SAILBOARDS OF THE LAST CENTURY
Your guide to the exhibition dedicated to the phenomenon of Windsurfing.
The permanent exhibition is installed within the interior of a baroque granary on the grounds of the Stránov Chateau. It is located near Mladá Boleslav, a 45 min drive from the center of Prague.
1. INTRODUCTION + Chronology
There are several theories
about who and when the
sailboard
was invented,
which are still hotly debated today. What is certain, however, is that the sail
of the forefather of today’s windsurfers was first stretched by the wind in May
1967 in California. Its designer, Jim Drake, and his friend Hoyle Schweitzer,
patented the craft under the name Wind-Propelled
Apparatus and eventually renamed it
the Windsurfer. Riding it, “windsurfing”, was a somewhat eccentric
hobby of a few beach parties at the time, until a few of these sailboards made
their way to Europe. On the old continent, the invention immediately aroused
enthusiasm, and licensed mass production quickly began in Holland. That wave of
popularity swept back to the country where the Windsurfer was invented . The fact that in just a few years this
wave would hit a small land without a sea, whose rulers were trying to protect
their citizens from anything made in the U.S.A., was something no one expected.
As
obscure as the merits of the discovery of sailboarding around the world are, so are its origins here in Czechoslovakia. It is said that the first Czechs personally encountered windsurfing abroad probably in
1972, Gejza Mikoczy in Hungary and Petr Cerha in Norway. The first detailed
mention in the domestic press appeared in the summer of 1973, in the magazine
Science and Technology for Youth. Enthusiasts (mainly) from
among skiers, water-skiers and wild water canoeists measured
the dimensions from those rare photographs and tried to manufacture according
to their own imagination, but we were still only groping.
A historic breakthrough came in the spring of 1974, when Jan Pánek, a water
skier from Karlovy Vary, brought a Windsurfer, made by the Dutch company Ten
Cate, to Czechoslovakia. It is said that right on the way back from customs Jiří Nováček, a canoeist and
lamination expert, took an impression of the beautiful yellow board and
prepared the mould. Other clones of the original were quickly created and there
was already something to ride on. Windsurfing was definitely here! A year
later, when Jan Pánek called the first Czechoslovak
meeting and a race of windsurfers, 27 enthusiasts
gathered at the Jesenice reservoir on 30 August 1975. Apart from the race
itself, a preparatory committee was established and the future direction of the
new sport was agreed. As the number of enthusiastic surfers grew steeply, the
number of regattas organized for them also grew every year.
The windsurfing
fever hit both Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc at almost the same time and with the
same intensity. In 1970, barely a hundred people in the world could windsurf,
and in just ten years the sport was on the Olympic programme. And the fact
that five years after the first race on Czech water, fifty Czechoslovaks
started at the Windglider Class
Worlds is an event unprecedented in our sporting
history. Certainly, it was a lucky coincidence that the Windglider World
Championships were held on the Balaton River near us. Fifty of our team came
there, literally experienced the world first hand, and learned from the best. Windsurfing was included in
the Olympic program for the first time in Los Angeles in 1984 – Czech people did not go to the regatta then and
in the end they could not even see it on TV. However, it wasn’t the Olympians who
reaped stardom in windsurfing. The status of superstars was held by a few dozen
guys
raging in high
waves in Hawaii and several world pro-sailing events. Robby Naish, Mike Waltz, Pete Cabrinha, Jenna de Rosnay,
Bjorn Dunkerbeck and co. were the poster idols and the reason why hundreds of thousands of mere
mortals bought boards from hundreds of manufacturers… it was the most
glorious era of windsurfing!
While on the world market many famous companies went bankrupt in the
“crisis of overproduction”, Czech and Slovak manufacturers Lověna, NOE,
Sportservis, Brnosport, Fatran, Novoplast, Artis and others were not producing enough boards to meet the steeply
increasing demand. This created a large space for home DIY and gradually also
for workshop, more or less professional business on the border of (then)
legality. The lack of good equipment in shops was solved by ”golden Czech
hands”. Laminating was done in garages, resin stank in the cellars of family
houses, polystyrene balls and needles of glass fabric flew in the underground of prefabricated houses. The desirable products of private „proto-enterpreneurs“ were mostly sold at regattas and through
private advertising in the absence of normal opportunities. At the end of the
1980s, there were approximately 50,000 sailboards of
all types in the Czechoslovakia (10 mil. population) and probably as many as 140,000 windsurfers were riding them. After the Velvet Revolution, our previously hardly tolerated „enterpreneurs“ could finally
offer their production not only on the beaches,
but also in the newly emerging surf-shops. Next generations of our surfers grew
up on the products of Kasík, Slim, Šugár, Lipno windsurfing 2R, König, Santi,
Maty, Pasko.
