

spend their time in various ancillary 

activities, which can sometimes be 

more time-consuming than any other 

part of the sport. American football is 

a weightlifting profession as much as it 

is anything else; professional cycling, 

from what I gather, is really competitive 

clandestine biotechnology. There 

are two contenders for the “sport-within-the-sport” 

of windsurfing: traveling 

and waiting. If you consider the list 

of professions required to visit places 

like Madagascar, Northern Denmark, 

Western Australia, North Africa, and 

Hawaii, you will find a small group 

of diplomats, oil explorers, and… 

windsurfers. They’re always traveling—true 

nomads. But, even more 

than traveling, windsurfers wait. 

Waiting requires focus and concentration; 

otherwise, it is too 

maddening. Wake up, check the 

weather forecast. Bad conditions. 

Walk to the beach to double-check 

the forecast: indeed, bad conditions. 

Walk up and down the beach, taking 

careful account of the badness of the 

conditions. Meet other competitors, 

similarly engaged on the beach. 

Lament the bad conditions. Speculate 

on the duration of the doldrums and 

on the accuracy of the forecasts. It is 

now midmorning. Might the conditions 

change in the afternoon? Walk 

back to the house, check the weather 

forecast. Bad conditions. Repeat. 

My experience of the waiting 

was strange; I was there merely 

as a witness. I wanted to get to 

know professional windsurfing, 

to watch all aspects of the sport. 

Very soon I could see that windsurfing 

is, as I have shown, a waiting 

game. But, in that case, was I 

waiting? Although I certainly had 

the time, I could never decide. 

The competition started with 

decently sized waves, cold, whipping 

winds, and a relentless, spraying 

rain. Klitmøller’s beach is likely a 

pleasant place in nice weather, but 

this thought required all powers of 

imagination in the darkness of the 

storm. The sand was wet and gravelly, 

spotted with rocks shaped for the 

purpose of causing people to stumble. 

The sea was a bruised body of browns 

and blues, enduring the wind’s abuse. 


The first competition heats began 

at seven in the morning, before I was 

awake, as if to take revenge on all the 

waiting. I arrived at the shore, with 

the competition in full swing. The 

sailors kept their spare rigs sprawled 

on the beach, which reminded me 

of the pit stops in Formula 1. The 

spare sails seemed to number in the 

hundreds, covering a vast area. 

An elderly couple strolling the beach 

looked curious and confused to see the 

cold sand so populated. I hoped they 

would appreciate the bright colors of 

the sails’ liveries as a source of cheer 

and optimism. But my hopes didn’t 

last long. As the two walked among the 

pit stops, they were suddenly targeted 

by a rogue, unharnessed sail, which 

was picked up by a gust and flung 

downwind. Fortunately, they were not 

injured, as someone came quickly to 

their rescue. But the episode seemed 

to leave them thoroughly discouraged. 

The heats ran in quick succession, 

and everything happened faster than 

I expected it would; I had trouble 

keeping up with the outcomes, 

the winnowing of the bracket, and 

the implications for future rounds 

and the championship scoring. I 

had to slog through the rain, from 

the shoreline to the scoreboard 

and back, just to maintain a vague 

idea of what was happening. But 

every sailor, each a working professional, 

knew exactly his place, 

time, and competitors’ results. 

Between their heats, the sailors 

thawed in a hot tub set up near 

the judges’ box, with a view of 

the competition. At the water’s 

edge, I was closer to the action, 

but, soaking wet in the cold rain, 

I experienced a sickening envy. 

Despite the capricious waves, 

which couldn’t decide on a consistent 

height or direction, Graham 

did well, which was very fun to see. 

He came up just short in a heat I was 

sure he won. Windsurfing is a highly 

technical sport that requires years of 

practice and lots of talent to master. 

And in competition, it is game of 

chance as well as a game of skill. 

53

(WAITING GAMES) 

Back in London a couple weeks 

later, I prepared for another 

visit to the PWA World Tour. I 

returned to Hamburg and, from the 

airport, navigated the train system 

to Sylt: Westerland. Arriving in the 

evening, I could already tell this was 

going to be a different PWA experience. 

Upon exiting the train station, I 

found a place among gigantic turquoise 

sculptures of what appeared to 

be a family of Shreks in the unfortunate 

and permanent position of being 

blown over by a strong wind. A Ferrari 

passed by; a woman sauntered across 

the street wearing beige leggings 

and Frye boots; a Porsche growled 

to life. I walked through the clean, 

well-lit streets in happy anticipation. 

The beach was an extended, sparkling 

strip of white sand. The sun 

shone brightly in a cloudless sky. 

There was a huge production set up 

for the PWA: an enormous tent full 

of cooking, eating, and drinking. 

Everyone was in the spirit of vacation 

and entertainment. The windsurfers 

were putting on not just a competition 

for the connoisseurs, but a show for 

the masses. They were celebrities. 

Despite the implications of the windblown 

sculptures in front of the train 

station, wind and its ally, the waves, 

were absent. Waiting was upon us. But 

the weather was sunny and relatively 

warm—great for leisure. The first 

night, we went to a party sponsored by 

a clothing brand called Jaklar at a strip 

club called Zed 1. We descended into a 

small basement filled with windsurfers, 

male and female, who, as a rule, 

have long hair made lighter and frizzier 

by sun and sea, and are permanently 

tanned so that their skin is wrinkled 

beyond their years. They make for a 

jovial, unpretentious group that, given 

the resemblance among its members, 

appears to be an extended family. 

The next day, we went on a bike 

ride from Westerland to List, the 

northernmost town in Germany. 

The dedicated bicycle path wound 

through neighborhoods with the 

characteristic architecture Sylt is 

known for. High-peaked, thatched 

roofs hung low to the ground, hiding 

the brick walls, like a hood pulled low 

over a face. This gave the impression 

of cozy interiors—but also a kind of 

exclusivity. The new homes being 

built were all in the same style, but 

the reeds of the new roofs were a 

lighter, golden brown, and they were 

in a uniform shape unburdened by 

weather. They looked like cheap 

impersonations. But apparently, in 

less than a year, the new reeds take 

on the old, grizzled look so prized. 

Farther away from the town of 

Westerland, fewer houses could be 

seen, and then we were completely 

surrounded by Sylt’s barren landscape. 

The vegetation, dark green 

and brown, was a mix of shrubs and 

grasses huddled low against the 

wind. The landscape was all low hills, 

extending into the foggy distance. 

At one point, we came across a lake 

"I began to pity the 

lake, orphaned as it 

was by the water 

that had abandoned 

it, and I resented the 

fog for trying to cover 

up the crime." 

with what appeared to be receding 

shorelines. Almost all the water was 

gone, and only scattered puddles and 

damp sand remained in the basin. 

We couldn’t see into the distance, 

because of the fog. I biked onto the 

lake bed and rode across the packed 

sand for some time, then got stuck, 

which meant I had to drag the bicycle 

back out. I was on the lake long 

enough to feel a certain intimacy with 

it. I began to pity the lake, orphaned 

as it was by the water that had abandoned 

it, and I resented the fog for 

trying to cover up the crime. (Editor’s 

note: It was just the sea at low tide.) 

For dinner one night, we went to 

Shirobar for sushi, or, as Germans 

incorrectly but charmingly pronounce 

it, “zooshie.” We had several 

dishes in concert; in each instance, 

the quality was supreme and the 

composition elegant. For dessert, 

the chef brought out ice cream that 

was homemade with milk from Sylt 

cows. The scoops were a warm, golden 

color. The chef told us the flavor— 

caramel soy sauce—and returned 

to the kitchen. I was skeptical of soy 

sauce in ice cream, but I figured at 

least it wouldn’t contrast with the 

sushi flavors still fresh on my palate. 

