Dave White
“I was only 14 when I stood on the first windsurfer to arrive on our shores. At the time I wasn’t really impressed and after a year I left it alone. Nine years later I returned and windsurfing had changed from a toy to a sport, though its change in me was going to be greater. Looking back it’s hard to believe I was once shy and retiring and happy spending time with my camera or tending my garden; wow, how life has changed. I’m not sure windsurfing can be classified as an addiction but it has given me all the highs and lows of a Hollywood drug movie script. World travel, the elation of winning contrasting with the despair of defeat, cash and debt in equal measure and a life-saving experience that windsurfing brought me through. It may seem overstated, but windsurfing came to my aid when cancer called. While it could have consumed me, I was finalising a two year plan for the biggest group of friends to join me in Maui. We somehow swapped roles and they looked after me, and in the same way the windsurfing community came to my aid. Move on another fortunate few years and I ask myself, do I windsurf just to say thanks for those days. Maybe I should, though the truth is simpler, I’m a windsurf addict whose highs justify the lows.”