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112-562: The Saintes Maries de la Mer Speed Canal , known to windsurfers as The Canal , is a man-made canal or trench near the French Mediterranean coastal town Saintes Maries de la Mer , built especially for speed record-breaking sailing by windsurfers. The Canal, also called "The French Trench" by the English-speaking community of windsurfers, is 1,100 meters (3,600 ft) long and 30 meters (98 ft) wide, in

224-581: A daggerboard , mast , mast foot, triangular sail and fin. Interestingly, because Drake always envisioned in his mind the sailor standing on the board with the sail in their hands, he originally forgot to include a rope, now called an uphaul, which allows the sailor to pull the sail from the water. His first day on the water was made more difficult without this essential item, but by the second day he had invented that part as well. On May 21, 1967, Jim Drake , along with his wife Wendy and daughter Stephanie, went to Marina del Rey 's Jamaica Bay to make history with

336-594: A "straight boom" that became curved in use. The courts found that the Schweitzer windsurfer boom was "merely an obvious extension". This court case set a precedent for patent law in the United Kingdom, in terms of inventive step and non-obviousness ; the court upheld the defendant's claim that the Schweitzer patent was invalid, based on film footage of Chilvers. Schweitzer then sued the company in Canada, where

448-453: A Fiji heavily indebted to foreign creditors to the United Kingdom. It became independent on 10 October 1970 and a republic on 28 September 1987. Fiji is classified as Melanesian and (less commonly) Polynesian. Beginning in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Polynesians began to migrate in waves to New Zealand via their canoes , settling on both the North and South islands as well as

560-682: A Treaty of Friendship on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs tried to oust the second king. Within the British Empire , which posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British Consul (1901–1970), Tonga formed part of the British Western Pacific Territories (under a High Commissioner who residing in Fiji ) from 1901 until 1952. Despite being under the protectorate, Tonga retained its monarchy without interruption. On June 4, 1970,

672-420: A businessman, Schweitzer imagined the profit potential and encouraged Drake to build a functional prototype for product testing. Later, when Drake's prototype worked, he helped Drake to patent the idea. From the outset, the two men were motivated by different forces. Drake conceptualized, engineered, built and tested the first windsurfer. Schweitzer, while not directly involved in the invention, helped by organizing

784-701: A change in the movements of the Pacific Plate in relation to the Indo-Australian Plate . The Pacific plate had previously been subducted under the Australian Plate . When that changed, it had the effect of uplifting the portion of the continent that is modern-day New Zealand. The convergent plate boundary that runs northwards from New Zealand's North Island is called the Kermadec-Tonga subduction zone . This subduction zone

896-656: A composite sandwich shell, that can include carbon fiber , kevlar , or fiberglass in a matrix of epoxy and sometimes plywood and thermoplastics . Racing and wave boards are usually very light (5 to 7 kg), and are made out of carbon sandwich. Such boards are very stiff, and veneer is sometimes used to make them more shock-resistant. Boards aimed at the beginners are heavier (8 to 15 kg) and more robust, containing more fiberglass. Sails Modern windsurfing sails are often made of monofilm (clear polyester film), dacron (woven polyester ) and mylar . Areas under high load may be reinforced with kevlar . Two designs of

1008-485: A conventional stayed sloop rig sail arrangement made it more stable than the one built in 1948. S. Newman Darby created his first product for a wider market in 1964 that he called the "Darby sailboard" on the Susquehanna River , Pennsylvania , United States. While Darby's "sailboard" incorporated a pivoting rig, it was " square rigged " or "kite rigged" and was subject to the associated limitations. Unlike

1120-444: A host of predating windsurfer-like devices being presented to courts around the world by companies disputing Windsurfing International's rights to the invention. In 1979, Schweitzer licensed Brittany , France-based company Dufour Wing, which was later merged with Tabur Marine – the precursor of Bic Sport . Europe was now the largest growing market for windsurfers, and the sub-licensed companies – Tabur, F2, Mistral – wanted to find

1232-416: A marketable framework for the new sport. Drake and Schweitzer collaborated informally as friends rather than legally bound business partners, as no formal business partnership was ever signed between them. Unexpectedly, Drake was temporarily relocated 2000 miles away to design innovative rocket planes at The Pentagon . Around this same time, Schweitzer lost his job as a computer software salesman. While Drake

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1344-563: A non- Polynesian language . Some of the Lau Islands to the southeast of Fiji have strong historic and cultural links with Tonga. However, in essence, Polynesia remains a cultural term referring to one of the three parts of Oceania (the others being Melanesia and Micronesia ). The following islands and island groups are either nations or overseas territories of former colonial powers. The residents are native Polynesians or contain archaeological evidence indicating Polynesian settlement in

1456-459: A patent case: Windsurfing International Inc & Anor v Petit & Anor (also part reported in 3 IPR 449 or [1984] 2 NSWLR 196), which attributed the first legally accepted use of a split boom to an Australian boy, Richard Eastaugh. Between the ages of ten and thirteen, from 1946 to 1949, aided by his younger brothers, he built around 20 galvanized iron canoes and hill trolleys which he equipped with sails with split bamboo booms. He sailed these in

1568-425: A person to steer by shifting his or her weight in order to tilt the sail fore and aft . Darby filed for a patent but lacked the funds to resubmit. However, he is widely recognized as its inventor as well as the first to conceive, design, and build a sailboard with a universal joint. In his own words, Darby experimented throughout much of the 1950s and 1960s and it was not until 1963 that an improved sailboard with

