Sailboards

I started my stint on boards in 1983 helping out Don Trudget the boat hire bloke at Grafton rescuing windsurfers from all over the river and doing some instructing for him at Yamba during 1984. I bought a second hand Dufour Wing board from Don and spent every spare moment on the river practicing. We used to ride our boards for school sport on Wednesdays and I set up a bit of a midweek race for all the windsurfers and boardriders on the river which was a lot of fun. The best result I ever had on teh Dufour was a 2nd at a Stormriders Regatta at Byron. The natural progression was to go faster so a group of us bought wave boards. I picked up a nice glass board from Mike Maguire in Byron Bay, slapped an old mast on it with a second hand sail and off we went. I used to leave the board at Andrew Landenberger's house on the river bank. Landy and I would go out in storms for some freakish, scary rides. There's nothing like roaring along in 20+ knots of breeze with lightening and thunder crashing all around. We had some adventurous days at the beach, broke a lot of gear and finally admitted I couldn't afford it.



So I switched to Division II boards in the lead up to the 1988 Olympics. My RAAF boss refused to give me some time off to train, I think the quote was - if you picked a normal sport like golf or rugby I might think about it...!!! Racing boards just isn't the same as boats though. My best result on the Div II was 18th in the Open Division at the National Titles on Lake Maquarie. Give me a skiff or a sportsboat any day!

One of the guys, Tony Marsh, is still pretty heavily into the sport - waveboarding at the competitive level. Here he is organising a wavesailing event on the Gold Coast:

Marshy also has his own coastal weather website catering for the sailing, boardriding and surfing community, the link to askhuey.com.au is on the right side of the page. The tricks and aerials the guys execute these days are incredible! Way beyond just hanging upside down which was about the limit of my skills way back when.




Olympic boards have come a long way as well, its good that the ISAF and Olympic Committee have at least kept some performance sailing in the competition!: