SURF'S DOWN; DESPITE SPORT'S FALL FROM POPULARITY, CORE OF DEDICATED FOLLOWERS SAIL ON.

Byline: Jeremy Bagott

Windsurfing has been plunging in popularity since its heyday in the

mid-1980s.

The sport's problems are many. Boards and sails are expensive, if you can even find stores that carry the equipment. Newcomers find it nearly impossible to locate organized instruction. And the sport has a learning curve like an angle iron.

So why would anyone take up windsurfing?

Rick Hambleton thinks he knows the answer.

``You don't need a crew and you don't have to make sandwiches the night before,'' said Hambleton, a former Ventura Port District commissioner and high school sailing coach and now an adviser to the U.S. Naval Academy's sailing program.

``I can rig up the board in 20 minutes and sail for an hour or two, plus it's exhilarating and faster than any other kind of sailing.''

Windsurfing, known generically as sailboarding, was the brainchild of Newman Darby, who recently lectured at the Smithsonian for the sport's 30th anniversary.

The recreation's golden era was in the mid-'80s, during windsurfing's technological dark ages - before the revolution in lightweight Kevlar boards and high-tech sails that make the sport easier and faster today. Twenty-pound sails and 30-pound boards in the 1970s and early 1980s gave way to 9-pound sails and 13-pound boards in this decade.

While fewer are taking up the sport, an avid windsurfer nearly made it to the White House in the person of Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

The sport requires above-average physical conditioning in the stomach, back, legs and arms. And anything the aspiring windsurfer has learned about sailing boats does not automatically apply to sailing boards.

``Knowing too much about conventional sailing can be a hindrance,'' Hambleton said. ``It's often easier to teach someone to windsurf if they don't come into it with a lot of baggage.''

Windsurfing's meccas are the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington and the north shore of Maui in Hawaii. Closer afield, Leo Carrillo State Beach and Castaic Lake are popular, as is the mouth of the San Gabriel River at Seal Beach.

But windsurfers bond no matter where they gather.

When Ventura's Full Sail Windsurfing Club convenes, the talk goes to the finer points of the recreation. Terms such as ``mast-foot pressure,'' ``shredding,'' ``low-end power'' and ``planing'' float in and out of conversation. The 100 or so members, most in their 30s and 40s, bring an array of experience and gear into the mix. State-of-the-art boards and sails from makers such as North Sails, Seatrend and Mistral dominate.

Mike Veseth, 42, a Ventura insurance broker, is a longtime club member who sails in the shorebreak off Surfer's Point in his home town. He is out there so often, it's rumored his heart pounds in four- and five-beat sets. He had just been back from the Columbia River Gorge for a couple of hours when I caught up with him.

Veseth, who got hooked on sailboarding 15 years ago, was flying over 4-foot breakers on a sailboard made of a feather-light composite material. Oh, did I mention you can pay $1,200 to $1,500 for the board alone?

``Unlike the old days, these rigs require very little wind to get going,'' he said. ``I'm one of the old guys out here, but I remember how it was.''

Despite the technological advances, interest is mediocre.

``The sport has a difficult time attracting the under-25 set. It's tough because it's difficult to master,'' Hambleton said.

Enter Cal State Northridge.

Recently at CSUN's Aquatic Center on the shores of Castaic Lake - one of the few places in the Los Angeles area where a kid in summer camp can learn to windsurf - 19-year-old instructor Morgan ``Sausage'' Frohman of Los Angeles worked with Ian McDonald, 13, of Phoenix.

Frohman reviewed the parts of one of the center's extremely wide and buoyant beginner's rigs. Later, as her pupil was on a broad reach, heading away from shore, she shouted to him to tilt the sail forward to turn the board and take baby steps around the mast as the board comes about.

``I learned to windsurf (at Castaic) as a camper myself,'' Frohman said. ``For a kid, the lack of strength is the biggest handicap; it takes a lot of power to pull the sail up.''

Then, there's the issue of sailing theory.

``You can tell them as many times as you want to stay on the windward side of the board and it won't do any good,'' she said. ``Sometimes they just have to figure it out on their own.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo, drawing

PHOTO ``(Windsurfing) has a difficult time of attracting the under-25 set,'' says Rick Hambleton, an adviser to the U.S. Naval Academy who lives in Ventura and is an avid sailboarder.

Jeremy Bagott/Staff Photographer

Drawing: Anatomy of a Sailboard

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist