You know him as well as we do. In fact, it took some effort to get a picture out of Bill Markham. Aside from several conversations and email with Markham, this contributor is a total stranger. We’ve never met. But through the magic of cyberspace, Bill Markham is a fast-growing regular with American Windsurfer. Even though he’s a total stranger living in Capitola, CA, he has become a contributing editor  for the magazine. Why? Because he has passion. It is this passion that we felt coming out of Markham’s initial email to us.  His article entitled “My Windsurfing Adventure” was the first “cold call” submission we received via email and we loved it!

The pleasure and efficiency of the email might have put us on a positive mindset when we read Markham’s submission. Certainly it was easy to respond to his inquiry which lead to a casual dialog with the California lawyer. Ultimately, it was the WindMaker’s passion that came through the internet, and this passion is what made him so familiar to us.    

Another WindMaker who is familiar to us is Carrie Robertson. And if you read the last issue of American Windsurfer you should be quite familiar with her, too. Robertson is the WindMaker who swam among sharks to bring us her last story. For this issue we challenged her by sending her back to school and into the Maui-league halls of the Maui Ocean Academy. There was one catch:  She had one day to gather the story, one day to write the article and get everything together, including getting the pictures to Fed Ex at the end of that day. Piece of cake for Robertson, a seasoned pro from her days as a newspaper reporter and photographer. What you see and read in her “Generation 2000”  article on page 72, might be the fastest turn around feature story ever printed.  You don’t make these challenges happen without passion.

Another Windmaker’s passion is Annabella Hofmann, who is no stranger to American Windsurfer, though many may consider her quite strange. Nonetheless, she has become a fixture of compassion and inspiration to the soul of this magazine. Her yearly sojourn from the shores of Lake Garda, Italy to the frozen bays of Lake Winnipesaukee, has yielded the second part of her prognosis about Zen and the Art of Windsurfing. Like the movie,  “To Wong Foo with Love” each time she visits, she makes more friends and perplexes more  locals. If you’re curious about why, look for one of our past issues, Volume 3 Issue 4, where we interviewed the remarkable Annabella Hofmann. American Windsurfer has never been the same since.