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ROBBY SWIFT: LIVING THE DREAM

In this exclusive interview Robby Swift reflects on his path from a determined fifteen-year-old dreamer to a seasoned pro, balancing competition, family and evolving industry challenges. Times may be tough, but Swift’s passion and determination remain as strong as ever; just like when he first dreamed of turning pro and living on Maui.

Photos: Fish Bowl Diaries, Erik Aeder and John Carter.

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WS: When you started out windsurfing did you ever dream that you would one day end up living in Maui as a professional windsurfer with a wife and two kids?

RS: “I have a video that my dad made of me when I was four saying that I want to be world champion one day. I think we sent it to F2 and got some kind of minor sponsorship at the time. Then I think pretty much since I can remember, I dreamed of going to Maui. I remember when the Ocean Academy started, I saw it in one of the British windsurf mags and showed my dad and he kind of laughed at me when I suggested I might go there one day. Then the Super 8 contest came up with the 1st prize being three months for free at the Maui Ocean Academy. I was 15 and I remember very vividly saying to Dad that I wanted to win that. It was the 1st prize for the U18 finals in France and I was really in the U16 group but the UK let me do the U18 group and I won that, so I got the chance to go to Gruissan and compete in the U18 finals.

For a while the organization didn’t want to let me compete in U18 because I was too young for that category but in the end they let me do it and I was so excited and determined to get to Maui that I won every race and in March that year (at 15 years old) I headed off to Maui for the first time on my own with no parents. I couldn’t quite believe it when I got there, it was so cool. Luke and Levi’s mum and dad ran the school and we studied from 8am to 12pm and then we had 2 vans, 1 for Ho’okipa and 1 for Kanaha and that was the only choice we had to make for the day. It was quite spectacular being 15 in that environment.

After that, I went back every year for 2-3 months and on the back of the Super 8 win, I got sponsored by NeilPryde and JP and Oxbow with pretty decent contracts for a little 15 year old, so I finally had some money to travel to do what I loved and a dream of becoming a proper pro like Nick Baker, Jason Polakow and Josh Stone who were my travelling partners and mentors at the time.

I actually used to sit on the Kuau Store (back then it was called Kuau Mart) bench with Ross Williams and look at the houses in the neighbourhood and dream that one day we could live right there. Now my bedroom window looks at the Kuau Store and I can see the waves behind the Kuau neighbourhood from my bed. It’s pretty surreal when I think about it. Ross ended up marrying my wife’s sister and for a while he lived in the house next door and it was amazing that our childhood dreams ended up so close to reality.”

WS: Do you remember those day like Wight Air when all the British up and coming sailors all turned up for youth week?

“I loved those days, my best friends were all my windsurfing buddies, and they were all older than me and more experienced in life 🙂 We had so much fun and I just spent my weeks waiting for the British windsurf events. Youth Week and spending time on the Isle of Wight with the Williams family were some of my fondest memories of the UK. Also driving around Cornwall and Ireland with Timo and Skye Boy, Andy Funnell etc. We had so much fun. And when we came to Maui together with Sid and Wixee and Dan Ellis, the fun just continued. It was a wonderful childhood and youth and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

WS: What is it like being a professional wave sailor in 2025…is it tough times and do you have to adapt to keep your sponsorship alive?

RS: “It is extremely tough now. Sadly, sponsorship of windsurfing has diminished to an almost non-existent level. We have also bent over backwards (as riders) to invest into our collective dream of having events all over the world. Just a few years ago, you used to get about 1,000 Euros for coming 16th in an event and up to around 6,000 Euros for 1st place so you could kind of make money at events as long as you were consistently in the top 16. Now, the prize money at 4 star events is $10,000 split between men and women, so it’s really $5,000 for each fleet so even 1st place cannot even hope to recover their costs of going to the events. At 5 stars, it tends to be $20,000, also split evenly between the fleets so it’s $10,000 per fleet and only goes down to 8th place. If you come 7th equal, I think you get around $500. First place is maybe $3,000 which still doesn’t cover the costs of going there. The gender equality system doesn’t seem very “equal” to me, I am 100% for gender equality but when you have a woman’s fleet of 18 and a men’s fleet of 59 (as was the case in Chile), I don’t think that splitting the total prize pool 50-50 is actually the equal way of doing it.

