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MY FIRST BOARD

They say you never forget your first… windsurf board, that is! But was yours a sensible, floaty entry level board that gently introduced you to the world of windsurfing? Or did you skip the training wheels and go straight for a high-end wave board ready to rip it up like Polakow? We tracked down some of the world’s top windsurfers to ask: What was your first board? Let’s delve in and find out who played it safe or who sent it from day one!

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NIK BAKER

“My first board was a Bic Show. It had three big swept back fins and a centre fin, raised foot area, 1” wide red gel coat seem cover and a big sunset graphic on the nose. I loved it. I was 12 years old when my parents brought this board for me so I could get off my Dad’s board which was massive and I was pretty small at 12. That board felt so small and agile, I could jump it already within a month or so of getting it. I clearly remember Jumping over my eldest brother Steve, who was out in a canoe. A bit by mistake and a bit of luck I actually cleared him lol.”

THE EPIC BIC SHOW!

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BJORN DUNKERBECK

My parents moved from Denmark by MB Van to Gran Canaria in April 1978 where we had a few TenCate and one Mistral Super wind!

I learned why Ulla and Eugen were in Denmark. I learned in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria in the Summer of 1978 on a TenCate. I pretty much got hooked from the beginning a did the local racing from when I was 11.

I also started sailing with F2 with Peter Brockhaus in 1983 on the Lightning, Strato, Comet, Sunset Slalom and the F2 Bullit; the full length flat out! Those boards were all designed by Jürgen Hönscheid!

I pretty much grew up at the Dunkerbeck Windsurf Center here and I still run it HQ in Pozo Izquierdo also we do Surfing, SUP, and wing foil, Windsurfing Beginner and advanced…all levels! So, windsurf parents bring your kids to the Windsurf Center School!

1. To help windsurf grow
2. Have a nice Sport you can enjoy with your kids all your life!
3. So, you can get on the water more often!

THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

https://www.surfbd.com/windsurfing/

https://www.surfbd.com/ and also part of Salt Water Shops from Kiel Germany with already 5 shops!

www.dunkerbeck.com

Also, you can join the Dunkerbeck Speed Challenge for fun its easy GPS from anywhere on the planet! Sign up and post your speeds for motivation! First period starts on the 1st April 2025!

https://www.dunkerbeck.com/challenges-events/

EPIC VINTAGE SHOTS FROM DUNKY!

Saludos…Björn!

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TIMO MULLEN

My first board was a Vinta 330, bright yellow and weighed a tonne!! I was 14 when I got it! My Dad owned the biggest Windsurf Shop in Ireland and Vinta were one of the best-selling boards, from the age of 10, I worked in our shop and instead of paying us my Dad gave us stock from the shop! We had a particularly busy summer that year and I earned enough to get that board and a brand new F2 Super Cut 4.5m sail, I cannot tell you how stoked I was because Bjorn was using that exact same sail in his latest video E-11 El Nino!

 

I remember learning to water start, how to get into the straps, getting planing and I learned to carve gybe on it… to be fair I think I’d struggle to do anything on it now!!!

I remember ‘borrowing’ a brand new F2 Sunset Slalom from our shop without maybe letting Mum or Dad know… Mum saw it on the lawn by the waters edge (we lived by a lake) and went ballistic, so I got demoted back to my Vinta 330!

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PIERRE MORTEFON

“Like a lot of guys, I started windsurfing on a plastic dagger board at my local club, then I switched to an old ‘Funboard’ I think it was a like Tiga 257 or 254 but then my father bought me a board from one of our neighbours it was a Tiga Wave I think (thermoformed construction).

I think I was around 11 years old and I got it just before the summer. It was a present for my birthday along with some super old Dacron sail, I think the neighbour was happy to clean out his garage!

Having my own board felt so special, even if it was an old board and already well used I was taking care of it like nothing else! It was a plastic board made of 2 parts like a BIC Techno. When I damaged it, we were fixing it with some silicon mastic, pretty weird fixing but was waterproof again and ready for the next crash!”

LOOK AT THAT STYLE FROM A VRY YOUNG PIERRE MORTEFON!

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LINA ERPENSTEIN

“The first board I ever owned was a F2 Guerilla with a jaguar print, probably around 90L.

I must have been around 15 years old when my dad and I found it in the Ozu windsurf shop in Tarifa for 150€. It was used but still in a good shape.

I think we went into the shop because my dad had to get something repaired. When we walked out of the shop with the board under my arm, I don’t know who was more surprised, my dad or myself!

I was super stoked with my first own board and took it straight to the water, the same afternoon. Over the next months I remember how I learned a lot on that new board, even tried my first front loops on it. I think it still was a very old school shape, over 230cm long, so wave riding definitely was harder, but it helped me with learning to jibe.

When I started trying air jibes on it, a year or so later I realized that I would need a shorter, more versatile board. I started saving up for my first freestyle board and when I finally got it, I was so in love with it that I slowly forgot about the Guerilla. Still it was a super fun board and I am grateful for everything that I learned on it. Funny to think that it actually had a jaguar print ha-ha!”

