Something Big and Amazing, in Windsurfing

I think there's something big and amazing going on with the sport of windsurfing now. It has to do with good competitions and events being organized at all levels around the world, and the collective stoke of the windsurfers involved being creatively channeled and magnified through a maturing "new media" network of photographers and filmmakers, bloggers, websites, etc. What it amounts to is that the wonders of windsurfing, which had languished for a decade or two in isolated pockets of knowledge and stoke, are rising again into the light.

There are lots of ways you can tap-in to the flow of what's going on in the sport, but here I'm just going to recommend two main ones: "DaNews" and the Professional Windsurfing Association Website.

DaNews is run by a Floridian guy named Clyde who is really good at collecting and collating all the freshest internet-published news and videos about windsurfing stuff happening everywhere. Like me, his blog also has a sidebar of links to other blogs with interesting windsurfing content, so DaNews is kind of like one-stop-shopping for your windsurfing information buzz.

The PWA world tour website is less broad in scope, but it covers all the elite level competitions that take place around the world, and features really good photography, nice play-by-play journalism, and classy action videos. I am particularly digging their coverage of the "slalom" racing discipline. It's kind of like the heavyweight boxing of windsurfing, with big tough veteran windsurfer dudes like Bjorn Dunkerbeck, Antoine Albeau, and Finian Maynard duking it out for glory. There's a series of videos from the current competition in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands that captures the action better than any other slalom videos I have seen so far. I've reposted them here for your viewing pleasure.