WITH THIS ISSUE, and with all the happy memories that we’ve collected, the celebration of our ten-year milestone accentuates the transition that is to come. This change, though constant and perpetual,  underlies the strength of our quest. Like you, we must always forge new paths and take risks to create new opportunities. Though we may have arrived after 10 years, the hard truth may be that we’ve just begun.

If you consider our magazine to be a living entity, then we too must undergo an infinite process of tuning and re-tuning, adjusting and refining ourselves so that we will be worthy of our aspirations. Without this, we fall into a fate of mediocrity.

Like the movies that we’ve all seen—we head into the darkness of the forest (an ocean for us)—into a quest filled with uncertainty. The Fellowship of the Wind that we celebrate as our collective consciousness becomes our guiding force. With every pause, each milestone such as this, we are reminded that we are not alone. This journey, metaphorical as it may be, is the eternal expansion of ourselves and that of the universe.

For the magazine, though it has always been expanding, the time has come to expand further and replicate into another publication. We gave this considerable thought, how best to carry out this transition and concluded that starting next issue, International Kiteboarder will join American Windsurfer in this Fellowship of the Wind.

Following in the footsteps of  the spirit of American Windsurfer, yet with a global path, International Kiteboarder will have a distinctive edge toward the younger generation and a cutting edge style to transcend all age groups.

The Fellowship of our collective passions will continue to propel us into the unknown. Our task will always be to vividly present the experiences of our encounters and to admire the many colorful companions along our way. But more than anything, in this world of perpetual transformation, I hope that the lessons and the guiding forces that American Windsurfer has learned (or earned), will be preserved and passed to a new generation of editors, designers and yes, readers.

The force that propelled us and sustained American Windsurfer to this Silver Anniversary should be the hallmark of our existence. As part of my vision for the future, my hope is that this Fellowship of the Wind, and the sports that we champion, be propagated to all corners of the world. For the wind and our fellowship are both fleeting and invisible. But they can both be felt and be harnessed  for the development of the soul.

We celebrate this achievement through your time-incapsulated letters. They give us comfort and they help us launch into an unknown future. Gazing into this dark forest I am confident that this celebration will endure. For time finds a way to compliment the human spirit and even though change will be forever among us, the spirit in which we pursue our endeavors is a choice we can make. We choose to prevail.

We choose to propagate.

John Chao
Publisher/Editor