Three Pieces of Windsurfing Gear I've Owned More Than Ten Years

I love old gear.  This is one of the things that draws me to swap meets...I think of all the adventures each board and sail and fin screw has seen.    While I usually upgrade my gear once a piece is five years old or so, a few items have been with me for quite awhile, and it's been on my mind to honor them, so here it goes:

#3:   My reactor bar.   This bar came to me used in 1999, thrown in free with my first waist harness, so I don't really know how old it is.   That harness (and the one that replaced it) have since gone to the great sesh in the sky, but the reactor bar is none the worse for wear, except for some chipped paint.     Every few years I put the thing away and switch to a conventional hook, but I find I come back to the Reactor after a few weeks. 
 

#2   A 10.5” Ian Boyd fin.   Given to me in Cape Hatteras by Mark Skelton in 1996 for Learning to Fly (a F2 258 Axxis) my oldest fin now is the mainstay on Candy 77 (a 77 liter Fanatic Freewave.)   Mark has always provided sage fin advice, and the fin he gifted me may be bucking for immortality…it receives a lot of abuse but shows none of it.

#1  An EZ-Rig.   Note how 17 years of squeezing it has bent the metal!  This is the first new piece of windsurfing gear I ever purchased.   In 1992 I asked Jon Ford (who I think was just working at the shop that he now owns) which EZ rig I should buy.  “Get the all-metal one” he said, “it will last much longer.”     A friend suggested I tied a bit of bright line to the thing to make it easier to find.  I’ve lost it on the beach twice, but the line has helped me find it days later.

If I hadn’t switched to RDM masts a few years ago I’d probably be including a pair of Fiberspar Tidal Wave masts.   I’ve been fortunate with carbon masts…if you don’t abuse them (or pogo them in beach break) they’ll last a very long time.   New carbon masts are worth it, imho.  

I also own an early 1980’s Mistral Superlight, but that was over ten years old when I bought it.

(Images:  the Reactor bar in situ, the fin unsitu'ed, and my bent EZ rig, which I really should pry apart...I have to thread my downhaul line at times.)

Comments

[George]

interesting. my stuff that is over 10 years old is about the same as yours... downhaul tool, fins, heck and a bunch of sails clogging up my garage that i can't seem to get rid of either via a swap, or worse.
i'll hang onto them for sentimental value, plus i just like looking at em. its like a library of books i've read and collected. Every time you pass by and see them, you're reminded of a great story/sesh

[Michael]

For some reason I don't get sentimental about sails. Boards, on the other hand...I hate parting ways with a board. In 1999 I sold a 1994 Bic Tempo to a friend. He replaced it a few years later, and somehow in 2005 I found the board in a junk heap behind Windsurfing Hamptons (I write on my boards so they're easy to identify). I rescued it from the heap and brought it home, where I use it as a drag board. I had my first Hatteras session on her, and it pleases me to still be able to touch it.