What initially attracted you to windsurfing?
My brother Hendrix and I had grown up going surfing every morning with Dad in our Summer holidays and normally by lunch time there was a howling seabreeze and surfing wasn’t much fun. I think that’s what attracted me to windsurfing the most, the fact that I could ride waves on my surfboard in the morning and ride waves windsurfing in the afternoon. In the end I spent far more time windsurfing, especially during school term because by the time I would finish school in the afternoon it was normally 20-30 knots. As my Dad always says, growing up in Geraldton and not windsurfing is like growing up in the snow and not skiing or snowboarding.
Where did you learn, and where are your favourite spots back in WA?
I learnt to windsurf at St. George’s beach in Geraldton. St. George’s is a sandy beach with a few patches of reef and about 300m of flat water before you reach a couple of little waves. I probably windsurfed there for about 6-12 months and learnt how to plane, waterstart and gybe before I started sailing at Coronation and getting in to the waves. Coronation is still one of my favourite places in the world. It is such a good set-up. There’s a really shallow reef just upwind of where we windsurf there, so it’s super smooth on the inside for about 200m, then as you get past that the waves progressively get bigger until you pass the bombies out the back. During the day it’s really good jumping being side-shore to cross-on, and then an hour before sunset the wind normally swings cross-off and it becomes sick for wave-riding. The whole W.A. coast is amazing for windsurfing though and Geraldton is right in the middle of a couple of my other favourite spots, Gnaraloo, Margaret River and Esperance. We have such good variety with these waves. Gnaraloo is a perfect long left, Margaret River is a massive bowl where you really need to be hitting or turning as close to the lip as possible to ride it well and Esperance is a punchy, fun cross-off beach break.