In the 90s,
compared to the former great glory, the popularity of windsurfing in our
country and in the world was declining. Although the development of equipment
simplified the ride and the board could be ridden so fast, jump so high and
easily, that no one could even dream of it before. Of the millions of
windsurfers in the world, only hundreds of thousands remain. And nowadays most windsurfers only ride
when mobile apps predict more than 10 m/s and preferably only in the warmth, on
a few of the windiest spots around the World.
After the year 2000,
windsurfing regained its breath and now lived to the age of 55 years, but the present
will be told by others. I wish you an enjoyable and inspiring walk through the
origins of our sport. And if you are intrigued by the colours and stories of the previious years, be sure to try a ride on a
“board” and experience what it is like to plane on the waves and hold
the wind in your hands.
Aloha and Good sailing.
Tom from the windsurfing
museum
2. Thank You – List of Donations
3. Time of inventions
“If you
think about it, pretty much everything that made the twentieth century bearable
was invented in a California garage.”
(Paul Beatty, The Sellout)
0000 – Polynesians
1920 – Skaters
1935 – Skiers
1964 – Newman Darby
1967 – Jim Drake & Hoyle Schweitzer
4. Pioneer Times – 1967 / 1980
„A futuristic
vehicle for your dreams has risen out of the western sea, bringing new
dimensions to life itself. How can such a simple, easy-rider device bring so
much joy to millions? Because …it puts you – with your skills and your dreams
and your hidden potential – into a perfect interaction with wind and water.
Thus, this one small vehicle brings with it the power to make your visit here
on planet earth even more fulfilling.”
(Hoyle Schweitzer, 1984)
The Yellow Windsurfer, made from the polystyrene core of the NOE
Neratovice Co. between
1975 and 1977, retains the shape of the original windsurfer patented by Hoyle
Schweitzer in 1969. It was only a slightly improved version of the first SKATE
board from 1967. The first Czechoslovak copies of the original windsurfers were
made from moulds taken from the Dutch TEN CATE board imported to the
Czechoslovakia by Jan Pánek in 1974. From the legendary First one, the teak boom and joint have been preserved and
can be seen in our depository. In memory of the original, these boards were
called Tenkejt, Dutchman or Californian.
The set exhibited here is
equipped with typical period rig: a Fatran dacron sail (one of the oldest
surviving), a mast made of duralumin pipe from Děčín, a cardan universal
joint, a wooden boom of domestic
manufacture and a plywood
dagger.
It is reported that around 400,000 of the original Windsurfers alone were
produced by 1984. No one has counted the number of different copies in the
world, but around 50,000 may have been made in our country alone.
Pictures:
– The first
attempts to build a “sailboat under the armpit” according to the
photo made in Czechoslovakia in 1973.
– Footage from
probably the first Czech film footage of wind-surfing in action (Jan
Koenigsmark, spring 1975).
5. Made in Czechoslovakia –
1972 / 1989.
East
of Paradise
“…
hundreds of enthusiasts are buying or amateurishly making boards, sewing sails,
finding tubes to replace the fiberglass mast, inventing various improvements to
eventually sail with the wind for the race.” (Jiří Fára, pioneer of
Czechoslovak windsurfing, 1983)
The white
TAIPAN (1976) was designed by Karel Mencl, multiple champion of Czechoslovakia. The product of SPORTSERVIS Plzeň was probably
the first domestic serial produced sailboard with original design. The orange ALKA designed by František Hadač
was produced in large series by ARTIS Modřany from 1980 (its original mold can
be seen further in the exhibition). The DELTA board was a product
of a train carriage
factory in Schwerin (DDR). The tandem of the aeronautical
designer and South Bohemian windsurf pioneer Mr. Papacek is unique for its possibility of
disassembly into two parts … “It is ridden by two, the fun is twice as much”
(Ladislav Dítě, 1983). Raceboard
UNILINE by Otakar Zekl from 1984 respected contemporary European
trends. Funboard “SAILBOARD-fake” is a garage creation
using perhaps all the design elements that could be found in contemporary
Western
catalogues: jet bottom, swallow tail,
wingers… Sewing sails took off in our country as fast as laminating boards.
At first it was sewn from jacket polyester fabric, later from the stronger fabrics
Adriola and Adriana Sails made of STABIL foil for gardeners were also Czech uniqueness. The pinnacle of luxury was
the Polish dacron. Probably the first full-battened sails in the Czech Republic was made in 1982 by Libor „SLIM“ Šebesta. Who did not have a full-batten with a short boom in the mid-eighties was not
IN. But most windsurfers
on our ponds were pulling
triangular sails with a long, wiggling boom out of the water until the Velvet Revolution.
6. Golden years – 1980 / 1985
Fever … or Madness already?
