Author Topic: The invention of windsurfing  (Read 14363 times)

yugi

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #15 on: October 31, 2016, 06:48:43 AM »
^ wind indicators. Quickly became defunct as windsurfing became a high-wind sport only.

Looks like he’s on a Dufour and his big brother is going to be wondering where the sail of his Laser is.

Sailors always had a wind indicator at the top of the mast so it flowed over into windsurfing. Come to think of it it's also a long time since I've seen on a dinghy!
« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 07:14:10 AM by yugi »

Beasho

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #16 on: October 31, 2016, 06:53:50 AM »
A closer shot of the guy behind.. Notice the streamer thing on the top of the mast.. WTF was that for?

The streamer, always fluorescent & usually pink, was there just because . . . because it was cool! 
« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 06:56:17 AM by Beasho »

J-Bird

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #17 on: October 31, 2016, 07:20:12 AM »
Also called a tell-tail (or is it tell-tale?)

yugi

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #18 on: October 31, 2016, 07:24:48 AM »
Streamers: yeah

Just like these guys thought they were cool too.

http://tinyurl.com/jcwozc6

For the record: I  skiped the fluo windsurf masthead streamer, the mustache, mullet and ski fartbag.

What were we saying about hull concaves and deck dugouts again?

Sorry Off-Shore, couldn't resist ! You asked for that one.

yugi

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #19 on: October 31, 2016, 07:27:38 AM »
Also called a tell-tail (or is it tell-tale?)

tell-tales are more the 2 wooly or cassette tape strips (80's) in each of the sail sides.

Now the kids have endless supply of spinnaker cloth to cut up and use.

Last year I paddled around the world championships  Sailing Cats class C regattas. Meaning anything goes => wings, foils etc. They use tell-tales heavily in their wings. Which have about 8000 adjustments!
« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 07:37:13 AM by yugi »

PonoBill

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #20 on: October 31, 2016, 08:39:19 AM »
Streamers are supposed to show apparent wind, tell tales on either side of a sail window show proper sail trim. Still common on smaller sailboats, pointless on a batten-shaped or fabric-shaped sail.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

yugi

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #21 on: October 31, 2016, 09:05:50 AM »
^ true for windsurfers, but mainly because the feel is more important than the fine tuning and that it has become a high-wind only sport.

[sailing] Wings have tell tales all over the place! At least traditional sails flop.

Beasho

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #22 on: October 31, 2016, 10:56:28 AM »
Enough on Streamers  >:( 

Back to the sartorial delight of the 80's and how it translated to the water.

Someone sent this postcard to my parents this summer.

I never saw so many windsurfers on any finger lake.  Now I am jealous I wasn't invited. 

PS: Windsurfing was terrible on the finger lakes.  We would sit around and watch the weather channel waiting for a jump above 15 mph.  Once every 2 weeks it would happen and it would last for 47 minutes.
« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 10:58:22 AM by Beasho »

yugi

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #23 on: October 31, 2016, 11:28:38 AM »
Hmmm... I've heard something similar recently. Something about fastest growing something...

surf4food

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #24 on: October 31, 2016, 11:45:09 AM »
This may have been posted before, but anyway here it is:


This might be the history of windsurfing in Hawaii, but it is not the story of the invention of windsurfing. Windsurfing was first invented at my (then) home town of Hayling Island, UK, by Peter Chilvers in the 1950s, and this fact has been upheld several times in court.

Here is Peter himself talking about the occasionally comical attempts to erase him from history (as the video above seems to attempt to do):

https://youtu.be/CQZLKGZ6vgk

I think it shows how more than one person can come up with the very same or similar idea completely independent from the other.  Tom Blake (as the video showed) concocted a sailboard in the 30s but you lay prone rather than stand.  Newman Darby had his thing going on in 1948.  In kiteboarding should The Legaignoux brothers or Cory Roesele be credited as the inventors?  Both?  SUP you have John Pops Ah Choy who decided to use a paddle to surf with due to bad knees, but John Zapatocky was already surfing that way at least a good decade before that if not longer.  Did Pops know who Zap was at the time?  I know they became friends later on.  All these sports have an elusive past.
« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 11:47:58 AM by surf4food »

Area 10

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #25 on: October 31, 2016, 12:32:04 PM »
Sure. But it would have been gentlemanly to have mentioned Chilvers when talking about "the invention of windsurfing", since Schweitzer etc clearly knew about him since they had tried to sue him (and lost). To deliberately leave this detail out does not I think reflect well on them, or the accuracy of the video. Which is a shame because the footage is really great.

But I am sure I'll be pretty much alone in taking this view since I know that many of you here are connected to the people in the (first) video. However since I am connected to the person in the second video (albeit distantly: I grew up with his friends and saw them develop the sport) I'm sticking up for him. Someone has to, as he's received a pretty poor deal out of it over these years.

Dwight (DW)

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #26 on: October 31, 2016, 12:45:51 PM »
Enough on Streamers  >:( 

Back to the sartorial delight of the 80's and how it translated to the water.

Someone sent this postcard to my parents this summer.

I never saw so many windsurfers on any finger lake.  Now I am jealous I wasn't invited. 

PS: Windsurfing was terrible on the finger lakes.  We would sit around and watch the weather channel waiting for a jump above 15 mph.  Once every 2 weeks it would happen and it would last for 47 minutes.

Were you there when Jeremy had the windsurf shop at Myers Point? Did you know Michelle, the hottie who did nude modeling at Cornell?  Trying to figure out if Jacky and I were sailing the Finger Lakes at the same time. 1980-1985 then we moved to NC for more wind. Michelle moved to Hawaii. Jeremy moved to the Gorge.

starman

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #27 on: October 31, 2016, 01:20:34 PM »
Area 10, arguments about the patent disputes aside, there should be no doubt that windsurfing exists today because of Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake. Further more, Hoyle and Diane Schweitzer deserve all the credit for it becoming a worldwide success. Chilvers deserves no mention as he did nothing to contribute to the sports growth from garage prototype to the sailing version of an F1 car.

PonoBill

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #28 on: October 31, 2016, 01:32:55 PM »
^^And the gauntlet gets tossed.

Doesn't matter much, it's not just history, it's relatively meaningless in terms of where the sport IS, which is shockingly diminished from it's  90's craziness. A cautionary tale of hockey-stick growth and the pursuit of performance over usefulness.  I used my sailboard plus a cheap liferaft as a cruiser sailboat for a month in the San Juans. That wouldn't occur to most windsurfers today--because it's windsurfing, not sailing.

I sailed the 12'6" I gave to Bob (Stoneaxe) quite a bit in the great lakes (Road America and other tracks) and finger lakes (Watkins Glen).  Great fun, though the sail I used mostly was a 9.0, and the technique was classic sit-up-and-beg with a lot of sail pumping to get back to shore. The exception was during a microburst storm in Chicago where my 4.5 was much too much, and getting back to shore was more a matter of luck than good management. Did a two-mile walk of shame and was very happy to do it.  Land, precious land.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

Beasho

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Re: The invention of windsurfing
« Reply #29 on: October 31, 2016, 02:20:00 PM »
I think it shows how more than one person can come up with the very same or similar idea completely independent from the other.  Tom Blake (as the video showed) concocted a sailboard in the 30s but you lay prone rather than stand.  Newman Darby had his thing going on in 1948. In kiteboarding should The Legaignoux brothers or Cory Roesele be credited as the inventors?  Both?
 
Nope!

Ben Franklin invented kite surfing. 

Go to the museum in Philadelphia and you will see this picture.  Kind of makes sense, apparently he did a lot with his kite.

 


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