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GERRY LOPEZ: You know, I had no idea first seeing it that how my life...
would be, you know, and that I would be this surfer for life
and most surfers, you know, once the bug,
the surfing bug bites them, that's what happens,
they become surfers for life.
I think one of the greatest lessons
you can learn in life, and it's really a hard one to learn,
is to allow yourself the freedom to fail
because surfing, windsurfing,
I remember struggling with that.
Everything, stand up,
all these sports... Kiting, oh, my God, foiling... Jesus.
It's taken me a long time to learn... [CHUCKLES]
and to find any success in all these sports.
I think the only thing that I had going for me
was I was persistent, so I just stuck with it.
I think that's how everything in life is, you know,
that a lot of times we...
give up too soon, you know.
And I think it was Churchill who said,
"Success is going from one failure to the next failure
"without a loss of enthusiasm."
I just got to keep paddling, man.
No matter what, you know, keep paddling.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROBBY NAISH: If you want to go all the way back down the family tree,
we all started from surfing.
Surfing was the foundation of it all.
And from that, windsurfing came.
And windsurfing directly either gave birth to,
or at least really strongly influenced
all these other sports.
BRETT LICKLE: And that's the evolving part of it,
and that's what we're all here to talk about.
And that's like, you know what evolved from windsurfing...
and... and why.
MAN: That's the beauty of surfing,
is that once you embrace it, it embraces you.
For a surfer, life isn't about the last wave.
It's about the next one.
♪♪ Rising up
♪♪ This is our time To go together
♪♪ Time to go together
♪♪ Rising up
♪♪ This is our thing, you know Thing, you know
♪♪ Rising up ♪
THOMAS MOREY: I could take you back a long way.
MAN: I'd like that.
So let me start with Malibu.
For me, in the '50s, '55, '6, '7, '8, '9, like that,
I got to know a lot of guys, and we talked a lot of technology,
but we didn't know we were going to be anybody
or do anything with it at the time.
So in terms of who we were, what we were interested in,
we were surfers, first and foremost,
and didn't care all that much about all the rest of the stuff
we're supposed to do.
But we did care about that wind,
we couldn't avoid that it was there,
and it was in the wind, so to speak,
that we were going to at some point,
have sails on boards.
ZANE SCHWEITZER: I try and get it out of my grandfather a lot
when we're having dinner, like asking him,
so what was it like, you know, hanging at the beach,
like what, when did you decide that
we should ride the wind, or, you know,
and he would just tell me, well, we'd be sitting at the beach,
it was [BLEEP] for surfing, and we wanted to keep having fun.
You know, it's just like, so simple.
SEYMOUR BEEK: I'm not sure any of those guys knew at that time
that they were going to make any kind of a living out of
what they were messing around with and Clark,
of course, at that time, he hadn't even thought about
making a board out of foam.
That came years later.
And I'm sure Hoyle didn't think
anything about windsurfing at that time.
We were all just interested in surfing and having fun.
Hobie knew that he was going to be in the surfboard business
because he was already making boards and he had quit school,
and he'd got a loan from his dad to open the surfboard shop.
So Hobie sorta knew where he was going.
But I don't think any of the rest of that group really did.
But it turned out later we're Clark Foam,
we've got windsurfers and we got boogie boards. [LAUGHING]
Who'd have known that, you know,
windsurfing would become...
or even surfing,
you know, for both of them would become...
an industry and a business that,
that they could be successful at,
and, you know, they created their own jobs.
Grubby, you know, made the foam cores
for all the surfboards, Clark Foam.
Your grandpa, he figured out
the universal joint.
And he got a patent on it, you know, he was smart
and then all of a sudden,
you know, I mean, he saw that before anybody else.
You know, there's a real genius there that,
you know you have to admire
because no one had done it before.
GRUBBY CLARK: There was, you know, no wind, totally different
than what you guys even think of windsurfing as.
Completely different, completely different sport.
But it took over like crazy.
GERRY: When you guys go out and talk to Grubby,
he's 88 years old now,
but he still, at his core,
he's still a surfer, even though he calls himself a rancher now.
And your grandpa's the same thing,
you know, they started as surfers and...
Grubby will tell you a good story about when they were in college.
They were known as surfers and ostracized for it. [LAUGHS]
I'm a farmer. I don't know.
Yeah, right. You should see, this guy, he's more proud of his farming plaque,
-and he doesn't even mention... -Yeah...
And he sets his farming plaque down and sitting right next to it
is that gold Surfer Hall of Fame, Surfing Hall of Fame...
trophy... [LAUGHS]
That he didn't even mention.
Essentially, what your grandfather,
he was the one that kind of introduced me to it.
As I said, we built our first two boards together.
He knew where to get the board, knew what the shape was supposed to be
and all of that, and we screwed up all the tiles and everything
in the quad at Pomona College.
We had resin all over everything and...
It was a big mess. But we got the boards out and surfed them.
Our shapes were terrible and everything else
but we were way ahead of everybody else for a little while.
MATTY: I've never been able to get it out of my grandparents,
asking them anything to do with windsurfing.
They'll tell stories around the dinner table
about people, places, events,
experiences, but you can never get the details
of, you know, anything to do with asking them,
did they invent it or talking about that.