1680-419: A popular following across Europe and North America by the late 1970s and had achieved significant global popularity by the 1980s. Windsurfing became an Olympic sport in 1984. Newer variants include windfoiling , kiteboarding and wingfoiling . Hydrofoil fins under the board allow the boards to safely lift out of the water and fly silently and smoothly above the surface even in lighter winds. Windsurfing

1792-514: A possibility that the early Lapita Austronesians were direct descendants of the early colonists of the Marianas (which preceded them by about 150 years), which is also supported by pottery evidence. The most eastern site for Lapita archaeological remains recovered so far is at Mulifanua on Upolu . The Mulifanua site, where 4,288 pottery shards have been found and studied, has a "true" age of c.  1000 BC based on radiocarbon dating and

1904-733: A region within Polynesia and the categorization of these language groups by Green in 1966 helped to confirm that Polynesian settlement generally took place from west to east. There is a very distinct "East Polynesian" subgroup with many shared innovations not seen in other Polynesian languages. The Marquesas dialects are perhaps the source of the oldest Hawaiian speech which is overlaid by Tahitian-variety speech, as Hawaiian oral histories would suggest. The earliest varieties of New Zealand Maori speech may have had multiple sources from around central Eastern Polynesia, as Maori oral histories would suggest. The Cook Islands are made up of 15 islands comprising

2016-583: A retractable daggerboard , and are optimized for lighter winds or course racing. Shortboards are less than 3 meters long and are designed for planing conditions. While windsurfing is possible under a wide range of wind conditions, most intermediate and advanced recreational windsurfers prefer to sail in conditions that allow for consistent planing with multi-purpose, not overly specialized, free-ride equipment. Larger (100 to 140 liters) free-ride boards are capable of planing at wind speeds as low as 12 kn (6 m/s) if rigged with an adequate, well-tuned sail in

2128-427: A sail are predominant: camber induced and rotational. Cambered sails have 1–5 camber inducers - plastic devices at the ends of battens which cup against the mast. They help create a rigid aerofoil shape for faster speed and stability, but at the cost of maneuverability and how light the sail feels. The trend is that racier sails have camber inducers while wave sails and most recreational sails do not. The rigidity of

2240-513: A sitting position and not as a windsurfer standing up, near his home on the Swan River in Perth . The judge noted that, "Mr Eastaugh greatly exaggerated the capacity of his galvanised iron canoes to sail to windward" and that, "There is no corroboration of Mr Eastaugh's experiences by any other witness. Neither of his brothers or his father was called" . It is acknowledged in the courts that

2352-404: A small " Flipper " racing dingy rig. To gather the needed materials, Drake carefully instructed Schweitzer what raw materials to purchase such as an extra large foam blank to build the board and a hollow fiberglass mast for the sail. Drake completed construction of the prototype in his own garage during his spare time within a few months. Drake's question came down to simple operation of how

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2464-450: A solid board with a vertical sail. In the early 19th century, people in logging communities around western Lake Michigan were purportedly fixing sails to logs as part of log float control and for recreation. In 1948, 20-year-old Newman Darby was the first to conceive the idea of using a handheld sail and rig mounted on a universal joint so that he could control his small catamaran —the first rudderless sailboard ever built that allowed

2576-407: A standing person could control both the power of the sail as well as the direction of the craft without a rudder. Drake discovered that one's ability to rotate the sail's position relative to the board could allow control of both power and direction. Experimenting with a rotational design, he invented the concept for the universal joint . Drake completed his engineering concept with a wishbone boom ,

2688-662: A subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people . Tracing Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in Island Melanesia , Maritime Southeast Asia , and ultimately, in Taiwan . Between about 3000 and 1000 BC, speakers of Austronesian languages spread from Taiwan into Maritime Southeast Asia . There are three theories regarding the spread of humans across the Pacific to Polynesia. These are outlined well by Kayser et al. (2000) and are as follows: In

2800-537: A triangular Bermuda rig . The custom board Drake engineered required a greater amount of displacement volume for floatation than was found in a traditional surfboard so an extra large custom built foam blank was constructed by Gordon "Grubby" Clark of Clark foam and shaped by Jim Drake and Gary Seaman at the Con Surfboard factory in Santa Monica, California. A repurposed hollow fiberglass mast was taken from

2912-554: A way to remove or reduce their royalty payments to Windsurfing International. Tabur lawyers found prior art, in a local English newspaper which had published a story with a picture about Peter Chilvers , who as a young boy on Hayling Island on the south coast of England, assembled his first board combined with a sail, in 1958. This board used a universal joint, one of the key parts of the Windsurfing International's patent. They also found stories published about

3024-470: A west-northwest/east-southeast orientation designed to take advantage of the Marin and Mistral winds that blow in that location. In 1987, the idea of building a speed canal was thought up by British speed windsurfer Erik Beale and St Marie speed week organizer Michel Roussolet. The first version was 850 m long and it enabled Beale on 13 November 1988 to become the first sailor in history to officially break

