The beginning of windsurfing can be traced back to 1965, when two good friends, Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake wanted to combine surfing and sailing. They had seen that the major problem in surfing was that you had to wait for waves. They both came from southern California. Jim Drake was an aeronautical designer and Schweitzer a businessman. Drake came up with the idea of an articulated mast and so they developed the universal joint. By the end of 1968 they patented the first windsurf board, the "Windsurfer". So from a combination from surfing and sailing, they developed windsurfing.

Nearly immediately windsurfing knew a growing popularity. Unhappy with the old Fiberglas boards, Schweitzer searched to find a better material that was longer lasting and cheaper. The result of the search was polyethylene. Dupont, the supplier of polyethylene were so impressed by the new use of their material that they published an article that gave the Windsurfer world wide fame.

In 1973 Schweitzer acquired Drakes half of the patent. In 1973 Tencate took out a license to produce the Windsurfer in Holland and in the five years that followed European board sales began to overtake their American counterparts.

But there was one big problem; the one that the windsurf board was already invented before. Since the end of the fifties, S.Human Darby from Pennsylvania experimented with windsurfing boards. In 1965 he had published an article on windsurfing in the magazine "Popular Science". In that article he explained how to do a windsurfing board by oneself, the different sail positions and how you can steer the board.

It may seem incredible but until the end of 1976, Hoyle Schweitzer and Darby had never heard from one another. They began an incredible fight for the patent of the windsurfing board, which costed millions in lawyer fees. Today they are no longer concurrents. Schweitzer is the director of Windsurfing International and Darby produces hand-made special sails.

Very soon the boards became shorter and lighter. The sinker boards were invented, the footstraps and the harness. The funboard was born. In the beginning it was only practised on Hawaii. But then it was all over the world. The windsurfers got better and better. They began sailing in big waves, the wave sailing was born. It was a new challenge. They also always got faster...

In 1977 Derk Thijs sailed with 17,1 knots. The speed record evaluated all the time.
In 1979, Clive Colenso had 19,2 knots.
In 1980 Jaap van der rest demolished the record at special speed trials at Hawaii with 24,45 knots.
In 1981 Jaap beat his own record with 25,2 knots on a new sinker.
In 1982 Pascal Maka bumped the record up to 27,82 knots at Weymouth.
In 1983 Fred Haywood sailed with 30,82 knots.
In 1986 Pascal Maka breaks the record from Croosbow with 38,68 knots. The windsurfers become the fastest sail-driven persons on the water.
In 1988 Erik Beale realises 40,30 knots.
In 1993 Thierry Bielak realises 45,34 knots.

At Extreme Sports Cafe we have courses for beginners, intermediate and expert Windsurfers.
We even have Instructor courses...