“… Like the biblical flood. Windsurfing has flooded the world. Europe’s coastline is lined from north to south with tens of thousands of boards of all types and makes… All it took was a few years and windsurfing’s exuberance and playfulness has captivated more than two million people… (Rudolf Marek, 1988)
“… during the 1980s … it was estimated that one in every three household in Europe had a windsurf board….” (google.com)
In front of you, you can see a timeline of board shapes and concepts since 1970. From the 1st and 2nd generation longboards, through funboards, to the so-called sinkers (shorts). The first three allround boards (starting with the yellow Windsurfer – #4) are true icons of the late 70s and early 80s. They were all mass-produced and all contributed substantially to the popularity of the sport. Approximately 200,000 of the Mistral Competition series boards were probably produced between 1976 and 1985. The BiC WING was the very beginning of BiC’s windsurfing fame. Around 100,000 plastic Wings were sold annually in France between 1979 and 1981. Ten Cate TC39 (1979-80) was designed with even more emphasis on the speed. The fiberglass racing models were successful in regattas. The TC39 was also chosen by legendary long-distance sailor Baron Arnaud de Rosnay to cross the Bering Strait. TORNADO 36 (1981), an affordable, plastic board from the famous Austrian brand. The stepped, completely original shape of the board tail was intended to contribute to the entry into the planing. Sailboard RACE dominated the 1980 World Championship regatta in the open class. The round bottom and the bow cutting into the water allowed for a very efficient upwind sailing and were unbeatable in light and medium wind ranges. RACE was one of the first representatives of the so-called displacement hulls /check #10 – the stand opposite /. The evolution presented here symbolically ends the era of boards that floated on the water. The next ones will, or rather should be planing on the water. COBRA is considered to be the world’s first mass-produced board with a pin-tail, i.e. a rounded or pointed stern. The pin-tail was the main feature of the new style boards, the foot-steerable planing boards, then called FUNBOARDS in Europe. The Klepper S5 (1982) was the first pin-tail from a successful German manufacturer. The F2 COMET (1982) in front of you may be the oldest surviving board with the Fun & Function logo. The Comet was the first model of the brand that from the beginning bet everything on the success of funboards, brightly colorful sails and beach fashion around. The HiFly 700 (1984) was the pinnacle model of AKUTEC, which under the slogan “German quality and Hawaiian flair” worked its way up to the TOP 3 producers in the first half of the 1980s (until its bankruptcy in 1985).
7. Still on the wave – 1985 / 2000.
The Shortness of boards …. and breath. They’re still dancing on board … in an adrenaline rush …
“… the first signs that led to the sport’s current decline began to appear around 1985. That’s when many windsurfers realized that in order to have fun on the new high-performance equipment, they had to buy everything completely new… then later found out that this new equipment didn’t work in the conditions they were used to….”(Plat Johnson @A Tale of Boom…, 1996) ”
… once you went the way of the short boards, you couldn’t teach your friends to surf…” (Graeme Fuller – multiple UK windsurf champion)
Longboards, i.e. boards longer than 3.5m, were used in the second half of the 80s only by course racers and beginners. Advanced riders and company developers pushed the development to shorten and lighten all designs. This in turn allowed for even more radical maneuvers and more and more adrenaline rushing experiences on more expensive and sophisticated equipment. As windsurfing in light winds ceased, numbers of windsurfers gradually declined from the mid-1980s onwards. The masses who, just a decade ago, found windsurfing to be a family sport and fun for the summer, gradually dropped out and windsurfing moved further and further into the category of extreme and adrenaline sports. With a slight exaggeration, we can say that in the nineties, only those who knew how to windsurf better were more intensively involved, spent more money and they also, deservedly, pumped more adrenaline into their veins…
TIGA Race (1990): a PWA-approved,
RACEBOARD-class carbon racing machine – Handle
with care.
Multiple champion Anders Bringdal not only rode this shape, but also drew
playful pictures for TIGA. FANATIC Ultra Bee (1988): the FANATIC
graphics were one of the symbols of the late 80s. F2 Orbit (1991): a slalom board. In 1991, the innovative F2
company used the Power Box for the first time in serial production.
It is still
the most popular system for the fins attaching. The JP Wave 255 (1998) was one of the
first products of Jason Polakow (KA-1111) who as a fresh world champion, started
his own company for “Hardcore Wave” boards…
You
can see more top-of-the-line tools for slalom and wave in our depositories. The winners’ choice.
8. Sails: From butterflies to air wings.
The museum’s collection includes more than 240 sails produced from 1971 to 2000 .
a) Butterflies from Dakron and Mylar – 1980 / 1990
When Hoyle Schweitzer’s original windsurfer made it from California into the hands of Hawaiian enthusiasts and onto some serious waves, things started to happen. The patented 5.5m2 sail with a 2.6m boom was unnecessarily large in extreme conditions, so in 1976 storm sails appeared. The triangular shape and the long boom did not work well in the waves, so the HIGH CLEW and FAT HEAD patterns appeared. In 1979, Windsurfing Hawaii was the first to offer adjustable booms for different sizes and sail variations and also appears to be the first to add multiple windows to a sail (the original had only one). Professional yacht sailmakers took up sailmaking for boards. North Sails, Gaastra, and Neil Pryde brought their experience to the table, and sails with an aerodynamic profile became less and less like stretched bedsheets. The fundamental inventions that revolutionized sailmaking (and which we still use today) came in quick succession:
1982 – Full-battened sails appeared (with long
continuous stiffeners that held the drop profile).
