Sailboarding!

Background and Beginnings:

This extremely popular water sport is actually quite new - as far as established and wildly popular sports go. This post actually speaks a lot about the historical background of the gear involved and not so focused on the "names and faces" of it's players, events and champions.

It was a man named Newman Darby, that had the first ideas of using a sail, mounted on a universal joint, to steer a small catamaran in 1948. Darby didn't file for a patent for this invention but he is recognized as the inventor of the sailboard.

It was two men, Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer, that applied for and received the first patent for a sailboard. They called their invention a "Windsurfer." The early Wind-surfing boards were 12' long and weighed about 60 pounds.

In the late 80's, Newman Darby applied for and received a patent for a one person sailboat called the "Darby 8 SS sidestep hull."

In their article called "The Birth of Windsurfing" Newman and his wife Naomi wrote that "Newman Darby found he could steer a conventional 3 meter sailboat by tipping it fore and aft enough to make turns even without a rudder. This is when (late 1940s) Newman got interested in steering a boat without a rudder. Several sailboats and 2 1/2 decades later (1964) he designed the first universal joint to go along with a flat bottom sailing scow. This sailboard was fitted with a universal joint mast, a centerboard, tail fin and kite shaped free sail and thus windsurfing was born."

Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer applied for a patent for their sailboard design. It was granted in 1970. Drake and Schweitzer based their Windsurfer on Darby's original idea and gave him full credit him for its invention.

"The heart of the invention (and it's patent) was mounting a sail on a universal joint, requiring the sailor to support the rig, and allowing the rig to be tilted in any direction. This tilting of the rig fore and aft allows the board to be steered without the use of a rudder - the only sail craft able to do so."

Schweitzer began mass-producing polyethylene sailboards of the "Windsurfer" design, in the early 1970s. The sport grew like a brushfire and became very popular in Europe. By the late 1970's, the windsurfing fever had so enthralled the Europeans, that one in every three households owned a sailboard!

The first "World Championship of Windsurfing" took place in 1973. Windsurfing drew such a following that it was named as an Olympic sport for men in 1984 and as a women's event in 1992. The history of this sport, despite having very recent beginnings, has so enamored it's enthusiastic followers, that it stands out as a great example of how the ideas of one man, can lead to the creation of such a widely enjoyed sport.

Disclaimer: Ideas for this article and some facts and figures, are based on widely known and published facts from a variety of resources. Thank you all!