I think Hoyle Schweitzer has credit for it.
But Jim Drake was with him, and there was some talk
of other people before them. I don't know it.
ROBBY: Guys had laid on surfboards and held up T-shirts.
Guys had sat on surfboards in Waikiki with an umbrella,
that's windsurfing. But it's really different
when you break it down into those finished components
that actually functioned as a unit together.
Hoyle patented it successfully and received the credit for that,
and he did a lot for the sport by organizing races with their family.
LAIRD: I think it's dangerous if someone says
I invented this, like, they had some unique thought,
and they're the only person that ever had it.
It's just what you do with the thought
that separates you from the other people.
GRUBBY: I know your grandfather was the first guy
to make a windsurfer because what he did,
he came down to me and we took what was called a tandem blank
for tandem surfing, and took two blanks
and cut in half and extended it
by gluing this piece to this piece and took a piece out of the center
of the other one and glued it wider for him, to make his original prototype,
and that's how he made it out of pieces of a tandem blank
we glued up for him, kind of Mickey Mouse like.
ROBBY: All the elements were there, as they are with a million different things.
I mean, look at music, right? How many notes are there?
You think, here is a piano, it's only got that many keys.
Everything that could possibly ever be played
must have been played. Not the case.
People are still making new music with those same keys every day.
That's kind of the nature of everything.
It's not coming up with just the base.
It's what do you do with it.
You know, where are you going to take it?
KAI: At the end of the day, when I rig up my gear,
I go out for that last session and I ride a wave,
I realize I have the power of the wind,
I have the power of the ocean,
I am the conduit to make everything work.
And there is just this pure euphoria
of laying that sail down and carving down the line.
And I think people get the same sensation when they're just
skipping across the water like a rock being thrown on a lake.
It's the most powerful combination you could ever do on the water,
is to surf and to ride the wind.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
♪♪ I'll be that silver Silver lining to the story
♪♪ If you thought that I would Turn and run
♪♪ Then y'all don't know me
♪♪ May my fears rest in peace 'Cause that's the old me
♪♪ Got this taste on my tongue I crave the glory
♪♪ Gasoline in my veins
♪♪ Be the fuel through my pain Oh, ah
♪♪ As we rise Rise from the flames
♪♪ Heart of a lion Never say never
♪♪ Cut like a diamond Shine under pressure
♪♪ Whoa oh It's time to fire on up
♪♪ Pound on your chest Like there's no tomorrow
♪♪ Just play the game right No one can follow
♪♪ Whoa oh It's time to fire on up
♪♪ Heart of a lion Never say never
♪♪ Cut like a diamond Shine under pressure
♪♪ It's time to fire on up
♪♪ Pound on your chest Like there's no tomorrow
♪♪ Just play the game right No one can follow
♪♪ Whoa oh It's time to fire on up
♪♪ Whoa oh It's time to fire on up ♪♪
ZANE: My grandparents and dad talk so much about Baja.
A lot of the old stories I hear, like, when we're eating dinner with the family,
always bringing up stories from Baja.
Yeah, San Carlos and Abreojos,
and all those places they used to go
-for early windsurfing. -Yeah.
What was it, man? What was the Skate?
[MAN] The Skate was the very first name of the windsurfer.
-But did it look just like a Baja board? -The first windsurfer,
the very first windsurfer was named Skate.
And then we went to Baja all the time
and we renamed it the Baja board.
TARA SCHWEITZER: Old footage from the old days, eh?
People sitting in the sand.
We spent most of our young days down in Mexico.
That's why it was originally called the Baja Board,
because we used to go down to the Baja and camp all the time.
And then they renamed it the Windsurfer
after Baja board was already taken.
But some of these look like there are some pictures down on the...
down on the beach in Mexico.
MIKE: The first time I saw Windsurfer was in Mexico and I was seven years old
and I distinctly remember, I was either asking Diane or Hoyle
if I could try it and they kind of giggled and said, "Well, you're too small,
"like you'd never be able to pull the sail out of the water."
Which was true. I probably weighed
60 pounds when I was seven years old.
Two years later, when I was nine years old,
Diane had hand sewn a sail.
They called it the Kid Rig, and it was sail number 12, 12th sail ever made.
And they just put it on one of the normal boards,
and then Matt and I, we were nine and we could try it.
So that's when I learned how to windsurf when I was nine.
SHAWNEEN: Matt, and Tara, and Ted
watched their parents take this thing from an idea
to a huge, booming business,
and in the meantime, they were in their living room
boxing the windsurfers, putting the labels on.
They were working as a family to grow the sport.
TARA: In the very beginning days when we were manufacturing
out of our house on Beirut in Pacific Palisades,
it was basically a family affair
where everybody contributed, even my friends.
My mom would bribe my friends
with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so that
they could help screw on
the old style screws to the booms.
Then our neighbors turned us in for having a business in a neighborhood.
And so parents had to get real and get a shop,
get a real manufacturing business.
So, and that's when things started to kind of get
a little busier anyway.
REPORTER: Hoyle Schweitzer's development of the manufacturing process
set the stage for the windsurfing explosion.
Accessories are packaged and shipped to dealers,
nationally, as well as internationally,
to meet an ever increasing demand.
MATT: I think everything went so fast
for a while that their lives changed
from being cruisers in Mexico,
and my dad's surfing all the time, to, you know,
full-bore, get this windsurfing thing going.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The windsurfer was the fastest growing sport in the world.
Bar none.
And the reason it was like that is because
everybody was on the same product
and the class got bigger,
bigger, bigger and bigger and bigger.
DICK LAMB: It was the fastest any sport had ever come before conception
and Olympic status.
So that was quite a coup
for Hoyle and Diane, and for the sport in general.
♪♪ Mucho mistrust Love's gone behind
♪♪ In between
♪♪ What I find is pleasing And I'm feeling fine... ♪♪
In those early days, everything came from Windsurfer International,
it was Hoyle and Diane putting on the North American Championships,
giving funding to winners
of regional events to get an airfare, to get to the national championships.
That's how I got to Berkeley in '76, was winning
the Hawaii State Championships and getting a free airfare.
RHONDA SMITH-SANCHEZ: One of my fondest memories
is watching Diane Schweitzer jibe around the mark
at Nassau, Bahamas, in 1976.
It was the last time I actually saw her on the water, racing,
and I just remember feeling,
oh, my gosh, I'm on the water with the mother of windsurfing.
If you did not know my mom,
you would not realize how tough she is.
I mean, there was just through the ups and downs,
she was always positive.
There was no way anything was going to bring her down.
DIANE: We actually reached a point where I was just so... pinching pennies.
We had a milk delivery in those days.
So I kept buying more and more and more from them
because I only had to pay once a month. [LAUGHS]
Unfortunately, we ate a lot of cottage cheese
and hot dogs and eggs in those days.
MATT: Even when windsurfing in the very beginning was questionable
whether it would even make it or not,
she was determined it would work as much as my dad.
She has just as much success
in the story as my father did.
DIANE: Some people say, "Oh that was just so easy for you guys.
"It just exploded and isn't that wonderful?"
Well, it didn't just explode.
It took years of hard work and, you know,
trying to get the word out.
And the funny thing was, there was an explosion, which there was.
It started in Europe.
DICK: The three importers in Germany, for example,
they gave away 1000 boards
to ski instructors,
Olympic champions, jet setters in one year.
I think that was 1973.
The next year, they sold 40,000 boards,
and suddenly, it exploded in Europe
because all of the cool people,
you know, celebrities were seen on boards,
including Prince Charles.
GERRY: In 1973, I moved to Maui.
Ho'okipa was our spot, you know. We had to go early in the morning
before the wind blew, and every day that trade winds started blowing, and oh, man.
You know? So it was like, you know,
even at best, Ho'okipa's kind of a mediocre wave.
And one day, your dad and Mike Waltze showed up with these big boards,
you know, and they had these sails,
you know, and none of us had ever seen anything like it,
and they rigged up these things, you know,
and it was already all windy, and also we were all sitting on the beach.
What happened next totally changed our lives, and blew our minds.
You know, before foot straps, before harnesses,
these are two kids, you know, and they sailed out there
and all those waves that caught us inside at Ho'‘okipa forever,
they jumped the white water, all those waves that...
were just, you know, too far over here,
and it's over there and you can't get to it.
They would zoom around on those windsurfers. They caught all the waves.
We just stood there with our mouths open going... [GASPS]
I mean, what do you call these things?
And they go, "Oh, this is a windsurfer."
Oh, I never heard of that.
And that was the beginning.
Gerry had decided to come and totally embrace the sport of windsurfing.
I was very surprised because he was a hero.
We looked at him in all the magazines,
we watched how he turned, we...
we learned everything we could about him.
And then next we knew he was,
he was actually at '‘okipa,
learning how to windsurf.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GERRY: And then there was a couple of years there
where I didn't even put the surfboards in the car.
RHONDA: Gerry, at Ho'okipa, really stood out.
He surfed the waves like he would...
surf, you know, pipeline or something.
He had more moves on a face. You could just see it. It was very smooth.
It was the greatest thing, you know...
to have that kind of mobility, and...
to have that kind of power and speed, and...
to have the playground suddenly
become much bigger than it ever had been on a surfboard.
It's so, it's weird, it's how I cavitated only when I did sharp turns.
But a couple of times, when I'd gas it,
It sounded like it was cavitating...
PETE CABRINHA: The Strapped Crew, it was just a bunch of us
that were kind of embarking on this,
this whole new connected surfing idea,
which was happening right at the same time
as the whole tow surfing concept.
ALBEE LAYER: I would say, like, them putting foot straps on,
using tiny boards and whipping into 30-foot waves,
they'd invented a new sport within surfing
that changed everything that was possible at the time.
And that all came from them windsurfing.
This is one, perhaps one of the very first strap boards.
This is a board that Buzz Kerbox and Laird Hamilton
were towing behind a boat on the river in Kauai,
just sort of skurfing behind it.
But it definitely showed, you know,
what connected surfing would feel like.
BRETT LICKLE: You have open-minded people
and you have closed-minded people.
Gerry Lopez, that mind's as open as you'll ever meet.
Laird Hamilton. As open as you'll ever meet.
There is no boundaries. There is no way to do things.
GERRY: When Laird, Derek and Buzzy
started towing with that Zodiac, you know I...
and then they moved to Maui, I go,
hey, you know what, you guys, I'm going to show you one place.
This is the place you want to go with that boat of yours.
LAIRD: The use of speed and the use of the board
that I learned in windsurfing really
helped me when I started towing in giant surf.
You know, as a training device, it was really complementary
to the big wave riding.
Boom sha-laka laka boom!
A lot of surfers here on Maui got interested in windsurfing,
but we have a new sport now called tow surfing
that we do with jet skis.
A friend of mine had shown me the place in the '60s.
Oh, we used to call it the Atom Blaster.
And then, you know, in the '70s, we...
Let's go check Jaws, because any time
there's a big swell, northwest swell,
we'd always go down there.
The whole idea about catching waves early,
and being on the wave and riding them was because of windsurfing.
And once you had that, and you saw what that could do,
we were just figuring out how to get other powered boards.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PETE: I really feel like now it has become
surfing's innovation ground zero,
I think, when you look at
all that's come out of here
in the last two decades.
Well, first of all, what enticed me most about it,
because when I first saw windsurfing,
it was flat water and the guy has huge booms,
and triangle sails, and they were just going back and forth.
It was more of a sailing sport.
Because as soon as I saw the thing leave the water,
that was what got my attention.
It was like really right
at the windsurfer transition
from taking that plain, simple windsurfer
and making it actually work
for more than just sailing around in flat water.
MATT: When the foot straps came out
in smaller boards, you're flying.
All of a sudden, it's like full on motocross.
Everything's just stepped up.
All you can think about every day is just windsurfing, windsurfing.
MAN: When windsurfing blossomed here on Maui
with worldwide attention,
it was already big in Europe.
♪♪ I walked along the avenue
♪♪ I never thought I'd meet A girl like you...
KLAUS SIMMER :Everybody goes where the energy is.
And I think windsurfing,
they got that ball rolling big time.
And it sucked everybody in into it around the world.
♪♪ The kind of eyes That hypnotize me through
♪♪ Hypnotize me through ♪
Things were changing. They were cutting boards down.
They were like attaching foot straps to them.
They were making harnesses so that you could ride longer. All this kind of stuff.
CRAIG YESTER: The wave riding that you could do is second to none.
You can do everything except getting barreled,
but back then, aerials weren't happening in surfing,
so we were kind of the pioneers in that.
KALEO ROBERSON: It grew really fast. It was the faster growing sport in certain ways.
It appealed to a lot of people. At that moment, it was taking off
like nothing you've ever seen before.
More than foiling, kiting, any of these sports now,
if you witnessed how windsurfing grew back in the day, it was insane.
[CHEERING]
REPORTER: I was talking about that maneuver that you did against Dave Kalama.
Well, it's an aerial 360.
We used to do 360s right on the wave.
And lately we've been just been coming out and doing aerials.
And it's working out. I think surfers dig it.
It's kind of a cool move.
KALEO: Back in the day, if you're a hardcore surfer
and you drifted to windsurfing or kite boarding
or foiling or standup paddling,
you're just like, diluted your stock.
Basically, it's like, well, this guy
can't make it in surfing, so he's going to try
and do a diluted version of it to make it in it.
Surfers are closed-minded.
And so when windsurfing came, if you weren't open-minded,
windsurfing was for kooks.
You know, and you heard it all the time.
As, like, a surfer growing up here,
I was almost taught to not like windsurfers.
They were called wind kooks, and that was kind of, like,
embedded in me as a young kid.
I don't really know where from
because my parents were windsurfers.
KALEO: They were richer than us. They had all like 400 sponsors.
Guys were making big money at it.
Driving big, brand new trucks, And we're just...
a bunch of starving surfer rats on the other side,
you know, trying to get some of that money
that they are bringing, basically.
MATT: There was friction between the windsurfers and the surfers.
KALEO: At Ho'okipa, as we know, there's just a one way street.
And all the windsurfers have to drive by our three pavilions.
At all moments, those windsurfers would know
there's 20 guys down there
that want to break your face, and you have to drive by them.
So you had to be really dedicated as a windsurfer.
No! Oh, man!
Well there was 100% war with surfers and windsurfers.
Like, anyone will tell you that lived in that era.
-MAN: No, man. You got no right to be here. -MAN 2: [BLEEP].
The surfing and windsurfing feud has really died,
and I think it's when... 'cause all the surfers were mainly fueling it.
And then nowadays, surfing is so much bigger than windsurfing.
JAMIE O'BRIEN: I never really was against windsurfing.
I always thought it was really cool from day one, you know.
I remember going to Maui when I was young,
and that was the thing over there.
And I'd hear things from surfers
that you know, this windsurfer got beat up.
This guy, this guy, that, whatever, and...
And then, you know, windsurfing kind of faded away out here on the North Shore.
I mean, man, I probably see one windsurfer a year around here,
but Backyards used to be one of the best places in the world to windsurf.
ALBEE: Well, yeah, when we talk about like things
surfing has taken from windsurfing,
the speed, the big airs they do,
but another thing is like the way they shape their boards.
My shaper for Jaws was Sean Ordonez,
who was a pro windsurfer.
When we first started paddling Jaws,
he was one of the people
who completely reimagined what a big wave gun looks like.
