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Subconsciously we discovered SUP Windsurfing was still fashionable back then, with equipment in every hotel and local instructors teaching tourists in five languages. We were sent to boarding school and then university in the UK but flew home to Kenya at every possible opportunity. We’d spend our holidays hanging out at (the now extinct) Jadini Beach Hotel – windsurfing, playing beach volleyball and chatting up girls. Windsurfing quickly became an obsession, with all our pocket money saved up and spent in windsurf shops in the UK. I convinced my mother that we needed a semisinker with foot-straps and whilst the lack of a dagger-board frustrated her, the combination of low volume, foot-straps and a luminous yellow harness enabled us to zip around the shallows, startling flying-fish and emulating our hero Robby Naish in the waves.
Craig with catch of the day (New Years Eve 2011)
in those innocent days – poling around the lagoon with a splintery bamboo pole or a paddle borrowed from the dinghy. We’d explore the coral heads with mask/snorkel and (from time to time) free ungrateful inmates from carefully laid crab-traps.
Craig with the next generation
As worldwide interest in windsurfing waned and kitesurfing took off, the Kenyan coast (with steady tradewinds and shallow lagoons protected by outer reefs) proved to be perfectly suited to this spectacular new sport. My middle brother, Jason, was one of the first to kite in Kenya. In 2003, together with Eno and Boris Polo (both former tennis pros), we secured a lease over a beachfront shack, built sail racks and set up Kenya’s first kite/windsurf school. (The boys also ordered a pair of bright-yellow pedalos but the less said about that the better…) Since then kitesurfing Eno on a tiddler has exploded and on a windy day in January/February or July/August you’ll see up to Nomad Reef 50 kites between Forty Thieves Beach Bar on Diani Beach and the Kennaway Kitesurf Village on neighbouring Galu Beach.
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The combination of low volume, foot-straps and a lumino yellow harness enabled us to zip around the shallows, startling flying-fish and emulating our hero
Robby Naish