The Windsurf Loop

Is it spring already?

2012-02-22T21:43:00.000-05:00

This winter has been very warm, and today was no exception, with temperatures up to 57 F in Boston - 17 degrees (10 C) more than normal. With a decent wind forecast, we obviously had to go windsurfing, but did not take into account that spring rules, not winter rules, should apply. So we went to Kalmus, only to stare at flat water without any white caps. Here's the wind graph:

The rather chaotic wind is typical for days when the air is much warmer than the water, which is still near 40 F (4C). A SW wind in Kalmus with a small temperature difference is wonderful - the wind couples with the sea breeze, and we often get 5-15 mph stronger winds than the computer models predict. Forecasts today called for about 16 mph winds, and the spike at 12:30 shows what could have happened. But as the land warmed up more, the wind "decoupled" - it did not reach down to the ground anymore.

That was perfectly predictable, but it has not happened much in the last few months, so we forgot the rules that apply to spring windsurfing: if decoupling is an issue, Fogland is often windier! Here's the wind graph for Fogland from today:

Fogland had 4 hours of pretty decent wind - but why? It's a combination of several factors:

Water temperatures: the water in the Sakonnet river is several degrees warmer than the water near Hyannis, so the temperature difference is lower. The very shallow water in the northerly bay in Fogland can warm up several degrees on a single day.
Geography/channeling: the river channels the wind, and the layout reduces decoupling in spring and early summer days.
Thermal additions: just like Hyannis, Fogland can get a boost from thermals, when the air over the land heats up and rises, and pulls colder air from the sea.

The combination of these factors can bring stronger winds to Fogland if the circumstances are just right, like they were today. This happens a number of times in spring and early summer; but in the fall, the opposite often happens, and winds in Fogland are weaker and gustier than winds on Cape Cod. Well, things have changed, and Fogland is definitely worth a shot on those warm SW wind days!

We ended up not windsurfing today, but it was not all bad - we had plenty of time to chat with our friend Martin, and we were still a bit sore from ice surfing on Monday. Our friend Dean and his friend Jeff had broken 50 knots on the ice there a week before, and talked about almost perfect ice sailing conditions, with miles and miles of uninterrupted, smooth ice. So Nina and I asked if we could tag along, and Dean let us use two of his ice sleds. A bit simplified, these are oversized skate boards with two sets of ice skating blades at the front and the back, and a mast track to mount a windsurfing rig.

This was only the second time we went ice sailing, and the last time was about a year ago. Without holes in the ice, my legs did not shake this time around, but it was still plenty scary. At first, the wind was light, which was perfect for us beginners. Since there is almost no friction on ice, it is easy to go much faster than the wind, so jibing becomes a whole different thing. Even in a very drawn out jibe, chances are good that you'll get backwinded from apparent wind. I saw one of the better sailors doing a downwind 360 to slow down before actually jibing - cool! A few minutes later, I found myself doing an involuntary 360, when I got backwinded during a jibe, and just turning another 180 degrees seemed like the natural thing to do.

In the light wind conditions, duck jibes were the more natural thing to do. However, since the ice sleds turn a lot slower than windsurf boards, the timing is a bit different. I found myself sailing clew first after the sail duck for rather extended periods. Thank Andy for all that light wind clew first practice!

After one of these jibes, I suddenly found myself sliding of the ice sled, and relying on the dampening properties of the largest muscle in the human body when making sudden contact with the ice. Looking at the sled, I noticed that the rear blade assembly had come of - the screw that attached them to the board (the "king pin") had broken into two pieces. Apparently, they do this after a year or two of use. No big deal - Dean just sailed back, got a tool box and spare parts, and replaced the king pin on the ice. But when everything was ready to go again, the wind had picked up quite a bit. I did a few more runs, at one point climbing up a 2 inch high ledge in the ice at full speed - did I mention that ice sailing can be quite scary? With the winds now whipping up white caps in the one small (100 ft wide) area of open water, I did not even try to go for any more jibes - by then, the fall absorbing capacity of my gluteus maximus was about used up. Still, going wicked fast was wicked fun!

Even though I was using a 4.2 m non-cambered crossover sail that was wide open most of the time to keep my speed in regions that I was marginally comfortably with, I still managed to get a top speed of 32.5 knots - about a knot faster than I ever sailed on non-frozen water. Not bad for the second time of ice sailing - but Jeff, Dean, and the other fast guys reached speeds close to 50 knots that day. Plenty of things left to learn! Now I almost hope that the next winter will be colder, so we can ice sail on the nearby lakes. Once again, many thanks to Dean for exposing us to this sport, and letting us use the gear! It was also very nice to meet Jeff, the reigning World Record holder, and the other ice sailors.

Just two days before the scary and fun ice sailing adventure, we had sailed on non-frozen water in Pt. Judith. Winds were steady 25-30 mph, water and air temperatures in the low 40s F (about 5 C). I had been dying to windsurf with gloves again after reading James' report about how hypnosis may help to reduce lower arm fatigue. I had bought the mp3 and listened to it a couple of times; Nina listened to it once, but she had to laugh through the entire introduction, when Andy Steer counts down from 10, so I had doubts that this would work on her. We ended up sailing only a bit more than one hour, but we both spend almost the entire time on the water, without the more frequent breaks we often take when sailing in cold weather. Except for it being a bit chilly, the conditions were great - perhaps a bit too much wind for the 7.0 I had rigged because I did not quite trust the wind. While sailing, I often had to think of parts of the hypnosis tape, and it definitely helped me relax. At the end of the hour, my lower arms were starting to get a bit tired, but I don't think it was much worse than it would have been without gloves.

Nina reported that the hypnosis did not make any difference for her. I'm not sure I fully agree; the last time we sailed with gloves, she had reported cramps right away, and she took more and longer breaks. However, the conditions that time had been more difficult, and she had used different gloves, so a direct comparison is impossible. Maybe things will get better if she can listen to the entire recording without laughing... But for all of you windsurfers out there who have problems sailing with gloves, I'd suggest that you check out the forearm hypnosis recording. Maybe all you get out of it is a few good laughs, but it is quite possible that you'll end up with more fun on the water during the cold months. And you can't loose money by trying - Andy Steer promises to return your money if it does not work for you! I hope you try it - I'd love to see more windsurfers on the water during the winter. The only time I got cold at the water this winter was today - and that's because we were just standing around instead of going sailing.

Dry Case armband and Boost drysuit problems

2012-02-11T12:33:00.000-05:00

In a couple of previous posts, I said good things about the Dry Case armbands and the O'Neill Boost drysuit. But while my initial impression was very good, I have recently had problems with the armbands and the drysuit.

What I liked about the Dry Case armbands is that they use a vacuum which (a) prevents water from coming in, and (b) indicate if the case has a hole. Unfortunately, one Dry Case armband stopped holding the vacuum after just a few uses. Here's a picture:

The hole is hard to see on the picture. It is where the extra piece of plastic that holds the armband is attached to the main case. Pull on the armband, perhaps during a crash, opened a hole in the case that lets the vacuum out and water in. Fortunately, that happened when I was using the armband for a GT-31 GPS, which is also waterproof, so nothing got damaged; if this had happened with a phone, this could have been a costly failure.
Another Dry Case armband that I had ordered recently failed right away - here is the picture:

Here, the piece of plastic that is glued to the case to push the arm band through came off right away - apparently, is was not glued on properly. If that had happened on the water, I would have lost the armband and the GPS or phone in it! Fortunately, this happened at home, and I was able to return the defective arm band to amazon.com.

So, as wonderful as the vacuum idea is, the attachment of the armband to the Dry Case is a major weak point. Any stress, for example from a crash while windsurfing, can cause the little piece of plastic glued to the back of the case to either come off, or to rip a hole. I have bought a total of 3 Dry Case armbands in the past 6 months, and all three failed quickly (although in one case, I cannot rule out "operator error", since I had lent the GPS to a freestyler working on loops). In contrast to the Dry Case armbands, the Aquapac armbands have the attachment integrated into the case, so it cannot fail in a similar fashion. Until Dry Case changes their design, I will go back to Aquapac armbands.

Now to the O'Neill Boost drysuit. I bought one of these "baggy" drysuits in November 2010, and used it perhaps 10 times since then. It's main attraction was the price - at about $420, it was quite affordable. But when I used the suit again last fall, there seemed to be more and more water coming in. A close inspection showed air bubbles under most of the tape that sealed the stitches, and immersing the suit into water showed that water was indeed coming in there. Fortunately, this happened just before the one-year warranty expired, so I was able to return it back to the shop and get it replaced. However, the replacement took about 6 weeks! Not sure why simply sending a new suit would take so long. I was able to keep sailing in a semidry suit since it was unusually warm. But if this had happened a few weeks later, the suit would have been out of warranty, and I would have missed a lot of sessions.

Our friend Jeff also bought a Boost suit, although in his case, the suit had been hanging in the store for a couple of years, and was on sail. His suit also developed a leak within about a year, which Jeff decided to fix himself (apparently quite a messy procedure). I guess you get what you pay for - the top-of-the line Kokotat drysuits that our friends Dani and Sabah bought cost more than $900, but they come with a lifetime warranty, and Kokotat seems to be very good about honoring warranty claims.

Shock to the system

2012-02-07T14:31:00.001-05:00

We just got back from a week in Bonaire a few days ago. It was just wonderful, as usual, except that the wind was even better than before - we were planing every single day without needing big sails, and had only half a day of light winds (too little for Nina, who would have liked to practice light wind tricks for a couple of days). We met old friends and made new friends at the ABK camp, and learned a few new tricks. Here's a short video:

I finally "got" the carve 360. I had completed one a few times before, but I finally reached the point where I can do a bunch of them in a row, with a success rate above 50% - well, at least on one tack and in the flat Bonaire waters. But the most fun day was day 4 of the 5-day camp, when we finally worked on the loop. Once again, Andy's lecture (this time on the water and short) was successful in:

getting everyone in the group to try the loop exercises, even at least 2 windsurfers who said they did not want to; and
avoiding injuries and board damage.

On the downside, nobody in our group actually completed a loop. Conditions were not ideal - I needed a 6.1 m sail to plane, and the chop where Andy was standing was small and (for starboard jumpers like me) coming from the wrong direction. However, I did make some progress, and had several nice crashes where I was hanging under the sail, with the sail catapulting me around while being almost horizontal. In one of the crashes, the tail even broke free and the board turned around, but the nose was buried deep into the water - that was more a Gecko loop than a loop. Still, the "catapult rides" under the sail were fun, the crashes onto the back soft and painless, and I got a bit of the impression what a spin loop might feel like. More motivation to keep working at it!

One thing I noticed in both my own crashes and when watching others was that the timing was wrong. We usually get the nose out of the water nicely, and sometimes the fin, too; but rotation / catapult / nose down part almost always starts way to late, when the tail of the board (or even the entire board) is already back down in the water. I think the initial jumps are high enough, compared to completed flatwater loops I have seen live and on video; but something is missing. Nina, who was a bit frustrated with her crashes, even developed the theory that she should learn the vulcan first, since that requires learning the tail - nose exchange. I think a decent sized chop or waves would also solve the problem, since that would give more time to pull the back leg up; maybe the flatwater loop will become easier after learning the loop in higher chop first.

Coming back from the ABK camp, Nina was all fired up to keep working on tricks. So when the wind forecast for Monday looked good, with SW winds in the mid 20s and plenty of sun, we just had to get out. Yes, there was the small issues that both air and water temperatures were about 40º F (20º C) lower than a few days before in Bonaire ... but it was sunny, above freezing, and windy! We were also dying for some really flat water - Bonaire is lovely, but compared to the slicks near Kalmus, it's still choppy. Our friend Martin decided to join us, and Jeff, who will be in Bonaire soon, predicted that this would be a shock to the system. Well, Jeff was right - but not as we expected it to be.

Since Martin did not want to join us at the Kennedy Slicks, we decided to launch at the back beach in Kalmus and sail over to Egg Island (the winds where a bit too westerly, and the chop looked to gnarly, for a front launch). Rigging and getting into dry suits and thick boots took forever, but we eventually hit the water. At the launch site, the winds are offshore and very gusty. Foolishly, we sailed in the shallow waters near the launch for a while, and soon discovered what part of our system was getting shocked: the forearms! After just sailing 5-6 hours a day for 7 days in a row, you'd think that the hands and arms are in good shape - but having to sail on gloves or mittens again was almost too much. Nina got arm cramps within a few minutes, and got out of the water. Martin and I decided to sail over to Egg Island to search for steadier winds. The crossing was easy enough, with a couple of downwind legs and a bit of walking in the shallows in front of Egg Island. We were rewarded with very flat water and steady winds - except when we sailed all the way to the far side shore, where trees and houses made the wind gusty again.

I absolutely hated sailing with 3 mm gloves, even though I had cut out parts on the insides of the fingers to reduce the resistance to bending the fingers. The feeling is just so different that I was probably gripping way to hard most of the time. But just as I was about to sail it back, Nina finally joined us, after having changed from closed mittens to open palm mitts. That inspired me to do some decent sailing, staying in the area with steady winds and keeping the jibes dry about 10 times in a row. The sail back as the sun started to go down was a bit tedious for Martin and especially for Nina. I was lucky because I was nicely overpowered on my 5.8 m race sail in 30-35 mph winds, but Nina got too close to shore and was stuck for a little while in shifting and gusty winds. Just when I had walked out to her to bring here my larger board, she finally caught a decent gust that let her sail the rest of the way in.

So - was sailing here two days after returning from Bonaire a shock to the system? Only for the forearms, I'd say. Otherwise, we were perfectly warm the entire time, and sailing the Egg Island Slicks was tons of fun. None of us really got fully into the groove, but by giving Martin a GPS and putting him on my gear for a few runs, we still managed to pick up a few spots in the GPS Team Challenge. Can't wait to sail here again when the next "warm" southwest winds come!

Bonaire!

2012-01-21T19:43:00.002-05:00

The last few winters, we took a vacation in Bonaire to escape the cold, and learn new tricks at ABK BoardSports Camps. But after the bad economy got through to us last year, we had planned to skip the trip this year. That did not seem much of a problem for a while, since the winter came late, and we had plenty of warm days to go windsurfing.

Things started going south when my lovely wife came back from visiting family with a nasty cold that soon had us both coughing day and night, and kept us off the water for a while. Next, my car decided that 8 years without problems was enough, and started making funny noises - just in time to miss two days in a row of great wind. Then, when the car was finally fixed and the colds under control, we got our first snow storm. Nothing major, but still - not exactly ideal weather to go sailing here. But just as depression wanted to knock on the door, a couple of good things happened. First, we heard that we could expect a rather substantial tax refund; then, we saw that the prices for flights to Bonaire had dropped to rarely seen lows, even for flights in the near future. I bet you can guess the rest - we are going to Bonaire soon! Big smiles are back on our faces.

Bonaire is a wonderful spot for all windsurfers who love flat water. Of all the great things there, I think the colors of the water is one of the most beautiful things, especially as you sail from the large shallow area into the deeper half of the bay. I know that not all my readers have had the chance to visit Bonaire, so here is a brief video from last year that's indented to illustrate this point. Hope to see you all in Bonaire soon!

A comparison of speed strips

2012-01-14T21:38:00.001-05:00

Too sore from getting beat up by 58 mph gusts yesterday, and too wimpy to sail today in near-freezing temperatures, I decided to look for reasons why no speedsurfer around here has gone much faster than 35 knots - while in Europe and Australia, hords of windsurfers are going faster than 40 and 45 knots all the time (and recently, a few have broken 50 knots).

For wannabes like myself, we can explain the low speeds by lack of skill and proper speed equipment. However, at least 3 of the guys on our Fogland Speed Surfer team are kick-ass windsurfers with extensive race and/or teaching and freestyle experience, and they all have gear that can easily go 45 knots. So what to blame then? Maybe the lack of proper speed spots in the area?

I decided to have a closer look at our favorite spots, and compare them to West Kirby in England, where several speed surfers have broken 50 knots already this year. For the impatient readers, I'll start with a table that summarizes the results:

I'll briefly explain the different columns before I discuss each spot in detail.

Access describes how easy it is to get to the speed strip; ideally, we want to drive right up, carry our gear a few meters, and then race downwind at full speed.

Depth categorizes the water depth at and near the speed strip. Shallow water keeps the water surface smooth and fast, and can eliminate the problem of having to waterstart ridiculous large sails with huge mast sleeves full of water in very strong winds.

Tides show how sensitive a spot is to the tides; some spots are only fast at high tide, or may not be sailable at all at low tide.

Length is the length of the speed strip that can be sailed at the ideal angle. A 10-second run at 50 knots covers about 260 meters, but we need to add space to get up to speed and to stop.

Barrier relates to the jetty, sand bar, or similar obstruction that creates the perfectly smooth water for speed runs just behind it.

Let's look at West Kirby first. The West Kirby speed strip is in a man-made "marine lake" that is 5 feet deep. The speed runs are made at a wall that rises about 4 feet above the water levels; the speed strip is about 620 m long, with extra room at the start to load up for Slingshots, and at the end to jibe. The low barrier wall can be walked, which makes it easy to walk the gear back to the start. The wind has a clear fetch for several miles across a bay before it hits the speed strip.

West Kirby is one of the fastest speed strips in Europe. Just 11 days ago, several speed surfers broke the 50 knot barrier there. So a speed strip length of 620 meters is definitely enough; for 40 knots, even 500 meter should be sufficient.

Next, let us look at Fogland bay in Tiverton, Rhode Island, the birthplace of the Fogland Speed Surfers. The entire bay is about 500 meters across, and quite shallow. Tides in Fogland are about 4 ft, and most days, the speed strip shown in the picture is sailable the entire time (at least with short speed fins). Only when tides drop below normal low does the ground start eating the fins of speed surfers who venture too close to shore.

The best wind direction for speed in Fogland is SW to WSW. There is a second speed strip going up along the shore that is about the same length. However, both strips suffer from gusty winds since the barrier here is higher (at least 5 feet at high tide) and more uneven than at West Kirby. A bigger problem for 10-second top speeds is that the runs are quite short - a 340 m run like indicated by the line in the picture above would require a very abrupt stop at the end. All this makes Fogland a great place to get started with speed surfing, or to go to when it's so windy that some extra safety becomes important - but breaking 40 knots there will be very hard, if not impossible.

The next spot to look at is Duxbury bay. Similar to Fogland, it is separated by a sand bar that is wide enough to include a road. Tides in Duxbury are about 9-12 feet, which affects windsurfing: at normal low tide, most areas in the bay are too shallow for windsurfing. Even in between tides, the lower water level increases the height of the barrier by about 5 feet, to a total of more than 10 feet, which disrupts the wind quite a bit. This is less of a problem closer to high tide, but then, the water about 50 feet from shore is more than 10 feet deep. This means that in theoretically ideal N to NNE wind directions, a lot of wind swell builds up, which kills top speed.
However, Duxbury is by far the best local spot for long distance speed (one hour, nautical mile, and total distance). In ENE to NE winds, runs are almost 5 km long. About 50 to 100 m from the shore, the effects of the barrier are negligible, and the water is still very smooth in light to medium winds. Doing 100 km here means going back and forth only about 11 times!

The next speed spot to look at is in Hyannis Port Harbor: the Kennedy Slicks. A stone jetty protects the harbor from the prevailing SW winds, and creates a 560 m long speed strip. The ideal wind direction would be W, but west winds come across land therefore are weak and gusty; the best wind direction that actually works is WSW. Tides are about 4 feet; at high tide, the top of the jetty is about 4 feet above the water level. That's almost perfect - but unfortunately, the first half of the jetty has a number of large holes, through which waves crash at high tide, creating small waves and limiting speed.
To sail at the fastest angles (120-135º) in WSW winds, it is necessary to sail away from the wall. However, since the water in the harbor is pretty deep, the chop builds up very quickly, which again limits top speed. The Kennedy Slicks are a great place to play and practice, but reaching 40 knots here will be very hard, even if the tides and wind direction are perfect.

This brings us to the last local speed spot that we'll look at, the Egg Island Slicks. This spot is less than 2 miles from the Kennedy Slicks, on the other side of Kalmus Beach in Lewis Bay. While I have sailed the other local spots many times, I have sailed the Egg Island Slicks only once - and broke all my short-distance personal bests that day. Egg Island works best in SW winds, where it offers a 500 m long speed strip right next to a sand bar that is just barely above water at high tide. At the end of the sand bar, the chop increases gradually, enabling a controlled stop or turn. The wind tends to be a bit gusty at the start of the strip due to the "Great Island" below, so very small speed boards could be a problem. However, the setup allows a Slingshot approach from the right, and there is plenty of shallow water nearby to stand and rest.

The one drawback that Egg Island has is that it requires an approach over about 500-800 m of open water, which includes crossing a ferry lane. The waves and chop during the approach can be challenging; they were completely doable on a 30-35 mph day, but could present a real problem on a day like yesterday, where average were in the 40s and gusts in the 60s. Those are the days when real records are set...

Well, I think we can safely conclude that we cannot really blame the spots for our local low speeds. I think the problem may be more due to lack of "critical mass". With that, I don't mean body mass - Steve Thorp has shown that you do not need to be 6 ft tall or weigh 200+ pounds to break 50 knots. Rather, I mean number of speed surfers. Single speed surfer teams from Australia may get as many as 20 surfers onto the water on a given day, with 7 of them posting speeds near or above 40 knots; in the Netherlands, speed strips may see 100 windsurfers on a good day. Around here, I am happy if there are 3 of us on the water going for speed, and 5 makes a great day. But every time I get to sail with our better surfers, I learn a lot, and if we have good wind, I usually break a personal best or two. In addition to the learning, bigger groups increase the stoke factor. For example, in surfing hot spots like Australia or the Netherlands, it is quite normal to take long boat rides, drive a few hundred miles, or even do 2-day trips by plane just to get to the right speed spot at the right time. Our little group may not be as big or as crazy about speed surfing yet, but we have seen a number of group sessions, new speed gear, and plenty of new personal bests in the last year - and I am sure 2012 will be even better.

Friday the 13th: surfing 14-58 mph winds

2012-01-13T19:49:00.002-05:00

Is it tempting fate to go windsurfing on Friday the 13th? Or is it just proof that you're not superstitious? Well, either way, the forecast called for winds in the 30s today, and temperatures around 50 (although dropping quickly in the afternoon). That's just too nice a winter present to not go sailing!

The typical venue for a SW setup like today would have been Hyannis. With a forecast into the low 40s there, both the Kennedy Slicks and the Egg Island Slicks would have been perfect for setting personal bests. Alas, the tides were not quite right for the Egg Island Slicks, and with both Nina and I still getting over a cold, we thought that the shallow waters of Fogland bay would be a safer venue. We were joined there by Jeff, Graham, and Martin. Jeff had been the one who had originally suggested Fogland, but when he saw the wind averages in the low 30s, with gusts in 40s, he wisely decided not to go out. Graham went and was way overpowered on a 4.0 - maybe that should have told me that my KA Koncept 5.8 was perhaps a bit big. But I had set up some nice personal best with that sail not too long ago with wind in the 30s, so it should work, right?

Well, I hit the water shortly after 12, and here is what the wind meter showed:

Gusts of 58 mph made my attempts to get going rather interesting. I water started with both feet in the straps, but had no chance of getting the board under control - I did some nice wheelies before I got thrown into the water. The water was still to deep to touch the ground, so I quickly decided to turn around and rig a 3.7 instead. I also switched to the trusted Goya One 77 which had given me plenty of fun in Maui in 30-40 mph winds. That combination worked a bit better, but I ended up being still overpowered in the gusts, and under-boarded in the lulls (77 l is a bit small for a 90 kg guy with winter clothes and dry suit if the wind is not steady). So back for a bigger board...

I never got quite dialed in today. I did a few speed runs which involved some walking upwind, and managed to get a 30-knot reading on my GPS, which I had seen only once or twice before. Graham was fighting a bit, too, but he look good, doing a number of nice jibes and trying Willy Skippers and Duck Tacks. But the guy having the most fun on the water was Martin. It seems every time I looked his way, he was either chop hopping or turning around in style with a heli tack or a fully planing duck jibe. I gave him Nina's GPS and told him to try my Hawk, which he soon did. That only made him go faster, and widened his smile. I had wanted to blame the Hawk for many failed jibe attempts, but Martin quickly demonstrated that the Hawk can be jibed beautifully, with full-speed tight laydown jibes. Oh well - as Beth Winkler said, jibing is a career (a very long one for me :). He also got some great speed readings, in particular for the nautical mile and alpha - and I doubt he even knows what alpha is!

As much as I hated missing the steadier winds of Cape Code or Point Judith, I was glad that we had picked the shallow bay when my arms started cramping up after 3 hours. Not that I had sailed much during that time - it included plenty of equipment changes, upwind walks, and several breaks. On a good day, I sail more than today in 30 minutes... and I certainly don't get arm cramps after just a few hours. I'll just blame it on still being a bit sick.

We almost made it away from the beach without anything bad happening - that is, until I looked into the rear view mirror and noticed that there were only three boards on the trailer. We had come with 4 boards! Looking back, we saw one board lying on the rocks a hundred yards back. Seems we (or perhaps I should say "I") had forgotten to put the second strap on, and the wind blew the board of the trailer in no time. Fortunately, the board had not taken any visible damage, and nobody had been anywhere close to it when it blew off.

Here are a few pictures from today:

Lack of board control...

Where did that gust come from?

Young Master Graham jumping the board around

Martin, the king of the duck jibe

I may not be in the same league as Martin, but I'm in the same picture!

The winner of the "Create your own rainbow" contest: Martin

Graham just posted a nice GoPro video that he made with his new Clew-View:

I needed that!

2012-01-02T19:52:00.002-05:00

It was a lovely day at the beginning of January - lots of sun, and air temperatures in the low 40s (7 C). With no windsurfing for almost a month and a good wind forecast, I just had to get out today. Still on jet lag, I was up before 6, only to wait for the wind to come to Cape Cod. Yes, it was blowing upper 20s in Point Judith, and the forecast there was just as good, but that would have been too easy.

It's a long story of driving around that's not worth telling, but I eventually made it to Kalmus Beach in Hyannis around 10 am, just as the wind picked up to 30 mph averages. I took my time rigging, hoping someone else would show up, but ended up sailing alone for the first hour. With all the thick booties and gloves, I could not really tell if I was powered or overpowered - but I was nicely planing most of the time. Of course, I had my Hawk trimmed for speed, but ended up sailing in chop, since I wanted to stay closer to shore while sailing alone, instead of making a trip over to Egg Island. Together with lack of practice, jet lag, and at least 17 other excuses I can think of, this made jibing a difficult proposition. Here are pictures from two attempts:

If I had been going for jump jibes or Willy Skippers, that might have been decent attempts - but I was actually going for a simple step jibe. Oops! After a few slightly wet jibes, I decided to take advantage of the refreshing water temperatures (35F, 2C) instead, and practice new ways of falling in jibes. Except for my partially frozen brain, I was perfectly warm - and my brain thawed up a bit after I exchanged the thin hood for the big and tight hood (which I still think was originally developed for more devious purposes). Thanks to a Clew-View mounted GoPro HD, I can share some picture of these crashes with you:

Trying to prove that the earth is round.

Walking backwards off the tail

I like the way the water drops look on this one.

At some point, I forgot that I was going for new ways to crash, and thought I was actually trying turn around without falling. That did not work, which then in turn frustrated me. So I decided to let the board try to jibe without me:

Much to my surprise, that seemed to work better than when I stayed on the board. The only problem was that I was still swimming in the water when the board took of on the new reach. But while the board and sail may be able to turn ok without me, their straight line sailing (which happens to be one thing I am good at) sucks. So does the waterstart without me (that's another thing I'm good at, thanks to plenty of practice even when the water is almost freezing), so eventually, I caught up with the gear again, and sailed back in.

Well, I needed that. I am feeling a lot better now, and I'm sure the sea water that's still running out of my nose will stop within an hour or two (just kidding - I waited until the dripping had stopped before turning on my computer!). Next time when it's sunny and warmish, my lovely wife will (knock on wood) be with me again. It's only half the fun without her!

It was nice to see Jerry and a few other windsurfers show up around noon. I suspect a causal connection between them showing up kinda late and the wind dropping shortly thereafter. I can't really proof this, but I think the wind rewards those that show up early. Point Judith had much steadier wind the entire day, and I'm sure the Rhode Island windsurfers showed up bright and early again! Well, next time the wind is westerly, that's where you'll find me.
--
Disclaimer: It is by no means certain that my brain freeze has indeed ended, so (as always) read this at your own risk :-)

2011 review

2012-01-01T13:17:00.004-05:00

124 sessions, 4400 km (2700 miles) sailed - 2011 was a great year. We sailed locally (in Massachusetts and Rhode Island) from January to December, and some of the best sessions were in the colder months - February, March, and November. The warm weather in the fall helped a lot, but finding out how to keep the hands warm when sailing in cold weather was also essential.

Compared to 2010, we did fewer windsurf trips, but we still got to see the windsurf spots in Texas for the first time (Corpus Christi and South Padre Island), and made it to Bonaire and Hatteras. All of these trips were about a week each; but the big trip to Maui in the summer was for more than 6 weeks. Ok, that was not all vacation, we had to work most days; but we managed to go sailing in Kanaha, Sprecks, and Kihei 37 times. The trip convinced us that we want to live closer to the water, so that we can put a windsurf session in the middle of the work day when it's windy. That's not really an option right now - we have to drive for 1 - 2 hours each way to go windsurfing.

So, what have we learned? The list of new tricks is surprisingly short. We both got a few more light wind tricks, including a few 360 variations. The lovely Nina also got pretty good at duck jibes, and started to work on Vulcans. I was a bit lazier, and only improved a few tricks that I had already done at least once before, like 360s, duck jibes, and fall/slam/jump jibes. One day, I worked a bit on Shove Its, but that was mostly because it was so windy that I did not really want to work on anything else.

Perhaps the biggest thing we both learned was to be comfortable in chop and winds above 30 mph. Conditions that I found a bit challenging last year, for example the swell on the river near Fogland in 25 mph winds, now seem like a nice, mostly flat playground. The $375 that I spent on 3 private lessons with Matt Pritchard to get more comfortable in crazy conditions were very well spent! But in addition to qualified instruction, getting comfortable simply required practice - plenty of time on the water in 30+ mph winds to build muscle memory and confidence.

The one over-due thing that I finally accomplished was to break the 30-knot barrier. Under the right conditions, that turned out to be relatively easy, and Nina set a new personal speed best the very same day. I am definitely looking forward to going back to Egg Island in the spring to sail faster boards and fins!

We were traveling most of the summer, but in the fall, we sailed a lot with the other members of the Fogland Speed Surfers team. It was fun to drag Dean out to new places, and get my ass kicked every single time - his faster speeds usually improved our ranking in the GPS Team Challenge. In 2010, the Fogland Speed Surfers ranked 53rd of 59 active teams; in 2011, we ranked 49th of 63. A lot of team members set personal bests in the fall, so I am sure we'll do better again next year. I will keep focusing on the two long distance measures, one hour and total distance. I managed to sail 100 miles in about 6 hours on a marginal day, and I'm curious to see how far I can push things on a longer day with better wind.