And he drew a lot of inspiration or pretty much all inspiration
from riding windsurf boards out there.
KAI: When I'm surfing these giant waves, and I end up in a position
where I'm going 50 miles an hour,
and I hit a chop and I'm flying through the air, I'm comfortable.
I've been there before because I spent the entire summer
flying on my windsurf gear, in complete control,
but at the same time, out of control.
And that's kind of the art of riding a big wave,
is you're never truly in control.
But you have a certain level of control
to do what you want to do.
And so windsurfing really prepared me for that.
ZANE: What's the greatest reward from this
is I have my dad's knowledge,
and my grandfather's knowledge before me.
I see it as a great opportunity to pass that on.
And if we could kind of all have a chance to experience the ocean
and be embraced by the water, I truly do believe
this world would be a better place.
ALBEE: To me, the best way to define surfing
is just being in the ocean, whether you're body surfing,
whether you're like just riding the boogie boards.
It's just all about being a waterman.
At the end of the day that's... to me, the number one goal
is to ride anything, surf anything.
Whatever it is, don't limit yourself in the ocean.
And, you know, it's the perfect place to challenge ourselves.
You know, surfing's great sport, but it's got problems, too.
You can't surf in lakes and rivers, and even in the ocean,
you have to wait for just the right wave.
That's Matt and two of his friends windsurfing.
That's what they call it.
Actually, it was Matt's dad
who thought up the idea a couple of years ago.
YOUNG MATT: Like I got started by my dad, he invented it.
I think it's hilarious that Matt chose to put his trophy case in the garage.
There is some windsurfing trophies up there, too, but...
mostly riding trophies.
[LAUGHING] It's so important, he keeps it in the garage.
[LAUGHS]
SHAWNEEN: You'd think he would display these someplace
more visible to everybody.
But again, windsurfing to him is such... so personal.
It's not what he wants to prove to anyone.
It's just something he accomplished and it's his.
But I love that he chose our wedding picture to put in there, too.
PIETRO PORCELLA: Matt has been the real icon of this sport,
from when he learned at the beginning, windsurfer number 5 or 6,
to the first 15-20 years of the sport.
MATT: We are at Sunset Beach, California.
Believe it or not, that point, right up there
is where I was born, up in Pacific Palisades.
And this is the first time that we are really riding
waves on a windsurfer.
I was out here with my friend, Nat Mayer-Aitken.
We were riding waves with a dagger board,
and we'd pull it a little bit up and it never really worked that great.
Rammed it into a rock and the dagger board broke, and I put the dagger board
all the way down, had about this much showing.
And next thing I knew, I didn't want to go in.
The wind was ripping.
It handled so much better.
The next thing you know, we're bottom turning,
and we're not doing big off the lips or anything.
You know, this is a 12-foot, 42-pound board.
This is kind of where we started wave riding back in the day.
Even though it's kind of ugly today and there is no waves,
it has a special place in my heart.
Thinking about the younger days here.
Yeah. This is where I was born and raised.
Kind of weird coming back.
This is where we'd walk down the cliff
and go surf down this area,
and all these jetties right here.
We'd always be running down the beach
with our surfboards every day.
So this driveway, 317, this is where I was born.
That's a whole different gate and everything.
There used to be a driveway in a circle in there.
Riding our little mini bikes around it.
This street would be filled with people
coming here sometimes for windsurf parties,
and maybe a new board would happen.
We'd have a party to show a new board
or a new sail, a new mast, boom.
Things were consistently happening out of this house.
A lot happened here.
Kind of have chicken skin thinking about it.
Very strange to be in this neighborhood right now.
MIKE: My entire life, I had always looked up to Matt,
like my big brother, but also my sports icon.
You know, the same way I would look at Gerry Lopez
in surfing, but Matt was so talented,
like, on everything he did and still is.
LAIRD: Incredible motorbike rider. Incredible windsurfer.
I mean, these are two kind of really separate things,
but within that those, there's a lot of commonalities.
ANNOUNCER: Schweitzer harnessing that wind.
A great job on that bottom turning.
Matt Schweitzer from Maui, Hawaii.
[ALL CHEERING]
ZANE: I mean, he's won 18 world titles
and he is the most humble man I know.
And if there is any lesson that he ever taught me
growing up, it was make sure the helmet fits. [CHUCKLES]
SHAWNEEN: I especially don't like when people say,
"Well, why did Matt quit windsurfing
"right in the middle of his career?"
MATT: This is all, my dad and I put this together.
Photos by my father in 2004,
and the ones from the water are me.
That's my son and Laird.
This is when I was towing.
I was towing, I was windsurfing
at probably the best part of my life,
because that was the healthiest
part of my life and being young.
And, yeah, I had to...
I had to take a break for a while.
Well, they don't really know that he didn't quit windsurfing.
He got cancer.
How can you be a professional windsurfer?
And this was at the height of his career.
I mean, he was still one of the top four windsurfers in the world,
and really pushing the limits and he got the news.
He had cancer. And not just cancer.
Cancer caused by the sun.
MATT: Nobody knew what malignant melanoma was.
Now, if you're an Australian, everybody knows about it,
but I think still in the United States,
a lot of people don't understand that malignant melanoma
is something that travels in your blood.
And it could come out wherever it wants. In the bottom of your foot.
