Catching the wind on a wave

All I heard from anyone that I told I was taking windsurfing lessons was how hard it was to learn. Either they had tried it in high school and failed or they had taken private lessons and spent more time in the water than they had on their board.

So, when I met up with Bernard Labrosse, the owner of Windsure Windsurfing School, and told him that my mission was to find out just how difficult it would be, he immediately explained the difference between success and frustration once the wind starts blowing: Listen to your instructor.

If you pay attention to the instructor, he explained, you'll learn to windsurf. If you get distracted by the beach and North Shore mountains that surround you at the Jericho location, you'll just become a better swimmer.

The next thing Labrosse explained to me was how people often misunderstand what it takes to windsurf: very little strength, just a little bit of co-ordination and patience.

"I have taught 90-pound girls to do this and the first thing I show them is how I can do it all with my pinky fingers," he said of the sport's low physical demands.

Doing my best impersonation of a good listener, I started my three-hour, $99, beginners lesson on the beach where Labrosse drew diagrams in the sand to explain wind directions and how to use that to my advantage.

Once that was clear, we went on to the land training, which featured an actual windsurfing simulator.

He showed me how to pull the sail out of the water, which is not really hard if you do it properly (the first rumor to be quashed). He then went through the motions of turning the board in any direction I chose and, most importantly, how to set myself up in the T formation – the windsurfing starting point – with my back to the wind.

Now I'm not going to pretend that once we got out onto the ocean, I hopped on my board and surfed straight to English Bay. The first few times I tried to get into the T formation I lost my balance and, like parsley on Passover, I took a dip in some salt water.

But every time I got up, I felt a little more comfortable and accomplished a little bit more. By the end of the lesson, I was surfing. I could control the direction of my board, and losing my balance didn't necessarily mean falling into the water.

Granted my lesson didn't come on a particularly windy day for Jericho Beach, so I expect it to be a little more challenging the next time I surf. But with the width and excellent balance of some of the new beginner boards on the market, windsurfing is really something that just about anyone could do.

According to Labrosse, windsurfing was invented in 1967 in Marina Del Ray, Calif., by a computer nerd who liked to sail and a Boeing engineer who liked to surf. When the two got together for a summer barbeque, they came up with the idea of attaching a sail to a surfboard.

It didn't take long for water sports enthusiasts around the globe to hear of the new product, and windsurfers soon took over Europe's lakes and beaches, as well as many other parts of the world.

Labrosse took his first lesson in English Bay in 1975. He soon became the president of the local windsurfing club and opened Windsure a couple of years later. While windsurfing lessons and rentals are still Windsure's main market, they now also offer skimboard lessons and the newest water sport, kite surfing, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Once you've taken your lesson and are comfortable enough to surf on your own, getting out and doing it isn't an expensive activity.

Renting a board at Windsure, which comes with a wetsuit and lifejacket, costs $15-$20 per hour, $60-$78 for five hours (used at the buyer's discretion) or $150-$174 for an entire weekend. Windsure also offers several types of season passes, including $349 for the entire summer, $299 for weekends only and $249 for a full month. More information can be found online at www.windsure.com or by calling 604-224-0615.

Kyle Berger is an award-winning freelance journalist and a graphic designer living in Richmond.