Each bite began with refreshing 

coolness. Then the caramel came to 

life, a sweetening second act that combined 

perfectly with the soft texture, 

accented with sugar crystals. Admiring 

this flawless execution, one would be 

forgiven for forgetting the other flavor. 

But the chef had thought of this, and in 

the final moments, the dénouement arrived: 

the taste of soy sauce, contrasting 

and enhancing the caramel and 

leaving a combined, perfectly unique 

flavor. I felt like an expert gourmet, 

able to distinguish the finest flavors; 

a master composer appreciating each 

individual contribution to the symphony. 

I wanted more and nothing else. 

Like pizza, ice cream is uniformly 

satisfying. Premium ice cream is 

distinct for its quality, but because 

ice cream is always quite good, it is 

difficult to astonish someone with the 

greatness of a particular ice cream. 

Yet, we were utterly stunned with this 

ice cream, to the point of momentary 

speechlessness and deafness. 

It was so good, so much better than 

anything else in the world that it became 

a paradox. Being so far superior 

to any other ice cream imaginable, 

could it really be ice cream? Yes and 

no. I was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s 

remark that a truth in art is that whose 

contradictory is also true. With that 

ice cream, we were dealing with art. 

The wave competition didn’t run 

because the proper conditions didn’t 

materialize. But so much of the professional 

windsurfing experience did 

occur, in finding ways to wait around. 

We partied, discovered restaurants, 

befriended the locals, and explored 

the surrounding nature. Come for the 

windsurfing, stay for the ice cream. 


Alex Papazian recently finished a masters in Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics. He currently lives 

between Maui and London while he looks for a job. To offer Alex a job, email him at alexander.papazian@gmail.com. 

55

Waiting for 

P.T. Barnum 

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY CLARK MERRITT 

Sometime in early March there 

began quite a hustle and bustle 

about holding a major international 

windsurfing contest in Punta 

San Carlos, Baja. Negotiations were fast 

and furious between PWA organizers 

and Solo Sports, the current landlord 

of PSC. There were information leaks, 

which promptly took the high-speed 

onramp to the Internet News Groups 

and Chatrooms, et cetera, et cetera. 

This was not the first time a competition 

had been considered. Two years 

before, the exact same proposition met 

stiff opposition by a host of San Carlos 

regulars and then-new land manager, 

Solo Sports owner, Kevin Trejo. 

There were harsh critics this time 

too—with all the same arguments and 

doomsday predictions—but somehow, 

as if by providence, a deal was 

struck and the contest was scheduled 

for March 30 to April 6, 1999. 

Tensions ran high but were suspiciously 

void of the previous threats of 

vandalism and violence. A consensus 

showed either complete contempt or 

total apathy. Those adamantly opposed 

referred to Kevin Trejo’s shift in 

positioning as “Betrejo-ing the Point.” 

Punta San Carlos held (and still holds) 

a place of spirituality to most, and 

the thought of an event there seemed 

downright sacrilegious. The PWA 

organizers planned a careful strategy to 

acknowledge and respect the sanctity. 

Amidst the flurries of venomous 

e-mails about the PWA apocalypse, 

a decision was made by some closeknit 

devotees to visit the carnage 

firsthand. There were consultations 

and such with the mystics at www. 

subgenius.com, and a sign was 

delivered in the form of an image of a 

Dobbs head complete with sombrero. 

It was discovered on the lid of our 

ZuZu’s Pizza box, composed of sauce 

and cheese—truly a cosmic experience 

and all the justification we needed for 

a sortie to Armageddon. That night, 

I dreamed I was a willing, smiling 

participant in a 1950’s army nuclear 

bomb test, not in Nevada but in the 

San Carlos’ desert. The blast came 

from the point and none of the PWA 

participants had a clue. The bomb 

went off with bright, white light, and 

instantly we were all Soupy Sales-ed 

with cream pies. Whoa. No more 

loaded pizza for me after 10 p.m. 


57

Enter Fauquier the Magnificent 

(WAITING FOR P.T. BARNUM) 

I 

had never before traveled to Baja 

with Mr. Rod Johnson, Special 

Events Editor for a chic boutique, 

micro, sports magazine. (They were 

in fact the only publication willing 

to foot at least half of my expenses 

and pay a nominal fee—and 

that’s important to my taxman.) I 

jumped at the chance to freelance 

this assignment with Mr. Johnson, 

an avid Hunter Thompson fan and 

literary provocateur of measurable 

continence (whatever that means). 

Mr. Johnson and I met halfway 

between Malibu and Huntington 

Beach to properly split the travel 

expenses. (Long gone are the days of 

bulging magazine expense accounts. 

Born too late again! Oh well, Reader’s 

Digest rejected all of my diatribes 

and consternations, so I guess it is 

this assignment or the Huntington 

Beach Weekly Reader public opinion 

poll.) Mr. Johnson, a Mediterranean 

food aficionado settled for a little 

French Moroccan joint out by LAX, 

appropriately named Le Kasbah. I 

never knew French Moroccan was 

considered Mediterranean. After a 

little Tabasco and saltines, who cares. 

Le Kasbah was one of those retro 

movie bar/restaurants, complete 

with a Bogie look-alike who sat at 

the bar most of the evening nursing 

his virgin tonic-and-lime and chain 

smoking filterless clove cigarettes. 

Twice during the evening, Bogie 

slid off his bar stool, slithered over 

to the Dooley look-a-like playing 

piano across the room, and uttered 

those infamous most misquoted 

words: “Play it again, Sam.” 

Tonight was going to be very different 

for the bit players, ourselves, 

and a new character none of us yet 

knew. As if by some interplanetary 

convergence, a complex action of 

collisions was about to change our 

lives forever. As Bogie slid off his 

bar stool to make his rounds to the 

piano, a tall, dark and curious looking 

fellow with a rather large French-style 

proboscis walked backwards carefully 

studying the ceiling décor. Mr. 

Johnson and I heatedly debated the 

virtues of fresh tortellini versus dry 

when Bogie and the man connected, 

sending them both careening over 

our table. Drinks, dinner, and an 

ornate breadbasket went flying. The 

table collapsed as Mr. Johnson and 

I fell backwards onto the floor. The 

management and staff suddenly surrounded 

us. Dinners were immediately 

comped; Bogie was sent home for 

the evening with accusations of yet 

again spiking his tonics, and introductions 

were made to and from the 

mystery man, Monet Della Fauquier. 

We invited Monet to join us at our 

new table. Monet was a pro windsurfer 

of inherited means from the 

now-defunct provence of French 

Ghana and directly descended from 

Frenchmen incarcerated at Devil’s 

Island on trumped up charges. Monet 

wore very thick, circular, wirerimmed 

spectacles. Even corrected, 

his vision fell below 20/20. The 

glasses were dwarfed by the sheer 

size of his nose, and he sometimes 

tilted his head back, squinting to 

catch a more definitive view of his 

interest. In the white wrinkled 

linen suit, he looked Fellini-esque. 

He had just arrived in Los Angeles 

with hopes of competing in the San 

Carlos PWA event. With a very thick 

French accent, he told us that he 

stored his gear at LAX while sourcing 

out a car and directions. He was 

having trouble finding a company 

to rent him a vehicle for travel into 

Mexico. Mr. Johnson invited him to 

stay at my house and volunteered me 

to bring him with us to San Carlos. 

Was Mr. Johnson really my Dr. Gonzo? 

My acceptance of this new plan 

was purely an afterthought. It was 

three days before our departure, 

and a rare blue moon was predicted 

to appear during our journey. The 

last time a similar blue stellar event 

had occurred was over one hundred 

fifty years before. Befitting set of 

circumstances for a cosmic misadventure, 

don’t you think? 


