What happened? There I was on my worldwide windsurfing quest, ready to line up another trip after California, Chile, Australia and Hawaii, with a little Alaska skiing thrown in, and niente. What happened to Peru, Western Europe, the Caribbean, South Africa and Mauritius?
Life happened. Wanting to be a part of it. So here I am, in Italy, writing these parting words (at least for now), thankful for the year off and ready to get back to work.
I did make it to Peru, but without my windsurfing boards. I took my eldest daughter on a two week trip to Lima and Machu Pichu, along with some equator-hopping to Bogota and Quito. Peru is everything they say it is: amazing people, amazing food, amazing scenery. I contemplated making the 10 hour road drive north of Lima to the tiny village of Pacasmayo on the edge of the Peruvian desert to spend a few weeks surfing a supposedly magical wave, and then realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to do it alone.
Instead, I packed up my stuff for the next stop, Scotland, from where I was going to drive south along the western coasts of Wales, Ireland, England and France. My timing was off. I had planned the trip for October and November, when the autumn storms bring big winds and the water is still not too cold, but I arrived a month early, and that, plus an unusually, newsworthy sunny and hot September, was enough to nix the trip. For weeks there was no wind. I headed south all the same, hoping for a change in weather, through England, over to France, then Switzerland and finally Italy.
You might think I’d lost my way. After all, Italy is deep in the Mediterranean where the waves are small and the winds unpredictable. But Italy has some hidden gems. It’s home to some of the biggest lakes in Europe, a couple of which have strong wind patterns created by the surrounding mountains at the base of the Alps, and it has 7,600 kilometers (4,700 miles) of coastline that catches the wind from every possible direction. It also sticks out far enough into the Mediterranean that it actually gets the best waves that sea has to offer. When I finally found the wind near Rome, it was gale force with overhead waves. Not bad!
I’m going to be in Italy for a while longer, helping early-stage startups succeed. I’ve already mapped out the windsurfing spots I want to visit (the links are to borrowed material), all within driving distance (some with the help of a ferry), starting with Cala della Morte (gotta love that name) near Rome, Cala Pischina and Capo Mannu in Sardinia, and Lake Garda in the North. And then farther afield, still accessible by car, the best spots in France, Spain and Portugal, and with a short ferry hop, Morocco. Lots of places to windsurf because Europeans love to windsurf. The sport may have started in California, where I started my trips last year, but it was the Europeans that turned windsurfing into a household pass time. A fitting place, then, to end my windsurfing quest.
F4 Plus 