Like I'm usually sunburned on my face and my nose.
It didn't come out here. I got it under my arm.
SHAWNEEN: There were a couple of years there,
we were fighting, literally, for his life.
And then the repercussions of it and fighting infections.
And he just realized really quickly
his life had to completely alter if he wanted to change
to be a husband to me and a father to his son, and be alive.
And they removed my lymphatic system,
and um... I feel so fortunate
to be here right now talking to you guys. [LAUGHS]
I would have not wanted to miss out on that part of the life.
ZANE: You know, I think my dad always made sure
to share with me how important it is
to do what's right for yourself
and do what's right for the people around you.
SHAWNEEN: You know, Zane loves windsurfing as much as I did.
And because Matt was forced into windsurfing,
we didn't force our kids.
ANNOUNCER: And the biggest wave of 2021...
Zane Schweitzer!
[CROWD CHEERING]
ZANE: My dad was a pioneer. My grandfather was a pioneer.
And now I have that opportunity
with these new sports that are coming about,
revolutionizing the world as we know it.
ZANE: At home is the best place to be.
I could practice everything I want and at the same time,
be able to learn, hear stories from my grandparents while they're still here.
You know, I mean, I hear stories...
heroic stories of my grandmother,
you know, selling her car just to get more materials
to continue sewing sails, and...
It makes me feel the sense of sacrifice
and be proud of what has been created.
Regardless of the invention, it's where it's came today.
You know, my dad was the son of that,
and I think you could imagine the pressure he may have felt a lot of the time,
you know, to live up to these sacrifices his parents made.
REPORTER: And Matt Schweitzer also of Hawaii,
who has been winning sail board competitions
since the day his father, Hoyle Schweitzer,
created the original windsurfer prototype
that started it all more than a decade ago.
And it all started here,
on the surfing beaches of Southern California,
when Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake
decided to combine the best of surfing and sailing.
Today, over a million people enjoy sail boarding,
the world's fastest growing sport.
I mean, I wish we could stop the cameras
and talk for a second about it.
MIKE: So Darby invented this stand on thing.
But could you ever see somebody doing
double forward loops on that,
or sailing, you know, 50 knots speed?
He invented the concept of standing on a craft.
But Hoyle invented this thing that could be...
just slightly changed.
And if you look at the original windsurfer, number one,
and what we're riding today,
it's... it's arguably, the exact same thing.
It's not a Model T Ford, but it's got four wheels,
and doors and a motor in it and a clutch and a brake and, you know...
ROBBY: Well, Darby's sail board was a sail board.
It was literally like... a board,
and a little sail that you kind of stood behind and held.
It was like...
Huck Finn level windsurfing.
It was less about an invention of a thing, a technical thing,
and was much more about the invention of a sport.
You can have a soccer ball, but you don't have soccer.
MATT: It was a sad thing to see what had happened
just 'cause I knew my parents deserved
every penny of what they had done.
DICK: My knowledge is that Hoyle and Jim Drake were pals
and Hoyle was a surfer. Jim, a sailor.
And they started talking about
wouldn't it be fun to marry the two.
Now Hoyle and Diane decided they thought
they could commercialize this thing,
and maybe bring it to the masses.
So Hoyle went out
and started to develop.
He asked Jim to be his partner.
Jim decided he didn't want any part of it.
SCOTT: He was, I think, quick to sell his half of the patent
because Drake had other ideas
about bigger goals for himself,
of what he wanted to do with his life.
And so when windsurfing took off and started making a bunch of money,
I think Jim was a little bit jealous, sure,
but he wasn't going to sue Hoyle over it.
Hoyle was the one who insisted on getting a patent.
And he was the one who asked me to draw the only drawing
that ever existed at that time
because he needed it for the patent.
I was not all that enthused about getting a patent
because the idea of windsurfing,
well, I had already succeeded in the extent to which I was interested in.
It worked and it was fun and it would be more fun as it got better and better.
Um... It didn't play in any role in my mind as a source of income.
He didn't think it was going to work.
He wasn't passionate about it as we were.
Jim just said, "You know what, I can't keep doing this."
And Hoyle was like, "No, I'm going to mortgage my house to the hilt
"and sell my car." And you know and they lived at...
They had this one super old beat up station wagon.
And they just poured every ounce of energy,
every dime they could muster
to just keep teaching people how to windsurf.
Most sports evolve, you know, different people,
myriad different solutions and sources.
Not this one, not windsurfing.
Windsurfing started because Hoyle Schweitzer
had a business plan,
and he executed it for a decade and created a sport.
Bad [BLEEP]. This is all bad, bad, bad, bad, bad stuff.
-ZANE: Bad juju. -[MATT CHUCKLING]
MATT: My dad wasted years of his life.
SCOTT: And in this case, it seems to me
that the big windsurfing corporations
that wanted to make a lot of money
on selling windsurfers
did not want to have to pay the fee to Hoyle,
and were looking for any way possible
to get out from under it.
And when Darby surfaced, he gave them an out.
I think it's important for people to know though,
that without Hoyle branding it, there may never been a sport,
The debate on who actually invented windsurfing
can go around and around and around.
But Hoyle Schweitzer and his group of friends,
obviously, that put that final...
functional production thing together
invented the sport.
