The Shaguar story begins at a wedding reception in September 2002. I was best man for Nic and Alice (Nic subsequently built my hot wire cutter), and following a hilarious recap of Nic’s adult life in the best mans speech, we repaired to the bar for a few beers. Windy John had been keeping the bar staff occupied for the best part of the afternoon, but was fortunately still standing and able to communicate.
Before we get into the detail of the conversation that kicked off the Shaguar project, I should probably outline my involvement with Windy John prior to this point. I first met Windy when he was the manager of the Bitez Sunsail centre in 1999. I organised a trip out there for 15 windsurfers (those were the days, no children then and plenty of money), and we descended en masse for a weeks holiday. Fantastic staff, but lacking any sort of expertise in advanced board repair. So I ended up repairing a complex nose job on a Mistral Vision, and also the nose of (I think) Sam Noble’s Maui Project. Payment for these repairs was made in the form of a few beers from Windy. As we tucked into our beers, Windy told me of one of his mountain bike trip earlier in the day, and I got to see an insight into Windy’s, er, mentality.
As well as windsurfing, the centre had instructor-led mountain bike trips. In this particular week, there was a arrogant guest who fancied himself on a bike and was generally judged by the guest community as needing to be taken down a peg or two. Windy’s solution ?
1. Take the guy to the top of the steepest incline in the Bitez area.
2. Explain the consequences of not taking the drop (“Follow me down or you are gay”).
3. Descend the incline at full speed without using brakes, accepting the fact that there will be a few dodgy moments.
4. Smoke tabs at the bottom of the mountain as the guy walks down.
There wasn’t a huge song and dance about it, but that’s what happened. The point here for me is that fear doesn’t really figure too highly on the list of things to worry about for Windy – perfect attitude for speedsailing.
One of the female members of our group enjoyed a ‘tug on the Windy goatee’ in Bitez, a relationship that resulted in marriage some 6 years later. Maybe we’ll see Jane Sanderson on an ECB board at some point (probably with requirements more orientated toward colour coordination than rocker and plan shape).
So back to the wedding reception. We’re well into the turbo shandies by now and Windy’s asking about the board building. By that point, I’d just about stopped building boards – for me, I may as well buy boards off the shelf, it’s a lot less time consuming than building a custom board. Windy starts up with the idea of building a speed board, as he has always fancied a crack at speedsailing. Apparently, as a teenager, Dave White was ‘one of his heroes’ – he has enormous respect for Dave and closely followed the speed sailing circuit and results. Few more shandies and a deal has been done – I’ll build the board, John will sail it and we’ll have a crack at Dave Whites 42.16kt UK record. The wedding concludes with the groom, best man and Windy being thrown out for ‘balcony base jumping’.
Very often, conversations like this lead nowhere and are just forgotten. But after the event I researched the speedboard market and was that there was no truly dedicated speedboard that you could buy off the shelf. I could sort of understand why – a 40cm speedboard needs a highly skilled technical sailor to dominate it, and I’m not sure that’s a huge section of the windsurfing population. So there isn’t the demand to justify the costs of introducing dedicated full-on speedboard to the market. Fast forward to 2007 and we see 49-51cm ‘speedboards’ from most brands, I think Starboard do a dedicated 46cm speedboard. But still there is nothing in truly small 40cm region. So there appeared to be a good rationale to build a small dedicated speed board – you can’t buy one and it may be that we could have an advantage over all sailors buying kit off the shelf. I also got to thinking more on Windy as a speedsailor and concluded that he is a perfect fit for the sport – (i) lives in West Kirby, (ii) works in the industry (owned a windsurfing shop at that point), (iii) highly accomplished all round windsurfer, (iv) most importantly lacks that sense of self-preservation that would stops most people wanting to travel at 45kts (ref mountain bike incident above). So all in all there was a good case to build the board and I got on with the design and build process.
Half way through the build England rugby team was doing us proud in Australia, and I ended up deciding to paint the board in a Union Jack top and bottom to celebrate this. In one sense this was a ridiculous decision – the paint job took weeks, and used miles of masking tape. But as a result of the paint job, that board appears all over the place, in Windsurf and Boards magazine, the Tushingham sail adverts, the ‘Wave Riders Guide to Europe’, etc. Proudest moment of my board building career was on a Guy Cribb course at Gwithian - I took a UJ waveboard out of my van at Gwithian and Guy asked me if I had built Shaguar. Why name it Shaguar ? Jane christened the board when she saw the paint job.
So Windy takes delivery of the board and predictably decides to try it for the first time at 11:00 at night after a session in the pub. He changes into his wettie and marches through West Kirby from his flat to the lake. Net result of the first outing was that he couldn’t waterstart the board and wasn’t convinced that it was possible to sail at all.
Next attempt he finally manages to get planning and records a 43.1kt max on his GPS – on a wave sail and wave fin. So we are pretty excited now – board seems to work and we know there is mileage in getting the rigs and fins right.
Weymouth Speed Week 2004 is our induction into competitive speed sailing. First event that Windy has entered, and he pitches up with Shaguar I, a couple of Sputnik’s (270 and 265 I think), and a quiver of twin cam Tushingham Lightenings. He places 4th in a fleet of 100+, an excellent result for a first competition, especially given the volume of Stella at the end of each days sailing.
Weymouth Speed Week 2005 is the next competition. Windy places an admirable 2nd place in a competitive fleet, fastest runs achieved on Shaguar but this time using Neil Pryde rigs.
Its is about this point that I start to get a bit pissed off with seeing Windy sailing a non-ECB board – the problem is that Shaguar I needs fairly extreme conditions and if they aren’t around, he has to change up to a larger board, a Sonic 95 (lovely board btw, beautifully finished). So we start to think about building something that has a wider range of use, maybe in the 50-52cm range – the design brief for Shaguar II. Shaguar II is almost purpose built for Weymouth. It is a deep board with plenty of volume despite its 51.5cm width, perfect to get up and running in the dodgy winds in the run up to the start of the course at Weymouth. It handles chop reasonably well, and having chunky rails it absolutely blisters upwind which means that Windy can come back up the course in no time for his next run. Shaguar II had a number of teething problems, notably the quality of footstraps (always invest in good footstraps, completely devalues the board not to) and vibration in the fin box. These problems were resolved only the day before Weymouth Speed Week 2006, so we entered the competition with an unproven board. After the event Windy confided to me that he wasn’t 100% that the board would deliver the goods.
So 2nd October 2006 sees the first day of Weymouth Speed Week. Windy places fastest windsurfer on Shaguar II, edging Dave White into second placed board. We were both just so pleased with this result. Windy ended up placing 3rd in the week overall, behind Bjorn Dunkerbeck and Dave White – given the standing of those two sailors you have to be happy with the result.
An interesting by product of Windy’s performance in 2006 was that he was approached by a number of board manufacturers. In one sense, it would be the right thing for Windy to go with one of these offers, as he would have replaceable, cheap, up-to-date kit. But there is something appealing (and lets face it British) about being the complete underdog in these competitions – we just love the fact that we can take on the world’s best using stuff knocked out of my workshop. Anyway, he is still looking for the right deal on sails but remains the one and only ECB rider!
Right now, we are re-energised for speedsailing. The objective for the next couple of years has been agreed – Top 10 on the GPS Speedsailing rankings. Shaguar III has been designed and built with this objective in mind. Shaguar IV is in its conceptual phase (all that means is that Windy and I discuss it when beered).