Cheap Vans

Given that a van can be seen as a necessary (but not sufficient!) step on the path to waves, it makes sense to limit one's exposure financially. After all, why spend on ancilliaries when there's lots of new actual windsurfing kit to acquire?!

Off to the Cheap Van Co. They have some reasonable looking vehicles, but not at the starting budget of £500... Advice from friendly salesman, which kind of jives with the vehicles on display, is £2K-£2.5K might do the trick and enable a reliable vehicle that's not so bashed up or dirty inside that I'd be happy to sleep in it and not get diseases (communicable or otherwise...). Oh yes, I did mention sleeping in it is an important criterion didn't I - how else does one go on Saturday, go to the pub in the evening and still go surfing on Sunday? Not forgetting the "BSF" - Bacon Sandwich Facility.

But the Mercedes 308D is huge - mine will be parked on the street and people are going to hate it. The Mitsubishi L300 is ok, but the interior is crap. Don't like LDV and Leyland Daf (why? just don't... not hip, not notably reliable, horrible driving position, crap finish... need I go on?). Transits - hmm, millions, parts cheap, but still fairly big. VW Transporter? Looks cool, good engineering, good size... But none at the Cheap Van Co at the moment. Pants.

Check Autotrader web site. Lots of VW Transporters...

Finding a Van

Now this is proving to be the hard part. The club members seem to favour vans over cars, 4X4s, station wagons etc. but there is little obvious consensus on make or size. Helen has a large Mercedes 208D, which is very competently fitted out including that female luxury, the self-managed toilet facility. There's a very impressing VW Transporter, and an even more impressive and very newly kitted out Mercedes Huge (my term - sorry) with inbuilt shower etc. belonging to Niall(?) the Scots guy, who is anxious to make long weekends at the beach pleasant for his non-windsurfing wife.

I like vans too. My first vehicle was a van, a Morris J2, ex-GPO, 403 BXY, in tasteful flaking green with a huge fibreglass roof that let in sufficient filtered light to make it very pleasant inside. My second vehicle was a Morris 1000 van, which came from one friend and was passed onto another. So bring on the van.

WHICH van? Is there a magazine by that name? There probably is - there has to be. Haven't seen it, and I'm not sure it would help. What should the budget be? £500? £5000?? I'm sure Niall has spent £20K... But it must be remembered that all of this is merely a means to an end...

SAILING/SURFING IN WAVES!!!!

More on the van quest to come...

The Club

The first and easiest part was the club. The Ocean Motion Windsurfing Club appears to meet my aims. An association of people in the SouthEast of England with the aim of sailing at a range of southern seaside locations thoughout the three temperate seasons. I went down to meet them today at Hayling Island. Excellent people, and they supported my views on suitable transport for a windsurfer - a VAN!!

So onto the acquisition of a van...

Things I need to do to get windsurfing...

1. Get some transport. My current car won't support the carrying of large board-like objects,being a convertible saloon. Good for some times in one's life, but not all.

2. Acquire some windsurfing buddies. This is because some of them are bound to be better than me, so I can learn from them. In addition, I am sailing as much as possible on the sea, and it's not wise to do that alone. Finally, everything is better shared rather than kept to oneself, except perhaps communicable diseases.

3. Get some new windsurfing equipment. My old board sits forlornly in the garden, acquiring a fine algaeic patina, and providng a wonderful home for spiders in the footstraps. My old mast has now been sawn into three delaminating sections, although it was replaced with a new carbon mast a couple of years ago. In Dahab I've been sailing modern lightweight "wider-style" boards, that are more stable for smaller volume and plane more easily. Time for some of that methinks...

At least the old board and the new mast make an ideal practice set-up. Once I have negotiated space on the lawn, I can practise my tack and gybe footwork. Many thanks to Cribby's online articles by the way, they've added a lot of purpose and structure to things.

The start - 1990

Back in 1990, I went with my then 15 year old son on day's windsurfing course during a family holiday. I ended up buying a board, sails, wetsuit and even a sturdy roof rack to carry the lot home on the family people carrier.

The next four years or so was spent struggling on an inland lake, created by the excavation of gravel (a "gravel pit"). Bad wind (and not just because of my liking for baked beans), boredom with the constraints of the lake, no friends to sail with, even though I'd joined a club. Clearly age has made me more desperate - now it wouldn't matter... but then I started various other things, felt bad leaving the family at weekends etc. and it just drifted away from me.

And then last year (Jan 2003) I met a friend who declared he was going windsurfing in the Red Sea in February - bastard!! I immediately decided to join him, and by the end of 2003, had spent a total of a month in Dahab. My windsurfing had improved a lot, but I didn't have enough instruction, foolishly, I now believe. But I greatly enjoyed the clean wind, the space of the sea and the entire windsurfing experience freshly.

So now I've been to Dahab once this year (June 2004) and have decided that I really want to sail waves. And to do that I have to get more regular time on the water... and that means sea sailing here in the UK. And that means a number of things...