I really don’t see how professional windsurfing will be able to carry on existing unless something drastic changes very quickly for the sailors. Flight costs, accommodation costs, car rental costs, excess baggage etc. have all increased dramatically over the past several years and contracts for the sailors have dramatically decreased, while prize money has been cut down to about 30% of what it was a few years ago.

As I said, we agreed to this as a collective group of sailors as an investment into our sport, as we all believe in the images and stories created by windsurfing competitively in some of the best places in the world, and the dramatic stories from the events and the quality of the images has been incredible. So far, we haven’t seen any return on the events and sadly the initial prize money levels have even dropped more since we made the first step towards this unified tour, so I really hope and pray that somehow the people in charge of the PWA and the IWT will be able to find some meaningful external sponsors so that things can improve all round. There have been big management changes in both tours and the PWA especially, is just finding its feet after the changes, so hopefully in a couple of years we might see the fruits of our investment. It just feels sad that when we go to the events, everyone involved in the event makes some kind of money for doing it except for the sailors who all end up losing money unless the winner happens to live in that location and it’s just not sustainable.”

WS: What is it actually like living on Maui all year round? Do you get island fever and feel like you have to escape or are you constantly amazed by the conditions and the beauty of Hawaii?

RS: “I think I might get island fever if I stayed here all year round, but I have been travelling to Japan, Chile, the Canary Islands, Sylt and Argentina to visit my wife’s family every year for the past 15 years or so (plus a few even more special trips to Fiji / Tahiti) so in the end, I only spend around 6-7 months on Maui and I really wish I could spend more time here. Especially having young kids, it’s really one of the nicest places in the world and we have a wonderful time here. There is an endless amount of water action to be had between surfing, foiling, down winding, windsurfing, winging etc. My kids go to school for six hours a day and I try to work during those hours so I have time to spend with them afterwards, and we literally spend the entire time having fun together when they aren’t at school so I definitely think it’s one of the best places in the world to live, and if you are lucky enough to be able to travel off the island throughout the year, then you always end up missing home and being very happy when you return to Maui.”

Who are your best friends on Maui and why?

RS: “My best friends are Brawzinho, Ricardo (when he is here), Jason Polakow, The Fabbio family (Koa Fabbio is an amazing young waterman who trains with me in surf, windsurfing, winging and is an amazing role model to my kids), Lalo Goya and family, and a few other families who have similar age kids to our own and who have similar lifestyles and family values. Basically, all our friends are surf / windsurf obsessed and we spend our days working extremely hard to pay the bills and our early mornings and afternoons enjoying and nurturing our children’s sporting skills. It really is a very fun and healthy group. We also travel to the snow each year as a group (at least the ones with kids do) and that is quite the spectacle, with all these tiny kids burning around on the slopes doing all kinds of crazy things!”

WS: What is it like bringing up your kids in Hawaii? Are they wanting to one day be professional athletes like yourself?

RS: “I think all the kids want to be Kai Lenny to be honest 🙂 They have an extremely healthy life filled with activities from sun up to sun down and they motivate each other in a fun and competitive way to get better and better. There are lots of local surf contests, which they all attend and our group of kids generally manage to end up in most of the top slots which is really rewarding as a parent who sees how much work they put into their sports. They do skate contests too and generally do well at those. It’s kind of like going to school in England and being at a school, which has a good football or rugby team but here, the sports are surfing, windsurfing and skating and all the dads are the coaches so it’s a very rewarding way to bring up your children.”

WS: How many more years do you think you have as a Pro sailor, or what do you think the life span of a pro sailor is like in general these days?

RS: “I actually keep saying that this will be my last year (I have been saying it for at least 5 years now) but I love competing and even more than that, I love having a reason to get up and go to the gym and train on the water and improve my eating habits / work out habits and technical skill on the water. Having done it for my entire life since I can remember, I have a really hard time imagining stepping away from it and while I can still compete with the top guys in the world, I’m not sure if I really want to or not. It is quite hard on the body and since the financial rewards for bring a pro windsurfer are so small (non-existent) now, I do often feel like I’m wasting my time when I spend six hours driving to the other side of the island just to do a couple of double forwards on port tack when I should be doing something that actually earns money! But the exhilaration of learning something new, or perfecting something you have been working on and then being able to perform like that in a contest is still such a strong draw that I think I’ll be doing it for at least another year or two. (Hopefully my wife isn’t reading this!!)

