Saturday September 17th marked the day of the annual FunFest @ Sandy Hook organized by the New Jersey Windsurfing + Watersports Association. For the first time I attended. Despite loving all kinds of watersports and especially windsurfing, I was there to photograph the event and not as a participant. I was not quite sure what to expect, especially since the weather forecast was not great. Supposedly NE to E winds, which do not work very well for the bay side of Sandy Hook. And with the northeasterly winds it was cold, but mostly sunny. Despite these adverse conditions it was great to see so many people who made it. And not just from around the corner. All ages and genders were present, from young kids to experienced youngtimers, all enjoying windsurfing. And not only windsurfing. There were demonstrations of kite surfing, as well as clinics in SUPs (stand up paddling) and windsurfing clinics. Unfortunately the wind deteriorated even more during the day, so that the races scheduled for the afternoon ended up in just one race. Mainly for beginners, some of whom had stood on a windsurf board for the first time today, showing their new-found skills while having fun making it around the buoys one way or the other – congratulations to everybody! I hope that you got a whiff of why we are windsurfing whenever we can and that the FunFest successfully infected you with the “windsurf bug”. If you did, don’t worry, it is not lethal, in fact, for the most part it is a lot of fun. Which, I dare say we all had. Still when the time came to pack it all up, I think I can speak for all of us, we were quite happy to sit in our warm cars.
A big thank you to the organizers from the NJ Windsurfing + Watersports Association, the ones I met (Tom, Brian, Jeff and Barbara) and anyone else involved. I am sure it helps our sport. Well done.
Thanks so much for coming to the Fun Fest, and bringing your camera. I’m glad it wasn;t too windy, or you might have gone out windsurfing all afternoon.
Thank you for making them available to download.
@Thomas Latham : Hi Tom! You are right and you are welcome! And you beat me to telling you about the fact that they are now online 🙂 Let me know if you need anything else.
thank you for the pictures, looks like it was a fun time. Please post on iwindsurf when this event will be next year, I would like to come down from Long Island. Also, if anyone got bitten by the racing bug, check out the East Coast Windsurfing Festival, an event which is put on annually by Mike Burns (see cover of recent NEWJ) on Long Island in June. This year, Josh Angulo (yes, THE Josh Angulo) came and rocked everyone’s world in good wind the first day, but was brought down a bit by light winds and longboards on the second day.