AFFAIRS OF THE HART – HEY! LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!

Question. Why don’t more young people windsurf? Well they do – but not yet. Harty explains.

I think I’m a fairly easy-going kind of chap. But as I get older, I seem to be less and less tolerant of doomsters. Life chucks enough detritus in your path without some glass-half-empty misery-guts taking the gloss of your day by pointing out the potential awfulness of apparently benign events. “Always look on the dark side of life – that’s what I say – then you’re never surprised or disappointed.” Oh p*ss off!

Just recently, as has been extensively covered in the pages of this magazine, we enjoyed a marvellous National Watersports Festival. The whole place simmered with a warm glow of optimism, not the desperate positivity of a trader with a warehouse of last years boards to shift, but the raw enthusiasm of people getting into it for the first time, coming back to it or just looking for the next thrill.

But one of the comments I kept hearing was: “but where are all the young people? It’s all old buggers at our spot. The sport will die unless you get the kids in.”

You know those times when someone is telling you something, which appears correct and you nod in agreement but which instinctively you know is … wrong. I look at the age profile of the people who attend my courses, even the wave courses which you’d imagine appeals to the young and athletic, and it is indeed mostly, although not exclusively, males between the ages of 35-60. It seems to back up the pessimist’s observation. It’s not until you examine the numbers and individual stories that you uncover the truth.

35-60 is the age bracket of people who get into high performance cars and motorbikes. They’ve actually always been interested in them and, no, it’s got nothing to do with this mythical mid-life crisis – it’s just sometime around that age, they might finally be able to afford them!

Here’s a typical story. Ben, aged 34¾, learned to windsurf as a boy c/o a fanatical dad. He was reluctant at first, because, well that was something his dad did so how could it possibly be anything but fuddy-duddy, dull and painfully uncool. But when he burst through puberty and stopped seeing the world through hormonal eyes, he realised he actually really enjoyed it.

But then life took over. He went to college. As a student you are by definition poorer than a church mouse. At his last year in college he’d saved up enough money from various evening bar jobs, to buy a car. That meant he was now a church mouse on benefits. Windsurfing was still in his sights but it wasn’t until he was 5 years out of college and into a proper job that he could tool up and re-kindle his passion. Move on 20 years and the poverty situation for the youth, is even worse. It’ll cost an 18-year-old 2.5k just to insure a heap of a car, if he gets a deal, which leaves very little disposable loot to fill it up with gas, let alone buy a freestyle board and a quiver of sails.

Adolescent Poverty
I do not see it as a ‘problem.’ It’s just what it is. You can only do equipment driven sports, wealthy and generous benefactors notwithstanding, when you can afford them. Or you need to be a bit determined, resourceful and lucky where you live.

Jack is 13 and sails off my local ‘secret’ spot of …sorry it’s a secret. It’s a not a gnarly point break, just a stony bay lying at the end of one of the legs of Chichester harbour that fills up a couple of hours either side of high tide. He’s there whenever wind and water coincide with time off school, not because a doting mum has bought him a lot of kit and acts as permanent chauffeur but because he saved his pocket money to get a serviceable 10 year board and rig for £70 off eBay; and because he built a trailer for his bike out of a set of old pram wheels. It also helps that he lives just 450 yards from the shore.

I was talking to my friend Harvey this morning, a sometime inhabitant of Tarifa, where kites can be counted in their thousands. He told me that this year he’s noticed a lot more kid windsurfing lessons going on despite the fact that it’s not a great place to learn, too choppy. The local youths kite however because they can strap a rucksack to their back and cycle to the beach. On a similar subject a friend told me of a young colleague at work who had to admit to him that she’s been on a holiday to learn to kite even though she knew it would wind him up. She said she would have preferred to try windsurfing and still has a mind to, but couldn’t see a way to do it at home until she’d found a place to live with a garage and could afford a car.

Look in the right places.
When people say they can’t see kids windsurfing, I have to tell them they’re looking in the wrong places. It won’t be in the shorebreaks of Bridlington or Llandudno. Go and look at a morning session in Vassiliki in July and August where the shallow waters are so full of little mites whooping and a-tricking you can hardly launch without copping a kiddie rig on your head. Visit any one of the UK T15 clubs on one of their sessions. I helped out one day at the club on Tiree, population not very many and over 25 kids were involved. And if you really want to get inspired, get yourself to the Bic Techno Worlds and not only see how many there are but how good they are.

Middle class parents seem keener than ever to expose their kids to as many activities as possible (some a bit too fervently but let’s not go there.) Although we try to let them make their own decisions, we secretly push them towards areas where we’d like to hang out. My boy plays rugby because I took him there because the bar was far friendlier than the one at the football club. You’re unlikely to get parents to take a kid windsurfing if they’re not into it themselves and like hanging around windy shorelines. The way to get kids into windsurfing is to get their parents into it. There are a lot of kids into windsurfing but you tend not to see them until they’re 30.

PH 26th Sept 2014