Jim, I just had an interesting conversation with someone who used to be in the windsurf business and pulled out around year 2000. His name is George Stevens, and he runs Belle Haven Marina on the Potomac river just a couple of miles downstream from Washington, DC. He used to rent windsurf equipment at his site, give windsurf lessons, and host races on Thursday evenings. He said back in the 80s and 90s, about 50 people would show up and participate in these races, clogging his parking lot.
He pulled out of windsurfing around year 2000. I asked him why the sport declined. He said that in the late 90s and around 2000, manufacturers of windsurf gear stopped making boards for beginners and focused their attention on the high end windsurf jock. They started making the wider planing board, which he said was expensive. He told me that the manufacturers did not continue to make boards and equipment that catered to beginners. He told me that 1) beginners started having difficulty finding beginner gear at low prices, 2) were turned off at the daunting prospects that they would have to invest thousands of dollars to get into and enjoy the sport, and 3) felt that the gear market catered only to the jocks in the footstraps and not to encouraging beginners to have a good time on beginner boards so that beginners could get better. George felt that windsurf equipment manufacturers in the years about the year 2000 discouraged beginners from practicing and enjoying the sport. As a result, George felt that this discouragement of beginners ended up hurting the manufacturers in the long run as they lost most of their potential future customers.
Do you agree with George regarding the cause of the decline of the sport since 1990? Or do you suspect thaere may be other contributing factors at work here?

Ip