Fred and I have been windsurfing since 1984/85. Our parents lives just
2 minutes from one of the best lakes to windsurf on in Denmark so it was
a pleasant alternative to sitting
on the park bench in Holte (our home town) and watching the young
school girls. No seriously - it is a great sport with a lot of speed and
adrenaline involved. It's not as life threatening as kayaking, off-piste
skiing/boarding or crossing gorges in Spain on wires 70 meters above the
ground, but you do feel pretty much alone when you are skinning away over
the waves on a big ocean on your little board.
The great thing (bad thing?) about windsurfing on lakes - which is what I have done most - is that you don't have that interesting perspective of drifting of to sea hitting the coast of Norway, Poland or even England a few days later. Furthermore you don't have very big waves which means that you can really get a lot of speed on you board.
I bought my own board around
'89 and it was a really great fun-board but it went in to decay after
a couple of years. This usually only showed when the wind was really strong.
Once I was out there on the lake in seriously strong wind on my own (which
was usually the situation) and as I am flying over the water suddenly
the mast and board separates resulting in the board continuing with 100mph
in front of me leaving me with the mast and sail in the middle of the
foaming water. Time for making fast decisions. Should I leave the sail
(which didn't necessarily float) and go for the fast disappearing board
or should I try to keep the sail floating and see what would happen? Well
I didn't think that potential drowning was worth a 5.4 m2 Mistral sail (which wasn't even mine) so I started
swimming after the board. I took a while before I caught up with it and
I managed to get in to shore and luckily the rig was floating and was
nice and steadily floating in to shore. So I survived.
One of the ultimate places to windsurf is Vesterhavet on the west coast of Denmark and this was where I windsurfed last, when - as a result of some of the greatest windsurfing I've ever done - my old faithful board broke in two pieces. Luckily the wind was onshore, so I just drifted in to land and I was actually almost able to windsurf on the one half.
But I am currently without a windsurfer which is a big mistake - so if you have a spare one for sale send me an email.
in Danish
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