To give you a better idea of each discipline and where you can take the sport, here’s where windsurfing can take you….

CRUISING

Cruising. Image courtesy Severne.

Just because it’s non-planing winds doesn’t mean you can’t get a lot out of your time on the water. Getting out on a larger board with a manageable rig is a great way to use your windsurfing skills cruise about and enjoy your surroundings. Both in the UK and abroad there are endless stretches of water that can be explore by board. Sailing between islands and checking out local lochs, estuaries and harbours is all incredibly rewarding and very feasible on a board. Even if it’s sailing a short distance along the coastline or across the bay to grab a snack before sailing back, you’ll really feel a sense of adventure. Just make sure you check the weather forecast, choose your journey well, take a large volume board for safety and never do it alone.

SKILLS TRAINING

Skill Training

Train light, sail right! The benefit of getting out in lighter winds on a large board and small sail to practice key hand, foot and rig movements for stronger wind situations is invaluable. You can replicate specific parts of moves and repeat muscle memory skills time and time again. When it’s windy things can happen very fast, so breaking it all down into stages and getting brilliant at the basics enables you to make use of any wind condition and make much more progress than if you only wait for windier conditions. So get on the water, no matter what the wind might be doing, especially if you want to improve!

FREERIDING

Freeriding fun! Image credit Thorsten Indra.

Check out your local stretch of water and Freeriding is exactly what 95% of recreational windsurfers do. It might be on a lake, reservoir, estuary or coastline, but it’s all about getting out there and enjoying the elements and the rush of windsurfing. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at or the kit you’re using, essentially most people just love to blast back and forth trying turns and having a great time. In lighter winds and flatter water the Freeride kit tends to be higher volume boards and larger sails. As the wind increases and the water roughs up, the kit selection changes to smaller faster Freeride boards, that turn tighter and produce a lot more spray!

WAVE SAILING

Robby Swift. Image PWA/JC.

The term wave sailor refers to someone who enjoys sailing in rolling swell or breaking waves on the sea. This requires greater windsurfing experience and smaller boards to nip between, along and through the waves. You have to be able to waterstart and sail a sub 100L board to wave sail, but the sensation and thrill of it is incredibly exciting. Most people take at least a year or so before they can venture into this environment. But once you get a taste of jumping, riding and turning on waves, you just want more! There are thousands of recreational wave sailors around the world who rush to the coast the moment there’s a decent wind and wave forecast. At competition level, riders are scored on the difficulty of their manoeuvres and size of the waves they ride. From national circuits to the Profession Windsurfing Associations (PWA) events, the level is incredibly high, with jumps over 30 feet, double loops and ripping it up in incredible conditions. Unsurprisingly, the events are hotly contested by the younger and more fear free windsurfers.

FREESTYLE

Freestyle

Freestyle originated on long boards with graceful, almost balletic moves. It’s now been taken to extraordinary levels using small boards at high speeds. Whilst you do get some very good recreational freestylers, it’s those who compete or dedicate months and years to learning complex tricks who really impress. Freestyle tricks are now so ridiculously complicated that it’s almost impossible to describe what can be done on a board. There are endless names and combination moves that make up a full repertoire. Freestylers love flat water, so they can spin, rotate and weave body, rig and board in to lightening quick trick sequences. Rarely is the board being used conventionally, they’re usually going backwards, sideways and spinning 360 degrees, often all at the same time. Despite the insane tricks, Freestyle boards are actually very easy to sail, but the top guys use tiny fins to encourage the board to spin sideways, which is what everyone else is trying to avoid. Those with freestyle ambitions need to be incredibly agile, flexible and resilient to knocks and crashes as it takes hundreds and hundreds of attempts to perfect each move. But unlike wave sailing that’s very conditions and location specific, freestyle can be done on any flat water. In fact, the latest craze is to take freestyle to non-windsurfing environments like waterparks, where the riders are towed in behind a jet ski and then released to perform wild tricks in no wind at all!

SPEED SAILING

Speedsailing

It’s all about getting from A-B  quickly! Whether it’s just for fun timing yourself on a waterproof GPS or entering a speed event, the concept is to load up and sail as straight and as fast as possible. At competition level, you’re given an average top speed over a 500m straight-line blast. To reduce wetted area and drag, speed boards are very thin and ultra low in volume. But to handle massively powerful camber induced sails, speed sailors tend to be superior in stature and some even wear weight jackets. When you’re trying to lock the board and rig down in up to gale force winds, as you scream across inches from the water, it takes strength, bulk and incredible nerve. Recreationally the average Freerider blasts about at about 25-27 Knots, top speed sailors are regularly doing over 40 Knots. The world windsurfing speed record is held by Antoine Albeau in Saintes Maries del la Me Canal, with an average 49.09 Knots over 500m. That’s 56.49 mph! The water is incredibly hard if you come off at that speed.