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PETER HART

HARTY’S PANTHER

“It was 1977.  I was 21. I’d just spent a year in France. It was there I tried windsurfing for the first time on borrowed kit and was so smitten that I arrived back home desperate to buy my own. That year away was spent teaching as part of my language degree, so I’d had saved a bit of loot – although after taxing and insuring the trusty Morris minor, there wasn’t much left, certainly not enough for the original Windsurfer which came in at an exorbitant 430 quid. Someone told me about a newly formed British brand up in Nottingham. A great board, so they said, and more importantly, an almost affordable £275. It was well before the era of Internet scams, so I happily posted a cheque into the ether and 3 weeks later a beautiful Sea Panther landed on my doorstep.

Your first board is very much like your first car. It signals the start of a new and wonderful chapter as a life of freedom and excitement stretches out before you. I remember looking it as you might a new partner, and rather creepily saying: “we are going to have so much fun together…”

First outing
I headed for West Wittering on the UK’s Sussex coast, for no other reason than my parents had taken me there when I was a kid and I knew where it was. Advice I give my clients today (and wish I’d given myself then.) is to spend the day rigging the new combo at home because you’re bound to discover some vital bit is missing or broken or unfathomable. Knotty issues are so much harder to resolve on the beach when your heart rate is up to 200 bpm in anticipation of the first water trial.

I cobbled the rig together but was totally confused as to how to fit the fin. It was the US box type with a screw and a plate already attached. It was like some devious 3D puzzle. It was a good hour before I realised you had to unscrew the plate first, put it in the slot before dropping the fin in – then line the screw hole up with the plate (another half an hour) and screw it back in. We take things like rigging instructions for granted now…
I launched and got going. It felt wonderful. I didn’t have much to compare it with, but I immediately noted it had some rocker and glided beautifully over the 8 inch chop. The original Windsurfer I’d learned on had a dangerously low nose and ‘submarnined’ at the very sight of the smallest wave-ette.  It was also quite a bit bigger, which made life a lot easier for the 90 kg me.

Sandbanks
Things were going so well but I hadn’t noticed the dropping tide. The session was only 20 minutes old when at a scorching 8mph, my daggerboard made contact with one of the many sandbanks (sandbanks, which today we love for generating beautiful waves) and drove the trailing edge through the casing and deep into the hull itself.
It was nothing a car body repair kit couldn’t patch up and a week later I was back out.
This time on my first run back in I caught a wave. There were about 7 seconds of pure ecstasy before the dagger (repaired) hydroplaned, tipped me over into the shorebreak.
The rig emerged a crumpled mess. Here we go again. Unexpectedly, both mast and sail were sort of intact. But the cleat on the front of the boom (where the clamp would now be) had pulled out.
In an attempt to dodge Hoyle Schweitzer’s patent, the Panther boom was a strange trapezoid shape with a square end. The original was actually made out of piping sections, so I took it to a friendly plumber who riveted on the new section.
The good old Panther was certainly improving my resilience and resourcefulness.

But things got steadily better. Mostly…

HARTY RIPPING THE WAVES AT BIGBURY ON HIS BELOVED PANTHER

Fun on the Itchen
Back for my final year, with Panther in hand I founded the Southampton Uni windsurfing Club. Our base was the rowing club on the river Itchen. A section of it widened out and at high tide formed a little lake where we did our teaching. But on an ebbing tide the whole place emptied out like a bath. I was messing about after a class and was having such fun that I forgot about the tide and got sucked 3 miles downriver and spat out into Southampton water. I had no choice but to abandon board and rig and get a bus home with no money.

The Freestyle platform
The early 80s I’d started my school and was a part of the industry, which was truly exploding. Sexy, planing, footstrap funboards were flooding the market, but the heart of the scene was still on the lakes. The Panther remained my go to board and between courses I’d spend every spare moment farting around learning all the classic tricks. Unlike many other boards it had beautiful, rounded edges – perfect for rail riding without skinning your shins. And it had a cunning expanding mast foot, which didn’t pop out and smack you in the nuts every time you try to do something fancy.
The Panther circuit
Best of all, if you were a Panther owner you had access to an extraordinary race series and a social scene second to none. The ‘Worlds’ held at Rutland Water in ’81 ranks amongst the top 5 wildest parties of the century. The events of that event and the circuit in general inspired me to write a song called “The Pond Pussy Blues” which for reasons I’m just beginning to understand, didn’t get a lot of radio 3 play time.

Still Alive
45 years on and my Panther lives on. While many boards from that era have been turned into garden furniture or are rotting at the bottom of landfills, mine was accepted into Simon Basset’s windsurfing museum down near West Wittering for all to see and wonder … “what were they thinking?”

The Panther (second from the bottom) in the 2XS museum!

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SOL DEGRIEK

My first time on a windsurfing board I was seven years old. When I was ready to sail on the ocean, my mum bought my dad a Severne Dyno 105l with the thought in the back of her mind, it would be ideal for me. On this board I learned how to tack and jibe on the ocean. And water-start. Very soon after that, Severne made me a Pyro 55l.

I grew into the board and I have been sailing the Pyro ever since.