WS: Are the Jaws days in Hawaii in the winter the days that you live for and why?

RS: “Yes and no, I actually love sailing in all conditions from around head high and up. The Jaws days are so few and far between and so exhilarating that I absolutely love them and wouldn’t miss one for the world. It’s a fight I often have in the winter with my wife that she can’t plan anything at all because you don’t know when there will be a Jaws swell and it’s absolutely impossible for me to miss them. Partly it’s the FOMO of seeing photos of your friends out there when you aren’t but really it’s just one of the most insane feelings in the world to be out in the ocean with so much power moving around you and managing to catch those giant waves and try to improve your performance on them. I absolutely love it!”

WS: Do you still have any ambitions as a pro sailor?

RS: “My ambition is still to win an event. I haven’t won one since 2003, which feels pretty shameful to be honest. When I won that one at 19 years old, I thought there would be loads more but it’s so hard. I have finished in the top 3 overall 5 times and that’s another big goal of mine, to finish in the top 3 overall but it’s also so hard. So, really I try to keep my ambitions on a more visible level and just try to gradually improve each aspect of my sailing to try to be sure that I can do my absolute best with every minute of every heat that I have, and in every kind of condition that we might be faced with during a contest.”

WS: Are you still trying to push your sailing level?

RS: “Absolutely. My doubles, goiters, turns, 360s, 1 hand 1 foot back loops and timing on the waves, plus fluidity on the waves are 100% at the forefront of my consciousness pretty much 80% of the time that I am awake haha. I think that is a drive that will never leave me and everything I do on the water is with a purpose. I don’t ever just go out and sail around, I find that boring. I love progression more than anything.”

WS: How much are you involved in the testing and r and d with both JP and Pryde?

RS: “I am very involved with everything to do with waves. I test all the wave sails, booms, masts and boards. I recently started a new company on Maui called Swift Watersports (www.robbyswift.com) and we are hoping to become a more active part in the development of all the NeilPryde and JP products from wave windsurf gear to wings and foils. This is something that interests me a lot and I definitely want to keep doing this for many more years.”

WS: How do you know when you have found a magic board?…and if that board will also be magic for other riders of lesser ability etc?

RS: “I think that the boards I like generally end up being great boards for riders of lesser ability, but most of the time, the boards that I like for onshore conditions are the favourites of people who attend my clinics. I absolutely love the Ultimate Wave and find it almost as fast as the Magic Wave in almost all conditions, but I always sail pretty powered up when jumping or just floating around and catching waves when wave riding, and very rarely do the kind of sailing around that a lot of people do, just cruising.

My sailing trajectory goes from the beach to just past the waves and then back again so the general in and out performance of my wave boards isn’t the top priority, and I think that for your average sailor, the feeling of the board when just sailing around is the top priority. Our Magic Wave is a very easy board to cruise around on, it gets planing extremely quickly and still turns really well on the wave, so this tends to be the number 1 favourite of anyone doing my clinics. The Ultimate Wave is my board of choice in almost all conditions as it’s just that little bit more responsive and manoeuvrable on the wave, and for the conditions that I use it in, the difference in planing ability is really a non-issue.

A Magic board for me is one that is quick enough to get me going in between waves so I can jump high and turny enough that I can really throw it into any section going 100% full speed, no matter how steep and be confident that it will go where I want it to. This is a surprisingly hard balance to meet!”

WS: What is your favourite set up to use board/sail and why? 

RS: “I would say the NeilPryde 4.2m Combat and the JP Australia 81L Ultimate wave for windy bump and jump sailing, or the NeilPryde 4.5m or 4.7m Combat and JP Australia 81L or 87L Ultimate Wave for pure wave riding.”

WS: What is the high of your career so far?

RS: “Definitely the Fuerteventura win in 2003. Also, the five times that I finished number three in the world, my two x 3rd places in Fiji and my recent (just last month) final in the Maui Pro Am where I came 4th. This was the first time I have made the final in a Ho’okipa event in all these years!!”

WS: How do you enjoy the training you do with Sarah Hauser and Marcilio Browne?

RS: “I love this training and I think it is very necessary, especially as I get older. Sarah really dials in our training to what we are aiming at (getting strong for Pozo, getting fit and light for Sylt) and makes an amazing mix of strength / power / mobility workouts for us so I really enjoy them all and try not to miss any!”

