Games Sports

Sailboarding, or Windsurfing, or boardsailing, is a sport that combines sailing and surfing which uses a one-person craft called a sailboard. A sailboard is composed of a board and a rig.

In 1948, twenty-year old Newman Darby first conceived of using a hand held sail and rig mounted on a universal joint, to control a small catamaran. Darby did not file for a utility patent, but he is considered the inventor of the first sailboard.

Then in 1965, two good friends from southern California, Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake, wanted to combine surfing and sailing. They had seen that the major problem in surfing was that you had to wait for waves. Jim Drake was an aeronautical designer and Schweitzer a businessman. Drake came up with the idea of an articulated mast and so they developed the universal joint.

By the end of 1968 they patented the first windsurf board, the "Windsurfer." From that day on windsurfing grew in popularity. Very soon the boards became shorter and lighter. The sinker boards were invented, the footstraps and the harness and the funboard was invented. In the beginning it was only practised on Hawaii, then it spread across the globe as wave sailing was born.

Games Format

In the Rhodes Games, the sailboarding competition will be based at the Nautical Club of Rhodes on the west coast of the island.

The blue waters of the Aegean sea and warm breezes should make for excellent windsurfing conditions.