3136-629: A widespread Polynesian network or confederacy (or "empire") that was prehistorically ruled by the successive Tui Manuʻa dynasties. Manuan genealogies and religious oral literature also suggest that the Tui Manuʻa had long been one of the most prestigious and powerful paramount of Samoa. Oral history suggests that the Tui Manuʻa kings governed a confederacy of far-flung islands which included Fiji , Tonga as well as smaller western Pacific chiefdoms and Polynesian outliers such as Uvea , Futuna , Tokelau , and Tuvalu . Commerce and exchange routes between

3248-457: Is a subregion of Oceania , made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean . The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians . They have many things in common, including linguistic relations , cultural practices , and traditional beliefs . In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night. The term Polynésie

3360-437: Is a recreational, family friendly sport, most popular at flat water locations around the world that offer safety and accessibility for beginner and intermediate participants. Technique and equipment have evolved over the years. Major competitive disciplines on unified World Tour include Slalom, Wave and Freestyle. Increasingly, new technology "foiling" with high speed foil racing is replacing traditional 'fin' racing events and

3472-663: Is associated with the volcanism that gave rise to the Kermadec and Tongan islands. There is a transform fault that currently traverses New Zealand's South Island, known as the Alpine Fault . Zealandia's continental shelf has a total area of approximately 3,600,000 km (1,400,000 sq mi). The oldest rocks in Polynesia are found in New Zealand and are believed to be about 510 million years old. The oldest Polynesian rocks outside Zealandia are to be found in

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3584-416: Is considered to have lasted roughly 1,000 years. The cause of this gap in voyaging is contentious among archaeologists with a number of competing theories presented including climate shifts, the need for the development of new voyaging techniques, and cultural shifts. After the long pause, dispersion of populations into central and eastern Polynesia began. Although the exact timing of when each island group

3696-409: Is derived. This is due to new population being established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population which also causes a loss of genetic variation. Atholl Anderson wrote that analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, female) and Y chromosome (male) concluded that the ancestors of Polynesian women were Austronesians while those of Polynesian men were Papuans . Subsequently, it

3808-469: Is the marker of Austronesian expansions. The high frequencies of mtDNA Haplogroup B in the Polynesians are the result of founder effect and represents the descendants of a few Austronesian females who intermixed with Papuan males. A genomic analysis of modern populations in Polynesia, published in 2021, provides a model of the direction and timing of Polynesian migrations from Samoa to the islands to

3920-639: Is the oldest site yet discovered in Polynesia. This is mirrored by a 2010 study also placing the beginning of the human archaeological sequences of Polynesia in Tonga at 900 BC. Within a mere three or four centuries, between 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita archaeological culture spread 6,000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until reaching as far as Fiji , Tonga , and Samoa . A cultural divide began to develop between Fiji to

4032-912: Is thought that the Cook Islands were settled in two periods: the Tahitian Period, when the country was settled between 900 and 1300 AD, and the Maui Settlement, which occurred in 1600 AD, when a large contingent from Tahiti settled in Rarotonga, in the Takitumu district. The first contact between Europeans and the native inhabitants of the Cook Islands took place in 1595 with the arrival of Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña in Pukapuka , who called it San Bernardo (Saint Bernard). A decade later, navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós made

4144-666: The British Crown in 1836. In 1840, Royal Navy officer William Hobson and several Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi , which transformed New Zealand into a colony of the British Empire and granting all Māori the status of British subjects. However, tensions between Pākehā settlers and the Māori over settler encroachment on Māori lands and disputes over land sales led to the New Zealand Wars (1845–1872) between

4256-656: The Chatham Islands . Over the course of several centuries, the Polynesian settlers formed distinct cultures that became known as the Māori on the New Zealand mainland, while those who settled in the Chatham Islands became the Moriori people . Beginning the 17th century, the arrival of Europeans to New Zealand drastically impacted Māori culture. Settlers from Europe (known as " Pākehā ") began to colonize New Zealand in

4368-769: The German Empire and the United States. The German-controlled Western portion of Samoa (consisting of the bulk of Samoan territory – Savaiʻi, Apolima, Manono and Upolu) was occupied by New Zealand in WWI, and administered by it under a Class C League of Nations mandate . After repeated efforts by the Samoan independence movement, the New Zealand Western Samoa Act of 24 November 1961 granted Samoa independence, effective on January 1, 1962, upon which

4480-579: The IQfoil class is the new Olympic windsurfing racing class for France in 2024. Jim Drake invented and co-patented windsurfing in California between 1967 and 1970. Alternative concepts by Englishman Peter Chilvers and American Newman Darby are recognized as earlier sailboards. Drake was educated and trained as an aeronautical engineer at Stanford University. He spent his early years surfing, sailing and skiing. He conceived windsurfing to combine

4592-563: The Kingdom of Tonga became independent from the British Empire. The reef islands and atolls of Tuvalu are identified as being part of West Polynesia. During pre-European-contact times there was frequent canoe voyaging between the islands as Polynesian navigation skills are recognised to have allowed deliberate journeys on double-hull sailing canoes or outrigger canoes . Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited; thus

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4704-593: The Solomon Islands . The Tongan influence brought Polynesian customs and language throughout most of Polynesia. The empire began to decline in the 13th century. After a bloody civil war, political power in Tonga eventually fell under the Tuʻi Kanokupolu dynasty in the 16th century. In 1845, the ambitious young warrior, strategist, and orator Tāufaʻāhau united Tonga into a more Western-style kingdom. He held

