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THE DUNKERBECK DYNASTY 

WORDS –Bjorn Dunkerbeck and Liam Dunkerbeck // PHOTOS – John Carter, Stéphanie Conques / @STUKISAN, Julien Bru, Victor Couto. 

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The iconic sail number E-11 was the mark of Bjorn Dunkerbeck on the water for his entire career. Now Dunky has stepped back from full-time professional competition, he has passed the prestigious sail number down to his son Liam. John Carter sat down with father and son to learn more about their relationship, how Bjorn is on a mission to promote and grow windsurfing and Liam’s windsurfing ambitions.    

BJORN DUNKERBECK 

It is great to see Liam improving so fast and share time on and off the water with him, he has been top in the world in his age group already and if he keeps the same motivation, there is no limit to how good he can become! Liam started surfing when he was 4 Years old, windsurfing when 5, and SUP about the same time! He has won Canaries under 12 surfing events, also the under 14 as well and was 2nd in the under 18 last year. He has done all the PWA youth events in Pozo and Tenerife, so he has a lot of competition experience! He is already getting stronger day by day and has a lot of the best windsurfers in the world to train with here on Gran Canaria – Philip Köster, Daida and Iballa Moreno, Moritz Mauch, Alessio Stillrich, Omar Sanchez, Josep Pons, Marino Gil and many more. Plus, here we can windsurf 330 days or more a year and this helps to clock up the windsurf hours. So he is doing ok with it all and is very motivated! 

Windsurfing with him makes our relationship special, as we have lots to share and I can help him improve a lot! I also get in the waves a lot more lately and my foiling is improving because I am sailing with Liam. We will be making a Dunkerbeck movie for the cinema and TV over the next 18 months, so we will spend even more time in and out of the water together as well!  

My advice for teaching children to windsurf is that between 5 and 12 is ideal to start. Take your kids to a windsurf centre with other kids so they learn together. Once they reach a certain level they start to listen. At first Liam did not listen, but now he is taking advice from me. I give Liam a lot of tips and he is learning quickly, so it is too bad there are no contests this year for him or the other kids. He has plenty of time to practise and has been on the water a lot after the lockdown. What is also crucial for young windsurfers is that the more fun they have on the water, the more they are going to learn. Always keep the fun in windsurfing, this is very important!

The sport is vastly different from when I started in 1978, but his talent and time on the water is definitely paying off! At the moment he will concentrate on waves and SUP surfing, but also train in slalom, speed and foil! There is a lot of young talent here these days in Gran Canaria, also due to the fact that we have had on the island the PWA World Cup event in Pozo for the last 30 years! 

Windsurfing is the greatest sport there is, with wave, slalom, freeride, long distance and foiling, so there’s no time to get bored at all! What we do need is more decent windsurfing centres, so that windsurfing parents bring their kids windsurfing from a young age from 4 -7 up! They need to leave them there, just like in a ski school! Every country needs to have the industry and importers that are serious to have good centres and promote our sport! If every windsurfer would help our sport and get a minimum of one person a month into windsurfing, we would have the sport back to where it was 20 years ago in no time! 

NEW FOCUS 

My main focus these days is speed, the 100 km/h record and the Défi Wind long distance races, so my recent move to AV Boards fits perfectly, as the boards designed by Aurelio Verti are very speed oriented. Most serious speed sailors use his boards.  

I hope to go back to Lüderitz when Covid-19 is under control and when it runs again, and I will continue to go back for many years to come as well. Also I am looking for other spots, both canals and open water, so if anyone knows a good, fast place, please contact me on Instagram or Facebook!  

I’m a big fan of the Défi Wind events, they are the perfect format to mix amateurs and pros and enjoy our great sport together. Before Covid-19 there were 3 events in a season, but it has the potential to be 5 or 6 a year in the future when things get back to normal. 

It is so good to be back windsurfing without pain after my hip replacement, and it’s all thanks to my orthopaedic surgeon, Doctor Ulrich Vielwert in Germany. There is a link to his clinic on my website, www.dunkerbeck.com, if anyone needs his help! I recommend him, he has also been a windsurfer since the early 80s, so understands our sport and its demands.

On Gran Canaria our centre has been there since 1978, and I have been running it for the last five years! I have my gear stored in the centre and sail from there for slalom, freeride and foil. If the waves are good we go to Pozo and Vargas, or sometimes we go to the older spots on Gran Canaria as well; the island is round so there are many spots for windsurfing. My centre on Bonaire is going great too, and there you can windsurf at any age from 3 until 100 years!

THE PRO YEARS 

My parents moved to Gran Canaria because they windsurfed themselves in Denmark. They opened a windsurfing centre in Maspalomas in Gran Canaria and I was windsurfing from a very early age, before I even knew it! It is impossible for me to say what I would be doing if I was not a professional windsurfer, I feel it was my destiny! 

