Part I of II
By Anthony Vandenberg
On most days, Lake Norman is a playground of pontoon boats and paddleboards. But when the wind howls over 30 knots, it transforms into something far more feral—and irresistible—to a small group of us who call ourselves the CLT Windsurfing Junkies.
We’re ten strong, bonded by adrenaline and a shared lack of common sense. Our backgrounds read like a passport stamp collection: Argentina, Russia, Italy, Cuba, Poland, and Asheville. Among us are a surgeon, a civil engineer, a Milanese banker, a Gulfstream pilot, and me—a Florida transplant with former collegiate windsurfing bragging rights. Our wives tolerate us; our neighbors question us. The lake is our refuge.
October 19, 2025, started like any other “big wind” day—buzzing phones, hurried rigging, and the electric anticipation of gale-force gusts. I arrived as one of the first, over-confidently rigging up my foiling kit despite the whitecaps slapping the shoreline in warning. I chose a Maui double-luff 7.0 and a race-foil setup—fast, technical… and, in hindsight, foolish.
The first tack pointed straight toward the towering lake mansion of Michael Jordan himself. I barely had time to adjust before the lake reminded me who was in charge. The chop was vicious—over a meter high and tight as a drum. My foil mast was a meter long; the math did not favor me.
Somewhere in the tightening gusts, I convinced myself I could manage it. I bore off, adjusted trim, and found a momentary rhythm. Confidence crept in.
Then everything exploded.
The boom head detonated with a metallic crack, sending shards skyward. A heartbeat later, a second, deeper bang—this one mysterious and violent—pitched me underwater. When I surfaced, stunned and sputtering, the rig was a mess of broken pieces. I derigged and climbed back aboard, already thinking about repairs, insurance claims… anything but the reality I was about to face.
Instinctively, I checked the foil.
It was gone.
Solid Gone Sunk to 40-70’ on the bottom of Lake Norman…
Gone—ripped from the board’s fin box, leaving nothing but smooth carbon and a sick feeling in my stomach.
Somewhere below—40 to 80 feet deep—my $3,600 foil kit lay on the muddy, black bottom of Lake Norman. My friends greeted me at the beach with the compassion only windsurfers can muster:
“What size sail should I rig?”
I forced a grim smile.
That night, I pulled up my Garmin tracks and replayed the entire session. My speed. My angle. Where tweeke close haul in the gusts to bleed off power. Which tacks were survivable. Which weren’t. I marked the points where the accident likely occurred and eliminated legs where I was moving above 16 knots—too fast for the foil to separate without a splash cue.
I told myself it was recoverable.
I was wrong. At least at first.
The next morning, I hired a professional diver. Two tanks. Zero visibility. Silt—thick and blinding. Hypothermia creeping in. He resurfaced defeated.
And so began the obsession.
A simple loss turned into something bigger: maps, apps, trawl nets, and a battle between human stubbornness and Lake Norman’s dark bottom. The search expanded. The expenses added up. Doubt crept in.
Had the foil really dropped straight down?
Or had it glided… somewhere unpredictable?
As the October wind died and November rolled in, what began as a hopeful recovery morphed into a relentless quest—with no guarantee of reward.
Next month: Part II—trawl nets, DIY engineering, deep-water dives… and the shocking moment when obsession meets breakthrough.
