Windsurfer...Sailboard?

HOLY MOLY!!!

Thought he was way off until I noticed the lack of rudders and the old fashioned uni insert holes.
Just what we need for cruising around the estuary in 2 to 3 knots.
If you can steer it that is, might be a bit like the Queen Mary, take several miles to turn around.

Like a dog on goey chasing his tail?

and ONLY $300! (not including sail!)

A friend lent me an identical one of these (tyronsea 370) a few years back to learn get me started...if I hadn't tried a GO I probably would never have persisted with the sport.

The government should initiate a 'buy-back' scheme to rid the country of these old tanks, so not to discourage young windsurfer hopefuls...although I noticed that he's selling it to take up kiting! point made!

Ron Given ( kiwi power cat designer) had one of these designs in production in the early to mid 80's.It just wouldnt turn. BUt if you tried to tow it behind a boat, it just would not go straight! After towing ! one across the Bay of Isles we just about wanted to cut it adrift after just a couple of hours

I'm sure everyone is thinking it but I'll say it anyway ... the old wallies were all we had to learn on back when windsurfing was 10 times more popular than kiting will ever be. They can't be as bad as they are made out to be these days.

but windsurfing was a fresh new sport.

there was no mountain bikes, mals hadn't re appeared since the sixties, no skateboard culture, no video games only pinball at the corner shop, no friggin anything to stand the way of windsurfing being super successful and it was.

i used one of those catamasailboards and they went straight very well!

With the greatest of respect (honest!) maybe we under-estimate the level of competition windsurfing had back then. There were many other boom sports in the 1980s that windsurfing competed with successfully in those days, despite the fact that boards were bloody expensive (compared to the average wage) and crude in many ways.

Squash was an enormous sport at the peak of a boom. Aerobics was happening. I think triathlons were novel and big. Dinghy and yacht sailing were stronger than they are today, and the catamaran fleets were massive. Waterskiing seemed to be a lot bigger than wakeboarding is today.

Skating has always been around. Mountain bikes were appearing by the mid '80s. There was, in some places, a bicycling boom. The video games weren't up to today's standards, but they were pretty much brand new and maybe had more impact. Canoeing and kayaking were really suffering under the windsurfing boom, now it's the other way around.

The Australian population was only 75% what it is now; since 1985 about six million people have arrived and stuff-all of them have got into windsurfing.

While there are more sports to compete with now, we how have 25% more population, more money, and many of the sports we used to have to compete with have lost popularity. In contrast, other well-managed sports (where the barriers to entry are down and the structures you need are in place) have done one hell of a lot better than windsurfing in the same crowded market.

While windsurfing was fresh, that was also a handicap in some ways; it's hard to work out how to sell and run a sport, and (imho) we proved that by blowing the boom!