Okay, what's the dumbest thing you've done to damage your gear?

I once let the wind carry away my brand new (only 2nd item I'd used it) 6.2m2 C.I. sail just after I'd rigged up and it landed on the parking sign at the end of Ida St. (Dolls Point). The strength of the wind forced the parking sign straight through it.

The worst part was that they couldn't exactly match the 1980's hot-pink mylar in the repair patch !!!

Regards,
Harrow.

[In my best Homer Simpson voice]

Mmmmmm, salty!

Arr Qwerty i seem to remember a certain day at Wallaby point a few years ago when a certain PERSON(no names-qwerty)rode their brand new JP board over the rocks! Naturally the judges all gave u perfect 10's.
U dumbarse.

Sounds like my evil twin .qwerty is a major talent too.
Pity about Whyner who lands aerials on dry rock.

I once swam my gear out at Longy thinking that the wind out the back would be fine if I could get out there.
Ended up swimming my gear back in after never getting going.

No gear damage, but I did have a sign of my head saying "I'm a dick".

I lost an entire rig at Longy once too. got slammed and it sank. Paddled in on the board (think I saved my mast pad too).
There will be a lot of gear in the rocks on the bottom.

I once bought a brand new Neil Pryde V6 (Orange). Rigged it up in the car park to show off to my friends (No wind).
My 80kg Leonberger Bellman - (rest his soul) decided to lay down on it and put his foot through the main window.
It all happened in slow mo.

Was it a V8 that ran over ur V8?

Here's a couple:

Just finished the last coat of expoxy paint on my new custom, and all the stickers had just been put on, asked the shaper/designer If I could see if the new fin would fit in the finbox, as I walked over to the board, I tripped, the fin dislodged it self from my hands, and buried itself into the side of the board, pointy end first, leaving a 3cm wide x 1cm deep gauge in it before it had left the shaping room

Case Study 2: Just got my new wave board and first time out in the waves, got on my first wave, and started bottom turning, and it felt unreal, So I thought I'd try and break my bottom turn record, after my 3rd bottom turn, I thought jeez it's getting shallow, but that lip looks good, Smack,..."Jeez this board is Hot"........."F#uck that's bare rock, schit i'm gonna hit it....", scrape, creak.. funny plastic breaking sound, body hitting rock and funny skin shredding sound....... and me crying "My board, My board.........."

So Leski, are you responsible for those strange looking boards from the 80s????

no decrepit, wasn't that creative! well, I thought I was at the time
They must have had some really good stuff in those days

1990 - I had only just come down from up north and it was my first time @ lancelin. I parked my panel van on the beach and threw my 8'10 windtech under it to keep it cool(the pilbara gets hot so we used to do this). Sailed all day on my wave gear and when I went to pack up discovered my panelvan had sunk about 6 inches in the sand. The diff had punched what can only be described as a massive hole right through the board. It also took some time and much verbal self abuse to free the board. Lucky for me the only other people left on the beach where euro's and I could understand their payouts.

One of the barn doors was rooted after being slamed and I think the old girl would still be in therapy trying to get through the gilt. I bought a 4wd with heaps of clearance to avoid this happening again.

woke up early one morning to the sound of a howling southerly.... packed the car full of gear board on the roof but with all the excitement i forgot to tie board down on racks ... the board hung in there for about half a k when i heard a sound from the roof... then looked in rear view mirror to see the board flipping thru the air then skid along the road lucky it was early sunday morning so there were few witnesses ... board survived too ( 80's style kym thompson watercooled )

Wet Dreams, I lost a board off the roof of the car and it was parked! Bloody wind. Bloody long scratch in the car paintwork.

Around the Mid 90's I was out on the Swan River in the middle of Summer pounding through big chop with a howling sea breeze on my 4m Neil Pryde World Cup Wave sail and my trusty plastic fantastic Tiga 260 board. It was peak hour Saturday afternoon and I was zipping thru fleets of racing yachts having the time of my life.

I was heading back towards Lucky Bay when I saw a large 40ft racing yacht heeled right over close hauled pounding through the large almost ocean-size chop in the middle of the river. Me being the cool amazingly fast windsurfing dude thought I'd just shoot past in front of him rather than let him go first. Besides I was on a Starboard tack and he was on Port so I had right of way didn't I?....

Of course as I crossed in front of him, the howling seabreeze dropped a bit thanks to the other big yachts upwind of us leaving me suddenly off the plane. With amazing skill I managed to place myself immediately in front of that monster so that the bow of the yacht punched through the very centre of my sail impaling it on the bow of the boat. Of course instead of unhooking and jumping out of the way, I found myself still hooked into the harness hanging onto my boom as my board was ripped away under the bow of this enormous yacht and I was dragged down under water as the bow pounded up and down through the waves and the sheer force off water dragged me under the bow.

At this point I did actually experience everything slowing down and all sorts of thoughts of my life flashed through my head as I began to drown. After what seemed like an eternity, the yacht turned upwind and the pressure of the water eased off so I was able to come up for air and then pull myself up the bow of the yacht and clamber over the rail to find all the crew of the yacht at the back looking for the dead body! I tapped one of them on the shoulder and he turned around with a start and wide eyes and I then said I'd jump off the back to retrieve my board.

I then jumped in and swam to my board and then sat on it waving at the rest of the fleet of yachts in the race as they sailed past gawking at me bobbing up and down while the guys on the yacht struggled to pull my sail off the bow of their yacht where it was still firmly impaled. They finally got it off, turned around and picked me up and gave me a lift back to shore.

The cost of the exercise, $60 to replace my snapped universal and patch the bow-shaped hole punched through my sail. Oh and the slight dent and big long blue paint mark off the hull of the yacht was a nice souvenir on my trusty old bullet proof Tiga.

A week later I happened to bump (metaphorically this time thankfully) into a yachtie friend of mine who immediately said "hey did you hear about the windsurfer who was run over by a 40ft racing yacht last weekend?

I replied "ah, yes, about that...."

These days I sail at Safety Bay and usually give way to anything bigger and badder than me. :-)

homepages: ozmac.com/

-Mart