Windsurfing Magazine

kristin
2004-02-03 19:00:00 | 302 views | 0 Comments

It's hard to realize that the Keys are part of the United States. Maybe there's something to that Conch Republic thing with the Jimmy Buffet music playing everywhere. You can even feel it in the water. Take an average March day. US 1 is clogged to the gills with spring breakers because its sunny, 85 degrees and the water is warm and flat. There's a slight breeze from the northeast–just enough to create that pingy clanking noise at the marinas as halyards slap against aluminum masts. For a windsurfer in the keys, that noise is your lunch whistle.

Twelve knots with a race sail and a Formula board has you blasting over shallows, checking out the reefs and fish below you. Moving at over 20 knots your 55 cm fin is just inches away from scraping the bottom. You are playing a fast-moving game of “dodge reef” as you pick you paths around the dark spots. You are on the open-air version of a one-man glass bottom boat-almost part of the aquarium as you fly over spotted eagle rays, sand sharks, urchins, parrot fish, schools of pilchards and rolling tarpon.

You see pelicans standing on pilings–staking out their territory like one wooden post is better than another. Great blue heron are poking around the shallows like you aren't even there and you aren't really. This is where the non-invasive windsurfer is at its best. You sail up to a an empty beach and actually find a coconut you can crack open and eat. And relax.

You can get epic days in the Keys, where a late cold front stirs things up to a 30-knot froth and your small sails become a necessity. You also can sail some beautiful waves at the Alligator Reef lighthouse. But why? You can do that stuff everywhere else. The Keys is the world's greatest nature hike and you can do it on your board.