Windsurfing

You're never to old to learn something new, so at 51 I set foot on a windsurf board for the very first time. Today was one of those days with almost no wind. We had one booking for a rental of our catamaran, one of our ex-students, who had completed the sailing course several weeks ago, and who often rents the boat in the weekend to go out with some friends. Some tourists had rented our kayaks and paddle boards, which are easy and fun on a windless day when the sea is flat as a mirror. To our surprise, at some point a  windsurfer approached very slowly. A women in wetsuit landed at our beach, and it soon became clear that she had set off at the nearby beach next to the Music Square, where one of China's two national sailing and windsurfing schools is located (the other one is in Qingdao, Shandong province). She had borrowed the board from the school, where her boyfriend (or husband) is working as a coach. Because there was almost no wind, she was not able to return, and just drifted on the tidal current to the next beach.
We initially tried to bring her back using our sailboat, but that was a bit naive, since our sailboat also needs wind, so we didn't make a lot of progress, and had to give up after 20 minutes. The windsurfer (her name is Mika), called some friends who arrived a bit later with food for everybody, which was very welcome of course, and after our lunch she offered to teach me windsurfing, which I gladly accepted. Paul gave me a short introduction on the beach, and then Mika brought me into the water. A great part of windsurfing depends on your balancing skills, and coordinating the movements of the board, the sail, and your body, while at the same time dealing with wind direction and wind pressure on the sail. A complicated balancing act, and to nobody's surprise (quite an audience of onlookers had formed by this time) I fell in the water several times before I was able to keep standing and at the same time move the sail gently in a direction where it would catch the little wind available and move the board forward. With so little wind, this is actually more difficult, because there is no back pressure to lean against. At last, I managed to move a bit before falling off again, but by that time an inflatable speedboat had arrived from the school to bring Mika and her equipment back. To be continued...