You know, it wasn't just putting a surfboard and a sail together.
It was putting the surfboard and the sail together,
and then making something out of it, sticking with it.
I honestly believe that Drake had a very big part
in the engineering of everything.
That's no doubt to me.
And then Hoyle and Diane took it and ran with it,
and made it what it is today and blessed so many of us.
SHAWENEEN: Hoyle and Diane, they were in their mid-50s.
They had found great success
and I think they both made
the hard decision of just
saying, you know, let's...
We've raised this baby.
We've watched it grow.
Let it go and let's
move on ourselves,
and let windsurfing grow
as it was supposed to.
BRETT: I am an inventor.
I own, like, ten different patents
and have never made them work.
Because this is me.
I'm the guy that makes it I am not the marketing guy.
I'm not the guy that wants to... to spend my days in New York
or somewhere at a trade show selling my goods.
I want to be in the water, you know?
And so I think that that's the biggest thing
that everyone needs to take from this, that Hoyle gave his life for it.
[SVEIN RASMUSSEN SPEAKING]
MATT: If you think about it as a whole, people don't really even really care.
People just want to go out and have fun riding these windsurfers,
I'm very proud to be a family,
having my father invent it.
GERRY: Well Hoyle, I got to tell you that you really paved
a lot of the road for myself to
want to try and embrace new things
because, before windsurfing, man, that's it.
My whole life was surfing.
Windsurfing was the first time that I attempted
another water sport besides surfing.
SPORTS COMMENTATOR: Something new in the way of water skiing contests.
Enthusiasts of the fast-paced aquatic sport have done
just about everything possible afloat.
So now, they're taking to the air.
The general idea is that the one who stays up
the longest is the champ.
LAIRD: Thomas Edison once said that
all you need to be an inventor
is an imagination and a pile of junk.
SCOTT: I think we kind of revel in that,
you know, let's try something different.
You know, let's keep it fresh.
All these spin-offs that happen,
you kind of need to give them a go first
before you can write them off or dive in head first.
LAIRD: I look at it now, when I think about it,
we talk about it, I can really see
the influence that windsurfing had.
I've always said it had that, I knew the influence it had.
But maybe not quite the amount of influence.
ROBBY: I mean windsurfing's legacy to water sports is pretty profound.
Windsurfing, especially in Europe, was fricking huge.
Everyone you meet over there, the CEOs of every big company,
doesn't matter where you go.
You meet people that used to windsurf,
and it was the best part of their life.
Right? Whether they still do it or not,
it was the best part of their life.
MIKE: It wasn't necessarily that windsurfing was
the influence on other sports,
but the people that were drawn to windsurfing,
and windsurfing was the catalyst
that brought all these people together.
GRUBBY: The digital age and the information ages
sped up innovation alarmingly fast.
You can say the early windsurfing
is probably not that popular anymore.
Windsurfing is probably phased out a lot due to kiting.
LAIRD: The first time I saw a kite with water skis
was Cory Roeseler's father,
and that was in 1986
in the South of France at a speed competition.
You know, we looked at that and we were like,
that's going to be something.
But it wasn't something yet.
Wait a second. Let's get a little wind first.
ROBBY: Change is going to happen.
Sometimes it's kind of in big circles and we come back to somewhere we,
we were at years and years ago, but we're doing it better.
Look at foiling. Foiling is the thing now.
It's been around forever. It was just the wrong time.
The wrong approach, the wrong combination of elements
that they've all been here in different ways before.
But they were never packaged like that.
That was the one Laird had over in Kauai.
-MAN: That is the first one? -Yup.
That's the first one that was cut and welded.
[WAVES CRASHING SOFTLY]
So windsurfing sort of reached its peak at some point,
perhaps in the late '80s or the early '90s,
and all of a sudden, things like snowboarding came into play,
and on top of that
there were more and more sports happening.
And so, the field got a lot bigger
and more attention was being given to some of these other sports.
Our numbers aren't where they were because we lost our introductory level.
We lost Hoyle. We lost what Hoyle had put together
and that was a marketing formula that wasn't about wave riding,
and it wasn't about anything more
than introducing people to the sport.
ROBBY: There is no bus. There is no...
rags to riches to rags.
It's all riches.
Like, windsurfing doesn't have to always be
the biggest sport in the world.
It's still the frickin' best sport ever.
CRAIG: The last of us that were into windsurfing on Oahu,
we did all kind of, in early 2000s,
we saw kiting, and we saw the fact
that you can kind of jam around in a little bit less wind.
It's just another part of the arsenal, you know?
I mean, I don't hunt, but I'm sure the guys that hunt,
they don't just have one little slingshot.
Then they got their bow and arrow and their more better one,
and then they got their rifle and...
Same with the wind sports and the water sports, you know?
While surfing is the root and is the Duke and the King
and everything from the group of pioneers,
five sports have exploded, and that's towing,
kiting, foiling, SUP
and now winging. Every single one of those,
you can directly trace the roots and they go to windsurfing.
Sure, you can trace their roots deeper and they go to surfing.
Windsurfing has been this DNA pot that's created all this other stuff
through the people that were super active in it, which is pretty cool.
I mean, to me kite-surfing was just three dimensional windsurfing.