1983 – Gaastra introduced and patented the CAMBER (a profile-enhancing fork, for better sail stability and
power)
1984 – Clamp-on booms (which no longer wobbled) and RAF sails (Rotating Asymmetrical Foil) appeared
b) Monofilm wings – 1990 /
2000
The quest
for maximum efficiency, speed and maneuverability also drove sail designers
into new creations. The material of the period is a transparent monofilm that
holds the profile perfectly (until it breaks or falls apart). Dacron is hardly used (just for mast sleeves and for beginner sails). The low durability of the
materials and their degradation in the sun was and still is a problem faced by
manufacturers and users.
* Dacron – polyester
fabric developed by DuPont in the late 1940s (originally) for lightweight, non-absorbent clothing. It has been used
for yacht sails since the 1950s. Dacron sail life is given as about 10 years,
if you accept that you will soon have a “bag” of it
* Mylar – polyester fabric coated (laminated) with plastic film started
to be used for WS sails in the early 80s. The shape holds perfectly, the sail
life is half that of dacron (the film peels off).
* Monofilm – lightweight, transparent polyester film (actually the
thicker mylar film). It was apparently first
used in mass production on WS sails by F2 in 1989. This material holds the shape perfectly, but it cracks
and breaks.
9. Boards: There are about 175 boards in the museum collection, here in the exhibition you should count more then 110
10. Sailing. The first 5 Olympic games. Regattas and course races. DIVISION II vs. Raceboards.
” ….Equipment is developing very dynamically. The board, which is for 2 Olympic games, chosen as Olympic, is long outdated by the time of the Olympics, especially the second one. Thus, windsurfing is never shown at the Olympics in its most attractive form and its development, at least in terms of racing equipment, is thus greatly hindered…” (Marek Raška, President of CWA, 2000)
This stand is dedicated to the first 5 windsurfing Olympics, windsurf boat classes, regattas and windsurfing as sailing or yachting in general. The word Yachting is considered almost a dirty word among young windsurfers today. They call it anything with a sail bigger than 5m2. In the seventies, however, the fathers of windsurfing tried very hard to get Yachtsmen to take them into their established organizational structures… And they took us in, even though a lot of true-believing sailors turned up their noses at the boarders anyway. They looked at the
windsurf as the cheapest boat – a sailboat in the armpit.
Similarly, at the world level, manufacturers were already trying to get windsurfing into the Olympic games (under the wing of sailing) in the second half of the 1970s. This succeeded very soon and in 1980 it was decided between 2 finalists: a Windsurfer from the USA and a Windglider from Germany. The choice of the first “Olympic board” is still a bit a mysterious chapter in history, but even with the choice of windsurfing for the next Olympics not everyone was ever happy. The equipment used has often disgusted “this way of windsurfing” to the general public and some professionals.
Let’s recall the boards on which the first Olympic regattas were sailed and which you see all before you: Los Angeles 1984 @ Windglider > Seoul 1988 + Barcelona 1992 @ Lechner Division II (DII) * Atlanta 1996 + Sydney 2000 @ Mistral One Design (Raceboard)
*Raceboards and Division
II.
Two design lines of boards for regatta and circuit racing, where all courses
apply and effective upwind sailing is required. Both concepts had their boat classes, their
Olympics, their world champions, their admirers and haters. Both concepts experienced a peak of
popularity in the 1980s and even met in the Open class events between 1981 and 1995. In
Olympic sailing, the years 1988-92 saw the rise of the displacement champions, then
the era of Raceboards
under 5 rings began… as
time went on, longboards ceased to interest windsurfers and then
manufacturers… or was it the other way around?
11. Hall of Fame
/28 inductees pics from windsurfinghalloffame.com /with Jonathan´s kind approval/
12. Photo Corner and Drawing Corner.
We are looking for new talents – designers and racers
/ drawing worksheets, windsurf simulator for the smallest kids/
TREASURY / DEPOSITORY (Further panels and exhibits are located in the following room – a tour of the depository is only possible with a guide. The tour takes place only on selected days)
13. Workshop, garage, cellar…
Fibreglass wherever you reach, polystyrene balls wherever you look… the whole family laminates…
A riddle: at what maximum speed was it possible to drive when you ceremoniously carried this fragile PS core on the roof of your Skoda car from producer to your home?
99% of Czechoslovak windsurfing enthusiasts could only dream of the western boards on display today. At best they looked at their photos in magazines. The more skillful among us traced logos and fast stripes from the photos, estimated scales and proportions, more or less copied the graceful curves of the boards.
