Steve's Windsurfing Journal

 It’s been 15 years since I posted here. Superstorm Sandy in 2012 marked the end, more or less, of my Long Beach Island windsurfing era. My ardor for windsurfing had been fading. Not for sailing itself — my love has not diminished — but I increasingly noticed that no one else in my family was ever going to participate with me, and I re-centered my weekends at my parents’ place on things more of us enjoyed doing together. Windsurfing inevitably dominated an entire day of a two day weekend. My kid was only going to be young once, my wife was left to take care of things, and my parents weren’t getting any younger.

For some reason, Sandy and the subsequent raising and renovation of my parents’ house after the flooding took almost 5 years and during that time all the windsuring equipment was also less than convenient to access.

In November 2019, my parents sold their Manahawkin house at moved to very inland and land-locked retirement community in Marlton. My board went into their garage to become a source of amusement for the maintenance guys: “You guys preparing for a flood?” And there it has remained until today. Almost all of the rest of the gear has been languishing in the basement storage locker of our Manhattan apartment.

Forward to today, my parents are getting ready to move out of the house and into smaller units where they can get more active care. Time to empty out the premises.

We have friends (D and M) who have a have a house on Upper Greenwood Lake, NJ. D windsurfed on Lomg Island decades ago. I’ve been threatening to take my gear up there for a few years, but never executing. Now is the time.

So, I rented an SUV, loaded all the gear but the board into in Manhattan, and drove to Marlton. Put all the gear on the lawn to photograph it as an informal inventory. The Chinook mast base tendon mysteriously and spontaneously broke just sitting in a box somehow, but everything else looks none the worse for wear besides the usual rubber and elastic degradation that happens just by time passing.

Rental companies dont’t love you tieing stuff to the roofs of their vehicles, so softracks it was. The trip was 2-3 hours possibly on the NJ Turnpike and similar high-speed roads. I spent far too much time mentally over-preparing my tie-down strategy, even buying multiple hood straps that it turned out I couldn’t use because the rental SUV used so much plastic under the hood. So I tightened the softrack straps as best I could, and carefully positioned the board to not bounce onto the roof wart antenna.

Given the lack of stabilizing ties, I decided to take the less intense roads north. I-295 is not exactly a back road but it’s fine. Ended up going through downtown Princeton and all that. Trip took close to 4 hours including a few stops to check on things and get snacks. I listened to huge chunks of a book about Steely Dan all the way. This experienced launched me on a month-long Steely Dan obsession once I got home.

Got to D’s house as scheduled, actually, and D was there to greet me. He had come out from the city for the day. I guess he wanted to be there to figure out where to put the stuff. I told him many times that I consider this to be an indefinite loan of the equipment. Maybe I’d ask for it back if I ever won the lottery amd got a beach house but otherwise I’ll almost certainly want it back. I encourage everyone there to use it and abuse it; just have fun and don’t worry if you break stuff.

D. graciously BBQ’d me dinner on the deck. We had a beer and a great chat and I headed back to the city.

Can’t wait to come try out the gear on the lake. I have a standing invite to come up whenever and use it. Realistically that’ll be a couple times a year.

Small lake sailing ain’t bay sailing, but it’ll be nice to putter around.

This post created August 15 2026, and backdated to date of occurence.

All strapped in and ready to roll. Photo by my Mom

Labels: upper greenwood lake