Driving Miss Dizzy 

We armed ourselves with 

laptops, cameras and 

film, batteries, tequila, 

rum, more batteries, six cases of 

Tecate beer, twenty-three emergency 

marine flares, still more batteries, 

and one canned supermodel blowup 

doll. Any other recreations would 

be dug up in the desert. My traveling 

partners, right out of a Joseph 

Conrad novel, knew the significance 

of this event, and it was clear to all 

that history was in the making… or 

was it taking? San Carlos was about 

to lose its virginity at the hands of a 

well-seasoned pro, thusly we required 

a ringside seat with hot dogs and beer 

tenders at the beckon. Very prolific 

and a little kinky! Whip! Crack! 

Pass me the Grey Poupon, please. 

MARCH 31 

On the road since 2:00 a.m., I drove 

on three hours sleep. The Melissa 

and Papa viruses manifested themselves 

in the computers in my office 

on the day we were to leave. I was 

the MIS manager, so this situation 

delayed me six hours. I normally 

pre-plan my Baja food menu for the 

week. With the addition of Fauquier’s 

exotic dietary needs, our pre-planning 

became totally irrelevant. 

With no time to revise the menu, a 

Costco sweep netted more food than 

we could possibly eat in a month of 

continuous feasts. Loading the truck 

was reduced to: throw it in, throw it 

on, and pray to St. Christopher later. I 

unwittingly turned my back on all of 

those precious Baja tenets of wisdom 

hard learned over the years, and I 

anticipated a nasty whipping by Baja 

fate. I prayed my past benevolences to 

other travelers would not be forgotten. 

At 11:00 p.m., I fell into an uneasy 

sleep with horrific dreams of travel 

woes and mechanical breakdowns. 

At a Denny’s in San Ysidro, our 

breakfast fare was predictable with 

an added touch of ambiance to the 

room, serenaded by a door alarm 

that the manager could not turn 

off. With his thick French accent, 

Fauquier questioned the now-veryagitated-by-the-alarm 

Manager about 

why Americans call his breakfast 

“French Toast.” The manager short 

on patience, long-armed us to the 

door with a “le me esplain” and 

nudged us off to Nunca, Nunca Land. 

As we left the border and entered 

Mexico, it dawned on me to ask 

Fauquier if he had his passport. He 

did not. The roulette wheel of Baja 

fortune slowed toward my red number 

13. It had rained from Rosarito 

to Colonet, and driving conditions 

were tedious. Fauquier amused us 

with stories of his opulent life in 

the tropics. Little did I know that 

his thick French inflection would 

lull me into a hypnotic trance. 

At Camalu, I dozed off doing 

seventy miles-per-hour down MEX 

1 highway. As I drifted over to the 

opposing lane, we narrowly missed a 

head-on with a Baja bus, taking five 

years off my companions’ lives. I believe 

Fauquier soiled his shorts over 

the whole episode. Cramped in the 

cab of my truck, the rest of the southbound 

drive was miserable. This 

experience was all I needed to keep 

me awake for the rest of the drive. 

I kept flashing on the scene 

from Trains, Planes and Automobiles 

when John Candy looks over at 

Steve Martin and says, “Gee that 

was close.” It was all I could concentrate 

on to preserve my sanity; 

I disguised a nervous chuckle as 

a cough. My gut was perpetually 

wrenched—something that only a 

few Tecates would remedy—but I 

dared not ask my now silent companions, 

who were mentally putting 

their last wills and testaments 

together, to crack open the cooler. 

When we finally reached the 

dirt road to San Carlos, we double-checked 

the boards on the roof 

while consuming a six-pack in less 

than three minutes, which put our 

spirits back on track but did nothing 

for ensuring the security of 

the gear. Somewhere on the road, 

we lost our AstroTurf carpeting. 

A week later, on the way back out 

to the highway, it was gone—now, 

no doubt, a lovely compliment 

to some local’s adobe abode. 

APRIL 1ST 

We picked a lovely sloping cliffside 

plot of ground within stone’s throw 

of the Solo Sports Campo and PWA 

Central. (We never threw any—honest!—although 

we were heavily 

bribed to do so). Frayed and frazzled 

by the turmoils of the trip we decide 

to surf first, setup camp later. This 

morsel of wisdom made famous by 

Dr. Trumbo was challenged later 

that evening when a violent rainstorm 

hammered our tent to the 

ground. It was utter chaos trying to 

fix the tent in the dark while being 

pounded by 30-knot winds and rain. 

The next morning, we had a small 

duck pond in the low end of the tent, 

christened Lake Fauquier Bayou in 

honor of its shoreline resident. 

Meanwhile the contest commenced 

without a hitch. Messrs. Farkle, our 

latest nickname for Fauquier, was 

devastated upon learning that despite 

all of his credentials and healthy trust 

fund, he could not enter the PWA 

contest. This news set him off on a 

drinking binge that depleted us of 

all our inebriates within two days. 

Mr. Johnson tried in vain to extract 

any contest information from the 

organizers but their lips were ever 

so politely sealed. The contestants 

must also have been sworn to 

secrecy because when we asked them 

what was going on, they admitted 

that they were just as confused as 

we were. Outward appearances 

indicated all was well; although, we 

had nothing to compare it to. 

59

The Tempest Begs an Encore 

(WAITING FOR P.T. BARNUM) 

On our second night, there are 

toasts and salutations mixed 

in with a host of chastisements 

for my almost-fatal of faux pas on the 

highway. In a much-lifted spiritual state, 

we finally settled down for the evening 

only to be nailed to the floor by another 

raging torrential rainstorm. In a state 

of delirium from alcohol and other inebriates, 

Farkle found the marine flares 

at the height of the tempest. He wildly 

launched them in all directions except 

the most appropriate—straight up. 

Imagining himself as a courageous 

nineteenth century sea captain, he 

shouted orders in French to an imaginary 

crew of his sinking ship. We 

wrestled the gun away from him and 

lectured him on the virtues of gun 

safety and substance abuse. He was too 

far gone to understand, and within a 

few moments he found another gun, 

and in defiance of our wishes, fired a 

flare within the confines of the tent. 

Quick-witted Mr. Johnson grabbed 

the writhing flare with salad tongs 

and pitched it outside the tent. We 

banished Capt. Farkle—as he was then 

called—to Fauquier Swamp at the 

low end of the tent. Mr. Johnson and I 

cultivated quite a case of Francophobia. 

APRIL 2 Information about the contest 

was still sketchy, but we postulated 

that the contest was going well. At 

noon, I went for a beer and discovered 

that we were completely dry. That rat 

bastard Capt. Farkle—down at the 

point completely looped—shouted 

French obscenities at the contestants 

and exposed his privates in a lascivious 

gyrating manner best kept to the techno 

acid romps of the late night L.A. Club 

scene. The contest personnel were very 

tolerant and considered these antics 

as entertainment. I was not amused. 

By nine that evening, all was quite, 

and we were lulled to sleep by the 

nearby contestants crooning Kumbaya 

around their well-manicured campfire. 

That quickly faded, replaced by a PA 

broadcast of a satellite TV station porno 

movie, compliments of our mad-scientist/musician 

neighbor in a blue 

mini-strato bus. Our dreams were filled 

with gorgeous pro women windsurfers 

sailing in frilly French teddies. Ooo la la! 

APRIL 3 Mr. Johnson and I quizzed 

the contestants on a number of 

subjects. Friendly and concerned 

about preserving the Baja experience 

at Punta San Carlos, they referenced 

the contest motto: “Baja with Respect.” 

We also quizzed the non-contestants 

about the impact of the event on the 

Punta. All comments were positive. 