So, what's in store for 2012? The big thing will be a move closer to the water. We had considered Cape Hatteras for a while, but a Hurricane wash-out like this fall could be a big problem when we are also trying to run a business there. So the current favorite is Cape Cod, which also offers the advantages of many different sailing spots, including lakes for ice sailing in the winter. With the planned move, the number of windsurf trips this year will probably be lower than last year, and maybe also the number of sessions. But after the move, the nearest beach will be just a 10 minute drive away, with plenty more choices within a 30 minute drive. That should drive the number of sessions back up again! Right now, it looks like 2012 is off to a good start: the forecast for tomorrow looks great, with wind in the mid-20s, sunshine, and reasonable temperatures (45F, 7C). The only thing missing is my lovely wife, who is still in Germany visiting family. But she will be back soon, to start our 2012 windsurfing adventures.

Windsurfing as anti-aging medicine

2011-12-09T06:25:00.003-05:00

"The Time a Person Spends Windsurfing is not Deducted from their Lifespan..."

This is how noshuzbluz signs all posts on the iWindsurf.com discussion forum. I am currently in Germany, and have been spending a lot of time in hospitals and other areas where almost everyone you see is old, and this line is constantly popping up in my head.

There is a stark difference between the older persons I see here, and the windsurfers of similar age that I see on the local beaches or in ABK clinics. The picture on the left is from an ABK clinic earlier this year in Bonaire. Two of the windsurfers in the picture kicked my butt on the water - including Stew, the guy in the white shirt, who in in his seventies. When I assembled a little video from the clinic, he was the only one who had a completed 360 captured on video...

Stew is definitely not an exception - I have met many windsurfers in their 60s and 70s that are much better windsurfers than I am. Many of them play and work harder than I do on the water - I think noshuzbluz is onto something.

I read a little about the effects on exercise on aging, and I have come to the conclusion that noshuzbluz statement is probably an understatement - that the time spent windsurfing actually get added to your life span - probably with a significant multiplier. If you don't believe me and think that this is just a justification to sail a lot, do some reading - maybe start with this article from the Harvard Medical School. Plenty of studies have shown that regular exercise reduces the likelihood of all kinds of diseases, from cardiovascular diseases to osteoporosis, dementia, and cancer. The best exercise regimens include cardio and strength training as well as balance training. If you have ever spent an hour on a windsurf board, you know that windsurfing is just about an ideal mix.

The biggest challenge with any exercise is sticking to it on the long run. Going to a gym is interesting for a little while, but most people stop going regularly after a few months - I have done that many times, with all kinds of different gyms, over the past 20 years. Obviously, windsurfing can be different, and keep you interested for decades. But that's not a given, and I have met plenty of (often former) windsurfers where the stoke has gone away over the years. Below are a few suggestions that may help to keep the stoke alive. They are organized by some of the tips given in the Harvard Medical School article I cited above.

Explore a variety of activities. I love the just going back and forth fast, but it does get boring eventually. Most windsurfers spend years getting learning to plane and jibe confidently in difficult conditions. Learning and struggling is part of what makes windsurfing interesting, and stopping to learn new things once you have mastered the jibe (or perhaps the duck jibe) can be the beginning of the end. There's a lot more to learn - just do an ABK clinic, or take some private lessons at a qualified instructor. If there is none where you sail, take a trip to new places, and experience new venues. Or just get a GPS, and learn how to sail faster and longer. Chances are that you'll be sailing at angles and speeds you never sailed at before soon! If you can find some other local sailors with similar interests, even better! Form an informal little club or a team on the GPS Team Challenge site, and multiply your fun!
Exercise regularly. If you are lucky enough to live at a spot where you have wind and waves all the time, you're probably doing this already. But for the vast majority of us who do not live on a spot like Maui, this probably means that we need to widen our horizons a bit. Perhaps get a sailable SUP and play in small waves when there is not enough wind to plane, or paddle around marshes and re-discover your inner Tom Sawyer. Learn some light wind freestyle, and there will be no more skunked days! It may seem a bit silly at first, but it can be a lot of fun once you get over the initial hump. Some of my best windsurfing days this year were light wind days - and my year included 123 sessions and 6 1/2 weeks on Maui.
Listen to your body. This is perhaps the most important thing as we get older. In your 20s, you can perhaps ignore your pain, because you will recover within a day or two. In your 50s, that's not such a good idea anymore. The two things that helped me the most here are (1) getting great instruction, and (2) long distance windsurfing. Great windsurf teachers like Andy Brandt and Matt Pritchard gave me the necessary technical basis. Going for top one-hour average speeds and maximum distances in a day forced me to recall anything they ever told me, and to listen to small complaints that my body was sending me which I could have easily ignored during shorter sessions. For example, really bending your knees and committing all your weight to the harness are essential to sail a hundred miles a day and get off the water without pain in your knees and hips, and blisters on your hands.
Use good equipment. There is nothing wrong with using old equipment that you know exactly how to sail - but if you have not sailed any new equipment recently, you absolutely should! Some of the new boards and sails that I tested during the last year just blew me away. I would have never believed that it's possible to combine speed, agility, and comfort the way that some of the newer shapes do. When I replaced a 10-year old sail that I though of as perfectly fine a couple of years ago with the equivalent new model from the same manufacturer, I was totally amazed by the improvement in performance. Of course, not every new board or sail is perfect for everyone, so try a few different new things. If you are sailing a newer shape or kind of board for the first time, give it some time - you probably will have to adjust your sailing style a bit, but you may end up with a lot more fun. Again, getting some qualified instruction may be a great idea. How about a week at WorldWinds in Texas, or at a Vela center in the Caribbean?
Have more fun. That's the most important advice, and all the other things above are just ways to get there. Try new things, but don't get too serious about anything. Learning new stuff is great, but don't forget how to enjoy just blasting back and forth from time to time, without "working" on something! I am following the speedsurfing scene most closely now, and many of the greatest speedsurfers are also great wave sailors and/or freestylers. Just do what seems most fun at the moment! The more things you know how to do, the more fun you'll have. The best example is our friend Marty, and excellent freestyler, even though he does not get to spend nearly as much time on the water as I do. But when he makes it to the beach, he is always out there having fun, no matter if it's blowing 35 or 5.

Winterizing a Pro-Tec helmet

2011-12-03T19:55:00.002-05:00

When it gets really windy, I often use a Pro-Tec helmet while windsurfing. It works great most of the time, but as the weather gets colder, the helmet has a number of little problems:

I am talking about the ventilation holes - they give me an ice cream headache when it gets cold. Wearing a hood underneath helps somewhat, but when the temperatures drop towards freezing, the ventilation holes are just a bad idea. And we are getting there now, especially when the wind comes from the north.

I could have simply spent $120 to buy another helmet, but since I have only one head and thus don't need two helmets, I decided to address the problem with a knife and a plastic pool noodle. Plastic pool noodles are an extremely valuable tool for windsurfers: cut of 10 cm pieces and put them in the foot straps so they don't get crushed when stacking boards; cut them in half and put them on the roof rack or trailer as a cheap cushion; or cut out little pieces to fill holes in the helmet during the colder seasons:

Here is the image of the final product:

I may also tape the holes close with some electrical tape, but I don't think its necessary. Now all I need is 35 mph winds to try it out :)

Sorry, waves, but I love slicks

2011-12-01T20:16:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was an interesting day. The forecast called for SW winds in the low 20s, but this time of the year, that often brings winds around 30 mph. We decided to mix things up a bit and go wave sailing at Old Silver Beach. I can count the number of times I have been in waves on my fingers, so I'm not any good at it - but Old Silver Beach is supposed to be easy. Or so we thought...

When we got there, the wind did not look strong at all, and from the parking lot, the water looked quite flat. We rigged 4.5 and 5.7 m wave sails for Nina and me. I also spend quite a bit of time changing the foot straps on my Hawk - putting the front straps in the inside position, and widening the back straps. When we were finally ready to go out, the wind had picked up quite a bit, and so had the waves. The wind also had turned from SW to WSW, and now was coming almost directly onshore.

I decided to leave the Hawk on shore and go out on the 77 l Goya One instead, since that board is just wonderful in chop. When trying to get started in the shore break with onshore winds, I finally understood why Matt Pritchard had called the board a bit too small for me. I can sail the board without problems in flat water and chop, but in in the waves, I had a bit of a hard time to get started. It did not help that there was a bit of a wind shadow near shore - my wind meter read anything from 11 to 20 mph. Several times when I got on the board, the nose would just sink, and with waves coming in, I'd be unable to get it straightened out in time. Well, I eventually made it out, and had a bit of fun. Between adjusting harness lines and checking on Nina, I had a few more opportunities to practice my launches. They did not get easier, since the incoming tide and increasing winds also increased the size of the waves. But at least, the water in Buzzards Bay felt warm (maybe 12 C).

Nina, who had sailed in something like waves maybe twice before, had a much harder time. She tried to take her Angulo custom out, but never made it through the shore break. After 30 minutes of trying, she got caught with the rig between her and the waves, and was rewarded with a big mast smack to the head.

We decided to cut our losses, and drive over to Hyannis for some easier sailing. Once at the Sea Street Beach, Nina was a bit cold and demotivated, and did not want to go out, but I took my Hawk and the re-rigged 5.7 m wave sail and went sailing. On the water, I found myself quite overpowered. The wind had picked up to averages of 32 with gusts of 38, so maybe the 5.7 was a tad big - I think I would have been quite nicely powered on a 4.5.

Well, what can a poor boy do who does not want to rig for the third time in 2 hours? Look for flatter water, of course! So up to the Kennedy Slicks I sailed. On the way, I constantly had Matt Pritchard's voice in my head: "Bend your knees! Put all your weight in the harness! Speed is your friend!" Doing all that made the sail quite manageable, especially after adding a bit more outhaul.

When I reached the harbor, I was a bit disappointed at first. It was close to high tide, and waves were crashing through the holes in the jetty near shore and at the far end. This made the water near shore, which can be ultra-smooth at lower tides, a bit choppy. But the middle section of the jetty is solid, and stood just 3-4 feet above the waterline, creating smooooth water without disturbing the wind. I made me think of the videos and pictures I had seen of West Kirby.

I did a few runs along the jetty, but sailing alone was not so much fun, so I decided to sail back to Sea Street and check on Nina. On the way there, whom did I see sailing up to the Slicks? Yes, Nina! Still on her 4.5, but now on the Goya One 77, she had gotten bored of being cold, and decided that rigging and sailing might just warm her up. So we sailed back up to the Slicks together, and the real fun started.

I still had my entire gear set up for wave sailing, from foot strap positions to the wave sail I was using, but that did not keep me from practicing sling shots right at the wall. Here is a short video from the GPS data from a few of these runs:

The replay is accelerated 10-fold. This time around, I actually did get a feeling for what the Slingshot is supposed to be. I tried a couple of them on most runs out, taking advantage of gusts and where the water was flat (closest to the wall, the "waves" were about 2 cm "high"!). Just from the tracks, it would seem that the last bend in the jetty would have been perfect for going downwind - however, the water was getting a bit rough back there, both from wind-driven swell and from some swell coming in from the end of the jetty.

When everything comes together - a nice gust, perfectly flat water, and good board speed to start with -, doing a Slingshot is a pretty amazing feeling. At least once, I had the feeling of being almost pulled out of the foot straps when pushing the rig forward and going downwind, which then translated into great acceleration (well, at least for my standards and gear). Here are the speed data from 5 seconds (speeds in km per hour):

That sure felt good! The other thing that just feels great is the jibing at the end of a speed run in perfectly flat water. Going into a turn at almost 30 mph is a feeling that I find just absolutely amazing - the board cutting through the water like a hot knife through butter, the sail going completely powerless, and coming out of the turn still fully planing. But while I had some decent jibes, I think the jibing is perhaps one of the weakest points on the Hawk. Over the last year, I have been on a number of boards that just want to keep planing no matter what. These include Dean's Manta, Dani's iSonic, the RRD Firemove and Firestorm, and several other freeride and slalom boards that I sailed at the board test in Hatteras. In contrast to those boards, my Hawk gets quite sensitive at the end of a jibe, and takes small handling errors as an excuse to fall off the plane. I think this is at least partially because it's a lot narrower than most of the other boards, and perhaps also because it's a tad slower (compared to pure slalom boards). But don't get me wrong - I love the board, and I'll just have to improve my jibes a bit more.

In the speed runs, I was gunning for 30 knots, but only got up to about 29.4. The wind was strong enough for more, and the conditions were ideal, but the wave-oriented setup definitely help me back a few knots. The Manic 5.7 was quite wonderful to sail once I got used to it, but it does not have the stability of a Matrix, or the slippery feeling of a cambered race sail. But on the other hand, perhaps it was a better sail for practicing Slingshots, since it does provide a bit more direct feedback. Still, the session made it into my top 5 session for 2 second top speed. Nina did even better - it was her second-fastest session ever, with more than 48 kmh top speed. That's despite being on wave gear - who knows how fast she would have gone on the Missile!

The was one other thing I was practicing during the entire session: to take it easy - have the most fun with the least effort. This might seem a bit strange when sailing overpowered in 30+ mph winds, but it is actually a great idea (someone else put it into my head a few years back). Just assume that it can be easy to sail in those conditions, and that you just have to find out how! Of course, I don't think I could have done it without all the tips I have gotten over the years from Andy and his crew, Matt, Tulpe, and all the other great instructors that have helped me along. With their help, though, I was not tired at all after almost two hours, when we had to stop because it was getting dark. My main incentive to practice the "easy sailing" thing was for long distance sailing. I may never be really fast, since my risk tolerance is quite low; but I absolutely love sailing for hours on end. I have sailed 160 km in about 6 hours, and I am looking forward to longer days and longer sessions. We may skip our annual trip to Bonaire this winter, but we'll be in Hatteras for two weeks next spring - and that is the perfect place to break personal bests for distance sailing. Anyone interested in joining me on the water there next April for 12 hours?

The case for Dry Case armbands

2011-11-26T12:19:00.002-05:00

When using a Genie GT-31 for speedsurfing, you need a waterproof armband. This post explains why I think that a Dry Case armband is much better than the often recommended Aquapac armbands. Let's start with a picture of the Dry Case armband with a GT-31:

The Dry Case bags use a vacuum seal, which has several advantages over Aquapac bags:

Without air in the bag, there is no excess pressure that pushes water into the bag when the bag is submerged.
The vacuum causes the plastic from both sides of the bag to stick together. They remain stuck together even when you open the bag - so if the bag developed a hole, water would not fill the entire bag.

Up until recently, I had always used Aquapac armbands to hold my GT-31 (either a medium or a large bag). However, I always noticed that the insides of the bags where getting wet after just a couple of uses, even if the bags were clean and did not show any cracks or holes. After using bags for a few months, they would often develop cracks which let a lot of water in. Since the GT-31 is waterproof for immersion (but not for high-speed windsurfing crashes), that was not a problem. I just put some clear tape over the crack, and the combination has worked fine for me. Eventually, I had to replace a bag or two, though, when the cracks got to big.