4816-460: The Tovata confederacy of Fiji. This is where most Fijian-Polynesian linguistic interactions occurred. In the chronology of the exploration and first populating of Polynesia, there is a gap commonly referred to as the long pause between the first populating of Fiji ( Melanesia ), Western Polynesia of Tonga and Samoa among others and the settlement of the rest of the region. In general this gap

4928-525: The colonial government and the Māori. In response to the conflict, the colonial government initiated a series of land confiscations from the Māori. This social upheaval, combined with epidemics of infectious diseases from Europe, devastated both the Māori population and their social standing in New Zealand. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Maori population began to recover, and efforts were made to redress social, economic, political and economic issues facing

5040-451: The "sailboard": a hand-held square rigged "kite" sail on a floating platform for recreational use. Eventually US courts recognized the Schweitzer windsurfer as an obvious step from Darby's prior art. Schweitzer had to reapply for a patent under severely limited terms, and finally it expired in 1987. Shortly thereafter, having lost its license royalty income, Windsurfing International ceased operations. In 1984, Australian courts determined

5152-453: The ' Australo-Papuans ' of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands . The preliminary analysis of skulls found at the Teouma and Talasiu Lapita sites is that they lack Australian or Papuan affinities and instead have affinities to mainland Asian populations. A 2017 DNA analysis of modern Polynesians indicates that there has been intermarriage resulting in a mixed Austronesian-Papuan ancestry of

5264-460: The 1948 invention of the sailboard by Newman Darby and his wife Naomi in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania . In Windsurfing International Inc. v Tabur Marine (GB) Ltd. 1985 RPC 59 with Tabur backed financially by French sailing fan Baron Marcel Bich , British courts recognized the prior art of Peter Chilvers. It did not incorporate the curved wishbone booms of the modern windsurfer, but rather

5376-526: The 19th century, leading to tension with the indigenous Māori. On October 28, 1835, a group of Māori tribesmen issued a declaration of independence (drafted by Scottish businessman James Busby ) as the " United Tribes of New Zealand ", in order to resist potential efforts at colonizing New Zealand by the French and prevent merchant ships and their cargo which belonged to Māori merchants from being seized at foreign ports. The new state received recognition from

5488-406: The 2000s, the sport has seen a steady revival, first through the explosion of foiling., and more recently with global consolidation, restructuring, and an exciting new unified World Tour. Modern windsurfing, as a sport and recreational activity, did not emerge until the latter half of the 20th century. The earliest version of a sailboard design utilizing a freely articulating sail on top of a board

5600-553: The 40- knot barrier, setting the Outright Speed Sailing Record of: Early in the 1990s, the canal was extended to its final length of 1,100 m, and windsurfers in 1990, 1991, and 1993 set four consecutive Outright Speed Sailing Records on The Canal, measured over a 500-meter course: Later the same year (1993), The Outright record fell to the Australian sail craft Yellow Pages at * 46.62 knots sailing in

5712-520: The Bismarck Archipelago. The modern Polynesians still show human genetic results of a Melanesian culture which allowed indigenous men, but not women, to "marry in" – useful evidence for matrilocality. Although matrilocality and matrilineality receded at some early time, Polynesians and most other Austronesian speakers in the Pacific Islands were and are still highly "matricentric" in their traditional jurisprudence. The Lapita pottery for which

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5824-637: The Hawaiian Emperor Seamount Chain and are 80 million years old. Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the Polynesian Triangle , although some islands inhabited by Polynesians are situated outside the Polynesian Triangle. Geographically, the Polynesian Triangle is drawn by connecting the points of Hawaii , New Zealand , and Easter Island . The other main island groups located within

5936-740: The Kingdom of Fiji by 1871. In around 1855 a Tongan prince, Enele Ma'afu , proclaimed the Lau islands as his kingdom, and took the title Tui Lau . Fiji had been ruled by numerous divided chieftains until Cakobau unified the landmass. The Lapita culture, the ancestors of the Polynesians, existed in Fiji from about 3500 BC until they were displaced by the Melanesians about a thousand years later. (Both Samoans and subsequent Polynesian cultures adopted Melanesian painting and tattoo methods.) In 1873, Cakobau ceded

6048-586: The Māori in wider New Zealand society. Beginning in the 1960s, a protest movement emerged seeking redress for historical grievances . In the 2013 New Zealand census , roughly 600,000 people in New Zealand identified as being Māori. In the 9th century, the Tui Manuʻa controlled a vast maritime empire comprising most of the settled islands of Polynesia. The Tui Manuʻa is one of the oldest Samoan titles in Samoa. Traditional oral literature of Samoa and Manu'a talks of

6160-584: The Northern and Southern groups. The islands are spread out across many kilometers of a vast ocean. The largest of these islands is called Rarotonga, which is also the political and economic capital of the nation. The Cook Islands were formerly known as the Hervey Islands, but this name refers only to the Northern Groups. It is unknown when this name was changed to reflect the current name. It

6272-649: The Polynesian Triangle are Samoa , Tonga , the Cook Islands , Tuvalu , Tokelau , Niue , Wallis and Futuna , and French Polynesia . Also, small Polynesian settlements are in Papua New Guinea , the Solomon Islands , the Caroline Islands , and Vanuatu . An island group with strong Polynesian cultural traits outside of this great triangle is Rotuma , situated north of Fiji . The people of Rotuma have many common Polynesian traits, but speak