The traveling pros mingled with the 

campers, sharing stories, rigging 

tips and the like. There was way too 

much Kumbaya. Even Capt. Farkle 

shared some of his most coveted 

and prized speedsailing tips with a 

group of mesmerized pros. I spent 

my time searching for a beer—not 

that I needed one. But I was tired of 

Fruit Punch Gatorade and Nyquil. 

We still did not have a full grasp on 

where the contest was going. Capt. 

Farkle struck a deal with the local 

fishermen for a ride into El Rosario for 

supplies: beer, rum, tequila and beer. 

He was not seen for two days. Life was 

sweet but very mundane in his absence. 

APRIL 4 The water was a modest 

52 degrees. Most of the contestants 

wore neither booties nor gloves. A 

handful wore short sleeve wetsuits. 

No one complained about the freezing 

conditions. Mr. Johnson gave up trying 

to decipher the contest results. He was 

promised e-mails of contest activities, 

which, to this day, he has not received. 

Still the vibe was good with Solo 

Sports and the PWA. There were no 

negative incidents between contestants 

and non-contestants. Maybe all 

the fuss was the fear of fear itself. 

I met Glenn Dubock, a photographer 

who worked independently with 

the same magazine but whom I had 

not before met. We talked for ten 

hours, and I took back all the mean, 

petty, jealous things I used to say 

about him. Well, almost all of them. 

APRIL 5 The last day of the contest: 

finals day. Capt. Farkle returned from El 

Rosario thoroughly french-fried. Instead 

of the promised truckload of booze, he 

slid into camp virtually unnoticed with 

three six-packs and a half-empty bottle 

of Tequila. Who knows what he had been 

into or up to? We later learned that Capt. 

Farkle intended to steal a contestant 

jersey and rig and sail in a heat. 

Mr. Johnson and I took our positions 

at the point for a day of photographing 

the powerhouse surfsailing. We were not 

disappointed. The PWA performances 

were spectacular. No set wave went 

unridden. Kevin and Matt Pritchard, Nik 

Baker, and Jason Polokow all shredded. 

I was painfully prudent about 

putting the hammer down on the 

motor drive. Twenty-five feet away, 

Glenn’s motor drive smoked. He shot 

four rolls of film to every roll I shot. 

Mr. Johnson promised that one day 

I too would shoot with impunity. 

No one noticed Capt. Farkle’s entrance 

into the contest arena. He blended 

into the pack until a set gave him the 

perfect opportunity to shine. Everything 

worked out for his finest fifteen 

seconds of fame. He drove hard off 

the bottom into the left bowl, which 

jacked up just as the lip broke. Swoosh! 

He flew out in front of the wave in a 

twenty-foot-high, one handed, head 

cocked back aerial. He floated down 

with a perfect three-point landing 

and sailed off toward the Fish Camp. 

Everyone on the point—including 

the judges—stood and cheered. Their 

acknowledgements were short-lived 

as interests diverted to Jason Polakow 

entering the bay on a rare mast-high 

wave. A combined total of 78 frames of 

film were taken by the small group of 

photographers on this one wave alone. 

Polokow secured a clean first place 

with Nik Baker second. Mr. Johnson and 

I, along with the other spectators, ranked 

Kevin and Matt Pritchard at a clean 

third and fourth. The judges disagreed 

and put Björn Dunkerbeck in third with 

Kevin and Matt as fourth and fifth. They 

must have seen something we missed. 


Evening Festiments 

At the closing ceremony, the 

publisher of Generic Sailboarder 

awarded Polakow 

the first annual Generic Sailboarder 

Sailor of the Year Award, which 

came with a canned supermodel 

blow-up doll. Jason disappeared 

with his new friend for a night 

on the town, San Carlos style. 

Capt. Farkle, satisfied with completing 

his mission, dazzled the 

crowd with an impressive display 

of emergency marine flares and 

colorful French obscenities. It appeared 

that the organizers forgave 

him of his most heinous crime of 

crashing the contest. Mr. Johnson 

and I thanked them for that, but the 

organizers acted as if they didn’t 

know what we were talking about. 

APRIL 6 As the morning sun rose 

over the mountain, the PWA 

contest machine quietly retreated 

into the desert bound for the next 

contest location. Mr. Johnson and 

I stood at the point and observed 

the land. All appeared as before— 

once again quiet and peaceful. We 

observed a strange ship in the 

bay. Capt. Farkle feared he had 

summoned the Mexican Coast 

Guard with the flare fireworks. 

He scrambled to collect the spent 

shell casings, muttering about 

his intense fear of Mexican jail. 

EPILOGUE 

We went expecting the worst and left 

with a good feeling; the event had 

not been what the doomsayers had 

predicted. As we crept up the line to 

the American Border, we encouraged 

Farkle to smile and keep his mouth 

shut. Without his passport, things 

could have been sticky for all of us, 

but we lucked out—a disinterested 

guard sent us home free. We dropped 

Farkle off at LAX. With promises 

to write often (at Mr. Johnson’s 

request), he left for Fiji, trust fund 

checkbook in one hand and the 

last emergency flare in the other. 

POST-MORTEM 

Having hosted a few contests since— 

namely the AWT—Punta San Carlos 

is still pristine, uncrowded, and damn 

near the best wave sailing spot on the 

planet. As for Monet Della Fauquier: 

he did show up at the point one morning, 

saying he returned to dig up something 

very valuable he left behind. 

Clark Merritt is a surfer, a windsurfer, a 

photographer, a rabbit owner, an amateur 

anthropologist, and a longtime lover of 

Punta San Carlos. He lives in Huntington 

Beach but travels to Baja frequently 

where he works with SoloSports. 

61

Seventy-Five Bags 

WORDS BY KEVIN PRITCHARD 

In the late ’90s, I once checked in 

75 board bags on my way home 

from Europe to Maui. This was 

during a summer of PWA World 

Cups, and I had a ticket to fly from 

Fuerteventura (FUE) to Frankfurt 

(FRA) with an all-night layover before 

connecting on to Dallas (DAL), then 

to Los Angeles (LAX), and finally 

home to Maui (OGG… Maui’s Kahului 

airport has the code “OGG” in honor 

of Hawaiian aviator Jimmy Hogg). 

At that time, my brother Matt and 

I were part of The Team, a group of 

friends with one goal: beating Björn 

Dunkerbeck and ending his 12-year 

grip on the Overall World Title, which 

I finally accomplished in 2000. The 

other racers were PWA chairman 

Phil McGain and a mohawked New 

Zealander named Scott Fenton. 

All of The Team lived on Maui, 

but I was the only one going back 

home at the end of July; everyone 

else planned to stay in Europe for a 

couple extra weeks. No one, especially 

professional windsurfers, likes 

to travel around Europe with board 

bags, so I offered to take everyone’s 

bags, which was a lot of bags. 

Remember that this was back before 

the PWA was as specialized as it is now. 

We all competed in racing, waves, and 

freestyle (currently, Taty Frans is the 

only sailor to compete in more than one 

discipline: racing and freestyle). Nowadays, 

the PWA disciplines of racing and 

freestyle have gear registration rules 

and limits, but back then, we could use 

anything and have as many boards, 

sails, fins, booms, and bases as we 

wanted. The Team had 20 bags, and I 

planned to bring them all back to Maui. 

A couple days before leaving Fuerteventura, 

Tiffany Ward (another Maui 

pro sailor) asked me, “Hey, could you 

also take my bags? I only have two.” 

I thought, “Well, I am already 

bringing my bags, Matt’s bags, 

Scott’s bags, and Phil’s bags. What’s 

a couple more board bags next to 

a pile of 20?” This was before 9/11 

and the TSA, and air travel was 

not the stressful affair it is now. 

One by one, more and more people 

asked me if I could take their bags back 

to Maui. And somehow, I had to figure 

out how to get 75 bags to the airport. 

