Vintage Windsurfing Blue Tank Top 80s

Two boards heeled over hard, sails color-blocked in purple, chartreuse and orange, an airbrushed sun and a set of speed lines behind them. Marked © W.M.G. 1982, which places it right at the peak.

The sport got there on a patent that shouldn’t have held. A Pennsylvania man named Newman Darby had built a working sailboard in the 1960s, testing it on a lake near Wilkes-Barre with a length of nylon rope serving as the universal joint, and never filed for protection on it. Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer patented their own version in 1970, trademarked the name Windsurfer, and spent the next fifteen years collecting royalties from every manufacturer worldwide.

The courts eventually found their design an obvious extension of Darby’s. The patent expired in 1987, the licensing income stopped, and Windsurfing International shut down not long after. Darby, who never made money from any of it, said he was satisfied once the sport reached the Olympics in 1984.

A tank top printed at the exact moment a sport was booming on somebody else’s idea.