stribo said...Chris 249 said...
The idea that only surf sailing is windsurfing is pretty weird, considering where the term came from.
The term was created by Bert Salisbury, an early customer of Drake and Schweitzer. Originally the sport was called windsurfing, so the term "windsurfing" actually came from the days of light wind and longboards. It's bollocks to say that windsurfing doesn't mean longboards or light wind.
The boardsailing term only came up when Windsurfing Int'l tried to stop the term becoming generic. They failed, so the term is now applied to the whole sport. That doesn't mean that the term no longer applies to the original style of the sport.
Surfing has changed a hell of a lot since its name was crearted, but no one says that Duke Kahanamakou didn't surf, or that Nat Young doesn't surf his mal.
Sailing has changed a lot since the Viking ships or the first America's Cup, but no one says that the 1850s racing schooners were not sailing.
Flying has changed a hell of a lot between the Wright Flyer and the SR72 Blackbird, but no one says the Wrights didn't fly.
So of course a sport can change without the older style losing its right to the name.
If you say "windsurfing is only strong winds and shortboards", then if you put Drake and Schweitzer (who invented the sport as we know it and applied the name) and Salisbury (who created the term) on original Windsurfers (TM) in a Windsurfer One Design (TM) championship, they wouldn't be windsurfing. That's ridiculous and illogical.
Whats ridiculous and illogical is saying that you can surf without a wave.
Wind + surf = Windsurf
sail + board = Sailboard
So take your sailboard into the waves and your windsurfing.
Take your sailboard to a lake and your sailboarding.
I apologise for saying "ridiculous and illogical"; I was taking a break from writing a report late at night.
However, when I look up definitions of surfing and think of what surfers think of surfing, it seems that they only reckon you're really surfing (as distinct from suitting out the back, or paddling out) when you're actually on a wave. So does that mean when you're on a waveboard, you're windSURFING when you're on a wave but sailboarding when you're jumping or gybing or planing across the flats between waves??
You can surf the net without a wave....oh, and the internet isn't built of bits of string tied together and used to catch fish or butterflies but we still use the term "net". You can make up a compound word without staying 100% true to the definition of parts of the term. Look at skateboarding - a skate used to be something you use on ice but now we have wheels on them. An expensive deck isn't just a bit of board, skates aren't what used to be called skates, that doesn't mean it's called "small wheels hanging off a truck underneath a deck-ing".
We go mountain biking whether we go out down steep singletrack or along the freeway on our MTBs....it's not as if a bike changes from a "road bike" to a "hill bike" and then a "city bike" or "mountain bike" during the day as the terrain changes.
The idea that the term "windsurfing" originally meant wavesailing just isn't true. The Windsurfer was meant for flat water more than for wavesailing. The very man who invented the term created it for a new sport that was not done in surf, so why should it suddenly be taken apart and given a new meaning that goes against the meaning of its creator and the guys who created the sport?
Sure, there's "surf" in the name. So? IIRC the "surf" meant that the board looked like a surfboard (and was in fact a copy of a Matt Kivlin tanker tandem).
If you want to get so literal, since when did a "fish" surfboard have scales and gills? Does a Mal have to come from Malibu?
Sorry, I just can't see how you can tell the man who created the term and the men who created the sport and used the term, that they got it wrong when they called standing on a 12 foot board in light winds "windsurfing". Hey, they made it, they get to call it what they want.
- they don't need more information than that. If they know me, they know exactly where I'm going
. If they don't how gives a sh!t.
