the Atlanta Boardsailing Club
windsurfing, kiteboarding and wingsurfing in the Southeast

Our good friend B. explains the forecast and, by implication, why the grass can wait to be mowed another day.

We were going to title this something more entertaining like "My Crack Head Friends" but spending two minutes searching through Google Images of before and after pics of cocaine and meth addiction was profoundly distressing - thus, the simpler title.

One of the absolute joys of windsurfing in Atlanta are our friends. In our younger days, we used to arrive at Van Pugh and be on the water in minutes. Now, we chat, gossip and catch up so much that we sometimes don't notice that the wind has picked up. We aren't saying that our friends make up entirely for driving fifty minutes and finding the wind much less than predicted (they aren't THAT great) but sitting around and talking on a pleasant spring day comes pretty close.

However, some of our friendships have evolved into some less healthy relationships. We didn't notice it at first but several episodes over the last few months highlighted the issue. Some of you may have experienced the same thing.

We have one friend, B., who has a pretty flexible schedule during the day. Consequently, B. often can make mid-week sessions that most of us who have more conventional responsibilities must miss. B. isn't exactly starved for sailing time as he spends quite a lot of time in Nags Head and manages to squeeze in windsurfing on his frequent travels. For some, that would be enough but not for B. He loves windsurfing.

There is so much good photography and videography of windsurfing these days. It's fun to look at and it can be very useful in picking up tips on how the better sailors do things.

We came across the blog for IFJU Fins after following a serendipitous series of links from our own home page. IFJU is a title sponsor for the upcoming IFJU Fins / FORMULA US Eastern Championship to be held in Miami on March 20-22. The latest entry in their blog is an article about Loic Legallois, a French windsurfer who will be competing.

The blog has a pic of Loic sailing a Formula board. The picture is quite instructive of three things that apply not only to Formula boards but windsurfers in general. We could talk and wave our hands on the beach but having the picture here may help a lot more.

The board and sail might be bigger than anything you have but there's a lot to learn from this picture.

Hey, don't judge. He may be rigging next to you the next time you are at Van Pugh. Say hi to your new neighbor.

It gives us great pleasure to inform you that your parking place is endangered. We are so happy that we could barely sleep last night thinking about it. We are excited. Estatic. Pumped. No, the Corps hasn't changed anything at Lake. We still have the same access - well, better since they've done some improvements to the walkway and grass at Van Pugh. The reason your parking place is endangered is that someone else will be using it. And, that someone else will be a new windsurfer.

Windsurfing is back upfront. It's always been cool but it has both slipped to the back of the public consciousness and become a bit esoteric (we call it the "Soccer Syndrome", to be addressed in a future article). Here are three reasons that is about to change:

We mention this one with some trepidation. Due to the spending habits of of someone in our household (lookin' at you, Princess), we've found ourselves on the Vineyard Vines mailing list. If you aren't familiar with the brand, it's the current generation's answer to L.L. Bean. They carry the same theme of khaki, plaid and madras that's been found in fraternities and sororities since Delta house was banned from campus.

The owners of the firm are a clever bunch, setting photo shoots in really swell places while their friends back in New England suffer from frost bite. We don't know what possessed us to thumb through the latest issue shot in St. Barths but we found a very welcome surprises: windsurfers, windsurfing, people learning to windsurf.

We were never good with history but we think this guy was pretty big in the Renee Sau Renaissance.

Same guy but in "period" costume..

So, it's been cold lately. Very cold. Terribly cold by Atlanta standards. Not so much in magnitude but in sheer duration. Atlanta usually gets the few odd days each winter of reminder why we live here and not Buffalo, NY. But, this year, we've had so many of those days, we are starting to think we are actually living, well, not Buffalo but someplace a lot colder than here. There have been some windsurfable days lately but the desire to jump in 44 degree water wanes now that spring can't be more than a few weeks away.

- source
Umm... maybe we'll go work on the website instead.

So, we put the time to go use. We've re-arranged the furniture, put up a new coat of paint and dusted the shelves here. We've upgraded, updated, migrated and consolidated. We'll spare you the details (unless someone really wants to know) as those things tend to put most people to sleep and would only reveal the general level of incompetence around here.. We guess you could call it a rebirth of sorts although the less kind might just say we put the old website out of it's misery. It's something that we've been putting off in ways for a long time but some recent core software updates made it more urgently necessary.

The result of all this is a much more unified website with a single log in. The wiki is still somewhat separate but, since after four years, zero edits have been done by anyone else, that wasn't very high on our to-do list. As importantly, the future upgrade path is much more secure.

Here are just some of the changes we've made: