Learning to windsurf in my mid-forties on the shallow lakes and grey open water of Flevoland, from the first wobbly uphaul to the day the board lifted and flew.
October 3, 2026
The season is over: the board is back in the shed, the wetsuit is drying in the bathroom and the notebook is nearly full. The water start I did not quite learn, a last session on a cold grey day on the IJsselmeer, and the totals from three summers.
Read more →June 6, 2026
On a Sunday in late May, in a wind of force five on the Veluwemeer, the board lifted onto the water and started to fly. What planing is, why it took me two years, a borrowed smaller board, and fourteen seconds that I have been trying to repeat ever since.
Read more →July 19, 2025
A harness takes the pull of the sail off your arms and puts it on your hips, which is wonderful until a gust comes. Learning to hook in, the catapult, and my first sessions on the open IJsselmeer, where the waves are short and the bottom is out of sight.
Read more →April 26, 2025
A winter of advertisements, cold car parks and a husband with a calculator: buying my own board, two sails, a mast, a boom and a thick wetsuit, nearly all of it second-hand. What it cost, and the first session of the year in water of eleven degrees.
Read more →August 31, 2024
A summer of Saturday mornings on the Veluwemeer on a rented board, learning to tack: turning through the wind by stepping round the front of the mast. Steering with the sail, light winds, a sunburnt neck and the first time I came back to where I started.
Read more →June 1, 2024
A beginners’ course of four Saturdays on the Veluwemeer, on a board as wide as a door and a sail the size of a bedsheet. Standing up, pulling the sail out of the water with a rope, finding the one position where nothing moves, and falling in forty-one times.
Read more →