"Starboard is a brand that prides itself on innovation through design, never afraid to challenge convention or try bold new concepts. The company founded by Svein Rasmussen some 11 years ago is sometimes criticized by its competitors for going too far. Yet few can fail to acknowledge the change that the company has pioneered in windsurfing over the last decade." Winsurf UK, Jan-Feb issue 2006 A new player from the past has been identified, TIKI who could well be the link to windsurfing's very distant past. His journey several thousand years ago, as a banished pre-Inca chief, is a crucial link in the circular trail that led, thousands of years later, to the seminal joining of a sail and a surfboard in California. The journey began in northeast Asia over, probably, a land bridge across the Bering Straits. The trail leads down the western hemisphere to a tribal territory that today is Peru and then across the pacific to Polynesia. TIKI, was both god and chief in the words of Thor Heyerdahl who replicated and validated the theory behind the journey. TIKI is said to have made it from South America to Polynesia. It was TIKI who brought my ancestors to these islands on which we live. He mastered the wind and the waves. Many many years later his descendents sailed north to inhabit the Hawaiian Islands. Blessed with an easy life and unblemished waves, here surfing began, first as a royal rite but finally as a public sport. California beaches soon mimicked the Hawaiians. On one of those beaches, California surfing met California aerospace. Thus TIKI, the god of wind and wave, may well be the true ancestor of windsurfing. Which brings us to today. And, yes indeed, some of what we said last year is taking shape. The first attempt at a new cruising concept aptly named Serenity is making its debut. Parallels can be easily seen in sister sports ski trekking, kayaking, etc. So, no matter what the market thinks today, the Serenity concept is well launched into a promising future. Unforeseen but just as dramatic, Gemini echoes tandem bicycles and kayaks AND an innovative Cobra design some twenty years past but brought up to date. And now to the future. A sport I overlooked last year kayaking like skiing and bicycling provides a model for where windsurfing is likely to go. It's also an old sport, particularly if combined with canoeing. Technology has been kind to it as well with carbon fiber paddle shafts, Dyneema paddle blades, Kevlar hulls, etc., etc. Some may also remember that modern kayak retailing rescued many windsurfing shops back in the 1980s. And here's the point in kayaking WIND is the enemy; in windsurfing NO WIND is the enemy. Both sports have a stake in transforming the SAIL into an effective PADDLE. Well, of course, that's done today. It's called pumping. But pumping has never been described as easy, much less fun. Imagine, for a moment though, a sail that generates drive in the same effortless way as a bird's wing does without being burdened, as the bird's wing must, to provide lift at the same time. What does it look like? I'm not certain but it's likely to be taller with much more area high up. What I am certain of, however, is that the Darwinian success of birds is proof that an efficient air-oar is possible and, given the payoff for success, it will happen sooner rather than later. Jim Drake Jim Drake co invented windsurfing with Hoyle Schweitzer and was in 1967 the first man ever to Windsurf. Jim also was the first man to design an aircraft on a computer. Amongst his designs was the X-15 rocket plane, which still after 40 years holds the world speed record for a manned aircraft.