However, our fellow Fogland Speedsurfer Sabah has not been so lucky. After a recent session, he noticed that his entire Aquapac bag had filled up with water, and that the GPS turned off. He could not get it to turn back on even after drying it, and trying to recharge it. I took his GPS apart a few weeks later, and this is what I saw:

You can see a lot of corrosion on top of the battery pack and on different parts of the circuit board - apparently, a lot of salt water made it into the case. A close look at the housing reveals problems at the three top screws that hold the upper and lower part of the housing together: one mount is broken off completely, one partially, and the third on is cracked. Most likely, the GPS housing was damaged either during a bad crash where the arm hit the mast or board, or maybe when the GPS was dropped. That alone would not have been a problem - the GPS was still working fine at the beginning of the session. But together with the tendency of the Aquapac bags to develop leaks, it eventually killed the GPS. I tried to rescue it by rinsing with water, but I was way too late. By now, the corrosion as so bad that some parts of the electronics just fell off.

I think the GPS would still be working if it had been in a Dry Case bag instead. I found the Dry Case bag through luck when I needed a waterproof armband in Hatteras, and the only one I could find was a Dry Case armband at WindNC. I have since used the Dry Case several times to hold an Android phone so I could have GPS Speed Talker tell me my speed while sailing, and it has remained perfectly dry so far (I am sure that an Aquapac case would have let water in by now). The Dry Case has a microphone connector which is not needed for the GT-31, but the connector in the bag is actually useful: if you put it on top of the GPS close to the push buttons, you can prevent accidental pushing the buttons while sailing.

It remains to be seen how long the Dry Case really will remain dry. But as I said, I think it is already doing better than the Aquapac armbands. The plastic material seems sturdier and less likely to develop cracks; and using vacuum to get the air out of the bag and to make the sides of the bag cling together is a great idea. When I am using it with my phone, I'll keep double-bagging the phone in a little clear plastic bag. That has been overkill so far, but why risk a $130 piece of electronics that is not waterproof? I also added the little piece of brightly colored plastic. With the phone, the bag may sink in water, even though the armband itself is floaty. That should not be problem with the GT-31, since the GT-31 is "floatable". The armband on the Dry Case also is sturdier than on the Aquapac cases, but all armbands can slip off, especially when using dry suits or no suit. The brightly colored plastic may just make it easier to find the GPS when it's floating in the water. Of course, it would be even better if Dry Case would come with brightly colored (or at least white) arm bands in the first place...

Windsurfing Point Judith

2011-11-22T21:16:00.001-05:00

Last Sunday, we went windsurfing in the Point Judith Harbor of Refuge for the first time. We had picked the spot because the weather forecast called for very warm winds, which often decouple in Kalmus and Fogland at this time of the year. Point Judith sticks out into the water and is surrounded by water from 3 1/2 sides, so decoupling is much less of a problem (as the wind graphs from warm days from the previous weekend showed).

The launch is at the Salty Brine State Beach, right next to the Block Island ferry. From the suburbs west of Boston, the driving time is about the same as to Kalmus in Hyannis, 75 to 90 minutes. Here are some pictures:

There's a decent sized paved parking lot, and more parking right next to it at George's Restaurant. The beach is sandy and more than a mile long - plenty of space for kiters and windsurfers:

The sailing area is surrounded by jetties, which create a protected triangular area that is about 2 km long:

In addition to the hope for steadier winds, we had been attracted by the jetties, hoping that they would create flat water for speed runs. But when I went sailing, I discovered that the harbor had a nice, long, rolling swell that was just too much fun, so I never bothered sailing up close to the jetties. I did go for a bit of long distance speed, and got some numbers that were pretty good for the conditions (22 knots for the nautical mile and 17.8 knots for 1 hour).

I thought that the place was amazingly easy and fun to sail, and the other advanced sailors all like the spot, too. However, pur newbie Jeff, who only started windsurfing about a year ago and is still working on getting comfortable in the straps, found the conditions not quite to his liking. It did not help that the shore break got the better of him when he came in, and broke his mast. I did not see this happen, but the shore break did not really look bad enough to break masts - I think he had a lemon, and some bad luck. Here are a couple of pictures that show the shore break a bit:

Like Sabah in the picture above, Dani had a lot of fun even though he arrived after the wind had started to go down:

Fred caught a wave on his way in and was smiling ear to ear about it:

The wind died down in the afternoon, and only the guys on the bigger gear were still planing. In the morning when we came, some of the very friendly local sailors had been out on 4.2 - 4.8 m sails, but the wind drop had been in the forecast. We did not get any of the huge ups and downs that Fogland and Kalmus had the same day, so the "no decoupling" definitely worked as expected. On the downside, this means that Pt. Judith won't get thermals in the summer - but then, the somewhat small parking lot would be filled with beach goers, anyway, and I am not even sure if windsurfing even is allowed during the summer season. But for the remaining 9 months of the year, Point Judith is a great spot! At some parts of the harbor, for example near the openings in the jetties, the swell ramped up to chest high, and got pretty steep; it also had a bit of cross chop there, great for jumping, but not nearly as "voodoo"-like as Kalmus can have.

It was great to once again see so many members and friends of the Fogland Speed Surfer team show up, including Fred, Bart, Dani, Sabah, Jeff, Graham, and of course the lovely Nina. The spot definitely has potential for long distance speed, and maybe even for top speed under the right conditions. The water felt quite a bit warmer than on Cape Cod, as can be seen on the sea surface temperature image:

We will definitely be back!

Closer is faster

2011-11-21T18:57:00.010-05:00

One of the great things about being part of a speedsurfing team is that you can examine the tracks of better team members afterwards and learn from them. The first time I went windsurfing with Dean, I learned that I needed to go a lot deeper downwind for top speed. Even now, a year later, I often discover that I did not go nearly as deep downwind as I thought when I look at my tracks in the evening.

Our great little speed session at Egg Island two days ago has provided some more material for learning to sail faster. Both Nina and I improved our previous top speeds by about 3 knots, but there is still a lot of room for further improvement. Here is a comparison of the GPS tracks from our fastest runs (my track has the blue label):

The biggest obvious difference is where we reached our top speed. My top speed was close to the sand bar, where the water was very flat; Nina's top speed was pretty far out in the bay, where the chop got sizable. The main reason why she stayed away from the sand bar was that she was afraid of hitting ground at shallow spots. I had walked the entire length of the sand bar at the start of the session, so I was comfortable getting closer to it, but I still stayed about 40 meters away from it. In most of my runs, I felt that the chop was limiting my speed - as soon as I approached top speed, the chop got so high that I throttled back to avoid crashes. I find it pretty amazing that Nina hit her top speed that far out. Yes, she was on a 49 cm narrow F2 Missile that handles the chop (even) better than my 58 cm wide Fanatic Hawk, but still. As for the top speed difference, keep in mind that Nina almost never goes for speed; that she weighs next-to-nothing, at least compared to me; and that she was using a 4.5 m wave sail instead of the cambered larger race and speed sails that Dean and I were using.

Now let's compare my runs with Dean's. Dean has been playing the speed surfing game a while longer, and he got a lot closer to the sand bar. Here is a comparison of my fastest run to his second-fastest run of the day:

He was about 1.6 mph faster than I was by staying closer to the sand bar. He reached his top speed right at the tip of the sand bar, where the water was flattest. He then kept close to his top speed for several hundred meters into the bay, which speaks for his skills and the chop-handling ability of his Tabou Manta board.

In my four fastest run, the top speeds were very close to each other (57.24 - 58.23 kmh). In contrast, Dean's fastest run was quite a bit faster (62.98 kmh) than his second-fastest run (60.64 kmh). Here is the comparison of our fastest tracks:

Dean was much closer to the sand bar for the entire run, and the smoother water enabled him to accelerate much faster and to reach a higher top speed. It is quite amazing what a difference 100 feet can make! It is quite unlikely that I would have beaten his speed even if I had sailed so close to shore, but I probably would have picked up another knot or two.

For Nina and myself, one goal for the day had been to practice the Slingshot. We definitely had this in mind while sailing, and played around with it somewhat. I don't think that I did one that was good, mostly because the chop on the approach to the sand bar made it seem advisable to start going a bit downwind earlier for more control. Looking at the tracks now, I think that might have been a mistake: holding a steeper angle longer to get closer to the sand bar before bearing off probably would have been faster. But I might need a few more days of practice before I approach a sand bar at 25 knots with the plan to Slingshot myself downwind just a few seconds before hitting it at full speed!
--
One thing worth mentioning is that I was using the GPS Speed Talker application the entire time that day. It sure was nice to here it telling me 30, 31, 32 knots! The top speed on the Android phone was 0.5 knots higher than from the GT-31, but overall, I think it was pretty accurate, and definitely helpful.

I had planned to use Nina's bluetooth-enabled BGT-31 with the Speed Talker app, but when I tried to set this up, I discovered that updating the firmware on the BGT-31 apparently has removed all bluetooth options from the settings - the menu items are simply missing! I know that they were there initially, because I tried to hook the BGT-31 up to my Mac when we got it. I tried re-installing the older firmware version from the Locosys web site, which worked - but it did not restore the bluetooth menu items! So if you have a BGT-31, think twice before "updating" the firmware version!

The Egg Island Slingshot adventure

2011-11-19T20:34:00.002-05:00

My lovely wife had recently posted a link to a description of the "Slingshot" manouvre in the Windsurfer International Magazine, and we were dying to try it out today. After hearing about how flat the water at Egg Island in Lewis Bay can be, we decided to imitate the freestylers who often sail to there from Kalmus. We were on the water just before low tide, where the chops is small and regular, so Nina decided to sail the F2 Missile. She had tried it only once before, with limited success, but her sailing has improved a lot since then, and she has been on small (72 and 77 l) boards quite often. So this time, she did just great.

The water behind the sand bar at Egg Island was beautifully flat. The wind was a tad more gusty, especially at the approach to the sand bar, but nevertheless, these were almost ideal speed conditions, with wind averages around 30 knots. Nina quickly broke her old personal bests, reaching almost 50 kmh. Dean got his best speed outside of Hatteras, with more than 34 knots. Your's truly sailed while listening to the GPS Speed Talker, and it quite often spoke of 30 and 31 knots. At the end of the day, my 2 sec top speed was 31.4 knots (58 kmh), and I even broke the 30 knot barrier in the 5 x 10 second average. Being on my 5.8 KA Koncept certainly helped - but Egg Island at low tide sure is a great speed spot. Now why again did I never sail there before in SW winds?

Here are my GPS tracks for the day:

It was nice to see Nina work on speed for once, and she found sailing the Missile "very interesting" (in a good way). After I short break, I borrowed the 4.5 m wave sail that she had sailed all day for some bump and jump fun. Graham and Martin were still out, and they both worked on loops. I saw some very nice tries, and at the end of the day, Graham actually made it around and water started out of a loop attempt - congrats! The pain on the back will eventually go away :)

Why wind forecasts drop

2011-11-17T18:54:00.004-05:00

In recent weeks, the wind forecasts on iWindsurf.com have often shown this annoying pattern:

the wind predictions 5 or 6 days out look great, and remain great for a few days
about 2 days before, the forecast suddenly drops and looks a lot less impressive

For example, the forecast on Monday may predict 30 mph winds for the weekend. This stays more or less the same until Wednesday - but on Thursday, the forecast drops to the low 20s. This happened a lot in the last few weeks. Almost every time when we went sailing, though, the actual wind was much stronger than the most recent forecast, and closer to the stronger forecast from a few days before.

What is going on? Well, let's have a look at the iWindsurf forecast tables for Kalmus from this morning. The default tables show the "Quick Look":

Until yesterday, the forecast for Saturday called for wind in the upper 20s to low 30s; now, it shows mostly low 20s. Sunday is still looking a lot better in the table above, but dropped a few miles later during the day.

A look at the different computer models sheds some light on what's happening. Here are the tables from the GFS model:

The tables from the NAM model don't look quite as good:

Both are run by NOAA. The NAM model has a finer geographical resolution (12 km vs. 35 km for GFS), but gives predictions only for 84 hours, compared to 7 days for the GFS model. The "Quick Look" table on iWindsurf will use the NAM model if it has data for the entire day, and the GFS model otherwise. So in the example above, it shows NAM data for Saturday, and GFS data for Sunday.

This time of the year, it seems that the GFS model always predicts stronger winds than the NAM model, at least for the Cape Cod area. So when the iWindsurf "Quick Look" tables switch from the GFS model to the NAM model, it seems that the wind forecast has suddenly dropped. In reality, however, the wind prediction from the GFS model may not have changed all all, or even gone up!

I do not know why the GFS model seems to make better wind predictions than the NAM model at this time of the year, but I'm glad it does. As I am writing this, the latest NAM model runs predict 23-25 mph for Saturday (that's 5 Beaufort for our European readers), while the GFS predicts 27-29 mph (6 Beaufort). My bet is that we will see 30+ mph again!

So, if you are making plans for windsurfing on Cape Cod for the weekend, check the GFS tables! Just keep in mind that when it gets too warm, decoupling at onshore beaches may cause winds to be a lot lower than predicted. That will hopefully not be an issue on Saturday, but it could be a problem in Kalmus on Sunday.

Four funtastic days

2011-11-15T21:24:00.000-05:00

We just had four fantastic days of sailing - here are the wind graphs:

We sailed three different spots to catch the best wind each day; the only spot we sailed twice, Skaket, had very different conditions on the two days we sailed. Here are the three spots on a map:

It's easy to see why we chose Skaket for the WNW wind on 11-11, Kalmus for SW on 11-12, and Fogland for SSW on 11-13: they are the spots with the best fetch for the given wind direction. In addition, Kalmus typically has thermals that increase the wind in SW, and Fogland can have thermals and channeling in SSW. Why we picked Skaket on 11-14 is explained below.

Day 1: Skaket, WNW, 30-40 mph
We had good memories of gentle waves at Skaket in NW winds, and when we arrived about 90 minutes after high tide, the waves looked perfectly manageable for us flatwater sailors, despite the strong winds that sandblasted us and made rigging a bit more difficult. We rigged the smallest sails we typically use (3.7 for Nina, 4.5 for me), and used the smallest boards: the Angulo custom 72 for Nina, and the Goya One 77 for me. We were soon joined by Ron, who lives just a few minutes away. By the time we hit the water, the waves had gone down a bit, and were just perfect for wave newbies like us. Despite the wind being almost straight onshore, getting out was easy. I absolutely loved how flat the water was between the waves! After mostly sailing bigger boards in the last couple of months, it took me a few attempts before my jibes were dry - but one of the nice features at Skaket in WNW winds and medium water levels is that you can go for mile-long runs parallel to the shore, and still touch ground when you fall in. The boom cam video below shows how flat the water was between the waves:

We had to stop after 90 minutes because it was getting quite shallow, but it was almost getting dark, anyway. We stayed overnight in Hyannis, where we met up with Jeff, Graham, and Manish. They had sailed in Chapin, and reported gusty conditions with some voodoo chop - it seems we had picked the better spot.

Day 2: Kalmus and Kennedy Slicks, 35-40 mph
The forecast for the day called for SW wind in the low to mid 20s, but sun and swarmer temperatures. Based on recent weather patterns, I expected a significant thermal boost, and was not disappointed. We hit the water at 11:30 am, and I did a few runs with my Skate 110 and a 5.5 m sail, but that combo quickly got to big, and it was time to go down to 4.5 and 95 l. As we were getting close to high tide and wind averages picked up to 35 mph, the famous Kalmus voodoo chop came. Here's a picture of young Master Graham having fun:

In the steep waves with lots of cross chop, jibing and even controlling the Hawk 95 became a challenge, so I decided to cruise upwind a mile to the Kennedy Slicks, where Dean was going for speed runs. By now, it was getting a bit crowded on the water, anyway, and I really wanted to be on the nice, flat water next in the Hyannis Port harbor.

