by Carrie Robertson - November 2004

I must be one of the few windsurfers surviving who still rides a stock Windsurfer. Many sailors learned to windsurf back in the '70s and '80s on a stocker but left that all behind with disco and eight-track tapes.

Sure, I'm more often on my 78-liter Drops wave board or, in lighter winds, my 90-liter Bassett, but every now and then I look out onto a flat Corpus Christi Bay marked with evenly spaced ripples and pull out the stock Windsurfer for a different kind of ride.

Take yesterday: It's a Saturday and my boyfriend's out of town, so I'm using the weekend to catch up with work. I spend the whole morning on the computer, keeping an eye on the wind by monitoring the orange windsock flying from our small wooden pier. By 3 pm, I decide to call it quits and step out onto the balcony to assess the conditions: there's not near enough wind for shortboarding but it's perfect for longboarding.

I change into my swimsuit, swipe on a thin layer of sunscreen, strap on my Maui Jims shades, and go downstairs to pull the latest addition of my longboard collection (people keep giving them to me) down from the rafters. The shortboards are stored in racks in the garage, but the longboards are kept closer to the water's edge - hanging suspended by rope slings below our house-on-stilts.

This "new" Windsurfer I acquired has "One Design" written across the bow in cursive and, unlike my other two stock Windsurfers, has a retractable daggerboard - a step up from the original slot-type daggerboard wells. This particular board's story - they all have one - is that it sat in its original box in the back of someone's shop for a couple of decades until it was finally discovered and eventually ended up in my hands. It's still in mint condition.

I select a 5.4 wave sail from the rigged quiver in the garage (I know, I'm spoiled - but somebody has to live here), connect it to the universal (modified with a Chinook cup to fit modern gear), and strap on my new DaKine Wahine waist harness (thank you, Bill). Sliding the gear off the carpeted bulkhead, I'm off.

Usually when I take the longboard out, I stay close to home, practicing freestyle moves in hopes of reenacting the trick on my shortboard in higher winds. I have yet to railride or step through the booms on a shortboard, however. But today, it's blowing hard enough to harness in and get the new longboard moving, so I set out across the bay to a spot about a quarter mile away near the tip of a small island.

Seeing bottlenose dolphin around here is not unusual. From the house, we watch them surfing the bows of huge ships cruising down the Corpus Christi Ship Channel. I've seen dolphins countless times while windsurfing. But today, I notice several dorsal fins breaking the surface in one area near the island. What really peaks my interest is when one puts its tail fin up in the air, waves it around and starts slapping the surface, as if beckoning. This tight-knit pod of about a dozen animals seems very active.

After playing on the surface for a few seconds, they disappear from view. I sail over to the area I last saw them and shortly hear a series of staccato exhalations as they surface about 10 feet from my board, swimming side-by-side in groups of three and four. A large dolphin smile creeps over my face as I point the board upwind on a tight haul and sheet in only enough to keep the board moving. The pod and I continue this slow convoy on a parallel course for several minutes. As they surface, I watch their round curious eyes check me out during the brief instant they need to exhale and inhale. They seem very aware of me, not frightened, but also not willing to come too close. I think to myself, "This is freedom."

Just when I think I've lost them and tack to sail away, three dolphins surface, their bottle-shaped mouths pointing right at me as they forcefully move through the water. To me, they're saying, "Don't leave yet."

Charged with adrenaline from this interspecies interaction, I try to keep my distance to avoid scaring them off and focus intently on not falling. Something about swimming with wild, carnivorous, nine-foot-long marine mammals with rows of sharp teeth doesn't really appeal to me. Logically, I figure they won't hurt me, but I vow to stay topside anyway.

Sensing the pod all around me (but underwater), I drop my sail and sit on the deck of my board. In the stillness, I can hear their muffled whistles and ratcheting calls emanating through my board.

Finally, the pod moves on and I uphaul my sail and head back to shore, replaying the experience in my mind and being extremely happy to have taken the One Design out for a ride this light-wind afternoon.

Photographer/writer Carrie Robertson runs Third Coast Photo & Web from her home on Corpus Christi Bay. Find her online at: www.thirdcoastphoto.com.