Thursday, June 9, 2011

Does windsurfing make people nicer?

One of the things I love about windsurfing it that you get to meet many really nice people. I've blogged about a few of them before - the great ABK folks; "our" speed and ice surfing teacher Dean; Cesar, the driving force behind speed surfing in Fogland; and windsurf shop owners like Jim and Andy, to name just a few.

Another one of these really nice guys, Jeff, somehow talked me and Nina into joining him to go to the East Coast Windsurfing Festival this weekend. He offered to drive there very early Saturday morning, a deal that was just to good to refuse. It certainly helped that the king himself, Mike Burns, had promised great wind for the weekend, and that Josh Angulo and many windsurfing friends will be there. Once there, I'll have to participate, which will be in racing. Hopefully, the conditions will be right to use my slalom board, which should be tons of fun. I had been toying with the idea to participate in the Maui Race Series when we are down there in July, so this should be good practice.

The open division will be probably be dominated by formula boards and huge sails, so I'll be in the division where the sail size is limited to 7.5 m. That was a bit of a problem - my largest sail under the limit is a 7.0, and that's a non-cambered, top-oriented sail. But what are friends for? Dani had jokingly offered to give me gear to race in Maui, so I asked him if he had a cambered 7.5 sail that I could borrow. If I tell you that Dani is a really nice guy, what do you think his answer was?

Well, first he offered me a choice between two cambered 7.5 sails he has. Then, he picked up the sail from his friend, and delivered it to my house. He also brought a 100% carbon mast for the sail, even though I tried to assure him that one of my 55% masts should work just fine, and that I would not have the money to replace his mast if I broke it. What a guy - somebody pinch me so I know I'm not dreaming!

Such random acts of kindness brighten my life for many days. I don't even think windsurfers like Dani are an exception - we meet extremely nice people on every one of our windsurfing trips. I think it's infectious - neither my lovely wife nor I are very social, but sometimes at the beach, you may not notice that. We also try to support ABK in various ways, and one of our boards has been out on a loan for half a year now. So yes, it seems that windsurfing does make people nicer.

Of course, sometimes you might meet a windsurfer at the beach who is not friendly, or worse. But in the few cases that I can think of, these guys were usually overworked, and barely ever could find the time to go windsurfing; if they could get a free day on weekends, the wind would often not show. So rather than contradicting my theory, it only confirms it - these guys just don't windsurf enough!