Photo Bomber’s blog

“Windsurfing, the sound of the word contains all the mystery of a solitary buoy in the fog, echoing across the water at the end of the day.” 

― Laurie Nadel

Windsurfing’s popularity across global media saw a decline toward the end of the 1990s. This has been attributed to many possible problems within the sport including licensing battles, equipment becoming too specialized, requiring excessive expertise, the splintering of Windsurfing into various niche groups around the world and splintering of the fundamentals as constant reinvention of technology challenged what it was to be ‘a windsurfer’.

On top of these internal issues there was a coinciding drop in major sponsor support, directly caused by the steady introduction of international bans on cigarette advertising during the 1990’s.

Cigarette industry advertising had become the dominant source of sponsorship support during the early and mid 1990’s boom years for the professional level of Windsurfing. With the internationally legislated withdrawal of these large companies, the money spent on promoting the sport and paying for add space declined steeply and Windsurfing receded from public view across global advertising and media generally.

• 

Some good places to start learning Windsurfing

1. Sal, The Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa
2. Tarifa, Spain
3. Kos, Greece
4. Soma bay, Egypt
5. Essaouira, Morocco

•