Getting upwind was easy enough, since I had plenty of power. On my last run out towards the jetty, I heard a snapping noise, and my harness lines suddenly seemed a bit longer. When I jibed and tried to hook back in, I noticed that one side of my harness hook had broken off! I hooked in, anyway, but it took only about 10 seconds for the other half to snap, too. Sailing without the harness is something I just don't do - lazy me usually hooks in first thing, and accelerates later. So I chickened a bit and sailed back to shore without even getting into the foot straps - stupid idea, that just resulted in things taking 3 times as long, with a lot more pressure in the sail. When I finally made it to the shore, my lower arms were burning.

Dean did not have a second spreader bar, but he was nice enough to offer me to take turns with his harness. Fortunately, that was not necessary, since a local windsurfer who was just taking pictures offered me a ride to Kalmus to pick up the spreader bar I had bought two days before, but foolishly not used. Thanks so much for the ride and the ride back (and sorry that I forgot your name)!

So I finally made it out onto the "Kennedy Slicks" right next to the jetty in the Hyannis Port harbor - and slick they were! About 100 feet from the jetty, the chop was about 2 inches high - chitter-chatter chop, my favorite kind. What's better than waterstarting in the foot straps, going up to 25 knots in a few seconds, going downwind and accelerating to almost 30 knots, and then entering a jibe at full speed on perfectly flat water? Carving a nice, wide arc at 50 kmh is something to dream about!

Once at the Slicks, I wished that I had the 5.5 non-cambered race sail that was still lying in Kalmus, rather than the 4.5 m wave sail. Dean was on a 6.3 m cambered race sail and slalom board, and hit almost 33 knots (61 kmh). I barely managed to break 30 knots, and that only for one second. Still - this was the first time I hit 30 knots, so it counts! I also managed to make my second-best jibe ever, with a minimum speed of 12 knots - not bad for a mid November day:)

Dean let me use his equipment for one run, and that was just wicked scary. By then, I was getting tired, and I neither wanted to get catapulted at full speed, nor did I want to break his gear, so I sailed as slow as seemed possible. But there's only so much you can slow a slalom board and sail down in 35-40 mph winds, and my speed was still about 28 knots. With a bit more practice on this gear and fresher forearms, 10-second averages above 30 knots should have been no problem. Next time...

Day 3: Fogland, SSW, 20-35 mph
Our friend Dani made the call to go to Fogland, and that turned out to be the right call - Fogland was windier than Kalmus (probably because of the more southerly wind direction and channeling in the Sakonnet river). Again, it was sunny, and warmer still than the day before - almost 60 F (15 C). Quite a few windsurfers showed up, including many team members from the Fogland Speed Surfers - Dani and Sabah, Dean, Jeff and Graham, the two Freds, and a few others. Nina and Graham were working on freestyle the entire day. Nina's duck jibes are getting good, she is now making most of them dry, and she also work on Vulcan pops and body drags. I'm not sure about all the things that Graham worked on, but I saw some nice Willy Skipper tries, and here's one that was caught on camera:

I spend an unfortunate amount of time fiddling with my equipment. My first runs were with a 7.9 m North S-Type sail from Dani and my 118 l slalom board, but just then, the wind was picking up, with gusts of 35 mph. So I switched to my trusted old Hawk 95 and my Matrix 7.0 sail, which worked beautifully the rest of the day (after putting the second back foot strap on again that I had taken off for all the recent play in choppier waters). Even though the winds were a bit gusty, everyone was having fun, and the Fogland Speed Surfers set 5 new personal bests - Fred and Sabah for the nautical mile, Dean and I for 1 hour, and Dean also for alpha. Nice to see so many friendly and happy faces on the water!

Day 4: Skaket, SW, 25-35 mph
The wind forecast for the day was calling for SW in the low- to mid twenties again. We had not planned to go sailing, but when I saw perfect meter readings of 24-33 mph in Kalmus, we just had to go. Dean joined us, but just before we got to Kalmus, the meter readings had dropped to mid teens - bummer! By now, the air had gotten too warm - the warm winds did not reach the surface near shore anymore. It was plenty windy inland, and about 10 miles out at sea, but not on the south-facing Cape Cod beaches.

When decoupling like this is an issue, the beaches on the north shore of Cape Cod often do better, since the land warms up more, and the wind gets all the way down to the ground and then does not lift quickly enough when the offshore breezes hit the cold water. Indeed, the Skaket sensors were still showing averages near 30, so we drove half an hour to Orleans.

At the shore there, it did not look very windy - a few white caps on the water, but in Kalmus, this amount of whitecaps would have indicated maybe 20 mph winds. So Dean and I rigged 7 meter sails again and went out, while Nina was still rigging her 4.5. What a nice lesson in not trusting your eyes in unfamiliar conditions! As soon as we left the shore, the wind almost blew us off the water, and we were back in within 5 minutes to rig down. I sailed the next 90 minutes on my 5.5, at first fully powered, and still planing 90% of the time when the wind dropped towards the end of the session.

It was very interesting to see how different the ocean surface was in the side-shore winds near high tide. Instead of the regular waves with flat water in between that we had had a few days before in onshore winds, we now had high chop with some cross-chop. It was enough to make things interesting, and for Nina to have a lot of fun working on her wave riding skills; but it was not nearly as bad as the voodoo chop in Kalmus in similar conditions. I had no problems jibing my Hawk 95, and to my surprise, actually made most out my outside jibes dry. I always thought that my outside jibes were worse because of the chop, but maybe it's more of a "which hand is in front" thing - the chop was coming from the opposite direction compared to almost all other places we sail. The chop also had a slight angle to the wind - going out meant hitting the chop straight-on, while sailing back in allowed for some nice speed runs more parallel to the chop. Dean actually managed to hit 30 knots, and both of us got nautical mile averages that were close to the ones from the day before. Skaket definitely has some speed potential, at least for long distance!
--
So we sailed 4 days in a row in 20-40 mph winds, in a variety of different spots and different conditions. Even the same spots offered very different conditions: Kalmus a choice of voodoo chop right in front, or flat water at Egg Island or the Kennedy Slicks; Fogland perfectly flat water in the bay, and nice rolling swell in the river; and Skaket very different waves and chop in different wind directions. All this with lots of sun, and temperatures that ranged from fine to "too hot for 5-4 semi dry" on day 4. IMHO as a non-wavesailor, the Cape Cod - Rhode Island areas definitely has a big advantage over Maui when it comes to variety of sailing conditions. Pick your spot right, and mix it up, and the fun will be endless!

Fortunately, the forecast for the next few days shows very little wind - but it looks like it will pick up again on Saturday, for another windy and warm weekend. November rocks!

Summer winds in November

2011-11-08T19:18:00.002-05:00

In the summer, Cape Cod is often the windiest place on the US East Coast, with southwest winds that are boosted by thermals. This summer was an exception, with very few windy days. But it looks like the summer winds are finally coming - in November! Here is a wind graph for Kalmus from the last two days:

Sunday was nice enough, with averages near 20 mph for about 5 hours. Monday was even better, with averages above 20 the entire day, and 3 hours with winds between 25 and 30 mph. Both days, the actual averages were 5-10 mph higher than the forecast. Looks like we got a nice thermal boost, despite the short days! All that sun made the temperatures of around 50 degrees F (10 C) for both air and water quite tolerable. Sunday's low forecast and moderate winds drew only about 6 windsurfers to Kalmus; Monday better forecast and higher winds attracted a several more, including Martin, Drew, Bruce, and a few others.

I think the crowds will get even bigger next weekend, which starts on Friday with Veteran's Day. The weather has been so warm that the water temperatures are going up a bit, and the wind forecast looks great:

The predicted winds of 25-30 mph would be lovely enough - but with a 5 mph thermal boost like earlier this week, we may see low 30s. Even Sunday, which looks a tad weak in the forecast, could end up being very nice with a bit of thermal boost.

Friday is still 3 days away, and wind forecasts this time of the year have the annoying tendency to look good a few days away, only to go down the closer we get. However, this seemed to be more the case for NW winds, and less so for SW winds, so I'll remain optimistic. Hope to see you all on the water this weekend!

GPS Accuracy: GT-31 vs. Android Phone

2011-11-07T20:32:00.000-05:00

I finally managed to get some recorded GPS tracks from my Android phone for comparison with the GT-31 data from the same run. Just listening to the GPS Speed Talker app, I knew there were some spikes in the GPS data from the phone. Here is an example:

According to the GPS data from the Android phone, I hit 30 knots here. I wish! Within one second, the speed jumped from 24 to 29 knots, and stayed around 30 knots for 3 seconds. That's using the Doppler data - according to the GPS position data from the phone, I actually hit 40 knots!

The tracks show that the GPS points from the phone are not accurate here. I was going straight - I did not suddenly go upwind and accelerate 5 knots within one second. The jibe in the lower right corner also shows that the GT-31 is much more accurate: the blue curve from the GT-31 shows a nice curve; in contrast, the red curve from the phone GPS wiggles all over the place.

I have seen spikes in GT-31 data, too, but they tend to be rare (as long as you look at the Doppler results), and are usually very easy to identify. Most of the time, it's just a single value that's wrong, which gives a very sharp peak. Also, GT-31 spikes tend to be linked to crashes (although that's not always the case). Either way, they are easy to see and remove.

The 4-second, 5-knot spike shown above it the worst in the 2-hour recording, but there are a number of other spikes, too. Many of the other spikes affect only one point, which seems to be off by 1-2 knots (an example is in the track before the jibe). More than 98% of the time, the speed values from the GT-31 and the phone are very close.

So using an Android phone with the GPS Speed Talker app can be helpful, although one has to take the announced speeds with a bit of skepticism. Perhaps other phones are more accurate, although the only thing I have seen was a description that some other phones have less accurate GPS units. Posting results from Android phones to sites like GPS-speedsurfing.com or the GPS Team Challenge is, at best, questionable. The standard filters in GPS action replay did NOT remove the spike above, and my 2-second speed for the day would have been 4 knots to high. There are obviously good reasons why these sites suggest to use GT-31 units.

If you want to hear how fast you are going while sailing with the highest possible accuracy, you can always use a bluetooth-enabled GT-31 (a BGT-31), and have the GPS Speed Talker app use the BGT-31 data for the announcements.

Did Andy jinx me?

2011-11-06T21:31:00.003-05:00

Some of my fellow windsurfers see me as a freestyler. I can't totally blame them, since I have taken 10 ABK Clinics in the past 3 1/2 years, and I actually work on freestyle thingies during the clinics. In my heard, though, I and a BAFer (that "Back-And-Force" sailor for the non-windsurfers). Ok, I put on a GPS and call myself speedsurfer, but that seems to be just a ruse, considering that I have not even broken 30 knots yet.

The one thing in my windsurf quiver that's not compatible with freestyle is my 8.5 m V8 sail. With its 2 cambers and huge mast and boom, it's about 3 x as heavy as a nice freestyle rig. I love this rig, but this year, it has given me a really hard time - I am sure that Andy Brandt has put in a jinx to get me to stop using it.

Things started in April, when I hit a fishing line at full speed, and put a big hole into the sail (check the video on YouTube). Fortunately, Gerda from WindFixes was able to fix this, and the sail was as good as new again. But then, the boom snapped during a late summer session. Ok, it was a few years old, and I always wanted to try the Aeron V-grip boom, so not all was bad.

The final part of my big rig broke last week, when the mast snapped while sailing. I knew I had downhauled it a bit much, the cambers really did not want to rotate - but I was still about 5 cm below specs. Well, the mast was pretty old, too, and it has gotten a lot of use over the years. Still, it made me wonder if I'd been jinxed by one of the freestylers - maybe Andy Brandt himself :)

But within a day of posting about my misfortune on Facebook, two of my windsurfer friends offered me a replacement mast for free. Do you need any more proof that windsurfing makes people nicer? I got to sail my 8.5 today using a nearly new mast with a $559 list price that Dani lent me - thanks, Dani! It was quite a perfect day, too - the 8.5 got a bit big at times until I had sailed up to the flat water at the Kennedy Slicks. Lots of sun, and the air and water was not too cold: Sabah and Nina sailed without gloves and hood today, and were perfectly fine. Dani was in his new dry suit, which kept him warm and smiling from ear to ear for the entire afternoon. Great day! And the forecast for tomorrow is even better! Maybe it's a good thing that my drysuit does not deserve its name anymore - all my clothes were soaked today when I got of the water. Since I had to change out of everything, anyway, I'll probably use my 5-4 semidry wetsuit the next few times I go out. I think the semidry lets less water in than the "dry suit"! I'll have to check this baby for obvious problems soon.

A Google Earth overlay of my tracks from today can be seen here. Once again, looking at the tracks brought some big surprises - I would have sworn that my angles at the upwind runs to the Kennedy Slicks, and during my speed runs at the wall, were much steeper.

I also used the GPS Speed Talker app again today. It worked really well, except that the stupid Android phone started playing music all the time. I think it has a "music" button that got pressed accidentally by the bag all the time. Also, the phone GPS is definitely more prone to spikes than the GT-31: at one point, my speed jumped from 29 mph to 35 mph according to the phone, and stayed around 34 mph for a few seconds. I knew this was an artifact while sailing, though - I may have sped up by one mile, but definitely not by 5 mph. The GT-31 tracks don't show the spike at all. Nevertheless, I found hearing the speed all the time quite useful. The new waterproof headphones I ordered for $16 worked much better than the ones I used before, too - no pain in the ears at all, and they stayed in place for a couple of hours, despite a few crashes and near-acrobatic jibe and tack saves. Now I just have to find the stupid music button on the phone, and figure out how to disable it!

GPS Speed Talker

2011-10-30T15:40:00.000-04:00

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that I like to know how fast I'm going when I am windsurfing. So I was quite intrigued when someone mentioned the idea of using a smartphone to not only measure your speed, but announce it to you while sailing. My biggest concern was that the "waterproof" bags I had been using for my GPS unit all started to leak after a few sessions. That's no problem with the GT-31 device I am using, since it is sufficiently waterproof to tolerate a bit of water in a bag (but not a high speed crash while windsurfing). But with an iPhone or android phone, the same amount of water would have ruined a pretty expensive piece of equipment.

Still, the idea stayed in my head. The fact that the windsurfer who mentioned, Roo, it had helped develop the "standard" GPS unit (the GT-31), helped keeping it there - as did the fact that Roo managed to get an average speed rating of 40.2 knots in the Gorge, and is currently listed as the 3rd fastest windsurfer in the US on gps-speedsurfing.com. I actually got a little "Speed Talker" app for my iPhone that announces GPS speeds - but when I tested it while driving around, I noticed a 5-10 second delay between speed changes and the announcement of the new speed by the app. It seems like the app uses too much dampening to eliminate spikes in the GPS data. After that, I gave up on the idea for the time being.

But two weeks ago in Hatteras, I needed to buy a new waterproof armband for an extra GPS that I had brought along. I got lucky at Wind-NC, where Andy had a DryCase waterproof armband for $40, about the same cost as the the AquaPac armband I had been using. Here's an image:

Well, this bag had a headphone connector! I also liked the idea that it is vacuum sealed. This allows you to see if a bag has a leak before you hit the water. But perhaps more importantly, the vacuum creates a static cling between the plastic around the phone, and the phone and the plastic. When you open the bag after vacuum sealing it, you actually have to pry the plastic apart. I believe that this is a much better solution than regular waterproof bags that keep air on the inside: if you immerse a bag with air into water, the outside pressure will be higher than the pressure in the bag, pushing water into the bag through any little hole there may be. I think that the water intrusion in a DryCase bag will be a lot less even when the bag has a hole.

