Here I am, 15 years old, windsurfing in the waves for the first time, in 1975, at St Aygulf in the Var (France). Filmed by my mother with her Super 8 camera — I could not drive yet, so she had to bring me to the beach.

I was tacking onshore winds, and I had the hardest time tacking the incoming breaking waves and their foam. Watch at 1:12: I let go of everything, completely scared of the wall of water coming at me. I simply did not know what to do. I was not surfing yet, so I was making enormous mistakes.

And I had no real technique. There was no internet back then, just a few pictures in rare magazines, and I had no idea what was possible, nor how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lolyTk0pNtE

My gear was a piece of work:

• a 22 kg Windsurfer (North Sails, then Ten Cate), with extra rocker added the honest way: soften the polyethylene in the sun, then push on it,
• a small daggerboard I made myself from magazine pictures,
• a smaller sail made by the local sailmaker, Velazur,
• a heavy teak wishbone,
• no harness, no footstraps, and a mastfoot that kept popping out constantly.

So every wipeout went like this: the mastfoot pops out, I swim to bring the board back to shore, then swim back to fetch the sail...

And I was totally alone. Nobody else was wave-riding in St Aygulf at the time — I was the only one doing it in the area for several years.

Then there are some mellower sessions in the thermal breezes, just having fun on flat water.

A heroic era, captured on Super 8.