Fuerteventura is covered in sand 

so fine and so deep that if you drop 

a screwdriver, it is gone forever. The 

constant, strong wind means there is 

a haze of sand a few feet high blowing 

down the beach at all times, and 

this sand gets in everywhere. After 

a week of competing in Fuerteventura, 

your ears, your hair, your bags, 

your everything is full of sand. 

We rented a dump truck to carry all 

75 bags to the airport. Sand poured off 

the bags as we unloaded. I stood in the 

entry hall of FUE airport with seventy-five 

board bags and piles of sand. 

How the heck was I going to check in? 

The night before, I had come up 

with a plan. I scanned one of the tags 

from my flight out of Maui. I changed 

the airport codes to my new routing 

and printed out 75 baggage tags 

all with identical information—the 

same bar code and reference number. 

What I did not realize at the time 

was that each bag tag had the ticket 

counter number of ticket agent in 

Maui who had checked me in. 

In most European airports, FUE 

included, the excess baggage needs 

to be dropped off at a different area 

than the check-in. I checked in normally, 

handed over my clothing bag, 

and then, with my boarding pass, 

brought the 75 bags to the excess 

baggage belt, and got on the plane. 

At Frankfurt, I saw all the bags 

pour out onto the conveyor belt. 

I was scared of getting in trouble, 

so I grabbed my clothing bag and 

went to the airport hotel, leaving 

all 75 board bags at the airport. 

All I could think about was washing 

the sand and dirt from my ears and 

eating a nice big German dinner while 

reflecting on the competitions that 

had just happened. After my meal, the 

clean, cozy German bed put me to sleep 

without nightmares about the bags. 

The next morning, I checked in 

my suitcase with the ticket agent 

at the American Airlines desk. My 

ticket was upgraded to business 

class. I waited for the agent to ask me 

about my 75 other bags. She did not 

ask, and I did not mention them. 

At the OGG baggage claim, I 

expected to find only the one small 

clothing bag. Bam! The doors opened 

behind the baggage carousel and 

the baggage handlers carried out 

board bag after board bag. Fifteen 

bags came out. The fake bag tags 

had worked for all four flights. 

The next day, the ground staff at 

OGG called me to say that 30 bags 

had arrived and I needed to pick them 

up. The next next day, I received 

another call about five more of the 

bags. This happened for two more 

days in a row, and then nothing. 

Fifteen bags missing and a week 

without calls, the phone rang. “Hello, 

Mr. Pritchard, this is the head of 

security for American Airlines. 

We have a problem. We have 15 

bags impounded, all with fraudulent 

baggage tags. We would like 

to have a phone conference with 

you and our lawyers next week.” 

I found a lawyer of my own and 

came up with an explanation that did 

not sound too bad. On the call, I said 

that the previous year, the airline had 

lost my bags (which was true) and 

the self-made bag tags were just to 

ensure the bags would make it home. 

After my story, there was a pause on 

the line, and then: “You scanned our 

logo, broke international copyright 

laws, broke the baggage laws put in 

place by the FAA because you were 

worried your bags would be delayed?” 

In the end, American Airlines only 

cared that they were stuck with 15 

big board bags. I had to pay $1,500 

for the bags and another $1,500 

for administration fees, which, 

naturally, I passed on to the sailors 

who had given me their bags. As 

of today, I have flown 3.57 million 

miles on AA without a problem. 


Kevin Pritchard is one of the most accomplished competitive windsurfers in the history of windsurfing, with seven PWA world titles, 

an IFCA world title, and an AWT National title to his name. Born in California but living on Maui since he graduated high school, 

Kevin has spent his entire adult life living out his passion for windsurfing, a sport he loves today just as much as when he started. 

63

Robby 

Naish 

INTERVIEW BY GRAHAM EZZY 

PHOTOS BY DARRELL WONG 

At eight o’clock on a Friday morning, I met Robby Naish at Baked 

On Maui, a Haiku cafe. We separately ordered coffee in to-go cups 

and sat opposite each other on one of the cafe’s tables outside. 

We talked for two hours, and the following is excerpted from 

the recording of that conversation. 


Naish photo 

65

(INTERVIEW: BOBBY NAISH) 

Fish Bowl Diaries photo 

How old were you when you moved 

to Hawaii? Four when I moved to Kailua. 

Born in La Jolla, California. My dad 

was a surfer and he had been coming 

to Hawaii for years every winter to surf. 

Living on the North Shore and surfing. 

The first chance he got to get a job in 

Hawaii, he took. Teaching school at 

Roosevelt High School. When did 

you start sailing? Probably seven. 

That’s when we started sailing. We 

were Hobie 14 state champion six years 

in a row and went to the nationals. 

My brother Randy (who is a year and 

half older) and I got a Hobie 12, which 

is that little semi-catamaran mono-haul 

Hobie—great little kids boat. 

We were always down at Kailua 

beach sailing. That is how I met Mike 

Horgan and Larry Stanley and those 

guys. They were the first windsurfers—hippie 

guys. I think there were 

six windsurfers in Hawaii at that 

point. They set up some buoys and 

were trying to do triangle races. They 

asked if I wanted to race them with my 

Hobie. When was the first time you 

actually got on a windsurfer? Then. 

That was 1974. And what was the 

impression? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t 

pull the sail up. The boom was eight 

feet long, and I weighed less than 

seventy pounds. I was a scrawny kid. 

It was hard, but I loved doing things 

that were hard. 

Down on the beach on weekends, 

they did windsurf lessons and rentals. 

Marines would rent and go drifting 

downwind. I’d get my practice by 

asking if they wanted me to sail the rig 

back upwind for them, so they wouldn’t 

have to drag it all the way back. 

In ’75, I took my life savings and 

bought my first windsurfer. How 

old were you? I was eleven. Almost 

twelve. Three hundred forty dollars 

complete. Brand new. That was a 

lot of money for an eleven-year-old. 

I worked a long time to save up. 

Baby sitting. Making jewelry. How 

long till you started racing? 

I started racing locally right 

away. Were you winning? Not at the 

very beginning. But pretty quickly. 

Was there a lot of crossover from the 

Hobie sailing? The windsurfing sailing 

then was an Olympic triangle. And 

that’s what we did in Hobie’s, so I knew 

starting, tactics, and basic sailing rules. 

In ’76, we had our Hawaii State 

Championships. For events with 

more than fifty registered entrants, 

Windsurfer International would pay 

a flight for the winner to the nationals. 

We didn’t have fifty windsurfers 

in Hawaii, but we entered dogs and 

we made sure we had enough people 

so that the winner would get a trip to 

Berkeley California for Nationals. 

I ended up winning. So off I went. 

My parents didn’t go. Luckily some 

of the other guys went. They were my 


parents’ age, and they watched out for 

me. We stayed at my uncle’s house in 

Berkeley. We didn’t have a lot of money 

when I was a kid. Three kids—no, four 

kids at that point—with a public high 

school teacher’s salary. The last year my 

dad was teaching, the take-home pay 

was eighteen thousand a year. What 

school did you go to? I went to Lanikai 

Elementary. Kailua Intermediate. One 

year at Kalaheo High School. Then my 

last three years at Punahou. So public 

school until tenth grade. So by the 

time you were at Punahou, were 

you already—? World Champion? 

Yeah. I won in eighth grade, ’76. And 

pretty much for the next several years 

went from free airfare to free airfare, 

winning. Obviously I couldn’t afford to 

go anywhere myself. Why Punahou? I 

don’t even remember. I was at Kalaheo. 