6384-472: The Polynesians (as with other modern Austronesians, with the exception of Taiwanese aborigines ). Research at the Teouma and Talasiu Lapita sites implies that the migration and intermarriage, which resulted in the mixed Austronesian-Papuan ancestry of the Polynesians, occurred after the first initial migration to Vanuatu and Tonga. A complete mtDNA and genome-wide SNP comparison (Pugach et al. , 2021) of

6496-664: The South Sea Islands because of their relative proximity to the southern Pacific islands, even though they are in fact located in the North Pacific . Another term in use, which avoids this inconsistency, is "the Polynesian Triangle " (from the shape created by the layout of the islands in the Pacific Ocean). This term makes clear that the grouping includes the Hawaiian Islands, which are located at

6608-633: The Teouma Lapita site ( Efate Island , Vanuatu ) and the Talasiu Lapita site (near Nuku'alofa , Tonga ) published in 2016 supports the Express Train model; although with the qualification that the migration bypassed New Guinea and Island Melanesia . The conclusion from research published in 2016 is that the initial population of those two sites appears to come directly from Taiwan or the northern Philippines and did not mix with

6720-680: The Trusteeship Agreement terminated. The new Independent State of Samoa was not a monarchy, though the Malietoa titleholder remained very influential. It effectively ended however with the death of Malietoa Tanumafili II , the country's head of state, on May 11, 2007. In the 10th century, the Tuʻi Tonga Empire was established in Tonga, and most of the Western Pacific came within its sphere of influence, up to parts of

6832-900: The archaeological record, there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with some certainty. It is thought that by roughly 1400 BC, " Lapita peoples", so-named after their pottery tradition, appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago of northwest Melanesia . This culture is seen as having adapted and evolved through time and space since its emergence "Out of Taiwan ". They had given up rice production, for instance, which required paddy field agriculture unsuitable for small islands. However, they still cultivated other ancestral Austronesian staple cultigens like Dioscorea yams and taro (the latter are still grown with smaller-scale paddy field technology), as well as adopting new ones like breadfruit and sweet potato . The results of research at

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6944-472: The boards Drake had invented. Observers close to the situation believe it was always Schweitzer's plan to keep Drake uniformed of the large profit potential long enough to misrepresent and under value the real worth of the patent so that Schweitzer could buy out Drake's half of the patent for as little as possible. When Drake later discovered Schweitzer's unethical and dishonest actions he was deeply confused and angered. Drake, who trusted Schweitzer and his family,

7056-703: The business details of patenting, marketing and selling Drake's new craft. As a partnership, Drake came up with the original concept and Schweitzer marketed and sold it. Both men's names appear on the patent. Years later, in 2002, when the Professional Windsurfing Association (PWA) inducted both Drake and Schweitzer into the Windsurfing Hall of Fame, they called Drake "The Father of Windsurfing" for his role as inventor and egalitarian figure head throughout his lifetime, and called Schweitzer "the man who brought windsurfing to

7168-426: The chiefly title of Tuʻi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised with the name Jiaoji ("George") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of the missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker , he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the western royal style, emancipated the "serfs", enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs. Tonga became a British protectorate under

7280-581: The company Windsurfing International. The details of Jim Drake's original windsurfing concept were published in 1969 by Drake's employer at the time, the RAND Corporation, in a technical paper written and presented by him titled Windsurfing - A New Concept in Sailing ." Further details can be read in published interviews . Despite forty years of subsequent development, the design is still remarkably similar to today's windsurfing equipment, and

7392-401: The decline of the Tui Manuʻa's power, with the western isles of Savaiʻi and Upolu rising to prominence in the post-Tongan occupation period and the establishment of the tafaʻifa system that dominated Samoan politics well into the 20th century. This was disrupted in the early 1900s due to colonial intervention, with east–west division by Tripartite Convention (1899) and subsequent annexation by

7504-459: The development of high quality lighter and stiffer planing short boards, introducing foot straps, harnesses and more stable sails. These innovations further expanded the sport by making it faster, more radical and more exciting for the top end, and significantly more accessible at the entry level with lighter easier equipment. Windsurfing shattered the world speed sailing record, entered the Olympics and became lauded as, "The fastest growing sport in

7616-423: The east. This model presents consistencies and inconsistencies with models of Polynesian migration that are based on archaeology and linguistic analysis. The 2021 genomic model presents a migration pathway from Samoa to the Cook Islands (Rarotonga), then to the Society Islands (Tōtaiete mā) in the 11th century AD, the western Austral Islands (Tuha'a Pae) and the Tuāmotu Archipelago in the 12th century AD, with

7728-546: The end of the 1970s it was the fastest growing sport in the world. Originally, all windsurfing boards were "long boards". This type of board went relatively slower through the water, but worked well in low wind conditions. Light air, long board windsurfing was enjoyed by a wide range of participants including families with young children. During the 1980s a global community consisting of equipment designers, manufacturers, athletes, travel professionals and journalists worked together to propel windsurfing forward. Innovation allowed for

7840-424: The first European landing in the islands when he set foot on Rakahanga in 1606, calling it Gente Hermosa (Beautiful People). Cook Islanders are ethnically Polynesians or Eastern Polynesia. They are culturally associated with Tahiti, Eastern Islands, NZ Maori and Hawaii. The Lau Islands were subject to periods of Tongan rulership and then Fijian control until their eventual conquest by Seru Epenisa Cakobau of