Boards in our country were (mostly) made of fiberglass, either in a mold, see the mold for ALKA board (in the previous room), or on a polystyrene (PS) core. In-mold production guaranteed a perfect shape, even if the creator was a clumsy hoof. But the board was (mostly) heavier, it always leaked, but again it could be poured. There were a few guaranteed technologies to make reinforcement, but the deck was going to soften sooner or later anyway. The PS core boards were considered better and usually lighter, but once the water got in, no one could get it out. Even if you bought a semi-finished core, getting the board to the perfect shape was a great art.
The most famous supplier of so called D.I.Y. kits in this country (and probably in the world, as it is not known that kits were produced on such a scale anywhere) was NOE Neratovice O.P.S. You can see the polystyrene core for the Windsurfer, ready to be laminated, in front of you. You had to wait several months to buy this. Later in the 80s, when they started to offer the core for the Winglider, the demand was so huge that the wait for the core was up to 1.5 years. The can with Epoxy 1200 resin is an authentic leftover from the last Lechner future museum founder made in the 80s.(the thinner and therefore much better Epoxy 1500 was the best, but it was not legally available).
14. Booms, masts, fins,
daggers.
Magic boxes full of junk. One man´s trash is another man´s treasure
Mast “I took the measures from a picture, we found the mast in the nearby forest” (Milan Sejkanic recalls the making of his first windsurfing board in 1973)… The mast of the first American windsurfer was made of fiberglass. However, we had to improvise when making copies in our country, so the evolution could be summarized as follows: spruce instead of fiberglass, duraluminium instead of spruce, and back to fiberglass, in which glass was gradually replaced by carbon. The parameters of the masts have always been debated by windsurfers*.
Boom is “ Specifically a pair of curved booms are arcuately connected athwart the mast and secure the sail therebetween, “… (United States Patent, WIND-PROPELLED APPARATUS)
Battens: “reinforcements to prevent the end of the backstay from bending” (J. Fára, 1983) were made from wood, from the tips of fishing masts, from pertinax and all the then available, possible and impossible plastics
Dagger board: “a specially modified and shaped plate of wood or plastic which, when inserted into the board, prevents lateral movement when the board is in motion” (J. Fára, 1983). In the early 1980s, small daggers began to be used, in the middle retractable ones and at the end daggers gradually stopped being used altogether (for most board types)…
„UJ“ (UNION JOINTS) „the position of the mast and sail being controllable by the user but being substantially free from pivotal restraint in the absence of such control.… the propulsion means is connected to the vehicle body by means of a universal … joint having three axes of rotation“ (US Patent, WIND-PROPELLED APPARATUS) Joints of all the designs and materials used can be found in the magic box. Note the popular gimbals made of wrenches, duralumin, stainless steel, silon and plastic…
Fin … ”A small fin has a draft of approximately 200-300 mm.
It’s a bit of a paradox, but a more skilled surfer can do without a big fin,
but not a spur. We will almost know its importance when we mount it. It is
practically impossible to cast without it; the board is constantly going off
course.” (Anton Zerer, 1982)
” Finnology: history of the spin-out
fight? Football, Foot, Fence fin in
the US, Power or Tuttle
box?”.
**) spin-out – shooting off the back of the board under certain
conditions – another favourite subject of endless discussions* of windsurfers
in the 80-90ies. Guaranteed shapes were guaranteed to work (and if you really
believed it, they worked even better).
*) Discussions were held by windsurfers
on the shores and in bars. Then on i-forums after the invention of the
internet. In prehistoric times in Czechoslovakia, the basic topic was HOW and from
what to make a piece of equipment. After 1989, the question was WHERE to BUY
cheaper… And of course, and most importantly, it was always possible to solve
and resolve the WIND. It was always blowing either LITTLE or A LOT, but only
from the second half of the 80s onwards it started to be a question of WHAT
size sail to rig. And since 2000, it’s been about ”HOW the forecast from windguru.cz
fits” – By the
way Windguru has been probably the most important Czech contribution
to windsurfing(!).
15. Winding and blind paths of progress
Sometimes you overtake time, other times you get lost
The mahogany board of Mr. Vejr (≈ 1976) looks curious among the others, but it was built with the most classic boat building technology with ribs. SOLAR STAR, a board with a keel instead of a fin (1977). The second oldest board in the exhibition (the one above the open expo space), demonstrates one of the blind branches of development. Of course in 1977 it wasn’t so certain, SOLAR boards were made with rather progressive technology – PE plastic, the promotion campain was massive. Riders on the yellow keel boards even participated in the prestigious Pan Am Cup in Hawaii.
The Mistral Challenge Flex (1988) – slalom and wave board, 2 in 1, was probably the only windsurf board to use Mike Tinkler’s unique patented method of a suspension tail in production. Mistral also combined it with the ability to swap out the pin-tails and thus change the length and volume of the board. Tinkler bros. patented his flexible back system in ’75 for surfboards, and it was also used with some success on asymmetrical wave boards.
