We talked to a wintertime mountain dweller who migrates to Hood River come late Spring. We asked him to compare skiing and sailing and the two lifestyles. Wavesailing is all about gravity. Once swells become big, they're your own little mountains. There's no up at all.
Sailing is more consuming than skiing, more difficult.
It provides more challenge and more variety day to day than skiing. When you ski, you leave tracks and conditions stay pretty much the same once you've determined them. When you're sailing there are no tracks, no two waves are in the same place. The wind is constantly erasing everything and recreating the conditions. It's got the sailor mystique where you get on your ship and sail away.