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Editor’s Note: Issue 10.1

By Will Harper

Summer arrived this morning, inching quietly toward me from the East. I watched as the dawn of the solstice spread her pink light on the glassy Columbia below. It was a beautiful sunrise.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 9.5

By John Chao

If you consider our magazine to be a living entity, then we too must undergo an infinite process of tuning and re-tuning, adjusting and refining ourselves so that we will be worthy of our aspirations. Without this, we fall into a fate of mediocrity.

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Editor’s Note: Perspective

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Editor’s Note: Issue 9.3/4

By John Chao

With this issue, American Windsurfer celebrates the completion of a decade of continuous publication. It is an accomplishment that fills me with pride and amazement for surviving and withstanding this test of time.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 9.2

By John Chao

We finally did it! We established a West Coast office in the Columbia River Gorge. In fact, our new office is so close to the action that it is only a stone’s throw from the famous Fish Hatchery. I must admit, as the publisher, I’ve resisted the idea of moving to the Gorge for the past 10 years.

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ABOUT 9.1 ON 9.11

By John Chao

On the morning of September 11th, I was in New York City not far from the doomed World Trade Center. I was there visiting an aging friend in a hospital and to have lunch with a potential sponsor who was interested in the formation of a windsurfing tour.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 8.5

By John Chao

If you’re a guy like me, there is something about femininity that stirs a deep rooted response. While most of us equate this to be sexual in nature, there is far more at play than the mechanism of procreation.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 8.3/4

By John Chao

Where have all the windsurfers gone?” asks a reader in one of the letters of this issue. This seems to be the question many of us have been asking and wondering more and more as windsurfing has evolved through the past years.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 8.2

By John Chao

There is much soul in this edition even though it is our annual equipment review issue. While I say this, I’m trying to figure out why it is that I feel this way.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 8.1

By John Chao

You will find some startling articles and news in this issue of American Windsurfer. Aside from the fact that we have a nude (it seems that we can’t seem to learn from the past) on the cover and some inside pages—this issue, only two months since our last—bears witness, as well as delivering a statement, about the circle of change.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 7.5

By John Chao

AS YOU RECEIVE THIS ISSUE, Olympians Mike Gebhardt and Lanee Butler will be competing in Sydney, Australia, September 16th to the 24th. While the competition heats up, a movement to replace the current Mistral IMCO with the Formula Class racing program is taking place.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 7.3/4

By John Chao

With three articles about the Trans-Atlantic Windsurf Race, you might think that it may be a bit over indulgent to cover something so few windsurfers will ever do.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 7.2

By John Chao

By the time this issue hits the fan, I will be somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. The oceanic storms might be gentler than the storms which this issue might produce.

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Editor’s Note: Volume 7.1

By John Chao

WINDSURFERS WERE WINDSURFING near Boston Harbor on New years Day. The exceptional warmth that saw the new millennium gave many, myself excluded, the opportunity to greet the new age with their passions. This was a sign of things to come.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 6.5

By John Chao

Welcome to the incredible shrinking machine. If you haven’t noticed, we shrunk in size again. It wasn’t easy to give up our oversized format. But with our plans to reach more readers in the coming Millennium—this new size will serve that function well.

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Editor’s Note: 6.3/4

By John Chao

As we grow, we expand our worlds with experiences and encounters. Whether good or bad, positive or negative, elations or disappointments—how we process these experiences are the marks of our legacy.

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Editor Note: 6. 2

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Editor’s Note: 6.1

By John Chao

Now that we are back on terra firma, it’s easy to sit back and glorify a conquest on the high seas. The trials and tribulations of the trip have all been elevated into nostalgic moments of thrills, spills and chills

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Editor’s Note: 5.5

By John Chao

The phone rnag shortly after 11pm on Monday night. It was Senator John F. Kerry calling from his Washington office. He asked “Hey, what are you doing tomorrow night?”

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Editor’s Note: 5.3/4

By John Chao

There are over 1,000 photographs in this issue of American Windsurfer. One thousand and twelve images if you include all the advertising pages. Certainly a record for any windsurfing publication and, possibly an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.

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Editor’s Note: 5.2

By John Chao

Recently I stumbled onto a wonderful movie entitled “Contact” where the heroine was accused of Windsurfing across the Universe. (I screamed with laughter when the line referring to windsurfing was delivered by the character played by James Wood.)

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Editor’s Note: 5.1

By John Chao

From the infant days of the magazine, this highly-respected shop owner made it clear to the editor that he would never advertise in the magazine if we published a photo of a scantily-clad woman...

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Editor’s Note: 4.5

By John Chao

If you’re into astrology you will know that we are leaving the Piscean age and entering the New Aquarian age.

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Uncovering The Origins of Windsurfing

By John Chao

It was a breezy afternoon on an obscure lake in the middle of New Hampshire that fate crossed my path, chuckling with a mysterious sense of serendipity.

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Editor’s Note: 4.3

By Jud Bartlett

When Publisher, John Chao first suggested the idea of putting an F-16 on the cover of this issue, the immediate impression that I got was that he might be a little touched.

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Editor’s Note: 4.2

By John Chao

Perhaps the last bastions of independence and originality that we have yet to overcome are those of nature and the creative expression of the individual.

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Editor’s Note: 4.1

By John Chao

Compared to snowboarding it’s an older brother, but compared to any other sport, windsurfing is merely an adolescent preparing to enter the working world of recreational institutions.

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Forecast 3.4

By John Chao

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Editor’s Note: Issue 3.3

By John Chao

Today, early in the summer of 1995, I sit on a made-for-windsurfer sailboat off the shores of Virgin Gorda, watching competitors sit on the beach and wait for wind. I can't help but wonder, how can competitive racing survive with today's high wind demands?

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Forecast 3,.2

By John Chao

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Forecast 3.1

By John Chao

Why are we so pleasantly surprised and so abundantly inspired when we see a windsurfer of 60+ years land on the … Continue reading “Forecast 3.1”

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Forecast 2.5

By John Chao

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Editor’s Note: Issue 2.3

By John Chao

LIKE THE CYCLE OF LIFE in our human journey, windsurfing has a similar growth cycle. In this issue, the whole spectrum is represented.

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Editor’s Note: Issue 2.2

By John Chao

This was a story close to my heart, an inspirational story that says there is more to life than just windsurfing. A testimony to the power of faith which can transform a self-oriented, hardcore sailor to a caring, devoted man of God,

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Forecast 2.4

By John Chao

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Forecast 2.1

Perhaps the most rewarding experience after seeing the vision of American Windsurfer come to print is to read … Continue reading “Forecast 2.1”

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Forecast: Premier Issue

By John Chao

American Windsurfer is a publication designed to appeal to a general audience. If you are looking for a steady diet of radical, off the lip, double cheese roll or another publication for the hardcore sailor only, you've found the wrong magazine.