We want Your OLD GEAR!

HelmKites3rd · Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 45

Helm of Sun Valley in San Mateo is looking for your used gear!

If you have any extra masts, booms, boards, or accessories, bring it to us!

We realize many windsurfers have upgraded their equipment over the years but there is a high demand for older gear for families going out to sail on Lakes and such.

If you want to keep your old gear out of the landfill let us take it off your hands!

Helm of Sun Valley
333 North Amphlett Blvd
San Mateo, CA 94401
650.344.2711

jsampiero · Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 677

I'm a little surprised to see this post by a windsurf shop. I know not everyone can afford new gear, and I'm STOKED to hear about new windsurfers getting on the water, but, I hope you guys are being selective about the used gear you're setting up new windsurfers on. I think one of the quickest ways to guarantee someone WON'T be a windsurfer is to give them a lesson on the wrong gear.

JamesHardy · Joined: 29 Mar 2002 Posts: 160

rlemmens · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 206

Just out of curiosity why not have selective new gear on consignment available in the store? I'm talking about the sails that are just 2 or 3 years old. That way people who want to sell their good new gear can choose to have it available at a shop. It'd make it so people don't have to wait for swap meets and it would help keeping up the price of used gear, and help the shop make a profit. With buying a new setup it's easy to spend well over 1500. The shop could still sell new masts and booms and components but someone could save a few hundred on a perfectly good sail. Just a thought. Anyone's opinion?

jsampiero · Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 677

I don't sell the ads for the magazines - I'm the Editor, not the publisher. I think they used to advertise, and maybe still do. Ads pay part of my paycheck - but so do subscriptions, and my first and foremost interest, as the Editor and also merely as an interested participant, is that new windsurfers are on the right gear for learning. The further back you go with gear, the less conducive most of that gear is for a new windsurfer's first sessions.

I spent two hours yesterday teaching windsurfing down at the Hook - we had six people set up on newer windsurfing gear from the Big Winds school, and after an hour, all of them were tacking back and forth. The dude struggling by himself on an older garage sale rig? He was able to uphaul - barely.

Nowhere in that post did I say "New gear is the only way to use windsurfing!", and I plain as day acknowledge that a quiver of new gear is an expensive undertaking.

I just want to them to make sure it's the RIGHT used gear, because it's so easy for a never-ever windsurfer to get the wrong gear to start learning to windsurf.