No one even takes books. No one does 

their homework. It was nuts how easy 

it was. It was lame. I wasn’t learning 

anything. Somehow I got an interview 

at Punahou, and I didn’t really know 

what Punahou was. I went and took the 

test. I got in. I think my grandparents 

helped pay the tuition. I went there in 

tenth grade, and I almost flunked out 

because I came from public school. I 

didn’t know how to take notes. It was 

like going to college. You’d come in 

and sit down and the teacher would 

just start talking. I eventually figured 

it out. Graduated with a 3.8. But that 

first year was fricken challenging. Was 

the school aware of your competitions? 

Yeah, I think was part of 

my being able to get in. They were 

supportive? Yeah. But back then it was 

only a couple events a year. That’s all 

there was. You’d go to the championship 

and it was one event. It wouldn’t 

work how it is today—going to ten 

events a year. Could you see whether 

windsurfing would have a professional 

future? I graduated from high 

school the summer of ’81. The winter 

before that there was a Maui speed 

crossing, which was from Kaanapali to 

that island off Molokai and back. Put 

on by Arnaud de Rosnay. Remember 

him? That was the first ever professional 

windsurfing event. What do you 

mean by that? Prize money? Prize 

money. First prize was a thousand 

dollars. And that was a lot of money 

in ’81. And I won. Was that your first 

paycheck from windsurfing? Yeah, 

and I donated it—half to the Unites 

States Olympic Committee and half 

to my school—to retain my amateur 

status because back then you couldn’t 

go to the Olympics if you took even one 

dollar. Amateur was amateur. At that 

point we knew that windsurfing was 

going to be in the Olympics in ’84. Half 

a year later, you’d just graduated 

from high school, and… Yeah, graduated 

in ’81. Deferred admissions to UC 

Santa Cruz. I decided: I’ll do windsurfing 

for a year and see where it goes. 

It was ’81 and the Olympics were in 

’84. I could go to the Olympic Trials and 

have a bad race and not even be the guy 

representing the states. Was I really 

going to skip an opportunity of turning 

pro for a chance that’s so far off? I 

was toying with the decision. Going 

back and forth and back and forth. 

There were just too many if’s connected 

with that. So I said, “Fuck it, I’m going 

to turn pro.” My first paying sponsor 

was O’Neill wetsuits. Signed with Mistral. 

Shortly after signed with Quicksilver. 

Been with Quicksilver since 1982. 

And it just kept going. By the end 

of that year, there was the Japan Cup. 

Everybody in the world went because 

it was a lot of prize money. I won ten 

grand first prize. Ten thousand dollars 

cash in 1981 was like: “Holy shit! This 

was a good decision.” That was the 

beginning of the whole thing. Before 

that there was no vision. Nothing you 

could see as a potential career path. 

Those first years, even after you 

started getting paid, did you think 

it would stop? It was just pure luck 

of timing of being in the right place at 

the right time. If I was a few years later 

in the sport, it wouldn’t have worked. 

If I was one year earlier in the sport, 

I would have been off to college and 

would have missed the whole thing. 

I figured it could stop any day. I 

was so careful to try to work as hard 

as I could both on and off the water. I 

knew how lucky I was. I was already 

making in that first year more money 

than my dad made. I’ve always been 

really tight with money. Penny and I’d 

stash it. I worked things that way just 

in case it stopped, so I would have a 

parachute. I’ve lived that way since. 

It could all end tomorrow. I’m going 

to work really hard because there is 

no guarantee of the future. As a pro 

athlete you get a knee injury, you’re 

done. What were your parents 

telling you at that time? In hindsight, 

I don’t see how my parents let 

me do what I was doing. I was thirteen, 

flying to the Bahamas unchaperoned. 

67


The next year, at fourteen, going off 

to Sardinia, Italy by myself. I have no 

idea how they let me do that. They had 

enough trust that I wasn’t going to 

make a bad decision; or get kidnapped. 

They weren’t throwing money at me. 

They didn’t travel with me. I was off on 

my own, running around doing what 

I loved, and they just let me do it. It 

seems like you had two lives. You 

had this whole windsurfing world. 

And then the high school life where 

you were just a high school kid. 

No one even knew what I was doing. 

No one windsurfed. “What is it that 

you do?” Did you have close friends 

in high school? Not really. I had a 

lot of older friends—guys that windsurfed—who 

weren’t quite my parents 

age but close. Windsurfing was way 

more important to me than going and 

hanging out. My brother Randy windsurfed 

too—and he was good at it—but 

he was way more attracted to hanging 

out with his friends, doing what high 

school kids do. Getting in trouble and 

stuff. Was he ever jealous of your success? 

Probably. Yeah. He was successful 

too. I got him sponsors for a long time, 

piggy-backing on mine. He traveled the 

world. He did well. He wasn’t winning. 

But he did reasonably well. He made 

money. He led a really good life for a 

long time. I think he probably wished 

he was winning. But winning wasn’t 

important to him as it was for me. It 

was the process. There are a lot of guys 

that go and compete, and maybe inside 

they know they’re not going to win, 

but they are having a really good time 

anyway. And they know they are going 

to do this as long as they can. It’s not 

about winning; it’s about being there. 

For me, it was about winning. If I 

didn’t win, I really had a hard time and 

I didn’t want to be there. I did whatever 

I could to try to win. If I wasn’t as good, 

I would have quit and started doing 

something else that I was good at. 

We just had a different approach. 

But he loved it. He was in a really fun 

fun time. I mean, everyone on the tour 

knew Randy. They still remember him. 

You go to South Africa: “Oh, I remember 

your brother back in 1984 in the GTI 

cup.” He had a lot of fun. He had more 

fun off the water than I did. But that’s 

alright. So what was your life like 

off the water? I was pretty focused. I 

got married to my first girlfriend and 

had a baby straight out of high school. 

I had Nani when I was eighteen.What 

was your mindset then? You had 

a wife and your daughter Nani to 

support. You were making money. 

But like you said, you were unsure 

of how long it would last. What was 

going on in your head? Did you have 

moments where you doubted it? No. 

No. I never thought I should be doing 

something else. I had to keep working 

my ass off to make it work. Was it difficult 

to be a father so young? I was 

really self-centered. I loved being a dad. 

I loved being a young dad. I was really 

close to my daughter in a friend kind 

of way. When she was in high school, I 

probably could have been a better "dad" 

dad. But that’s not who I was. I was running 

around the world doing my thing. 

It worked great because her mom was 

very responsible. Now being an old 

dad—I was a dad at 18 and I was a dad 

at 40-whatever—it is cool to be able to 

experience both. Is there anything 

you’re doing differently now? Everything. 

Other than still being selfish and 

irresponsible. What’s different? You 

look at life differently when you’re 53 

than when you’re 23. In what way? 

What’s changed? That giant clock on 

the wall that is just racing along—that 

used to be that used to be a tiny clock 

that was hardly moving at all. How 

fucking fast time goes. You hear that 

your whole life when you’re little. 

You’re like, really? There is an actual 

physical change in the speed of time 

when every minute and every hour 

of every day becomes a smaller and 

smaller fraction of your total existence. 

It just starts racing by. That’s the only 

real difference in how I look at things 

now: the realization that I’m not going 

to be around much longer. It might 

be another 30 years, but the 30 years 

is so quick. Remember sitting in class 

watching the clock? Oh my god, could 

it go any slower? Now it’s 9:00 am, and 

then it is noon and you did not even eat 

breakfast yet. What do you feel when 

you think about mortality and time? A 

deeper appreciation of how lucky I’ve 

been. I don’t want to be greedy. I’ve had 

no issues. If my parents hadn’t moved to 

Hawaii and I still lived in California, who 

knows what I would be doing. If I didn’t 

get into windsurfing… We are really lucky 

to live here. I’d rather be homeless on 

Maui than be a banker in Chicago. Nothing 

against bankers in Chicago. Is there 

anything you do to deal with getting 

older? I don’t eat real good. I try not to 

change anything at all. It’s worked well 

so far. I don’t want to change the path too 

much. Just trying to stay fit. So go back 

to eighteen years old… Professional 

windsurfing is just starting. You’re doing 

well. But you have a lot of responsibility. 