7952-433: The general archaeological complex of the earliest "Oceanic" Austronesian speakers in the Pacific Islands are named also lapsed in Western Polynesia. Language, social life and material culture were very distinctly "Polynesian" by 1000 BC. Early European observers detected theocratic elements in traditional Polynesian government. Linguistically, there are five sub-groups of the Polynesian language group . Each represents

8064-481: The initial settlement of individual islands; although Professor Matisoo-Smith of the Otago study said that the founding Māori population of New Zealand must have been in the hundreds, much larger than previously thought. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift. The Polynesian may be distinctively different both genotypically and phenotypically from the parent population from which it

8176-433: The invention, he was "probably no better than third," behind mid-west based Newman Darby and Englishman Peter Chilvers . The battle over the origin story of the sport would go on to cause much legal grief for the global sporting phenomenon for much of the 1980s. In 1983, Schweitzer sued. Swiss board manufacturer Mistral and lost. Mistral's defense hinged on the work of US inventor Newman Darby , who by 1965 conceived

8288-488: The masses" based on his efforts to promote the Windsurfer brand's popularity. It was a brief but productive collaboration between a talented engineer and a motivated businessman that together created the modern sport of windsurfing. Drake has stated in various interviews that he recognizes Darby and Chilvers as early sailboard pioneers and sees himself as the sports "re-inventor". Drake is known historically as one of

8400-477: The migrant pathway branching to the north to the Marquesas (Te Henua 'Enana), to Raivavae in the south, and to the easternmost destination on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), which was settled in approximately 1200 AD via Mangareva . The Polynesians were matrilineal and matrilocal Stone Age societies upon their arrival in Tonga , Samoa and the surrounding islands, after having spent at least some time in

8512-491: The modern windsurfer design, Darby's sailboard was operated "back winded", with the sailor's back to the lee side of a kite-shaped sail . This is a much less efficient and less dynamic sailing position and opposite of how a modern windsurfer is operated. Darby's article stated that "you can learn to master a type of maneuvering that's been dead since the age of the picturesque square riggers". He began selling his sailboards in 1964. The main focus of his company, Darby Industries,

8624-484: The northern vertex of the referenced "triangle". Polynesia is characterized by a small amount of land spread over a very large portion of the mid- and southern Pacific Ocean . It comprises approximately 300,000 to 310,000 square kilometres (117,000 to 118,000 sq mi) of land, of which more than 270,000 km (103,000 sq mi) are within New Zealand . The Hawaiian archipelago comprises about half

8736-514: The opposition team again financially backed by Bic included Chilvers and Jim Drake, and Schweitzer lost again. After the cases, no longer obliged to pay Windsurfing International any royalty payments, the now renamed Bic Sport became one of the world's larger producers of windsurfing equipment, with an annual production of 15,000 boards. There is no evidence that Schweitzer or Drake had knowledge of any prior inventions similar to theirs. Drake accepted in retrospect that, although he can be credited with

8848-684: The past. Some islands of Polynesian origin are outside the general triangle that geographically defines the region. The Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands , most of which are parts of Kiribati , had no permanent settlements until European colonization, but are often considered to be parts of the Polynesian Triangle . Polynesians once inhabited the Auckland Islands , the Kermadec Islands , and Norfolk Island in pre-colonial times, but these islands were uninhabited by

8960-568: The remainder. Most Polynesian islands and archipelagos , including the Hawaiian Islands and Samoa , are composed of volcanic islands built by hotspots (volcanoes). The other land masses in Polynesia — New Zealand , Norfolk Island , and Ouvéa , the Polynesian outlier near New Caledonia — are the unsubmerged portions of the largely sunken continent of Zealandia . Zealandia is believed to have mostly sunk below sea level 23 million years ago, and recently partially resurfaced due to

9072-554: The remains of early settlers of the Mariana Islands and early Lapita individuals from Vanuatu and Tonga also suggest that both migrations originated directly from the same ancient Austronesian source population from the Philippines . The complete absence of "Papuan" admixture in the early samples indicates that these early voyages bypassed eastern Indonesia and the rest of New Guinea . The authors have also suggested

9184-410: The rotation in the name. Rotational sails have an aerofoil shape on the leeward side when powered, but are nearly flat when sheeted out (unpowered). In comparison with cambered sails, rotational designs offer less power and stability when sailing straight, but are easier to handle when maneuvering. Rotational sails are usually lighter and easier to rig. A windsurfing sail is tensioned at two points: at

9296-421: The sail is also determined by a number of battens . Beginners' sails often do not have battens , so they are lighter and easier to use in light winds. However, as the sailor improves, a battened sail will provide greater stability in stronger winds. Rotational sails have battens which protrude beyond the back aspect of the mast. They flip or "rotate" to the other side of the mast when tacking or jibing, hence

9408-466: The sailboard. Twelve-year-old Peter Chilvers is also cited for inventing a kind of sailboard in England in 1958. Stanford educated aeronautical engineer Jim Drake and fellow aeronautical engineer Fred Payne conceived and designed a sail powered surfboard in 1962. Their version differed from Darby's in many significant ways. The sailor stood upright on a large surfboard while holding directly onto