Folding kit SHARK System (1978), shows how you can be ahead of the times… A similar system of dismountable boards was used only in 2019 by paddleboard manufacturers and Lechner tandem. Shark, however, offered a kit that could be made into a kids or surfboard, an adult standard board, a tandem board and a team board for 8 riders(!).
Mr. Papacek’s (1978) Shifting reversable boom, allowed the mast to be moved in the front end of the boom so that the belly dacron sail would not touch the boom tube and thus not interfere with its dripping profile. Another unique feature was the routing of the trim rope inside the boom tubes. The inventor himself has used the unique boom during the 80´s on his own windsurfer and DII in regattas behind the Iron curtain… unfortunately he did not live to see 2020, when NEIL PRYDE announced this solution as “a milestone in the booms history” and its XC-RACE as the first racing boom with the integrated Interouthaul system…“
Beat´s forefin – „the bullish innovation“ J
16. Equipment. Fashion and technical show. I have nothing to wear, my dear… From rubberized canvas to Lycra
“The surfer is ready to ride: now the surfer gets ready. On a hot summer’s day there are no problems with equipment – swimwear and sneakers are enough – but in cold weather, special neoprene boots (or sailing boots) and a wetsuit are essential …” (Anton Zerer, 1982)”Windsurfing clothing needs more attention than it would seem at first sight..” (Jiří Fára,1983)
….Yes, especially in spring, fall and winter it was really tough. In the seventies our first pioneers who came from a yachting background surfed in rubberized canvas sailing suits and heavy sailing boots. It’s probably unnecessary to mention how bad it was to swim in, but in winter you didn’t want to swim anyway and tried to get to the board and ashore quickly. The wetsuits were first adopted by divers and then gradually by windsurfers in the 80s. Everyone who was serious about surfing could get a wetsuits from n.p. Svit Gottwaldov. They were also called “wood foam” because of their infamous inflexibility. Due to the slightly above-standard relations with “neutral” Austria, even under socialism, you could sometimes buy CAMARO wetsuits under the counter. The shoe situation was surprisingly easily solved: only Karel Mencl, our King, had racing Adidas in the early 80s, but even common people could get Yugoslavian ALPINAs (under the counters).
By the 90s we could finally buy everything we had seen in Western magazines… Well, almost everything, you couldn’t buy those brightly colored racing t-shirts with ads that I only later learned were called “LYCRAS”. And it wasn’t until our big supporter, Beat Steffan (Z-69, later when he moved from Switzerland to Spain E-69), a turn of the century PWA athlete, has donated his personal wardrobe – collection in 2022. I´ve learned that LYCRA was an invention 10 years older than windsurfing, that it was first used for bras, and in 1974 that it was used for swimwear. After a long introduction, let me present chronologically our Lycra shirt collection:
1) the 1992 Barcelona
Olympics shirt donated to the museum by Patrik Hrdina
2) the shirt from the 1996 World Speed Championships was donated by the Czech
record holder Martin Sladký
3) 27 shirts
from the PWA*, PBA, ISAF and
other
events from 1995 to 2003 donated by Beat Steffan (and
what PWA and PBA are you can read in the box)
4) the shirt from Luderitz Speed 2018 was donated to the museum by the current Czech speed record holder Martin Tóth
“Harness, or third hand – a piece of
equipment to ease the ride in strong winds… Nowadays there are harnesses
of foreign manufacture,
but a good handyman is able to make a trapeze of the same quality, at least in
function, according to the pattern presented.” (Jiří Fára) The harness collection includes more than 20 pcs, both factory made “foreign”
ones and those made in garage. Don´t miss the
unique harness Moravan, from Czech safety belts producer.
* PWA – Professional Windsurfers Association (founded in 1996)
represents the sport at the highest level, trying to improve it and make
windsurfing better for the public. The PWA organizes the PWA World Tour
pro circuit, creates rules, strengthens relationships and links between
existing associations, classes and disciplines of windsurfing, promotes the
growth of the sport even at the grassroots level… (pwaworldtour.com).