So for a GPS-loving windsurfing geek, the rest of the story is pretty predictable. I used the bag once or twice with my iPhone (which I had wrapped into a ziplock bag for extra safety). It worked, but I found the delay between actual speed changes and the announcements too irritating. Imaging having just fallen into the water, and the Speed Talker app tells you that you are still going at 20 knots!

So I did a bit of research for alternative apps, and discovered GPS Speed Talker. The great thing about this app is that it was developed by a speed surfer for GPS speed surfing. However, it is only available for android phones. But then, if you are really concerned about using an "officially approved" GPS unit, the app can actually tell you the speed that a GT-31 unit with bluetooth (a BGT-31) measures!

The next stop was to the local Best Buy. In the "No Contract" section, they had Android phones with GPS starting at $89.99. I opted for an LG Optimus V for $129.99 because the provider (Virgin Mobile) offered a cheaper plan ($35/months for including web, messaging, and 300 minutes talk time). I don't have plans to activate the phone right away, but I might just do so in the future (and save about $30 per month compared to my current iPhone plan). Note that the phone is about $20 cheaper than a GT-31!

I tried the setup yesterday in a cold and rainy Nor'easter. Before going out, I had tied a piece of bright foam to the arm band - I have had arm band come off while sailing before, and the bag without any air in it would sink (or at least it did sink when I tried it in the kitchen sink). It worked quite well at first. But later, the wind picked up, and I had a number of falls, sometimes loosing the ear buds. It got pretty loud, too, between the wind, the small waves hitting the board, and the rain. After a while, I did not hear the announcements anymore, perhaps because some water had gotten into the earbuds. A bit later during a swim or waterstart, my arm caught the wire, and pulled the earbuds out of my ear, and the connector out of the housing. I just stuffed the ear phones into my neoprene hood, sailed to shore, and then put them into my dry suit. The ear buds I had used where also from DryCase ("DryBUDS", $29.99), because that't what Wind-NC had in store. They come with 3 different sizes of ear buds; one of these fit well enough on land, but eventually came out. I think I'll have to try different kinds of waterproof headphones - there are many available on amazon.com, starting at $15, and the reviews from swimmers seem helpful.

When I got home, I wanted to compare the tracks from the GPS Speed Talker app with the tracks from the GT-31. However, I discovered that I had forgotten to press the "Start logging" button in the application, so there was nothing to be exported. I guess I am just to used to the GT-31, which automatically starts logging when you turn it on.

So yesterday's test of the GPS Speed Talker / android phone setup was only a mixed success. The conditions where at first too gusty, and then changed too quickly to survival-mode sailing, to allow me to try what I wanted to do: see how small changes in stance, angle, etc. would affect speed, with instant feedback. How crazy did it get yesterday? Well, let's see how the various members of the Fogland Speed Surfers team fared:

Nina went out on a 77 l board with a 4.5. At first underpowered in lulls and overpowered in gusts, then mostly overpowered. Had the smarts to stop before things got out of hand. Never made it all the way to the far shore where the water was flattest, so she did not get any good top speeds.
Dani had the bad luck of trying my 5.0 GPS sail, which I had rigged on a mast that just did not work for the sail. The sail was way too twitchy. Without a dry suit, Dani was quickly too cold and overpowered and stopped sailing.
I made it to the other shore and did some speed runs in the flat water there. However, it was quite gusty close to shore, and the wind direction was a bit wrong - as the tide went out, the wind was partially blowing against the current, so it was not flat enough. When sailing away from shore, the swell/chop got bigger very quickly, so downwind runs were not really an option, either. My top speed was about 28 knots, which I found quite disappointing for the conditions. My nautical mile average of 24.17 knots was ok, though (my second-best ever). I later did a few runs on Dani's iSonic 86 with the GPS 5.0 sail, but with the wrong mast, it was harder to sail than the GPS 6.6, and I got nowhere close to getting near top speed on the board.
Dean is the fastest sailor in our little group, and often hits 35 knots if the conditions are right. He started late using his 6.7 m sail, but stayed out until dusk. He did not find any flat water for downwind runs, and was way overpowered towards the end, with half-frozen fingers since he had ditched his gloves early on. He did not reach any speeds that he found worthwhile posting.
Nikita is the second-fastest surfer in our group, and by far the best freestyler. He came even later, and rigged a beautiful 5.5 m GPS sail. Seeing his sail rigged made it very clear how badly the mast worked for my 5.0! Nikita is about 20% lighter than Dean and I are, so he was overpowered on the 5.5. He used gloves, which however killed his forearms in no time. He also did not reach speeds he found worthwhile posting.
Graham was the one windsurfer from our group that always seemed fully in control on water. He was out on 4.4 at first, and later switched down to 4.0. He looked quite fast, but he was working on freestyle, and was not wearing a GPS.

Recently, we got what we wished for - we wanted lots of wind, and got so much that even the best windsurfers in our groups were a bit overwhelmed. So maybe we have to formulate our wishes a bit more clearly: wind in the upper 20s, gusting into mid-30s, from NE or SW, without rain and with air temperatures above 50. Please?

Warm hands

2011-10-29T21:53:00.002-04:00

We went windsurfing in a Nor'easter today - the start of the storm that will dump up to a foot of snow onto parts of Massachusetts. With predicted northeast winds, the spot was Duxbury. Temperatures were around 45F (7C), and as soon as we hit the water, the rain started. Over the next two hours, winds increased from the low 20s to mid 30s, with gusts in the 40s (mph).

For Nina, who really hates cold weather, it was the first cold session after the nice, warm winds in Hatteras. Still, she was nice and warm. So was I, but I had another cold windsurf session just a couple of days ago. Today, we were joined by quite a number of windsurfers: Dani, Graham (who has gotten a lot better over the summer), Dean, Nikita, and a few others. At least two of our friends today had problems with cold hands, which cut the session short, reduced the fun, limited speed, and/or let to bad crashes. They both did not sail with gloves (or ditched them after one run) because the gloves they have just did not work for them.

To me, this was quite frustrating, since I hate it if someone has no fun, or even stops sailing, because of cold hands. There are solutions to this problem! Nina and I have tried about 10 pairs of different windsurfing gloves and mittens in the past 2 years - and most of them did not work well. However, we found a few things that work well for both of us, even though we have different preferences, very different hand sizes, and differences in how sensitive we are to cold fingers.

There are two issues with most windsurfing gloves and mittens that cause problems:

Bending the fingers also requires bending some material and therefore more force. This is most pronounced in thicker neoprene gloves.
Loss of tactile sensation causes windsurfers to grip the boom harder. Gloves or mittens that do not fit well or slip on the fingers can make this problem worse.

Both problem cause sore forearms and reduced confidence when sailing. But for fall days like today, when the air and water temperatures are still quite a bit above freezing, the solution is easy:

get rid of the material between your fingers and the boom!

Solution 1: buy a pair of open-palm mittens. Open-palm mitts are available from several different manufacturers, and your local store should have some to try on. That's what Nina used for the first 30 minutes today. After that, her hands were warm enough to keep sailing without gloves or mittens.

My fingers are more cold-sensitive, but I still like to use open-palm mitts when it starts to get cold. One nice thing about them is that you can easily slip your fingertips out for rigging, or when you hands have gotten warm after sailing for a few minutes. I did not use them today, though, because they probably would not have been warm enough for me.

Solution 2: Cut out the material on the inside of neoprene gloves. Start with a pair of gloves that fit well, for example Glacier gloves (available for about $20 at L.L. Bean and many windsurf stores). Use scissors to cut out the material on the inside of the fingers. You'll notice right away that bending the fingers gets a lot easier. You can also cut out the material over the palm, if that's more comfortably to you (Nina does, I don't).

I find that the cut-out gloves are significantly warmer than the open-palm mitts, even if you start with a pair of gloves that are relatively thin. It's also easy enough to take the finger tips out for rigging etc.

Either of the two solutions shown above can keep your fingers nice and warm until the temperatures get closer to the freezing point. When you use them and you feel your fingers getting cold, make sure to take a quick break soon and shake your arms downward to make the blood go back into your fingers. If you wait too long, warming the fingers up again will really hurt! Another thing that helps is letting go with one hand while sailing, and hanging the arm down - this also will increase the blood flow in your fingers.

As air and water temperatures continue to drop, the two solutions I described above will eventually get too cold, and something warmer is needed. For some windsurfers (including Nina), pre-bent windsurfing mittens with a thin inner layer work well. I personally do not like them, and prefer two other solutions, which both add a layer to keep the water away from the skin:

Wearing thin kitchen gloves inside open-palm mitts.
Using nylon mitten shells on top of neoprene gloves with the inside of the fingers cut out.

Here's a picture of the mitten shells I use, which I made by simply removing the stuffing from mittens, and glueing the seams to add some waterproofing:

Using nylon mitt shells (or neoprene mittens) also lets you use re-usable hand warmers to keep your finders warm and toasty.

Well, if you're thinking about stopping to windsurf soon because of cold fingers or sore forearms, I hope you try some of the things described above first!

Staying warm and rigging right

2011-10-27T19:42:00.000-04:00

Well, fall definitely has arrived. We sailed twice this week, Tuesday in Wellfleet and today in Duxbury (GPS tracks above). Wellfleet had typical NW winds: gusty and strong at first, then dying down even though the forecast had predicted the wind would stay all day. Air temperatures were around 60F (15 C), the water a bit warmer, and it was sunny - not a bad day, and nice being able to plane on a 5.3 m sail for a while.

Today's call was Duxbury: NE winds forecast in the low 20s, but arriving in the mid-20s early in the morning. The weather was quite different: air temperatures near 50F (10 C), and water temperatures that seemed to be almost as low. Instead of sun, we got rain - mostly light, but every now and then, it rained hard enough that I had to close the windward eye while sailing. Fortunately, watching out for other sailors was not required: Dani and I had the entire Duxbury bay to ourselves, and Dani had to stop after 20 minutes. He had over-estimated the water temperature and went out with thin summer boots, no gloves, and no hood. After a couple of runs, he had problems getting into the foot straps because he had lost all feeling in his toes. When I took a break almost an hour later, he was sitting in his van and still shivering, even though he had the heat on full blast, and had put on his 5 mm boots to warm his feet.

Dani is a pretty smart guy with lots of experience windsurfing in cold weather - so what made him go out today without the right protection from cold? Well, he sailed last Saturday in West Dennis, just 30 miles or so from Duxbury. There, he had used the summer boots and a thinner (3/2) wet suit, and was perfectly comfortable. The water in Cape Cod bay tends to be a bit colder than in West Dennis, but I had used a wet suit with short arms myself on Tuesday. It seems that the water has cooled down very rapidly since then.

Another part of the problem, I think, was that Dani was already cold when he got on the water. He had changed into his wet suit and summer booties to rig, since it was raining. But wet suits tend to get cold really fast on land.

So, here's a short summary of things to do to stay warm when windsurfing on cold, rainy days:

Stay warm when getting your gear ready. Wear rain pants over your pants; winter boots; a warm jacket (e.g. a neoprene rigging jacket); a neoprene hood or warm hat; and rigging gloves. If you break a sweat, great!
Overdress on the water. Wear booties that are a bit warmer than you think you need; wear a dry suit or a wet suit that you know is warm enough for the conditions; use a neoprene hood and gloves. If you discover that you are too warm while sailing, it's easy enough to ditch some of this gear to cool down. But if you discover you are not dressed warm enough, your body will have cooled down so much that you probably need to (or should) end the session.
Stay warm in breaks. If you are using gloves and/or are wearing a wet suit with long arms, your lower arms will probably get tired much more quickly than during summer sessions, and you'll need to take breaks. Any wetsuit or drysuit that's warm enough when windsurfing will be too cold when standing on land! So put on a warm jacket like a neoprene jacket, or whatever else will keep you warm. You did remember to bring a thermos with coffee or tea, right?

Since I hate getting cold when windsurfing, I followed my own advice. I thought I had overdressed a bit, but ended up being just perfectly comfortable. For gloves, I used Glacier gloves with the insides of the fingers cut out. That minimizes the extra effort needed to bend the fingers, and perhaps more importantly, gives me direct contact to the boom, so I don't grip too hard without noticing. My hands, which tend to get cold very quickly, stayed perfectly warm, despite my usual frequent water start practice.

Being perfectly comfortable despite the cold, I really enjoyed the session today. We started sailing shortly before high tide, which allowed us to sail close to the sandbar that separates Duxbury bay from the ocean, in really flat water. At the water got higher, there was more and more stuff floating on the surface - mostly dead reeds, sometimes in form of little islands up to 5 feet wide. Running into one of these at full speed would have caused a major catapult, which kept speed runs interesting.

Just after the tide turned and starting going out, I went to the north side of the Powder Point Bridge to check the conditions there. However, the reeds were so bad that sailing there was almost impossible, and I quickly returned to the south side. Sailing back to the sandbar on the far side, I discovered that the combination of wind and outgoing tide had moved most of the floating obstacles towards the land side of the bay, and the speed strip now was clear. I had a number of great runs along the sandbar, but then decided to keep the session short since I was the only one on the water, and I assumed that Dani, who was watching me, wanted to leave.

While the session was a lot of fun, I was pretty disappointed with my top speed of 32 mph (27.5 knots). I had gotten a number of downwind runs in very flat water, and although the wind near shore was a bit gusty, I am sure that I caught some gusts of around 30 mph on decent downwind angles. I was sailing my Fanatic Hawk 95 and my Hot Sails Maui GPS 6.6 m sail. Less than 2 weeks ago in Hatteras, I had reached 31 mph (27.2 knots) in substantially more chop and less wind (gusts were 26 mph or less). What gives?

One potential explanation is that the wind meters were wrong, and that the wind was actually very similar on both days. That, however, is not the case: in Hatteras, I had to work to get planing and stay on a plane, and rarely felt fully powered. Today, I was fully powered 90% of the time, and really nicely powered in some of the gusts. In recent months, I typically go about 25-30% faster than than the wind even in chop. Today, that would have meant a top speed of 35-40 mph, not just 32 mph.

The one thing that was different today was that I used a different mast. In Hatteras, I had rigged the sail on a 460 cm Powerex 100% RDM mast. That required a scary amount of downhaul tension - the sail is spec'd for a 430 mast with a 36-38 cm extension. So today, I rigged the sail on a 430 cm Gaastra 100% RMD mast. The sail did not look quite right - the profile below the boom was noticeably shallower. Getting all the cams on also was a bit more challenging, another indicator that the mast may be a mismatch for this sail. And despited the shallow profile below the boom, I had to use a few centimeters of positive outhaul to keep the sail from touching the boom too much. The sail is spec'd for negative outhaul, and with the Powerex mast, I had sailed it with neutral outhaul.

In Hatteras with the Powerex 460 mast, the sail felt both powerful and very slippery. Most of the drive seemed to be forward and translated directly into speed. I had sailed a Pilot 6.5 m sail earlier that day, and the GPS was about 3 knots faster, despite feeling a lot lighter (except when water starting it...).

Today on the Gaastra mast with positive outhaul, the sail felt heavy and slow. There was a substantially higher amount of sideway pull, and I had real problems getting comfortably until I moved the boom down about 2 inches. But even after that, the sail never gave the slippery sensation that is typical for a race sail.

The mast itself is not a problem - it works beautifully with a couple of Gaastra sails. However, it appears to have a bend curve that really does not go well with the GPS sail. The sail looks ok when rigged on land, but it performs poorly on the water when rigged on the Gaastra mast. I had read about problems from mismatched masts, but we usually mix & match sails and masts pretty randomly, and never noticed real problems. However, we usually also do not know what a sail would feel like on the proper mast! Still, seeing such a big difference between the two masts was somewhat surprising. I can't wait to try the sail in similar conditions in Duxbury on the Powerex mast!

