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Windsurfing books
a topic for the windless season
What was the first book about windsurfing? The answer may depend on another question: what is a book? The earliest publication I have been able to find by tedious searching through library catalogs and web sites here and abroad is James R. Drake's Rand Publication Wind surfing -- a new concept in sailing. The space between the two words shows that "windsurfing" did not exist yet. But at 21 pages it's really a "booklet" and not a book. It's a print version of a paper he presented at the first AIAA Technical Symposium on Sailboat Design in Los Angeles, April 26, 1969. Newman Darby's Popular Science article (1965) is barely five pages, but it is the first publication on windsurfing.
The earliest publications in book form that I have identified date from the mid-1970s. But, material of this type has not been well collected. Few libraries were interested in acquiring books on something as exotic as windsurfing. One caveat: it's always dangerous to describe something as a "first". The "firsts" listed below are likely to be overturned by later discoveries. That old pile of books in your attic, the box of windsurfing magazines at the swap meet might harbor the real first windsurfing book!
A very early book containing a section on windsurfing is in Dutch: Jaap A. M. Kramer's Watersport van A tot Z (1974). It was soon translated into German (1975), making that the earliest German-language book about windsurfing that I have found.
The first book completely devoted to windsurfing may be A. H. Drummond's Sailboarding; a Beginner's Guide to Boardboat Sailing (1974). You can see in his use of the word "boardboat" that the terminology had not yet settled out. Drummond had previously written The Complete Guide to Sailing (1971). Early windsurfers had to rely on the literature of boat sailing for technique. It would be very interesting to see if and how his "boardboat sailing" differs from traditional sailing. If the techniques are not very different, then his beginner's guide may not be the first true windsurfing book.
Drummond's Sailboarding was published in New York. That makes the first windsurfing book also an American book. Windsurfing was introduced to Europe in 1971 and became more popular there than in this country. For the next couple of years most publishing about windsurfing was done in Europe. Most of them are in German or Dutch. Three books on windsurfing were published in French in 1978, so establishing the first French-language windsurfing book is going to be tricky.
The second-oldest book in English that I have been able to discover so far is Windsurfing (1976) by Uwe Mares. Mares was a convert to windsurfing from sailboat racing. The book is a translation of his Windsurfing : so wird's gemacht (1975). Mares' work is, I believe, the first windsurfing book to be published by Delius, Klasing and Co., a German specialty sports publisher who still today puts out just about every book that is published in Germany on the subject of windsurfing, from calendars to joke books, and of course, surf magazine.
Several other windsurfing books were translated from German into English (more or less successfully) and marketed in this country in the 1970s and 1980s. Reinhart Winkler's This is Windsurfing (1979) and Ernstfried Prade's Perfect Windsurfing (1986) still show up occasionally in used bookstores here.
The next American book about windsurfing that I can find is Glenn Taylor's Windsurfing, 1979. A revised edition, issued in 1980 by McGraw-Hill, a major publisher, achieved much wider distribution. This is one of the best.
We have been looking mainly at books, but windsurfing magazines have been around since 1974. The earliest I have found is Holland windsurfing : officieel orgaan van de Nederlandse Windsurf Bond, the official organ of the Dutch Windsurfing Association. I believe that there are windsurfing newsletters in the U.S. and elsewhere from the early 1970s onward. Our own MindJibe started in the mid-1970s.
It is true that the bulk of publications on the topic are introductions and how-to's and these rapidly seem outdated. But the field of windsurfing publications is richer than you might think. There are a few books on windsurfing design and construction. I am particularly proud of my copy of Fichtner and Garff's How to Build Sailboards: Step-By-Step Custom-Made Designs (1983).
Worldwide, there have been several books on windsurfing racing and regattas. For a sport as colorful and glamorous as windsurfing, there have been surprisingly few "coffee table" books, but there are a few. (It may be that videos, which evolved in the 1980s, supplanted this function of books.) Several windsurfing how-tos include a section on windsurfing photography. There seems to be a natural connection between the two activities.
I even found a published guide on to how to run a windsurfing school!
In the everlasting debate about why windsurfing is not as popular in America as in Europe, the argument is frequently made that in the U.S. we do nothing to educate children about windsurfing. This is simply not true. In 1980 Ed Radlauer wrote Some basics about windsurfing for children, which included elementary information about the origins, equipment, and techniques of the sport. Perhaps it was not entirely a pedagogical success. How much information do children need about the history of the sport anyway?
Non-technical books about windsurfing are the rarest and hardest to find. I am still looking for the Baron Arnaud de Rosnay's account of his transoceanic crossing, Tout m?est défi (1981). I would also like to find Tim Batstone's Round Britain windsurf: 1800 miles on a 12 foot board (1985).
Through the end of the 1970s most windsurfing books tend to be all-round treatments covering many aspects of the sport. Beginning in the 1980s, however, more specialized books begin to appear. My candidate for the first wavesailing book, for example, is Dave Cordell's Boardsailing in Waves (1984). In 1981 Sigi Hofmann published the "first" book completely devoted to freestyle: Tricksurfen (1981); it appeared in English as 101 Freestyle Windsurfing Tricks (1982).
As the sport advanced, books on more advanced techniques were published. An example of this: Mike Waltze's Performance Windsurfing (1985). Is this the first published use of "performance windsurfing" in connection with the sport? In the 1980s several book titles suggest an aggro attitude towards windsurfing.
Books about windsurfing in the 1990s can be very specialized, but their titles are generally less aggressive and performance oriented than 1980s titles. In the 1990s we begin to see books about windsurfing sites or even a single site.
What's the use of collecting old windsurfing books? A fair question. It's probably not for everyone. But there are some advantages. It's something related to the sport that you can do on windless days. Also, you get to know something about the social history and the technological development of the sport. You see, mainly from pictures, what truly exotic shapes have been created and sailed. You feel part of an international tradition. Not to forget real utility, of course. The basics remain the same: you can read about the basics of windsurfing just as well from an old book as from a new one. Chip Winans' Boardsailing Made Easy (1984) has 25 pages on getting into shape for windsurfing, a topic treated by very few other books. I'll get around to it soon.
Collecting books on windsurfing is a cheap thrill. You can find many of the more popular books through www.bibliofind.com, a multi-dealer listing of used and out-of-print books. Prices ranges between $4.00 and $20.00. Of course the most obscure publications rarely show up here. You can also look for windsurfing books on eBay, but I have not yet seen anything really unusual here. Prices are very affordable: now is the time to buy low.
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