What is your life? Just trying to 

make another day. Make another month. 

Never really looked more than a month 

ahead. I had contracts, but there are outs 

in every contract and you got to perform. 

It was a very shortsighted way of life. 

Living for the next day or week or month 

as targeted and as focused as I could. So 

it could last another month. Was there 

a moment where you had a sigh of 

relief ? No. Never. Not even today. I’ve 

always had that looming pressure that it 

could all come crumbling down in any 

moment, so I better do everything in my 

power to keep it from happening. But I 

know there are so many things out of my 

control that could stop my career any day. 

At least the things that are in my control, 

I am going to do the best I can. I don’t 

smoke or do drugs. Try to stay injury free. 

Try to do a good job so the fans like me. 

The more people like me, the more chance 

I’m going to continue to get paid. If they 

want my autograph, even if it’s eight at 

night, I’m going to keep signing autographs. 

If someone wants my name on a 

piece of paper, I’m going to give it to them. 

I can’t think of one person in the entire 

world whose signature I’d want. Could be 

the president; I don’t want his signature. 

Speaking of President Obama, did you 

know him when you were at Punahou? 

I didn’t know him like, “Hey Barry what’s 

up?”. But I saw him all the time. He had a 

big afro. He was a stoner. Hung out on the 

Bingham bench with the other stoners. 


When I got to Punahou in tenth grade, 

he was a senior. He had the comb in the 

hair. Are there any athletes that inspire 

you? Not back then. Over time? 

Sure. But I never really followed other 

sports at all. Gerry Lopez was big when 

I was surfing. I was pretty self centered. 

I really didn’t care what was going on in 

other sports. At what point did you 

realize you were famous? Was there 

a moment? Yeah, it was in the early 

’80’s. When we first went to La Torche, 

there were 100,000 people, and they 

needed barricades to separate us from 

the crowds. What was going through 

your head? Did it make sense? It 

was just part of the whole gig. I think 

inside I was stoked. But I was really 

focused on just trying to win. I was so 

focused on the racing. The good thing 

was that you would go to Europe and 

be all famous and then come home and 

be nobody. I loved that about windsurfing. 

It kept life in perspective. 

I was always worried about having 

a big head. I was a weird person when 

I was younger—I still am a weird person—but 

I was a really weird person. 

I was really worried I was getting a big 

head. I don’t care how good you are, 

you’re not any better than anybody 

else, you’re just luckier. And when 

the wave competitions started, was 

that stressful because it was another 

thing that you had to win? 

It wasn’t about winning; it was about 

not losing. I didn’t want to beat other 

guys; I just didn’t want guys to beat me. 

And in my head there is a profound difference. 

It’s not like I’d get up on the podium 

and hold up my trophy—I didn’t 

like that at all. I wanted to get off the 

podium as quick as I could. So it wasn’t 

about winning. It was about not losing. 

Back then we had racing, slalom, 

and wave. Waves was always the most 

fun. I loved racing, I loved the tactics. 

Because back then it wasn’t just board 

speed like it is today. There’s no tactics 

anymore. In the old days, on long 

boards, it was tactics. It was like yacht 

racing. You’d have tacking duels with 

guys. I hated when windsurfing went 

from longboard racing to short board 

racing because for me it took all the tactics 

out of it. I loved the mind game of 

having a bad start and still catching up. 

It is really different when board speed 

is 99 per cent of a race, like it is now. So 

you hate losing. Is there a loss that 

stands out as being particularly 

upsetting? Every one [laughs]. When 

I was a little kid racing in Kailua when 

I first started—long before winning 

anything—I would be crying, yelling 

at God, punching my board because I 

lost. Larry Stanley and these guys were 

beating me. I was a horrible loser. I was 

a good winner, but I was a really bad 

loser. Is there any event that stands 

out in all the events you’ve done as 

being particularly interesting? I met 

Björn in 1982 when he was kid in Gran 

Canaria. In 1983 when we had the first 

World Cup ever in Fuerteventura, 

69


PWAworldtour.com photo 

he was already sponsored by F2. He first 

beat me in the overall in Guadeloupe. 

Guadeloupe stands out as the one event 

where I knew everything had changed. 

Explain that. Up until that point, 

slalom was almost always—whenever 

possible—in and out through the 

surf and almost always beach starts. 

So, just getting into the water was a 

huge part of it. And I was really good 

at getting into the water. Suddenly the 

courses got longer. We started doing 

water starts more than beach starts. 

The equipment completely changed. 

Up until that point, the equipment 

wasn’t that technical. And it made me 

reinvent my equipment and my sailing. 

Guys would go straight past you if you 

were on the old stuff. That was the only 

time in my career where there was a 

big shocker. I really didn’t want that 

change to happen even though I knew 

it was happening. But you came back 

and you won a few world titles after 

that… Yeah… I kept winning. But I 

never dominated the way I did before. 

I had to race with weight jackets, and I 

hated that kind of racing. One, I wasn’t 

as good at it. It’s not as much fun 

when you’re not as good. Two, it was 

contrary to my style. I’m not as good 

statically. I am always in my arms, not 

in my harness. And the new style was 

IN the harness—locked in and wearing 

twelve pounds on your shoulders. 

That change was tough. It wasn’t 

so much getting beat by Björn. I was 

ready for it; I knew it was coming. Of 

course, I wasn’t going to win forever. 

But then having the gear and everything 

change so profoundly at the same 

time was also… ooof. What led to the 

decision to stop doing the world 

tour? There was never a decision. It’s 

not like I ever retired. I couldn’t tell you 

when I stopped. What I did first was I 

stopped doing the racing. I kept doing 

the slalom and the waves. Once I was 

out of the top, I was like, “Well this is 

fucking pointless. I’m not competitive 

enough. I’m not enjoying it enough.” 

I could occasionally get top three or 

four, but I wasn’t going to beat these 

big guys. I was beating my head against 

the wall. I started only doing waves. 

About ’98 is when we started playing 

with kites. And that was something 

fun—inventing new gear. And there 

was a new commercial reason to do it. 

And a new professional reason. I could 

reinvent myself. Did you feel like you 

were having déjà vu with kiting? 

We were developing new gear again. 

It was like windsurfing in the early 

days. I was good at it. I was winning 

events. They were paying me to do it. 

When the kiting thing really took off. 

I was running around doing all these 

kite events, winning almost everything. 

That’s when I transitioned out of doing 

the wave events windsurfing. It’s not 

like I quit windsurfing. There was never 

a point where I was over it. It was a very 

gradual transition out as I transitioned 

into the competitive kiting. And when I 

transitioned out of the kiting. Just started 

doing fewer events. Guys started 

advancing the sport faster than I could 

keep up. You know? I never retired. It 

just sort of organically faded out. By 

then I was totally ready. After competing 

for so many years and doing so well, 

to just stop, I would have shot myself in 

the head. But as it was, it was this nice 

transitional, long, organic process. As 

the competition was waning out, the 

business required more of my time and 

attention. It all was just being in the 

right place and the right time. No plan. 

If you read books they always say 

you have to have a plan and you have 

to target your goals and check them 

off. I’ve never had goal in my life. And 

I’ve never had a plan. I don’t even 

have a business plan. I’ve kind of just 

rode one wave to another and seen 

what happens. So I’m either really 

really really lucky or really really really 

lucky. But it seems that you’ve had 

your finger on the pulse of things 

and been able to react to what’s 

happening. From windsurfing to 

kiting to SUP. You learned German 

quite young, as well, right? Yeah, 

that’s right. I took it for two years at 

Punahou because you had to have 

a foreign language. And did you 

know that Germany would be the 

biggest market for windsurfing? 