Windy Thursday video

2011-10-23T18:17:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday was day 4 of the ABK Clinic in Hatteras, and I will remember it as "Windy Thursday". Wind averages were in the mid-30s, gusts in the low 40s. Still, every single camper went out on the water and tried to master the conditions. Here is a short video with some clips from the afternoon, when most of us where pretty tired already:

Most windsurfers in our group worked on jibes, fall jibes, and jump jibes. The fall/jump part in the fall/jump jibe was reasonably easy, but the clew-first waterstart in 35-40 mph was something rather different, even with the 3.7-4.5 m sails we were on. After a few failed tries, I remembered that Andy had called the Shove It a great move for overpowered conditions, so I decided to work on that instead. I did not make much progress, although my tries got me to the point where I can start making theories about the move. For once, however, I'll wait until I have tested my theories before I blog about them. At least I'm not alone with not getting the Shove It right away - other windsurfers have needed several months of practice or more to learn it. I also found some nice hints on the Windsurf Canada forum that explain the importance of front foot carving and the similarity to the laydown jibe. The same posts include a link to a Shove It by Taty Frans which is not as tweaked as most other Shove Its, and therefore probably more similar to the Shove Its a beginner would do.

The last day of the ABK Clinic was another light wind day. Nina and I worked on Reverse Duck Jibes and Duck Tacks. I managed to complete one of each on my Skate 110, although the Duck Tack included a duck rather than a nice throw. Andy made me sail on a 140 l board with a 5.6 Loco rig that was ridiculously light, and I made a Duck Tack on that combo within the first few tries, and also a few Reverse Duck Jibes. Maybe the 6.5 m sail is a bit big for learning new light wind freestyle moves after all.

We had 3 planing days in our week in Hatteras (plus one crazy day with winds from 20-50 mph and rain where we did not sail). If we had stayed home, we would have had about 6 planing day instead. But we definitely would not have learned as much here as we did there, so I'm definitely glad we went. Now I just hope that the water up here stays warm enough to practice freestyle for a while longer!

Light wind day

2011-10-18T20:56:00.000-04:00

The second day of the ABK clinic in Hatteras once again had plenty of sun and warm water. The wind was light today, so there was a lot of backwind sailing, heli tacks, and upwind 360s to be seen - and a lot of improvement over the course of the day. Nina worked on some fin-first upwind 360s, duck tacks, and a few more things Andy suggested. I learned the clew-first upwind 360, which took me a couple of hours, spread over the morning and afternoon sessions. The initial tries where quite frustrating - slicing the sail forward clew-first, and then controlling pressure to turn again, was not exactly easy. But having light side-off wind with really flat water definitely helped, and I eventually got the trick. The clew-first heli tack, which is just the first half of the trick, came as a "free" bonus from learning the 360. Afterwards, I played a bit with the duck tack / switch duck jibe. My initial attempts were rather sad, even though I had gotten a few duck tacks in January in Bonaire - but that was on a huge board, and today, I was sailing my Skate 110. When Andy demonstrated the trick for me, it (of course) looked easy and elegant - but he explained a few key points, and I did make some progress afterwards. While I did not complete a duck tack today, another light wind day might be enough.

For the next two days, however, high wind stuff is on the schedule - the wind forecast calls for averages between 25 and 34 mph for tomorrow and Thursday. There may be some thunderstorms tomorrow, and probably a lot of rain, but Thursday should be sunny and windy :)

ABK Clinic Hatteras, day 1

2011-10-17T19:45:00.000-04:00

The first day of the ABK Clinic in Hatteras was great. We had great wind this morning, and fun in light winds in the afternoon. The weather was just perfect - sunny, air temperatures in the seventies, water warm enough for shorties. Since the road that had been taken out during hurricane Irene was only re-opened last week, the clinic is not full - we have just 11 campers, all of them repeaters.

This morning, Nina got her first planing duck jibe, after trying them for about a year. Nice! After that, I had to try them again, too. I had done a few a long time ago, so I the first few tries ended in crashes. It was great to have Andy around for help - as usual, he pointed out the one thing that was most wrong. At first, it was ducking rather than standing still. Then, I stayed stiff - including my knees, a bad idea. Bending the knees in the next try led to carving to tight, leaving not enough time for the hand work. In one try, I ducked too late - but then, I finally got one. Without Andy's help, that would have required a lot more tries...

Nina proceeded to work on Vulcans and Flakas. I tried slam/fall/jump jibes, with decent success rate and a lot of fun. The entire morning, I tried some trick every time I turned around, usually after a 1/2 to 1 mile run. Fun!!

The wind had dropped off after lunch, so our group worked on heli tacks, with a few push tack attempts and upwind 360s thrown in for variation. The "no-handed" heli tack proved to be quite a challenge, even though it's just a second or so that both hands leave the boom. But even the falling was plenty of fun, and a lot of progress was noticeable, until everyone started to get tired. Shortly before 5, just as the clinic ended, the wind finally picked up again, and I got a few more planing runs is.

Tomorrow looks like it's going to be a light wind day, and I'm looking forward to that. But Wednesday afternoon and Thursday should bring us winds in the upper twenties to low thirties. Since there will be no camp on Wednesday afternoon, we might see some great action by the ABK instructors on the water - including some flat water spin loops by Andy, perfect to get us motivated for trying them on Thursday!

Facebook & Makani fins

2011-10-14T14:16:00.002-04:00

After hearing a lot of good things about Makani fins from freestylers, I bought a Makani Auku slalom fin a couple of months ago. It was intended for my Warp 71 slalom board with a 7.0 m sail. I followed the Makani fin guide to pick the right size, a 38 cm fin.

I got to use the fin only a few times, but the results were mixed. On perfectly flat water (in the cove at Fogland), the fin worked like a charm - it felt very slippery and fast, and delivered great speed. But as soon as I went out into choppier waters, I got one spinout after the other, forcing me to switch to a different fin.

Today, Makani fins announced on their Facebook page that

"Our first blend of slalom fins are not working to our standards so we are liquidating them on eBay at $79 with Free shipping".

Following the link to the eBay auction, they state:

"This AAUKU is designed for free race boards and slalom boards with TUTTLE BOXES for LIGHTWEIGHT RIDERS in the larger sizes especially as they are very soft. "

A little Google search quickly confirmed that soft fins cause more spinouts. Well, hats of to Makani fins for recognizing a problem and acting on it. Anyone buying the fin on the eBay auction now has the information that the fins won't work well for middle- and heavyweights. Still a bummer, though, that I spend $120 on what turned out to be a useless piece of plastic (unless I magically loose 50 pounds..).

Another thing that bugs me is that Makani has not updated their web site yet. On the web site, the Auku fin is still described with terms like "The power of Speed", having a "powerful shape" that "permits using fins 2 cm smaller than regular slalom fins", "the best slalom fin", and "a winner from the starting line". No mention whatsoever that the fin is designed for " LIGHTWEIGHT RIDERS"!

So, dear Makani fin people, please update the web page for the Auku fin ASAP, unless you want to loose a lot of trust. And while you're at it - how about offering anyone who purchased the Auku and found it a poor performer a replacement?

Trailer work

2011-10-09T20:34:00.004-04:00

For the last 5 years, we have been towing our windsurf gear on this trailer:

It's light enough to be towed by a Honda Civic, but fits about 10 sails, 5 booms, 8 masts, and (as shown) 4 boards. In theory, there is enough room for more boards on the top - but big, rusty pieces of metal have been falling off the top for a few years now. I have not trusted it enough to tow the trailer with boards on top for quite a while... So finally, I decided to just take the top level off. After a few exhausting hours of sawing, off it was:

As you can see, the top frame was pretty much rusted through, even though the metal was originally rather solid (the previous owner of the trailer had put a roll of carpet around the top, which kept the metal wet & steamy for weeks). Fortunately, the lower parts of the frame are all fine. Here's a picture of the trailer now, about 50 pounds lighter and more aerodynamic than before:

Astute observers may also notice new wheels, which we put on so that we can tow the baby to the ABK Clinic in Hatteras next week without worries. The trailer also has a couple of new stickers - here's a favorite (thanks, Andy!):

Here's one of my other favorites:

Hope to see a few of you in Hatteras next week! There's still lots of space in the ABK clinic. Coach Ned has rented a big house right on location again, and there's probably still room in there, too. The road repair should be completed within the next 2 days, so there is no reason not to come! Rocktober is a great time to be in Hatteras - last year, I ranked our two weeks there as the "vacation of the year", ahead of Bonaire, the Gorge, Maui, and Cabarete (all spots that I love, too!).

Rocktober .. or not?

2011-10-07T21:27:00.003-04:00

Here near Cape Cod, October can be the best month for windsurfing, with great wind, warm water, and decent air temperatures, which is why many windsurfers call the month "Rocktober". In the last few weeks, we often saw wind forecasts that looked great a few days out, only to go lower and lower with every update. So we got quite excited when we finally got a forecast for cooler northwest winds in the mid-20s that remained the same for several days in a row, all the way up to the day before.

For the best NW winds, we usually drive about 2 hours to Orleans or Wellfleet on Cape Cod. With 2 successive days of promising forecasts, we planned on one day of exploring new beaches, a night at a local motel, and a second day for a downwinder. The forecasts looked good enough for Dean, the fastest guy on our GPS Team Challenge team, to join us. Well, those of you who know about NW winds around here can probably guess what happened... by the time we made it to the beach at 12:30 pm, the wind had dropped:

We went out, anyway, and had some fun in the gusts for a while until even the gusts did not get us planing anymore. Ok, so the latest forecast had included a dip to 20 mph around 2 pm, but also a rise back to 26 mph at 5 pm. We remained hopeful and waited a while... until finally, a squall came through, and we had 45 minutes of nice winds. We had picked the launch spot (Sunken Meadow Beach in Eastham) because it was right next to an area that was only 2-4 feet deep at low tide - but when the wind hit, the tide had already added about 4-5 feet more water, so we had plenty of chop for a nice bump & jump session.

We checked the forecast again during dinner, and the computer models still predicted 24-27 mph for the entire day. Indeed, things looked great in the morning, with averages in the upper 20s. But with all-day winds, we had a nice breakfeast first, and made it to the beach around 11 am - when the wind had once again died down:

Well, some whitecaps were still to be seen, so we decided to rig big: 5.3 for Nina, 7.0 for Dean, and my 6.5 Pilot for me (since I had discovered the day before that my trusted 7.0 Matrix needs to be repaired, and I had left my 8.5 at home to make space for the smaller race sails). Bigger boards, too: the Falcon 111 for Dean, my Warp 118 for me, and the Hawk 95 for Nina. By then, the forecast had finally changed, and it predicted steadily decreasing winds.

On the water, it became clear that the wind was not good enough for a long downwinder or even good long-distance averages. The gusts were nice, and Dean got a few runs above 30 knots - but the lulls were much too lully, and I did not always manage to live up to my favorite nickname. The water up in Indian Neck was quite flat, though - much better suited for speed runs than the day before, and we got higher speeds despite less wind. Here are my GPS tracks:

My top speed was just barely above 30 miles, a bit disappointing. The Pilot is definitely not a speed sail - it had plenty of power to get me going, but it was sometimes hard to control in the gusts. With the relatively high foot cutout, I never managed to close the gap, either. That's very different from the Gaastra Matrix, which is more speed- and topend-oriented; I have sailed the slightly larger Matrix in significantly more wind without any stability problems. Not really a surprise - I did buy the Pilot primarily as a freestyle and light wind sail.

On both days, Dean was a lot faster than I was. Here are his GPS tracks for the second day:

He did point out that he had rigged too small - his 7.0 race sail just barely got him going. The tracks show that it definitely got too small towards the end of the run, when the wind had dropped a couple of miles. However, his acceleration and top end in gusts was much higher than mine - he beat my top speeds by about 5 mph, about the same as the day before. I found it rather interesting to see that the 0.5 m larger race sail had less power than the "price point" sail - but if the wind had increased by 15 mph, Dean would have been perfectly fine, while my sail would have become impossible to control. I think the larger part of the speed difference is still due to his better skills, not to equipment differences - but that will not keep me from looking for a cambered sail to fill the gap between my 8.5 and 5.8 m race/freerace sails.

Of the three of us, Nina used the smallest sail and board, but had the fewest problems to plane. That is, until you take body weight into account: relative to weight, Nina's sail and board were actually larger than Dean's and my equipment, since Dean and I both outweigh her by 50%.

On most other days, I'm faster in all the speed rankings that are used on the GPS Team Challenge, but yesterday, Nina beat me on the 1 hour averages and the alpha. She improved her new personal best by 3.6 knots, and now ranks 23 of 82 women on gps-speedsurfing.com for the 1 hour (and 2nd of 12 female US windsurfers!).

Dean followed Nina around a bit and filmed here with his GoPro headcam:

After 2 days of not-quite rocking winds, I finally remembered why we usually don't go sailing in the colder seasons unless the forecast is into the 20s: that gives us room for the wind to come in below the forecast, and still get a nice planing session in, without having to use the biggest gear. So, while the winds were not as good as forecast, we still had plenty of fun on the water. And with Dean the speed machine being out there with us, we even managed to get a decent ranking on the GPS Team Challenge for the month: #30 of 46. That's better than most months, and not bad for a couple of days with just so-so wind. But Rocktober is still young and has plenty of time to live up to its name .. and November often is even windier. We'll definitely be back to Indian Neck and Sunken Meadow!

Creating background maps for GPS Action Replay

2011-10-01T17:38:00.002-04:00

This post explains how to create background maps for GPS data in GPS Action Replay. It also contains a few downloadable maps I made (mostly for Cape Cod) at the bottom. Making a map is pretty straightforward and takes maybe 5-10 minutes.

Step 1: Create an image file in Google Earth.

Open Google Earth, and navigate to the region that you want to create a map for. It helps to have a big monitor and to make the Google Earth window as large as possible.
Make sure that you see the scale legend (in the bottom left corner). If you don't see it, select "Scale Legend" in the "View" menu. Also make sure that north is straight up.
Save the image from Google Earth, using "File" => "Save" => "Save Image As". I suggest that you create a new folder called "Maps" or similar where you put all the images and the maps you'll create.

Step 2: Calibrate the map in GPS Action Replay

There are different ways of doing this. The one I found easiest is described below: we will use a GPS track to give us the starting point, and use the scale legend from Google Earth on the image to scale the image (using the "Measure distance" function in GPS Action Replay).

Start GPSAR, and open a track from the location you want to use.
If necessary, switch to the view that shows only the track. Make the window as large as possible.
Click on the "Parameters" button, and make sure that the two checkboxes at the bottom ("Rotation control" are not checked.
Click on images to see larger versions
In the "Maps" menu, select "Create a new Map from JPG". Open the file that you just created in Google Earth. The background now will change - most likely, the image is zoomed in or out way too much.
Change the zoom level so that you can see the entire background image (a mouse with a scroll wheel is really useful here). Then, click on the "Move Map" button. You should now see two handles ("Anchors") in the image (yellow, crossed circles).
Move the anchors to move the map, and make it larger or smaller. You may want to use the "Slide" button to move your view point. Keep using the zoom, "Move Map", and "Slide" functions until the tracks seem to be at about the right place (we'll fine tune later).
Click on the "Move Anchors" button, and move one anchor to the start point of your traces, and the other one on the same height in the image.
Use the "Measure Distance" function to measure the length of the scale on the image. Use the "Move Map" function to adjust the size of the map so that the distance measured is the same as the distance shown on the scale. Use only the anchor that's not at your start point, so your start point remains fixed. Make sure the image remains straight, not tilted.
Double-check that the starting point is correct, and that the image is straight. Once the entire thing looks right, save the map using "Maps" => "Save Map". Make sure to save the map in the same folder as the image that it's based on.