9520-665: The separate Eastaugh (1946–1949), Darby (1965) and Chilvers (1958) inventions pre-dated the Schweitzer/Drake patent (1968). By the late 1980s the sport was massive and in the midst of a full-blown marketing and legal battle between the original market in the US, and the exploding European markets. This epic legal battle laid the ground for a still running rivalry between the European and American hemispheres. Windsurfing International briefly claimed trademark rights with respect to

9632-411: The sheltered waters of sandy point, Australia ending the 7-year reign of the windsurfers. That record would stand for 11 years until the next onslaught of the windsurfers in the early 2000s: Three consecutive Outright Speed Sailing Records, measured on a 500-metre course, were set on The Canal by windsurfers in 2004, 2005 and 2008: In October 2008, The Canal's leading position on the world sailing map

9744-607: The simplicity of skiing with the pleasures of sailing. Drake is known historically as "The Father of Windsurfing." Drake's patented invention was marketed and sold under the brand name "Windsurfer" for over 20 years by a company he cofounded with businessman Hoyle Schweitzer called Windsurfing International. Windsurfing's popularity saw explosive growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Initially in Europe, then in North America. The sport began to take off in popularity around 1972 and by

9856-560: The six to eight square meter range. The pursuit of planing in lower winds has driven the popularity of wider and shorter boards, with which planing is possible in wind as low as 8 kn (4 m/s), if sails in the 10 to 12 square meter range are used. Modern windsurfing boards can be classified into many categories: The original Windsurfer board had a body made out of polyethylene filled with PVC foam. Later, hollow glass-reinforced epoxy designs were used. Most boards produced today have an expanded polystyrene foam core reinforced with

9968-520: The sport was launched. Originally Drake and Schweitzer wanted to name their new sailboard concept "Skate" (SK8), however changed the name to "Baja Board" in early 1968. Schweitzer was marketing a prototype of the Baja Board in Seattle , when Bert Salisbury stopped his car to have a look, and commented: "Gee I have the perfect name for it! Windsurfing!" The name was soon changed to Windsurfer, sold by

10080-527: The tack (by downhaul ), and at the clew (by outhaul ). There is a set of pulleys for downhauling at the tack, and a grommet at the clew . Most shape is given to the sail by applying a very strong downhaul, which by design bends the mast. The outhaul tension is relatively weak, mostly providing leverage for controlling the sail's angle of attack. Polynesia Polynesia ( UK : / ˌ p ɒ l ɪ ˈ n iː z i ə / POL -in- EE -zee-ə , US : /- ˈ n iː ʒ ə / -⁠ EE -zhə )

10192-615: The term "Windsurfer" as a trademark at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1970. Windsurfing International Inc. created a popular one-design racing class, which was influenced by the desire to provide a fleet of racers with a uniformly constructed "boat," so that rider skill, rather than equipment choice, would determine competitive results. The first Windsurfer Class World Championship regatta took place in San Diego, California in 1973. The Windsurfer Class fleet

10304-671: The time European explorers arrived. The oceanic islands to the east of Easter Island, such as Clipperton Island , the Galápagos Islands , and the Juan Fernández Islands , were in the past formerly categorized on rare occasion as part of Polynesia. No evidence of prehistoric contact with either Polynesians or the indigenous peoples of the Americas has been found. The Polynesian people are considered, by linguistic, archaeological, and human genetic evidence,

10416-489: The west, and the distinctive Polynesian language and culture emerging on Tonga and Samoa to the east. Where there was once faint evidence of uniquely shared developments in Fijian and Polynesian speech, most of this is now called "borrowing" and is thought to have occurred in those and later years more than as a result of continuing unity of their earliest dialects on those far-flung lands. Contacts were mediated especially through

10528-467: The western Polynesian societies are well documented and it is speculated that the Tui Manuʻa dynasty grew through its success in obtaining control over the oceanic trade of currency goods such as finely woven ceremonial mats, whale ivory " tabua ", obsidian and basalt tools, chiefly red feathers, and seashells reserved for royalty (such as polished nautilus and the egg cowry ). Samoa's long history of various ruling families continued until well after

10640-419: The windward side of a small triangular sail. Originally, they designed it to be propelled by a hand held wing rather than an attached, masted sail. Soon they decided a universal joint attaching a movable sail was more practical. After learning of Drake's revolutionary sailing concept , one of Drake's family friends, a businessman named Hoyle Schweitzer, became interested in marketing Drake's new invention. As

10752-474: The wishbone boom, daggerboard and mast foot from laminated strips of teak wood. He custom designed and built a wood press jig for shaping the curve into the wishbone boom. The universal joint was built by reconfiguring a commercially available sailboat swivel joint constructed from heavy duty marine stainless steel with additional teflon components. Drake engineered the custom sail, which was made from Dacron sail cloth and cut and sewn by sail maker Bob Broussard into

10864-514: The word "windsurfer" has become synonymous with the sport itself. Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer together started the sport's first company, Windsurfing International, in late 1968 out of Drake's Santa Monica, California home. Both men were employed full time outside of their startup windsurfing business and so windsurfing was little more than an experimental hobby for them at that time. Drake and his wife Wendy, along with Schweitzer and his wife Diane worked closely together in their spare time to create

10976-465: The word "windsurfer". While this was registered in the United States for some years, it was not accepted for registration in many jurisdictions as the word was considered too descriptive. Registration was ultimately lost in the United States for the same reason. Eventually the sport became known widely as either sailboarding or windsurfing. Windsurfers are often classified as either shortboards or longboards. Longboards are usually longer than 3 meters, with