I had some German fans already. My 

first first big fan—pen pal—was a 

German guy who started writing me 

in the seventies. In Punahou, you had 

Japanese, Spanish, French, Chinese, 

German. And I said, I’ll take German. 

Everyone said, “You’re crazy, don’t take 

German; it’s too hard.” I was like, well 

I can go to Germany and there are a 

lot of windsurfers in Germany. Lucky 

decision because that helped my career 

so much. When I speak to Germans, 

they don’t know that I’m an American. 


You carry the image of windsurfing. 

Is that a burden or a gift? Or do you 

even notice it? At this point—I’ll be 

53 in a couple weeks—I can kind of 

look at it. Before, I didn’t want to look 

at it that way. I knew I was part of a really 

cool thing along with a lot of other 

people, and I was honored to be given 

that opportunity. It’s cool to still be 

connected to it. It’s not like I’m some 

guy in the windsurfing history books. 

I’m not out winning events, but I’m 

still part of this sport. I’ve been part 

of this sport since it has existed. I’m 

old enough now that I can look back 

and say, “Ok, this is pretty awesome.” 

I’m still there and still part of it. 

I’m out at Ho’okipa with you guys. 

I’m not in the way, not endangering 

myself. I don’t want to pat myself on 

the back, but I’m stoked that I’m still 

fit enough that I can go to Paris and 

do an indoor event and the people are 

still stoked to see me. I’m not going 

across the pool and falling on my first 

jibe, and people aren’t going, “Oh what 

a shame—he used to be so good”. I 

did my semi final heat and forgot my 

harness and raced the whole thing 

and won with no harness. I bet not 

many of the young guys that I was 

racing against could have done that. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but none of 

the guys that you were racing with 

in the ’80’s and competing against 

are still windsurfing. At least in the 

scene. Some are. Your dad still goes to 

Ho’okipa and rides. He was in Kailua 

in 1979 with your mom. Man, your 

mom was beautiful. I mean, she’s still 

beautiful. So there are guys that are 

still out there and still doing it. That’s 

the cool thing about the sport; you 

don’t wear yourself out like you do in 

almost any other sport. You can keep 

doing it a long time. Matt Schweitzer 

still windsurfs. I never see him, but he 

says he goes all the time. When you 

decided to compete these last few 

Aloha Classics, you did well. When 

the surf is big. Is it hard not to be 

winning? It still sucks to lose. I don’t 

want to go out and embarrass myself. 

I don’t want to lose my first heat. I get 

pissed when I lose; though, I know 

that I shouldn’t be winning. Honestly, 

at 53, if I can go out at Ho’okipa and 

win, there is something wrong with 

the sport. When was the peak of professional 

windsurfing? I would say 

the peak peak was about 1988. ’89. Did 

you realize at the time? No…I only 

realized as it started to subside. What 

was that? Ten years later? Twenty? 

No, no. A couple years. Going 

to an event in ‘91, what was the 

difference? Well, events would stop 

happening. Honestly for windsurfing, 

the biggest hit was restrictions on 

cigarette advertising. All of our big 

sponsors in the heyday were cigarette 

companies. Paul Mall in Holland. 

Peter Stuyvesant in France. It was 

cigarette money that helped create the 

really big boom in windsurfing. When 

you couldn’t advertise cigarettes 

anymore, suddenly the biggest pool 

of sponsorship disappeared. We lost 

the biggest events in the sport. Do you 

regret anything? Would you have 

changed anything? I could selfishly 

go back and change all kinds of stuff. 

Make a little bit more money. But the 

reality is that the mistakes I made 

were good mistakes. What mistakes 

stand out? Nothing. I don’t kick 

myself for anything. I’ve been luckier 

than anyone deserves to be in life. 

I’ve been in the right place at the right 

time more often than people deserve 

to be. If I could do it all over again, I’d 

do it all over again. For sure, there’s 

things I could do better—differently. 

But it could have gone so much worse. 

I have more than I deserve ten times 

over. I would pay to do it all again. Do 

you feel Hawaiian? Are you at home 

in Hawaii? Coming from California. 

I’m not one of those private 

school Haoles. Growing up in Kailua 

surrounded by locals. Going to public 

school pretty much my whole childhood 

was really grounding for me. I 

speak pidgin all day. I’m stoked that I 

was raised here. I grew up with my dad 

laying nets and eating sea turtle. A lot 

of my friends went to jail—died in jail. 

One of my friends got shot two weeks 

ago in Honolulu. Nothing wrong with 

being a full haole. But for me it was 

nice to be part of Hawaii. I can meet 

any local guy and be comfortable. 

Can you speak Hawaiian? No. We 

only have Hawaiiana in 4th grade in 

public school. It should be through 

all grades. It bums me out that I don’t 

speak Hawaiian. Are you involved at 

all with any of the schools here? Not 

beyond giving them money. Not 

pushing, for example, to have 

Hawaiiana? Some day, if I live long 

enough and I’m not so busy. People 

always ask me what I do for the community. 

I’d love to go into politics if 

I had another life to live. You see the 

idiots that go into politics with this 

tiny narrow view of the world. You 

should have to travel the world before 

you’re allowed to go into politics. You 

travel around the world and it gives 

you a very very different mindset on 

the way things work, or could work, 

or should work. Not that it’s all good, 

but it helps you see what’s bad too. 

So what would you do differently 

if you were in politics? Everything. 

Everything. Everything. It’s mind 

boggling how backwards the government 

in general is. It’s so big and so 

wasteful and accomplishes so little. 

Just things like traffic control and infrastructure. 

Hawaii is the only place 

in the universe that hasn’t discovered 

the roundabout instead of a stoplight. 

I remember when the first traffic light 

got put in. The first traffic light on the 

whole island was Dairy Road. That 

was the beginning of the end. Every 

time you put one in it gets worse and 

worse. Everywhere else in the world 

they know that roundabouts solve 

the problem. Oh man, the people here 

aren’t going to figure it out. If they can 

figure it out in Cambodia or anywhere 

else in the world, they can figure it 

out here. Who are you voting for 

the next election? Oh, we can’t go 

there. Are you a closeted Trump 

supporter? They’re all idiots on all 

sides. What we can’t do is have another 

attorney in the white house. Were 

you always Robby? Were you ever 

Robert or Bob? Always Robby as far 

back as I remember. Robert is my legal 

name but no one has every called 

me that except at the doctor’s office. 

It’s not like I grew up and needed the 

name change: call me Robert now. 

71


G A L L E R Y 

Casey and Sarah Hauser in beautiful New Caledonia. Gill Chabaud photo 

73


Tyson Poor jibes at the Rio Vista Grand Slam. Rich Baum photo 

75

76 · THE STORIES ISSUE 

Victor Fernandez going huge for victory in Pozo, Spain. John Carter/PWAworldtour.com photo

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LATE HITS 

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WORDS BY EDDY PATRICELLI 

PHOTOS BY DATNOFF.COM 

THE GORGE: 

EPIC FAIL 

peter lake and i are 40-something fathers. 

We sailed Arlington in the morning, 

then spent our lunch break there 

remarking how cool windsurfing is, 

because, after 25 years, it’s the one 

sport we can still charge at 

as hard as we did as teenagers. 

Then we hit the water for Round 2... 

and this happened. Call it karma. 

Peter still doesn’t know what 

went wrong, even after seeing the 

GoPro footage. The splash is worth 

seeing, and to be sure Peter surfaced 

intact. And yep, he kept charging. 

Watch Eddy’s up-close-andpersonal 

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on Big Winds’ Vimeo page. 

Eddy Patricelli filming Peter Lake’s nautical disaster.

Windsurfing Now 02.3

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