Let us briefly recall the history of
professional associations and their competitions: The
first series of pro competitions was the Windsurfing World Cup. From
1983 to 1985 it was organized by the manufacturers, i.e. the World
Sailboards Manufacturers Association (WSMA), renamed to WBA in 1986. Since 1988 the competitors took
the organization of the series into their own hands – under the Professional
Boardsailors Association (PBA) till 1996. PWA
as the successor of PBA is (also) in
the hands of the riders, but with the participation of producers and sponsors
17a. Czech Explorers Footprints: Vladimir on Baikal
Once upon a time on TITICACA lake…
“Adventure. The coin of life that modern society deprives us of… to escape the twentieth century by, for example, sailing a surfboard across the Bering Strait…. or across the Atlantic. An exciting game… brings more hardship than joy to the challengers of the elements, yet they prove that humanity is not yet dying in an avalanche of comfort… (Rudolf Marek, Olympia 1988)
In 1995, Czech windsurfer Vladimír Šimek sailed solo across the highest lake in the world navigable for large vessels, which lies at an altitude of 3,810 metres above sea level. His achievement has never been repeated, never been known worldwide or widely appreciated. During his solo expedition, Vladimir used the experience gained during his long-distance voyages with the FORMOSA expedition group: in 1989 they crossed Lake BALATON as part of their training excersise. In 1990, the FORMOSA international expedition crossed Lake BAIKAL. 105 km distance (as the crow flies) in 19 hours on allround HiFly SPIRIT boards. You can see Vladimir’s expedition board in front of you.
* Formosa, founded soon after the Velvet Revolution by Vladimir Simek and Pavel Zavadil, was primarily involved in sports marketing in addition to the aforementioned long-distance expeditions. Apart from organizing World Cup races in snowboarding and mountain biking, in the 1990s it prepared very seriously a Czech indoor windsurfing venue. Unfortunately, the idea could not be completed due to lack of sponsors. Vladimir Simek is now a respected filmmaker who has made or contributed to more than 50 documentary films.
17b. Czech Racing Footprints: Danny on Maui
Story of a guy from the land without the sea fighting bravely with the Hawaiians in waves
Danny Motz, Czech windsurf national team rider, arrived to Hawaii in January 1991 to experience the world-class windsurf races. He brought NPU sails and Weichhart masts from his European sponsors, but he needed a raceboard for the course races. Rick Naish personally sold him an older carbon epoxy prototype board*. Danny, a 25 years old guy from a small country without the sea, then took part in several races and (a bit surprisingly for the home team) he won two of them: the Aloha State games at Kailua bay and the Pacific Rim Championships at Diamond Head… 29 years later, Danny donated his beloved raceboard to the Windsurfing museum Prague.
*) Dan’s raceboard is probably the predecessor or uncle of the 1989/1990 Mistral Equipe models and therefore the 1996 Olympic One Design board.
18. Need for Speed. Fast and furious. From Spider to Luderitz, from Zero to 99km/h in less then 45 Years
”… When you
get your board planing for the first time, the experience is both scary and
exciting. Suddenly, … you start skipping on
top of the surface of the water like a thrown stone. The speed and acceleration
of that feels like no one could ever go even faster and that you must hold the
sailing speed records…” (poolewindsurfing.co.uk)
“The speed of the vessel in
displacement mode … is dependent on the length of the vessel …”. „Lange Lauft!“ say the Germans. Fred Ostermann followed this rule when he designed his Windglider SPIDER in 1975. No one else in windsurfing business has
taken the „extension route“ literally and so SPIDER at 465
cm, remains the longest (single) windsurfer of all time…
It’s human nature to try to
reach the highest speeds on anything that can move. The International Sailing
Federation has officially recorded speed records since 1972. At that time,
windsurfing was
years old and learning to walk rather than running a race. Another 5 years
later, Derk Thijs had already set the first official record of 19.10 kts (35.3
km/h) on a modified Windglider. Sailors track speeds in knots (kts), so tens of
knots have been considered historical milestones:
– 20 kts was
broken by Jaap van der Rest in 1980,
– 30 kts by Fred Haywood in 1983 (30.82kts = 57.07 km/h),
– 40 kts by Eric Beale in 1988. From 1991 to 2003 the record had only one
holder – Thierry Bielak pushed the limit from 43.06 to 45.34 kts. Finyan
Maynard* rode at 48.70 kts in 2005, but the magic 50 kts mark didn’t fall until
2012 when it did
thanks to Antoine Albeau.
Beyond these milestones, it’s worth remembering that:
– in 1986 Pascal Maka beat the legendary catamaran Crossbow.
– From 1986 to 1993 and then
from 2004 to 2008, the windsurfer held the absolute record among all sailing
boats (!).
– Antoine Albeau currently (5.2022) holds the record with 53.27 kts – 98.65 km/h.
– Bjorn
Dunkerbeck in 2021 broke the dream metric of 100km/h on a board (he went 103.67
km/h for more than 2s, but this is not an official record, which is measured on
a 500m course)
* Speed queens and world record holders on the board have been Erica Keller (1981), Jenna de Rosnay (1982,1984), Marie-Annick Maus (1983), Patti Whitcomb (1984-6), Britt Dunkerbeck (1986), Babeth Coquelle (1986, 1991-2005), Brigitte Gimenez (1988-1991), Karin Jaggi (2005-2012, 2015-2017), Zara Davis (2012-2015).