11088-437: The world's first modern sailboard. Returning to Marina del Rey one week later, this time with the skeg and uphaul, Drake succeeded at sailing the board the way he designed it to be used. With his confidence buoyed from multiple days of practice in the protected bay, Drake next took his sailboard onto the open ocean at Will Rogers State Beach in Santa Monica, California. Drake subsequently taught Schweitzer how to windsurf and soon

11200-486: The world's top aeronautical engineers. He was also an expert craftsman in his spare time. He combined both skills to conceive and build the world's first windsurfer prototype. First, he carefully engineered a mathematical simulation of his concept based on the physics of windsurfing . He then crafted nearly all of the windsurfer prototype components by hand in his Santa Monica, California home garage in January 1967. He built

11312-470: The world." The radical growth curve had to level out eventually and Windsurfing's retail momentum plateaued with the arrival of newer action sports in 90's. Closely related action sports such as mountain biking, snowboarding, stand up paddle boarding (SUP) and kite boarding all directly competed for popularity with windsurfing. Many windsurfing schools closed, or switched to teaching kite boarding and currently teach mostly wing foiling. After some lean years in

11424-406: Was away for two years immersed in engineering work on the other side of the country, Schweitzer began manufacturing and selling Windsurfers, as well as incorporating the company Windsurfing International and collected licensing fees on over 100,000 boards in Europe without ever informing or including Drake. Schweitzer concealed from Drake the somewhat large profits he was beginning to make from selling

11536-509: Was based the success of the Laser and Hobie Cat classes. Each Windsurfer had an identical computer-cut sail, a technology new at that time and pioneered by Ian Bruce. On March 27, 1968, Jim Drake, an aeronautical engineer, and Hoyle Schweitzer, a businessman filed the very first windsurfing patent, which was granted by the USPTO in 1970. Through the seventies, and early eighties windsurfing

11648-564: Was created in 1962 by American Newman Darby. Independently, engineer Jim Drake invented and co-patented the version we all know today and called it Windsurfing- a new new concept in sailing . Long before this modern moment, there were small scale sailing craft that have used wind as the driving force, many of them sourced to the Polynesians who have been riding the wind and waves for centuries. Early accounts suggest island peoples were undertaking day trips over oceans standing upright on

11760-663: Was first used in 1756 by the French writer Charles de Brosses , who originally applied it to all the islands of the Pacific . In 1831, Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a narrower definition during a lecture at the Société de Géographie of Paris. By tradition, the islands located in the southern Pacific have also often been called the South Sea Islands , and their inhabitants have been called South Sea Islanders . The Hawaiian Islands have often been considered to be part of

11872-459: Was found that 96% (or 93.8%) of Polynesian mtDNA has an Asian origin, as does one-third of Polynesian Y chromosomes; the remaining two-thirds from New Guinea and nearby islands; this is consistent with matrilocal residence patterns. Polynesians existed from the intermixing of few ancient Austronesian-Melanesian founders, genetically they belong almost entirely to the Haplogroup B (mtDNA), which

11984-409: Was settled is debated, it is widely accepted that the island groups in the geographic center of the region (i.e. the Cook Islands , Society Islands , Marquesas Islands , etc.) were settled initially between 1000 and 1150 AD, and ending with more far flung island groups such as Hawaii , New Zealand , and Easter Island settled between 1200 and 1300 AD. Tiny populations may have been involved in

12096-423: Was shocked that his friend would deceive him in this unkind way. Drake originally was not interested in forfeiting his half of the patent. However, Schweitzer and his attorneys would continue for 5 years to aggressively pressure Drake to sell his half of the patent to Windsurfing International in order for Schweitzer to secure a lucrative monopoly on all future royalties. Windsurfing International registered

12208-617: Was taken by the Lüderitz Speed Challenge in Namibia , when the "holy grail" 50-knot barrier of speed sailing was first broken by a kitesurfer. Windsurfing Windsurfing is a wind-propelled water sport that is a combination of sailing and surfing . It is also referred to as "sailboarding" and "boardsailing", and emerged in the late 1960s from the Californian aerospace and surf culture. Windsurfing gained

12320-404: Was the fastest growing sport on earth. Schweitzer aggressively protected his patent around the world through Sub-licensing the rights to anyone who wanted to manufacture and sell sailboards. Windsurfing International's usurious royalty fee charges, which its competitors were forced to pay, were so high that many observers felt it needlessly limited the growth of the sport. Mr. Schweitzer claimed this

12432-601: Was to promote his brand and the Windsurfer One Design racing class, but most believed it was so he could maximize his own profits. [1] The sport underwent very rapid growth however, particularly in Europe after the sale of a sub-license sold to Ten Cate Sports in the Netherlands. In 1975 Ten Cate Sports sold 45,000 boards in Europe. At the same time, Schweitzer also sought to defend his patent rights vigorously against unauthorized manufacturers. This led to

12544-484: Was to sell plans such that any school-age child could build one for under $ 50. Rather than building personal wealth, his focus was to introduce youth to the sport of sailing in even very shallow water. A promotional article by Darby was published in the August 1965 edition of Popular Science magazine. Darby died in 2016 reportedly feeling pleased with the recognition he received for having created an early version of

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