Like winging now, to me is just windsurfing.
PETE: If you do something for 30 years
and then there's another way to do a similar thing.
But you threw in all these other elements. Now you've got to stand on a foil.
Now you've got to hang on to this smaller wing,
and see where this thing is going to take you.
There's something really interesting in that for me.
That's the kind of stuff that either keeps me up
late at night thinking about or getting up
early in the morning to go try and do it.
MATT: Yeah, I think windsurfing had a very big purpose in life
to go beyond what people thought you could do,
and to expand the horizon.
MARCILIO: Times have changed, you know?
And yes, financially, back then, way better than it is now.
No question. Guys are making a lot more money.
But there's ways of seeing everything, you know?
It's still a profession. Still pays the bills.
You still have that as your job, and I don't think anybody
that gets paid to go sailing every day, enjoy the beach,
should be in a position to complain about it.
Still, for me, it's still the dream.
GERRY: All these different sports that we do,
each one teaches us something about ourselves.
Outside of the sport, all we have to do is keep our eyes and hearts open
so that hopefully, when those lessons come, they make an impression.
And we, "Ooh! I just learned something.
"I've got to remember that."
MATTY: The barriers are starting to be broken in the lineup,
when it comes to just being
so narrow-minded, and I'm guilty of it.
Rolling up on a stand up paddleboard, a kite, a windsurfer,
in most spots, you're gonna get hassled.
Now that those barriers are being broken down,
it's gonna let the innovation of water sports
get pushed to much higher levels.
♪♪ She's got a smile That it seems to me
♪♪ Reminds me Of childhood memories
♪♪ Where everything was as Fresh as the bright blue sky
♪♪ Now and then When I see her face
♪♪ She takes me away To that special place
♪♪ And if I stare too long I'd probably break down and cry
♪♪ Whoa, oh, oh Sweet child o' mine
♪♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh Sweet love of mine
♪♪ She's got eyes Of the bluest skies
♪♪ As if they thought of rain
♪♪ I'd hate to look Into those eyes
♪♪ And see an ounce of pain
♪♪ Her hair reminds me Of a warm safe place
♪♪ Where as a child I'd hide
♪♪ And pray for the thunder And the rain
♪♪ To quietly pass me by
♪♪ Whoa, oh, oh Sweet child o' mine
♪♪ Whoa whoa, oh, oh, oh Sweet love of mine
♪♪ Whoa, yeah
♪♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh Sweet child o' mine
♪♪ Whoa, oh, whoa, oh Sweet love of mine
♪♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh Sweet child o' mine
♪♪ Ooh, yeah
♪♪ Ooh, sweet love of mine
♪♪ Where do we go? Where do we go now?
♪♪ Where do we go?
♪♪ Ooh, oh, where do we go? Where do we go?
♪♪ Oh, where do we go now?
♪♪ Where do we go? Sweet child
♪♪ Where do we go now?
♪♪ Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay Where do we go now?
♪♪ Ah, ah Where do we go?
♪♪ Oh, where do we go now?
♪♪ Oh, where do we go?
♪♪ Oh, where do we go now?
♪♪ Where do we go?
♪♪ Oh, where do we go now?
♪♪ Now, now, now, Now, now, now, now
♪♪ Sweet child Sweet child of mine
♪♪ Sweet child
♪♪ Of mine ♪
BRETT: There's a lot of people that live on Maui
that work a night job at Mama's and surf all morning
and windsurf all day, and they make it work,
and they share a house with three other people or four other people,
and their car is worth the same as my kite...
you know?
But that's what makes them tick, and that's what, to me,
that's what this is all about.
And it's why windsurfing was successful, because...
It was a passion, and the people that loved it
loved it at a level that, you know, was off the charts.
ZANE: Millions of people have changed their lives,
you know, due to windsurfing, and my grandfather has given
the opportunity for many people to...
connect with nature and practice a...
[CHUCKLES SOFTLY] this epic sport that I have so much passion for.
MIKE: Just to watch how much dedication they put into their love.
They just loved the sport, and they loved what it did to people.
Hundreds of thousands of people altered their life
because of something they showed them.
FRED: I just feel if Hoyle hadn't got a patent
and had a motivation to start contests that he did in California
and then venture out around the world and promote windsurfing,
that the sport probably would not have taken off.
Their family is gonna be... is and will be throughout history,
responsible for one of the great revolutions in ocean sports,
which has influenced all the stuff we do.
RHONDA: There's only one thing that they did for me.
They gave me an opportunity to change my life.
And I did.
I took it. And they were there the whole time.
GERRY: I think, Hoyle, you showed us that you've got to embrace new stuff.
Being a surfer, it's a great thing,
but there's a lot of other things as well,
so thank you for that.
They are most proud of just the heart, sweat,
tears, sacrifices they did to bring people together.
To enjoy the ocean, travel the world,
and do amazing things.
MATT: I still get people all the time just saying, I am so thankful
for your mother and father inventing windsurfing because it saved our lives.
Even if some of them aren't still doing it from their age,
it was just a huge part of their lives,
the most exciting part of their lives.
I mean, how can you go wrong with giving somebody
the most exciting part of their lives?
[INAUDIBLE]
[PLANE WHOOSHING]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
[WAVES CRASHING]
[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]