And how about the ”speed scene” in Czechoslovakia? The first personal encounter of a Czechoslovak rider with the world’s best took place during the Week of Records in Port St. Louis, France in 1988. Martin Sladký tried his hand at canal riding outside the competition and met Pascal Maka and Fred Haywood. In 1989, before the Velvet Revolution, he came to the West German Brutal Canal to race on a custom-built board by Pepa Stepan (grey needle in front of you). After the first few races Martin bought a special needle from Italian speed record holder and shaper Stefano Pavcovich (white needle). Martin then set a record of 32.16 kts (59.56 km/h) on this board in 1990. A higher speed was not recorded by a Czech rider until 1995, when Pavel Včíslo clocked 35.65kts on a F2 Sputnik 270. However, this performance was not recognized as a record by the WSSRC. Similarly, the 34.63kts achieved by Tomas Malina in 2008 was not recognized as a national record (Surfmagazin.cz 10/2015). Martin donated both of his record needles to our Windsurfing Museum in the autumn of 2021. The collection of speed specials is completed by a red K-Weite sinker. Dr. Weigl from Karlovy Vary produced boards under this brand in the 1980s. The unique feature was the central screw fixing of the fin (which was ahead of the F2 company, which introduced its “Power box” system in 1991).
P.S. And how was it in Czech rep after 2000? In 2014 Martin Tóth set a record of 46.73 kts (86.54 km/h) on the canal in Luderitz, Namibia, which is still valid today (6.2022). The white RRD X-fire that Martin purchased from the aforementioned world record holder Finian Maynard* has only the stickers in common with the standard X-fire. Martin donated his board and other artefacts from Luderitz 2014 speed session to our museum’s collection in the summer of 2020. We are currently trying to find out if it is perhaps even one of Finian’s record boards…
19. Boardsports – the bonus: Skateboarding, Snowboarding, Alpine and Water Sking – Ancestors and siblings, roots and branches /of our tribe/.. Substitutes…
“We were full of energy, our tribe was the skateboarding community and skateboarding was an initiation ritual, full of blood and flying. But falling into powder seemed safer than asphalt, so in the early 80s we became interested in snowboarding.” Jiří Včelák (WWA)
„The general effect of providing a sail on a normally sailfree vehicle is to convert the vehicle into a water or landboat… The invention … is most advantageously used on small and lightweight vehicles such as surfboards, iceboats, skateboards“ (United States Patent WIND-PROPELLED APPARATUS)
What are those planks doing here, are you building a surf museum or a ski museum? … yes this chapter is just a bonus, you get this one for free on top of the price of admission. The last one and so it may already be a bit looser and chatty and less funny. But let’s start again from prehistoric times: The founding fathers of windsurfing in our country in the late 1970s were not surfers who missed the waves, but mainly water skiers and wild-water canoeists (our watermen)… and of course downhill skiers. When windsurfing was at its peak, this sliding, rolling and riding community mixed with the wheeled boarders, and then the snowboarders… and as it was in our country, these fashionable sports were met by pure, hardened and stuck-up athletes and free-thinking punks, teetotalers and alcoholics, unionists and various poseurs. Nowadays one would say that those sports and the life around them were “COOL and FANCY” , but we didn’t call it that back then… So what you can see here in the pile in front of you?
Jan Haškovec’s water skis. Jan Haškovec together with Jan Pánek was one of the first windsurfing pioneers in our country.
The first 3 mass-produced skateboards in our country including
the legendary ESAROL in the rare orange version (Yes, the board is like new, because it was basically impossible to ride it.. ), the more hilarious but equally underrated FLAMENGO and PEGAS… From my first DIY skateboard I made in 1977, only the wheels made in DDR were left. But my first real SKUDA board, made in England has survived in its entirety.
* French aristocrat and passionate sailor Arnaud de Rosnay in 1965 organized (and won) the first French
skateboard competition in
France. Fourteen years later, in 1979, he crossed in 12 days the Sahara Dessert
from Mauritania to
Dakar, standing on his Speed Sail (a windsurf on tires with wheels).
(http://blog.destination-surf.com/)
Snowboards
Nidecker and Pasko the boards of Rostislav and Zuzana Ruzbatský, Czech
sailmaker, our today‘s supporter
Downhill skis from the museum founder’s collection, including the legendary ELAN
05, made famous by the phenomenal Ingemar Stenmark (by the way also a windsurfer), and also Franz Klammer´s FISCHER
C4. Both featured on the posters which have hung above the future
museum founder’s bed.
MISTRAL SKISAILER – a unique windsurf rigg attachment system to
downhill skis, which Mistral spent a lot
of money on at the time. Kind donation from
Guy Bailie.
The guide takes into account the state of the exhibition in 2022. Since then, MANY interesting exhibits have been added. We are working on updating the guide, but there are many other priorities in saving our sport heritage. At least you will have some surprises when you visit us!
Thanks to Helena Štěpánská and Beat Steffan for help with translation and proofreading. Of course, we welcome any comments on inaccuracies, errors and other recommendations on the text.
V. 2aa 6.6.2022