Friday, September 1, 2017

BaHa Session

No, I did not turn into a wave sailor.  It's BaHa, not Baja. The great spot 12 minutes from our house that I usually have for myself. The GPS tracks:
94 km before noon - that's fun! The wind dropped at the end of the session, as northwest wind likes to do. The wind dropped just as I started, but 16 mph averages on the Chapin meter were enough to get going on the 7.0 Racing Blade with the 117 l slalom board. I got lucky about 2 hours into the session, when the wind turned more northerly and picked up to 21 mph average / 29 mph gusts, just as the tide level was perfect for speed runs in the slicks. The wind is weaker and quite gusty there, but I got lucky and caught a good gust, which gave me a new 2 second top speed on the big board (30.85 knots, 57 km/h). That's not much for most speedsurfers, but enough to make me happy: in the 1100 windsurf session since I started using a GPS, I was faster only 20 times. The 3rd-fastest nautical mile I ever sailed (26.58 knots) was just icing on the cake. 
Once again, the Loft Racing Blade behaved beautifully, letting me plane in 16 mph and just getting into it in the 29 mph gusts. I also was very happy with the Tectonics WeedDemon 33 today. Near high tide, plenty of dead reed stalks were in the water, so that a pointer fin would not have been fun. But when powered up today, it held beautifully in downwind speed runs, and going back upwind was absolutely no issue. Of course, having 2 km long runs helped :-).
That was a great start into September. I don't want to jinx anything so I'll be quiet - but have you looked at the wind forecast for Kalmus recently?