RACING

Racing

If you are the competitive type, then how about some racing? There have been various formats over the years, some replicating triangular yacht racing courses with upwind and downwind legs. Yet the most exciting windsurfing racing is downwind slalom, where races are held in heats over a short course with five or six fast gybes as they zig-zag downwind to the finish. Each race lasts about 2-4 minutes and is very intense with a very high-speed start and tight congested racing at each mark, which is great for spectators when the racing is held close to the shore. Various brands have team riders who use and develop the latest kit, which you can buy and use. But buyer beware, it’s very powerful stuff. It’s not uncommon for racers to be using 7-9m massively powerful sails in the same winds where recreational windsurfers are using 5-6m rigs. To get into racing and other types of events, we’ve listed the various paths you can take through the sport in our Sport Pathway section. Will you ever beat Bjorn Dunckerbeck, He’s the sports most successful competitor ever, with over 32????? world titles!

Written by Simon Bornhoft.

Learning to windsurf

Learning to windsurf is probably one of the best decisions I have ever made. With a huge worldwide social and recreational windsurfing scene, I have never been short of finding a like minded and enthusiastic sailor, like myself, to share a car with and spend hours out on the water and on a beach with. It has changed my mind on this stuff that previously annoyed me because it messed up my hair or ruffled the trees at night, but now I find myself at work, spectating weather sites praying for more wind!

Before learning to windsurf myself I only really saw it as standing on a massive floating plastic board whilst holding some strange sail-like thing that somehow uses the weather to move you along the water. Now I see that windsurfing is far more than that, and a lot more attractive too! Before starting my RYA Start Windsurfing course, an internationally recognized qualification, I was feeling apprehensive about whether I would be able to do it and nervous because the closest I have ever been to doing a sport on the water is sitting on a lilo in the middle of a pool. The reason I wanted to learn windsurfing was to try something very different, I now live in Brighton by the sea whilst previously I was in London where the only exercise was a forced, once a week trip to the sweaty smelly room of the local gym because that was what I thought I had to do to keep a standard level of fitness.

Lessons at Hove Lagoon

When I got the water sports centre at Hove Lagoon there were a lot of different types of people there, learning a variety of sports and at first I couldn’t tell who I was on a course with, or who out of the people in board shorts, no shoes and sunglasses introducing themselves was my instructor. I met my instructor and the others on my course shortly after signing in at reception and was then very calmly given an outlook to what I had got myself into. After being introduced to the course instructor and the other students, it was straight outside to see the equipment that I still hadn’t quite got my head around. Our instructor first showed us the boards and told us how they were ideal for learning on, being big and stable. Then we were introduced to the sails which were all kept fully rigged and ready to go, and I was given a size that suited my height, weight and the conditions. The surprising part about all this kit was that it was so easy and simple to handle and understand. Once all the equipment was out our instructor spent a lot of time at first on the simulator, showing us and getting us to try the few positions that we would need to get up and moving on the water. These positions were all very well broken down and put across in a way that made me really want to give it a go. After getting changed into a wetsuit (a strange devise that I was told was to help keep me warm, but only made me feel like a penguin) we headed out onto the waist deep water of the lagoon to have a first attempt at this new sport. The morning was spent just standing up and going in a straight line and using the wind to move us around the water, there were some pretty spectacular, let’s say dismounts, from myself but in this safe, controlled environment it was all part of the fun. By the end of the first day we as a group were all sailing across the wind, turning around and starting to steer the board. We had all been introduced to the equipment and gained a bit of background knowledge to the sport. The instructor said to us “as long as you are moving and enjoying it you are windsurfing”, so I felt that at the end of the first day I had achieved that and I felt really good about it, and very excited for the following day!

Hove Lagoon

The next day came after a very good sleep as I had been so tired from the day before. Once again I was quickly put at ease about what we were doing and there was no time to waste, so we got the equipment out and I found myself on the simulator going through what we had done the day before. The second day was about moving towards the wind and away from the wind which, at first, I had no idea about what our instructor was saying but after a good demo with an explanation I started to pick up this new skill quickly and easily. All the way though we were told in simple words the next step, whilst always working on a bit that we had done before which made the learning feel logical and progressive.

Level 1 course in full swing

At the end of the course it felt amazing that I had achieved something that previously I had worried about doing. The myths of windsurfing about it being hard and needing a lot of strength were torn up and burnt! The feedback I got from the instructor, who obviously loved the sport and was very passionate about it, was always positive and helpful. The Start Windsurfing course is an extremely rewarding course which does not require any specific skills or previous experience. With the main part about the course being an introduction to windsurfing with the aim to get you to enjoy the sport, I could say with certainty that it had done that and also got me to a point where I can hold my own on the water with an instructor. After doing this course I will always recommend it to anyone because it is a fun, fast and relaxing sport and achieves a full body work out with some pretty amazing perks, like having your gym on the beach!

Planing action at Hove

Once you are totally hooked on windsurfing the next stages are even more exciting, the next instalment of the windsurfing journey will be with you very soon as we follow the progression of another newly addicted windsurfer. 

Find out more about Lagoon Watersports:

website: www.lagoon.co.uk

phone number: 01273 42 48 42

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