WS: Do you still look forward to heading out to Pozo every year and battling it out in those nuclear winds?  

RS: “I do look forward to it, it’s such a challenge for me and we spend so much of our time on Maui looking for similar conditions that it is really rewarding when I do well (my 5th place last year was really special, considering the standard of the fleet now).”

WS: How did Chile go this year…do you like the format of one final and no double elimination?

RS: “It didn’t go well. I had messages from friends around the world who were watching on the live stream saying they couldn’t believe how robbed I got on the last exchange, where three of us caught a wave one after the other and all of our scores came in and then my good friend Diego’s last wave, which was basically a reformed whitewater wave with a slidey freestyle-like taka on was given a 4.3, when he needed something like a 4.2 to advance. I watched the waves afterwards on the live stream, and considering the briefing that we had just been given about how they would be scoring, I also felt that it was extremely poorly judged. They were giving 2-3 points for those takas all day except for that one move, so I did feel very hard done by.

Having no double is painful but it’s also nice for the competition as you get a clear winner and then it’s over. There are many arguments for and against a double but my main disappointment there was being told at the briefing specifically to ride solid waves with flow and critical moves and not to do 1 ‘freestyle’ move on the wave and then doing exactly that on my waves and getting beaten by someone doing 2 separate waves, both with 1 freestyle-type move on the wave. I feel like the judging should be more professional and consistent but with no budget to pay international / experienced judges, this is always going to be hard.”

WS: You just made the final at the MFC Maui Pro-Am how was the competition?

RS: “The competition was great. We finally had jumps in a Maui event again, for the first time in about 15 years. It was awesome to have another motivating event on Maui in the springtime. Lots of kids were involved and they are still motivated now and sailing every day, even a month later. I hope they will continue to do this event. It’s a huge effort by the Goya crew and we all really appreciate it!”

WS: Was it crazy conditions?

RS: “The waves were good. The wind was strong and really offshore, it was very hard to sail but we had plenty of opportunities and there was great action. I would say it was a 6 out of 10 for how Ho’okipa gets but the excitement of having jumps scoring made it an 8 out of 10 as far as Ho’okipa contests go for me. I hope we do more of this!

WS: How is the level these days with the likes of Marc Pare pushing and the Japanese young guns also ripping in all conditions?

“They all sail amazingly and it honestly makes it even more fun to have so many good guys out on the water. I’m lucky enough to sail pretty much every day with Braw, so I don’t have a lack of motivation but seeing so many other people coming up to that level is really wonderful to see. I just hope the professional management side of the sport and get things back on track to how it was twenty years ago or so, and reward these very deserving young men and women with more than just some fun surf trips and empty bank accounts to show for their efforts!”

WS: How is Brawzinho setting himself aside from the other riders with three straight victories at his last three events?

RS: “He is super talented, super dedicated and the most motivated and hard-working sailor on the planet. No doubt. He has an amazing support crew from his sponsors, who make him anything he wants (they also massively benefit from his dedication and results so the love goes both ways) and his family who support him in his lifelong mission to be the best he possibly can be. I really respect the amount of time and energy he puts into his career and think he will be very hard to beat for many years.

He has all the ingredients. A lifelong dedication to making everything as perfect as it can be in as many different conditions as possible. People wouldn’t believe the hours that go into making a package that complete, from gear to nutrition, to mental positivity to training on and off the water. He really is an incredible example to follow and I’m very lucky to be able to join in with him on probably 80% of the fun!”

WS: Where do you see yourself in ten years time?

RS: “Hopefully doing the same thing I’m doing now. I hope we help can build the NeilPryde and JP brands back up to the absolute leaders in innovation that they were before, and to build a solid water sports company here on Maui, where my children can hopefully join me in my passion to create the greatest gear on the market and help coach people and let them enjoy the amazing conditions Maui has to offer. I love spending time on the water and improving myself, helping my kids improve and sharing that passion with other so if I can continue to do all that, I’ll be right about where I am now!”

WS: Are you happy with life generally?

RS: “Yes, extremely happy. I couldn’t ask for more (except maybe more hours in the day and more energy to be able to take advantage of them) but almost everything that I do is fun for me and motivating and rewarding and I think that is pretty much the key to happiness isn’t’ it?”

Check out Swift Watersports here:

Swift Watersports

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