It’s A Tough Life

The World’s best windsurfers tell us about the toughest thing they can recall doing in their windsurfing careers to date.

Some of you may laugh at what the professionals think of as a hard day at the office. However, these guys and girls do actually work extremely hard to climb the ranks of PWA stardom, so stop the sniggering now. Most of you only see the glamorous side with pictures and videos of perfect conditions, but to get to that stage takes years worth of hard work and dedication.

Anyway, we’ll leave it to the pros to explain the harder side of a career in windsurfing.

Josh Angulo:

I would say course racing on longboards in Ma'alaea when I was a kid was pretty tough because I’d never done it before. It was a total nightmare! There were also some hard races back in the day when we did course slalom. That was brutal. But I guess that's all still pretty minor compared to lots of other careers!”

Kevin Pritchard:

“Windsurfing is not hard… Sylt however was hard. The conditions were pretty fun and gnarly, but I am not a huge fan of the cold. Luckily my Camaro wetsuits keep getting better so it’s not too bad.”

Klaas Voget:

“The redbull storm chase was quite hard. It was 60 knots of wind, a monstrous north sea and only 6 degrees with heavy hail showers. Quite gnarly! Teaching my girlfriend how to windsurf was pretty tough too…”

Kauli Seadi:

“For me, it’s all the traveling. Carrying all of your gear around the world can sometimes take its toll.”

Robby Swift:

“The day of racing in Sylt this year was the hardest thing I can remember. I could hardly get out of bed with the flu that I had and I had to get to the beach at 8:30am to rig up in the freezing cold. We then proceeded to do four rounds of racing back to back, taking us until 6:00pm that night with no breaks. I was coughing so hard that I threw up several times while sailing out to the starts and had no energy at the gybes - I simply flipped the sail and hooked in as I would have let go of the boom if I tried to pump. Interestingly enough, it was actually my best day's racing ever as I ended up 7th in the event, but the whole thing went past in a painful blur with me just wishing it was over. Luckily there was no wind the next day, so I was able to stay in bed and fill myself up with Vitamin C and cold remedies all day to come back and fight in the waves the day after that!”

Victor Fernandez:

“I seem to spend quite a few nights sleeping in the airports when I get stuck on various trips which can be pretty tough. My board bags don’t seem to have been made with sleeping in mind…”

OK, so life as a pro isn’t that tough. A bit of sailing in the cold and a few nights of sleep deprivation never killed anyone!

Thanks to the guys for taking precious time out of their extremely demanding schedules to answer our questions!