It’s the summer of 1983, the age of Mitterand, Regan, E.T. and new wave music on your Walkman. The sun was beating down in our arrondissement in a rough part of Paris, cloaking the city in a suffocating heatwave. When a friend casually offered to lend me his windsurfer for a summer vacation I grabbed it, and so by chance, my lifelong quest in watersports began.
It was a time of experimentation and progress and we felt like pioneers. We didn’t need a specific reason nor specific forecast to get on our boards. If there were scant wind, then we would go sailboarding on a floaty windsurfer with triangular sail and teak wood boom. You were kids running amok; we’d make up games or races, bring a picnic (we were never home in time for tea), explore the coast, learn some new freestyle tricks, improve our balance. PLAY.
