Sea Mandala

When it starts to take up all your time and mind, windsurfing can feel like a religion. Graham Ezzy uses an Indian religious symbol to describe his springtime windsurfing on Maui - “Mandala”, a Sanskrit word that refers to intricate geometric designs that represent the universe. Mandalas serve many purposes in Hinduism and Buddhism—from being a visual aid for meditation to providing architectural layouts for temples. Graham references sand mandalas, a Tibetan Buddhist practice that involves monks carefully using small funnels to position millions upon millions of coloured grains of sand into a beautiful and incredibly intricate mandala. This process normally takes weeks. Upon completion, the sand mandala is ritualistically destroyed to represent the cyclic, empty, and impermanent nature of life. Often the sand is deposited in a river to be carried to the sea. What, then, is a Sea Mandala? - Graham Ezzy muses.

- Graham Ezz

ADDICTED?

Windsurfing media is full of “stoke” and “addicted” as if windsurfing were some sort of sun-dried nirvana smoked through an epoxy pipe. This language reduces our sport to a “high” or a “quick fix”. I hate to admit that after close inspection, windsurfing and drugs do actually have much in common.

Like drugs, a lot of the lifestyle around windsurfing sucks. In fact, most of everything to do with windsurfing except windsurfing sucks. Think: misleading forecasts or traveling with boards and sails and masts and extensions and universal joints and booms. If you forget one piece say a harness line or a wetsuit then you are forced to sit on the beach (maybe in the rain?) watching your friends bliss out in the whitecaps.

With windsurfing, your spare cash gets spent, you only stay in touch with friends who also windsurf, British Airways won’t let you travel, your nose is runny from that long day on the water last Saturday, and you are willing to skip anything (dinner date, funeral, wedding) if it might be windy.

Maybe “addicted” is a pretty bang on description for windsurfing. We addicted windsurfers spend our free time searching for whitecaps. The callouses on our hands reveal our addiction to the outside world.

But doesn’t it feel so wonderful to fly across a smooth patch of water or to make an off the lip in the curl of a wave. Do you remember landing your first gybe? Your first forward loop? Back loop? Ah, the ecstasy!

FRUSTRATION

Yet, bad windsurfing sessions do exist. Windsurfing can be frustrating rather than fun.

Frustrated is how I felt when I returned to Maui for the spring after a winter of training port tack in South Africa and Gran Canaria. My Ho’okipa sessions were not fun but frustrating.