PLAYTHINGS : Call of the Wild

Like every other serous windsurfer in Southern California, Jim Martin used to spend a good part of each day calling around to friends and local shops to find out where and how hard the wind was blowing. But after months of racking up $300 phone bills and still missing those “epic” sessions of 20-knot-plus thermals, he figured there had to be a better way.

There was. These days, the beach calls Martin.

Martin recently launched Call of the Wind, a network of 12 automated wind reporters that monitor conditions from Seal Beach to San Francisco. Subscribers select the sites they want to know about and, when the wind meets their specs, the system beeps their pagers so they can try to catch the wind.

“You get the low and high wind sped over the last 20 minutes, the average speed, the direction it’s blowing, and the air temperature,” the Ventura-based inventor says

Martin says his own phone bill dropped by $250 in the first month he had the system up. Convinced he had a winner, he closed his contracting business a few months ago and began to promote his new service. There are now 275 sailors paying the $15-a-month fee, and he’s signing up three to five new users a day.

“Some guys laughed at first, but after they had it a week or two they were hooked for good,” he says. “In fact, if their pagers don’t ring after a few days, I get complaints that the system must be broken. I tell them to relax, the wind isn’t blowing and they’re just going through withdrawal.”