My favourite stops on tour were Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Maui and the Caribbean. I like any place where the wind is consistent, strong and you get to compete a lot! I liked places where we were on the water in waves, slalom and course racing and not sitting around waiting for wind! Sylt, the Netherlands, Japan and France had their moments, as they were usually more difficult conditions. The huge numbers of spectators made those events interesting stops on the tour.  

One of my memorable moments was beating Robby Naish in San Francisco in 1987 in the overalls. In the same year in Guadeloupe I won slalom and course racing. Those results helped me achieve second to Naish in the 1987 rankings. That was when it all started for me. I actually beat Robby in 1988 and that was a major achievement and a landmark in my career. I went on to equal his five overall titles four years later. I doubled that another five years later with ten in a row! I actually managed to make it twelve times in a row with over 30 individual discipline titles.  

Loving what you do and being prepared is key to success. My strengths are I’m positive, motivated and young minded. People ask if my talent is natural or from hard work, my answer is the more talent you have, the more payback from working hard you will have. 

The guys I look up to right now on tour are Matteo Iachino and Pierre Mortefon. They are up and coming stars and both strong in slalom and foil racing. They are both very consistent and having really hard fights. Obviously Antoine Albeau is still going very strong too, especially in the tougher conditions when the wind is really howling. In places like Fuerteventura he is still close to be being unbeatable. He can stay at the top as long as he wants to!   

FUTURE 

There are always things that could be improved in windsurfing. More contests in the waves are needed, as well as more real slalom in waves and strong wind. Foiling is going to bring the pro/am format to many light wind places and believe me, in the European summer, sea breeze windsurfing foiling is the ‘FUTURE’ and a lot of fun! From 5 knots you can fully fly and in 10 knots fly at speeds over 25 knots! 

In ten years from now I will still be enjoying windsurfing as much as possible. That is the plan. I will also continue with my Dunkerbeck windsurfing centre here on Gran Canaria and hopefully still pushing my Dunkerbeck pro centre Bonaire project and supporting any Défi wind events. The Défi Wind concept includes all age groups even for over 60s and 70s, which keeps the older guys motivated to go and travel. I will probably be travelling around with Liam as well too, and that will help me keep in touch with everyone. I don’t think I will ever quit windsurfing. The plan is to windsurf all my life and as my father always says… ‘windsurfing will keep you young forever’. See you on the water and join me to promote windsurfing! 

LIAM DUNKERBECK 

My dad has helped me all my life. We are always windsurfing or training together and we can speak about the good and bad things I’ve done on and off the water. I listen to the things that he says, but sometimes I also need to be strong and take my own decisions. Like that, I will learn from my own mistakes! I’m not really under any pressure, of course my dad is the best windsurfer in the world, but he has done all he could for me, and now it’s my turn to go for it! 

My goal is to become windsurfing world champion! I think that is the goal of every good young competitive windsurfer! Maybe in the future I’ll compete in foiling too because I have been training a lot for it here also in Gran Canaria! It is a super fun activity you can do when the wind is not that good for jumping in Pozo! 

I am working hard on my windsurfing and having fun! It is not easy because also I need to be focussed on school and that already takes a lot of hours up in the day, but I will keep pushing as much as I can. I am already a professional young windsurfer, that is what I consider my job! 

Recently I’ve just landed some double forward loops! Also I’ve been trying backside 360’s and frontside 360’s! These are just some cool moves I want to learn before the competitions start again. Also, one trick I have been practising is the taka! I really enjoy that manoeuvre because it is easy, and you spin so fast around your board!  

Surfing helps a lot to improve my windsurfing style! One of the reasons why is that surfing helps you develop where to place your leading and trailing arm to turn on a wave, whereas with windsurfing you focus a lot on just holding the boom, so I use that knowledge to make my wave riding when I windsurf more dynamic. I also do a lot of SUP, prone surf foiling and wing surfing!  

I’ve been sponsored by Starboard for the past five years! I love the way they work for me and they make some really light boards. Two years ago they made a Liam Dunkerbeck UltraKode Pro model 65 litres, exclusive for young rippers and for lightweight people, it goes amazing in strong Pozo conditions! Also, Severne sails have been supporting me for five years too. In 2020 they made a new model called the RedBack, also a perfect sail for small and lightweight riders. I really like that Starboard and Severne are thinking of kit for smaller and lighter people, especially us kids, as it helps us progress in windsurfing easier and faster. Also, I’m really happy that this year I made it into the Red Bull team! I am also riding for Mercedes-Benz now, the same as my father, plus the Dunkerbeck windsurf centre in Gran Canaria!  

I really enjoy windsurfing because it is an individual sport and I don’t find it stressful. I also like the fact that conditions are not the same every day and there is so much variety. In 10 years time hopefully I will have done a lot of windsurfing and maybe have some titles in my pocket! I would like to be living in Pozo, Gran Canaria, and still have my sponsors Severne, Starboard and Red Bull.