I've been pondering the windsurfing world post Windsurfing Mag and have come to the conclusion that if it didn't die on its own, it would have been "put down". That's not a comment on the editorial staff and what they were doing. It's not even a comment on the transition from physical to digital content. Rather that windsurfing itself has changed.

There's an old proverb that says, "When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails." Its corollary is, "When a camel drinks water, he doesn't use a straw"

No, wait, that's another article I'm working on. How about this: "When you see someone holding a hammer, you aren't expecting this."

Let's take a look at some windsurfing pics. When you see each of these, you have a reasonably good idea of what is happening in the picture.

"Oh, that's someone sailing down a wave."

"A jump! Wow, that's really high."

Dacron Jumps the Shark

For years, that was enough. In fact, windsurfing was considered quite photogenic and the marketing world used classic windsurfing stock images quite often. According to Madison Avenue, we still are using classic Dacron sails.

Things began to come unglued when Jaws was conquered. We saw plenty of pics. That wave certainly is big. Really big. But what the pics could never show and you never realized until you saw a video/movie of it was it wasn't just the size of the wave but the speed. It didn't jack up like a lazy South Carolina musher but like a dozen freight trains at full throttle going downhill pulling a hundred coal cars and maybe a caboose. (I like to lay my similes on thick and heavy). Once you start watching video of windsurfing at Jaws you realize how much of it is in slow-mo so you can actually comprehend what's going on. Coincidentally, at about the same time, windsurfing freestyle burst on the scene - something else that is difficult to "picture" (pun intended) without a video.

This is the issue with depicting windsurfing's cutting edge. It's complexity can't be captured by an image or even a series of images. Below are some images which are screen captures from videos. Clicking on the image will open the video in a new window so you can see what really is happening.

You think it's going to be a nice little wave jump off that maybe five foot face and then... Wait, what? How many did he just do? Rider: Steven Van Broeckhoven

Is it going to be a cutback or floater on that wave? Rider: Philip Köster

How about this move, ah, couple of moves, wait, what was all that? Rider: Steven Van Broeckhoven

Sometimes a picture is worth 100,000,000,000 words

We must admit that every once in a while, there is a pic so complete video is not required. But it's the topic for someone else's blog.

This is the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field Image. Each dot of light is a galaxy averaging 100 billion (100,000,000,000) stars each. Full size (18mb 6200x6200)