Windsurfing | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

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 aerospace and surf culture of California. Windsurfing gained 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 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 include slalom, wave and freestyle. Increasingly, "foiling" is replacing traditional events and 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 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 the end of the 1970s it was the fastest growing sport in the world. Originally, all windsurfing boards were "long boards".

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (2)

Related units (1)

Related concepts (3)

Related lectures (1)

Forces on sails

Forces on sails result from movement of air that interacts with sails and gives them motive power for sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and sail-powered land vehicles. Similar principles in a rotating frame of reference apply to windmill sails and wind turbine blades, which are also wind-driven. They are differentiated from forces on wings, and propeller blades, the actions of which are not adjusted to the wind.

Sailing

Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wingsails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the water (sailing ship, sailboat, raft, windsurfer, or kitesurfer), on ice (iceboat) or on land (land yacht) over a chosen course, which is often part of a larger plan of navigation. From prehistory until the second half of the 19th century, sailing craft were the primary means of maritime trade and transportation; exploration across the seas and oceans was reliant on sail for anything other than the shortest distances.

Catamaran

A catamaran (ˌkætəməˈræn) (informally, a "cat") is a multi-hulled watercraft featuring two parallel hulls of equal size. It is a geometry-stabilized craft, deriving its stability from its wide beam, rather than from a ballasted keel as with a monohull boat. Catamarans typically have less hull volume, smaller displacement, and shallower draft (draught) than monohulls of comparable length. The two hulls combined also often have a smaller hydrodynamic resistance than comparable monohulls, requiring less propulsive power from either sails or motors.

Optimal solution and asymptotic properties of a stochastic control problem arising in sailboat trajectory optimization

Carlo Ciccarella

We study the optimal strategy for a sailboat to reach an upwind island under the hypothesis that the wind direction fluctuates according to a Brownian motion and the wind speed is constant. The work is motivated by a concrete problem which typically arises ...

EPFL2017

L'HYDROPTERE: HOW MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH MAY HELP BREAK THE SAILING SPEED RECORD

Pascal Fua, Véronique Michaud, Mohamed Farhat, Mark Sawley, Michel Deville, Robin Amacher, Joël Cugnoni, Guillaume Bonnier, Luc Blecha, Olivier Braun, Antoine Sigg, Marc Oggier, Daniel Schmäh, Martin Calmon, Stéphane Dyen, Davy Moyon

In 2009, l’Hydroptère broke the symbolic barrier of 50 knots and became the world fastest sailing boat over both 500 meters and 1 nautical mile. This major achievement relied on the high skills of the sailing team but also on technical advances of the boat ...

RINA2010

Sailing Ships: Dray, Sailing & Foiling ME-201: Continuum mechanics

Explores the dynamics of sailing ships, including drag, sail design, and foiling.