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A Blast from the past
By Laurie Nadel



Everyone remembers the first time . . .like falling in love . . .
the gentle kiss, on a summer afternoon, long ago . . . and the first rush,
as you realize something wonderful is about to happen.

My first time ...on a hazy August day in 1982...will always be one of those timeless images that makes me smile just thinking about it. After a month of falling and scrambling back onto one of those twelve-foot long, original windsurfers, I got my first moment of magic: Stand up, knees apart... grabbed the thick, knotted, elastic bungee . . . hand over hand . . . until that most precarious of instants, when the waterlogged, cloth sail cleared the water, and the rig came up, at about a 45 degree angle . . . a hand, reaching for the boom. Up until then, this was exactly where I lost it . . . inevitably pulling the rig back too quickly, or too hard, so that I fell, backwards, into the water. I can't even remember how many hundreds of splashdowns later . . . and how many times people laughed at my comic attempts to balance, while performing what seemed like one of the world's trickiest maneuvers-positioning the rig, while the world beneath your feet squiggles.

I will never forget the warm flush of wind along my right arm, as a whispery "beginner', wind" made her first, hesitant contact with that faded orange, 3.5, cloth sail. If success is 99 percent failure, then a month of scuffed knees and bashed fingers had taught me well. Without quite understanding how it happened, my left arm pulled in, my right arm automatically

Soon, thousands of people around the country were getting swept into the romance and excitement of floating on, the surface of the water, holding onto the wind, enjoying the colorful geometry of those flashing, rainbow-colored, cloth, sails.

stretched along the salt-bleached, wood boom, just in time for that first, unmistakable kiss of breeze, swelling in the pocket of the sail. With my left foot planted against the mast base. I stationed myself in that eternally awkward starfish position, taught to beginners by windsurfing instructors all over the world. Great stance, it was not. But hey, it worked. As the wind increased, I set my first course... and windsurfed to a buoy about 50 meters (yards) away . . . without falling once! And yes, I managed to tack and sail back, as well. Before I knew it, I was in love.