For people still laboring under the illusion that windsurfing is the staid, plodding option amid diversifying – and, annoyingly, increasingly motorized – aquatic board sports, a new drone video out of Fiji provides some updated perspective to those notions.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, windsurfing was largely filed away as the activity people did in summer on lakes or waveless bodies of water like the Mediterranean – puttering along in the breeze and only inadvertently getting air after running over submerged kids. Since then, however, generations of athletes have taken those boards and sails into incredibly fast and hairy breaks – including monsters at Maui’s Pe‘ahi (aka Jaws) or Nazaré, Portugal. 

Read: Drone surf videos enhance footage shot on, in, and above waves

A new video uploaded overnight by windsurfing enthusiast and drone pilot Paul van Bellen offers arresting (and breath-robbing) evidence from Fiji that debunks ideas of the sport as a plodding, ho-hum affair.

Van Bellen’s drone hovered over the windsurfing sets at Cloudbreak during the heats of the 2023 Fiji Surf Pro competition, during which he captured video that included the epic pounding.

Discovered in the 1970s by visiting surfers off the island of Tavarua, Cloudbreak is now basically a pay-to-play gated spot for the rich – expect to pay upwards of $500 per day to bunk down near, and have boat access to the lineup – and the pro crowd. That latter group is currently out shredding waves there, albeit without competitor Marcilio Browne. 

As Van Bellen’s drone video shows, the Brazilian windsurfer exited the heats due in part to critical time lost during a brutal beating taken on a quickly peeling right. The wall’s speeding lip ultimately plucked Browne off the face, sendinging him into the unhappy mix of furiously roiling water, potentially mutilating board/mast/sail, and relatively shallow reef below.

Note the audible power of the lip’s impact with unfortunately positioned human; nausea-inducing flips it caused; and Browne’s post-wipeout, outrageously oxymoronic description of the wave keeping him breathlessly under water as “a good hold down, too ­– it took a while to come up.”

The good news is, even though the time involved in that drubbing (and an earlier workout) prevented Browne from advancing into later stages of the competition, he ended up on dry land unharmed (not counting the PTSD).

Read: Drone startup resolves world’s hottest debate: wave height in surfing 

The bad news is that while van Bellen’s drone video of the Cloudbreak battering will disabuse anyone harboring lingering perceptions of windsurfing as a kinetic version of a “dad joke,” few people who see the footage will want to risk the potential pain of giving it a try.