As the first gusts hit, a bright orange sail snaps taut, propelling the board across the spraying waves. The rhythmic slap of water against the craft’s hull mimics the howling wind, catapulting the windsurfer forward.
With each pull of the boom, muscles strain against the elements as the rig carves through the lake’s shimmering surface.
Here, every breeze feels infinite and every wave alive.
You feel like you’re part of the wind, you’re part of the water … It’s a very satisfying experience,” says Madison windsurfer Jim Matzinger.
Welcome to a windsurfer’s paradise: the inland lakes of Wisconsin, where the currents of wind and water never seem to fully run out.
If you want to find windsurfers, wait for a windy day, then look to the lake. It’s like a shooting star in the night sky: rare, vibrant and fleeting — proof that something untamed still lingers out there.
To understand its pull, you must first understand the sport itself. Windsurfing involves three main components: the board, sail and boom. You ride on top of the board, trying to catch each wind gust with the sail to propel you forward, gripping the boom tightly to steer as you bounce along the waves. The whole setup is “rigged,” or connected, together, and the board has a fin on its underside to help steer the craft by resisting lateral movement in the water. People will also use harnesses and foot straps to keep themselves steady while they move swiftly across the waves.
Windsurfing took off on the coast of Los Angeles in the late 1960s, garnering national attention during its peak in the 1980s. The first windsurfers were drawn to the combination of sailing, surfing and speed, which felt fresh compared to other recreational lake activities at the time. However, the sport began to lose momentum as equipment became costly, and similar watersports — like kiting and foiling — took its place.
But for some, windsurfing never lost its appeal.
Matzinger has spent more than 40 years windsurfing across lakes in Wisconsin and other states. As a UW–Madison alumnus, he saw his first windsurfer as a senior in college, right before he took off to California for love.
“I was like, why would anybody ride that? Sailing is hard enough,” Matzinger says. “But then my wife got recruited to California, and that’s the only access I had to boat. So I learned to do it out there … Then I was hooked.”
Today, Matzinger takes his windsurfing board out on Lake Mendota three to four times a week. When he’s not riding the blue ripples, he’s on the docks teaching students “Intro to Windsurfing” and other classes at Wisconsin Hoofers, a premier outdoors club at UW–Madison.
Every class is open to the public with a Wisconsin Hoofers membership and a reserved spot. During the classes, students can achieve different ratings that allow them to take the equipment out when they want, depending on wind conditions. Once you have a rating, you have it for life, so anyone visiting campus can still try out the sport without losing progress.
“I really enjoy teaching, meeting people from all over the world, all the students,” Matzinger says. “One day I was out there and was teaching a quantum physicist something. I thought, ‘This is kind of cool.’”
Like Matzinger, other Wisconsinites found their love for windsurfing thanks to educational programs like Wisconsin Hoofers. One newly devoted windsurfer and commodore of the Hoofers Sailing Club is Max Bublik, a first-year graduate student at UW–Madison. He learned to windsurf this past summer once the lake opened up, and it was one of the first activities he tried since joining last year.
“[Windsurfing’s] kind of just a combination of surfing … and sailing aspects, but it’s a different beast entirely,” Bublik says. “A lot translates from windsurfing to sailing, but not a lot translates from sailing to windsurfing if you had to compare the two.”
Bublik now teaches windsurfing lessons as well, guiding newcomers through everything from equipment and proper board positioning to catching the perfect gust of wind. With windsurfing, the wind is your fuel, and different directions of wind impact the way you need to sail.
“You’re out there, you’re at the mercy of the weather, and all you have is your skills.”
“Once you get it, you get it. It’s like riding a bike,” Bublik says. “It’s definitely a kind of thing where if you do it once, you realize how much fun it can actually be, and you want to keep doing it.
That thrill — the mix of speed and control — keeps him captivated.
“You’re out there, you’re at the mercy of the weather, and all you have is your skills,” Bublik says. “Love that.”
This past summer, Bublik watched familiar faces return to his lessons week after week, hoping to build their skills on the water.
Bublik says he didn’t just find a new hobby when he started windsurfing, he found a whole new community.
“If you have an interest in it and other people have an interest in it, it’s an immediate connection,” he says. “You talk about the wind, the waves, good experiences you’ve had around the world. I’m almost certain it extends that same effect.”
Just as passion can extend through people, the passion for windsurfing extends all across the state.
Drive an hour and a half northeast of Madison to Lake Winnebago — Wisconsin’s largest inland lake — and you’ll find another community of windsurfers.
Katherine Ebensperger has been windsurfing for the last five years with no plans to stop anytime soon. After moving to Appleton for work after college, she craved a new activity.
Ebensperger found a group of windsurfers online and attended one of their “meetup” events, where anyone could go and learn about windsurfing. She recalled her first time on a board being hard, as you need proper balance between yourself and the sail in order to not fall off.
“It was fun because everyone was new and trying too,” Ebensperger says.
Today Ebensperger sees windsurfing as a hidden gem in the world of recreational water sports.
“I’ll be out sailing sometimes, and there’ll be boats going by, and it’ll just feel cool to just be going really fast … or at the same speed or faster than the boats near you,” she says. “It’s like freedom in a way.”
There are only a couple of small communities of windsurfers across Lake Winnebago, but she’s been able to find a consistent group of four to five others with whom she windsurfs.
“That’s nice too, just to have that friendship through doing an activity,” Ebensperger says.
The group has travelled out of the state for windsurfing trips to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, Hood River in Oregon and even Bonaire, an island in the Caribbean known for windsurfing.
However, Ebensperger still appreciates Wisconsin as her home base for her hobby due to Lake Winnebago’s shallow depths and diverse wind conditions.
Despite Lake Winnebago’s ideal conditions, the sport of windsurfing still falters when it comes to popularity, impacting local businesses around the area.
Forty years ago, you might’ve seen flocks of windsurfers shredding Wisconsin’s waves with bright sails and freshly rigged boards. But today, you’d be lucky to see just one dotting the horizon.
Brian Stenz, owner of Wind Power Watersports, an outdoor equipment store located in Fond du Lac at the southern point of Lake Winnebago, says the sport is losing its appeal as people lean toward other activities.
“It’s just the sports changing, and more people are getting away from windsurfing and going to the kiting, the winging and things like that,” Stenz says.
Windsurfing doesn’t have the hold it once did, but despite Wisconsin’s icy climate and unpredictable winds, these devoted windsurfers never gave up. They show up on those extra blustery days when the water is frigid, ready to share their passion with anyone willing to learn. They know that once you feel the first breeze, you’ll understand why it never truly lets go.
Still, even as the crowds may thin, the spirit among windsurfers hasn’t disappeared, nor will it in the years to come.
For windsurfers, the draw isn’t popularity – it’s that feeling of freedom when your sail tugs onward and your board propels you into the next wave. They will keep moving with the currents, encouraging every newcomer to feel the wind and let it guide their sails to something new.
Feature photo: a windsurfer glides into the horizon while testing her skills out on Lake Mendota