How I bought my first windsurfing equipment and how I spent way to much money doing it?

As I said in my previous post, I was new to windsurfing and I had no equipment. So what to do? First as I always do, I checked the internet and found some stores that sell windsurfing equipment. Since Ljubljana is not a big city, we don't have many stores. I visited a few and explained to sellers what I was looking for. A windsurf that my ex. could use, my doughter and me ... 

They advised me to buy a board at around 160 L. At the end of research I bought a brand new starter board Tabou Coolrider 160 with full EVA deck and also removable center fin (not a dagger board) which they said it is better compared to dagger-boards, when we will start to plane - back then I didn't know what that really meant :) With the board there came the foot straps. So that was the board. As they said, it was a bargain of 800 EUR and it was the far most expensive piece of windsurf equipment that I ever bought. And this was "a really good deal" on the board. I had the price lowered quite a bit with a few contra-offers.

Tabou Coolrider was a nice board to learn on!

Then I needed a mast base, a mast, mast foot, sail and boom with a rope. I bought:

• new Amex MOVE aluminum boom, + rope for lifting (in use at the moment)
  
  
   
• new RRD EPX 430 epoxy mast, (mast broke first season, was replaced and immediately sold as new)
• Pat Love base and, mast-foot (stil in use)
   
• and Gaastra Pilot sail 5.0 m2, which was actually a test sail from Gaastra test center at Lake Garda. (did my first steps with it and then occasionally used it for two seasons and later sold it)
  
    
  In this video I was riding the Gaastra Pilot 5.0 right before I sold it.

All this equipment cost me additional 500 EUR. 

So having no experience in windsurfing I spent alltogether around 1300 EUR for my first equipment! I thought I didn't do all that bad. Which I actually did. I just didn't know.

Since then I owned all together 8 windsurf boards, 11 sails, 8 masts, 2 booms, a few mast extensions, bases, bags, harness lines and bunch of other windsurfing equipment. It was a path on which I found the type of windsurfing I want to do and the right equipment for it. And some of the equipment was also for kids.

All this sounds like I spent a fortune on windsurfing equipment, but I actually didn't. Mostly I cycled through the equipment sometimes losing a few euros but sometimes earning a few. 

During the time leared a lot. I was reading all the time, learning from the resources from the internet (video, text), joined a few forums and got some really good advice and of course did windsurfing as often as I could. 

And what is now already obvious - I was hooked on windsurfing.