Once you created and saved a map, you can load it and re-use it in the future through the "Maps" menu. After creating a map a couple of times, creating a map for a new spot will only take a few minutes.

If loading a map that you saved does not work, it's probably because the map and the image file are not in the same folder. If they are, it sometimes helps to quit GPSAR, and start it again - every now and then, the program gets confused.

Finally, here is a ZIP file with some GPSAR maps that I made. It includes map and image files for Duxbury, Fogland, Kalmus, West Dennis, Ned's Point, Avon, and Maui. (You may need to right-click and choose "Save linked file as" to download the file).

First flight

2011-09-29T20:18:00.004-04:00

Yesterday's forecast was for "mostly cloudy" weather with 17 mph winds. Forecasts this low often mean slim chances of planing, but when we heard that our friend Dani was on his way to West Dennis, we decided to join him. The day turned out much better than expected:

With ESE wind measured around 20 mph, and probably a couple of miles more once you got a bit away from the shore, it was a perfect day to take the Hawk out for the first time. We got to the beach around 1 pm, just as the wind picked up:

High tide was at 1:15 pm, so we had a little bit of chop to play in. This was also the first time I tried to rig my Gaastra Pilot 6.5 on a 100% skinny mast, but the sail is spec'd for a 30% SDM mast, so that did not quite work as planned. I downhauled so that the batten over the boom extended to the middle of the mast, which let me use the specified boom length - but the sail looked wrong, with too little leech twist. I took it out on the water for a few runs, but everything felt just wrong. It's easy to see on the GPS tracks that something was wrong:

The first set of runs were much slower than later runs. So I went back in and downhauled about 2 more inches. That pulled all battens clear away from the mast; required an additional 4 cm of outhaul (for about 1-2 cm of positive outhaul); and made the leech look quite a bit looser than I'm used to from my Matrix sails. But on the water, the sail now worked like a charm - I could basically just forget about it and concentrate on the new board.

Since I had sailed the 2011 Hawk 100 and loved it, my expectations were high. The first thing I noticed was a bit of side-to-side instability. That really was no surprise - the boards I sailed in the past month were 68-71 cm wide, so you'd expect some difference from a 58 cm wide board. I absolutely loved how the board handled the chop - it mostly seemed to disappear, and keeping the board on the water and at full speed was just easy. On my second set of runs, I planed through a jibe with a minimum speed of 10.7 knots, which I was very happy with, especially for first time on the board, and using a large weed fin. Going upwind was easy enough, too, so I went for a nice long downwind run, and clocked a 22.3 knot nautical mile. Not bad for 17-22 knot winds and chop!

One thing where the board behaved quite differently than the FreeWave 95 that I tried last year was when it came to playing with waves. The Hawk showed a clear preference for going straight - but then, I had mounted double footstraps, kept them tight, and used a long weed fin. The board is certainly no wave board, but with a single back strap and a smaller wave fin, there is some fun to be had playing with chop. I'll try that at some time in the future - but the more fun thing will be to test the speed potential on flat water on a really windy day (30 mph NE in Duxbury, please please!).

Back home, I looked at my earlier windsurf sessions in West Dennis. I had sailed there three times before in similar conditions, using my Skate 110. While the Skate can be quite fast, my top speed in the previous sessions was just 25-26 mph. This time, my top speed was almost 30 mph, 4 mph faster. I think the faster speed can be attributed to the board as much as to what I learned about sailing in chop this summer in Maui. There was just one time that I had sailed faster in West Dennis - 32 mph last December in a session with Dean. Back then, we had a nice low tide, which makes the water a lot flatter, and 30-36 mph winds. Just 2 mph faster in 10 mph more wind, despite using a speed sail then (KA Koncept 5.8) and a "low end" RAF sail (Pilot 6.5) now - it sure would be nice to see how fast the Hawk would fly under these conditions!

Hawk rescue

2011-09-25T20:34:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I saw something that nearly made me cry: a hawk, kept outside, standing on its tail, unprotected from the rain and the sun, and covered all over with rust stains (I hope you realize that I am talking about a Fanatic windsurf board and not a bird!). Compare to the fancy designs on newer boards like Scott's TExtreme NewWave, Jim's RRD FireMove LTD, or even my Black Beauty (Exocet Warp 71), the Hawk always was a bit of a wallflower - but this was too much! The board needed to be rescued!

Ok, in an ideal world, I would have just spent $2K+ and gotten a brand-new iSonic or Falcon. I loved the Falcon 111 at the Windsurfing Magazine board test this spring, and loved Dani's new iSonic 90 even more when he let me try it a couple of weeks ago. But all the traveling that Nina and I did earlier this year has depleted the fun-funds severely. Even a used iSonic or Carbon Art board was more than I could afford, especially if you add a couple of hundred dollars for shipping. So when someone expressed interest in buying my old Bic Nova 120, and said he had a 95 l Hawk to sell for cheap, I was hooked. I had sailed 100 and 120 l Hawks from 2011 at WorldWinds in the spring, and loved the boards. The size I was looking for was 90-95 l (to fit in between my 82 and 110 l boards), so a Hawk 95 sounded just perfect.

The first thing to do, of course, was to look for test results. I found the 2006 test report from the German "surf" magazine, where the Hawk 95 got very high scores almost everywhere. More importantly, it scored very high in the speed, planing, and upwind categories, where it trailed only the fastest board in the test, a JP Super-X. Reading the report for the Super-X was even more fun. Here are a few descriptions from the Super-X writeup (with my approximate translations):

"sauschnell" (wicked fast)
"extrem hartes Fahrgefühl" (extremely hard ride)
"Wie man dann einen Spock zelebrieren soll, ist dem Testteam ein Rätsel" (its a mystery to the testers how to do a Spock on this board)
"Kontrolle ist keine Stärke" (control is not a strength of this board)
"In der Halse muss das Wasser spiegelglatt sein" (for jibes, the water has to be as smooth as glass)

I found it very refreshing to read such "clear" language in a test - you'd never see that in a US magazine. It made it easy to see that the Hawk was a better board for mixed conditions that sometimes might include serious chop.

After reading the test, I just had to drive out to swap my old Nova against the old Hawk at the next opportunity. Seeing the board in such poor cosmetic shape almost made me drive back without it - but the seller quickly drove to the next hardware store, got some rust remover, and slapped the pink acid stuff onto the board. It removed all the rust stains from the pads right away, and made decent progress on the rest of the board. After a second application and some brushing (don't ask about the brush!), the board started to look better, and I decided to take it home. The one advantage of all the stains was that I had to pay only $60 (plus the Nova).

I spend a considerable part of Saturday afternoon cleaning the board up some more. On the bottom of the board, wet sanding with 1000 sand paper did the trick; on the top, I used some more rust remover. The ding stick also came out to fix a small harness-mark near the mast, and some wear on the nose - but now, the board is as good as any 5-year old board that has seen a bit of use. When I put it on the trailer, I discovered that the width of the board under the foot straps is rather narrow - narrower even than for the JP Super-X 82 which used to have its place on the trailer. I can't wait for the winds to pick up so that I can try it!
--
Disclaimer: It's been 7 days since I windsurfed the last time, 11 days since I was able to use something smaller than an 8.5 m sail, and 46 days since I planed on small gear, so withdrawal symptoms are setting in. I know that the situation has been even worse for some of my friends who had to spend the summer in New England, and hope that this post helps them forget their wind frustrations for a few minutes. Well, maybe I should not have added this disclaimer to remind them of their misery...

Going for distance

2011-09-19T19:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a great day for windsurfing in Duxbury Bay. I have rarely seen more windsurfers in Duxbury before - we had speed surfers (Dani, Sabah, Fred, and I), ABK alumni and trick surfers (Nina, Martin, Graham, Jeff, Jonathen, and Jeynaba), and quite a few folks that I did not know, including beginners, folks working on getting into the straps, and several advanced windsurfers. Nice showing!

The one thing that did not show quite as I had hoped for was the wind:

Averages remained between 16 and 18 mph for most of the day, and gusts remained below 22 mph. A bit low for the trick surfers, who often had to schlog or pump - but enough for the speed surfers on big boards and big sails.

Here are Sabah's GPS tracks from yesterday:

Sabah started out a 7.5 m sail and a 122 l board, and was a bit underpowered. He also had problems with seaweed and seagrass, which slowed him down a bit from time to time. Even so, he got a top speed that was about 30% higher than the wind speed, and sailed a total of 74.2 km (46 miles). Sabah set 3 personal bests for 1 hour (11.35 kn), nautical mile (19.38 kn), and total distance. On almost any other day, that would have scored on the GPS Team Challenge - but not yesterday.

Fred also went out on a 7.5, and was underpowered a bit- but that did not keep him from setting personal bests for the nautical mile (20.28 kn) and total distance (44 km). He "only" sailed 2 1/2 hours, while the other speed surfers sailed for 5 to 6 1/2 hours.

Dani was on fire yesterday, planing all the time. His low weight was a huge advantage in the light winds, and his fast board and (relative to his weight) big sails certainly did not hurt. Here are Dani's tracks:

Despite some problems with seaweeds, Dani set personal bests for 1 hour (12.37 kn), nautical mile (20.48 kn), and distance (96.73 km). Every single time I saw Dani on the water, there was a huge smile on his face. Gotta love the attitude!

Nina refuses to even think about speed while the water is still warm, and worked a bit on vulcans and other tricks. The wind was a bit low for her 5.3, but at least she had other trick surfers to keep her company, including Martin and Graham. Last fall, Nina and I often were the only windsurfers in Duxbury.

I was on a mission yesterday, so when I saw that the wind was a bit lower than I had promised, I rigged my 8.5 m V8 sail onto my new Aeron V-grip boom and hit the water at noon. The wind direction was perfect for crossing the entire bay length-wise - that's about 5 km (3 miles) each way. On my first run, I snagged up some seagrass, so I went back in to switch to the my Select Weed Eliminator L fin. That turned out to be a mistake - the fin was just to small for the marginal conditions, and I had a really hard time going upwind without falling off the plane. It took me an hour and many tacks just to get back were I had started.

While switching back to the 44 cm slalom fin, I chatted a bit with some of the new arrivals, but soon was back on the water. I had a good idea now where the seagrass was in the water - it was mostly limited to one stretch in the middle of the bay. Finally being able to kick the fin again felt so good! After another hour on the water, I finally needed to eat something. When I checked the trip meter on shore, I saw that I had sailed 93 km already - and it was only 3:35 pm, with the wind just picking up a bit! So I went back out for another 90 minute sessions, which was enough time for 4 complete and 2 partial bay crossings. By now, it was 5:30 pm, and I was starting to get just a bit tired. My hands also started to hurt a bit, mostly because this was my first time sailing the V-grip boom, and different parts of my fingers made contact than on my other boom. But back at shore, I saw that I was only about 10 or 15 miles away from sailing 100 miles - so back onto the water it was!

I just did 2 1/2 more crossings, and then stopped so that I could use the remaining daylight to derig and load the trailer. Here are my tracks for the day:

Overall, I spend 5 hours and 20 minutes on the water, with an additional hour of breaks in between. My average speed was mostly around 20 mph, with just a few minutes of schlogging, and a few faster downwind runs for fun. I set new personal bests for 1 hour (17.92 kn) and total distance (163.51 km). That's more than 100 miles, and 52 km more than my previous best. Together with Dani's 1 hour and distance, we pushed the Fogland Speed Surfers up a few ranks in the GPS Team Challenge rankings, and got into the top 10 for the distance ranking (albeit only for a day - we're down to #11 today).

It was great to see so many friends in Duxbury yesterday. Everyone I talked to who sailed there for the first or second time loved it, despite the somewhat light wind. I really appreciate the efforts of the team mates on the water yesterday - seeing Dani, Jeff, and Graham sailing late really helped to push through the last few crossings. This was great fun, and we should do this again soon - maybe with a bit more wind! Maybe we get lucky and get real northeast wind next time, like mid-20s gusting to low 30s. The water would still be wicked flat, and we could work on short distance, nautical mile, and alpha.

One day later, I'm very happy with yesterday's effort. I pushed myself further than I had before, and had a blast doing so. Ok, walking up the stairs yesterday evening was a bit slow, but with all the Maui training, my body has learned to recover quickly, and I could definitely go for a repeat tomorrow if the wind played along (and there was not this thing called work which keeps me from windsurfing every now and then). It's been a big ego booster when the friendly folks at the GPS Team Challenge site pointed out that I now hold the US record for distance traveled on the site. So ok, there are only 13 windsurfers from the US registered, but that includes a few wicked fast guys: Roo, who's hit 40 knots in the Gorge and helped develop the GT-31; Dean, who's hit 36 knots in Hatteras, after sailing out to the reef for a couple of miles; and Boro, who holds the top spots for 1 hour, alpha, and the nautical mile (with 30.72 knots - I have yet to hit that speed for 2 seconds!). The international rankings illustrate that the US is not exactly a hot-spot for speed surfing (yet): there, my 163.51 km put me on the 95th spot. Not that I am unhappy with that ranking - but I got 5 more disciplines where I need to climb up the ladder :)

Duxbury in northeast winds

2011-09-17T11:42:00.001-04:00

The fall winds are finally arriving - here is the wind forecast for Duxbury for Sunday September 18, 2011:

Perhaps the numbers do not look very exciting - unless you consider this:

The predicted wind direction is northeast.
In northeast winds, the last obstruction that the wind saw was in Nova Scotia, Canada - that's a clean fetch of 250 miles!
Computer models usually underestimate NE winds in Duxbury - winds are often at least 5 mph stronger than forecast.
With the long clear fetch, NE winds in Duxbury tend to be very steady.
Duxbury bay is separated from the ocean by a small strip of sand that barely obstructs the wind, which creates very flat water.
Duxbury bay is 3 miles long, and the entire length is protected by the sand strip - making it the perfect place for long distance speedsurfing.

Here are GPS tracks from a similar setup last year (9/26/2010):

I set my personal best for 1 hour that day (17.4 knots), even though the wind averages were only 20-22 mph:

My top speed for the day was not great, but I was on a freeride board (Mistral Screamer 116) and a non-cambered sail (Matrix 7.0) that was a bit small for top speed. Gonzalo, who was on a Ray 115 and a 7.5 m race sail, passed me all the time at will, and was probably going 20% faster than I was.

So, flatwater lovers and Fogland Speed Surfers: come to Duxbury tomorrow, Sunday 9/18! Lets set some personal records for long distance and alphas! The other US speedsurfing team, the Speedsters, have just passed us in the monthly ranking. We need only small improvements in the 1 hour averages and alphas to pull even! In the international ranking, we are ranked 46 of 50 teams for the month - it should be pretty easy to move up a few spots! For once, the tides in Duxbury are good, with a low tide of 1.6 ft at 10 am - meaning we can sail all day! I am hoping to get some serious distance tomorrow! Ok, maybe I am fighting a cold right now, but I am sure it will be mostly gone tomorrow, and I should be able to get at least 3 or 4 hours of sailing in. Last year, I sailed 86 km in 3 hours. With better gear (and better jibes) this year, I'll be shooting to break my personal best for distance (111.8 km). I sure hope another Fogland Speed Surfer will back me up so that it counts!

Below is a map that shows the public parking lot just before the Powder Point Bridge where we will launch. Hope to see you tomorrow!

View Duxbury public parking lot in a larger map. If you need directions, use "400 Powder Point Ave, Duxbury, MA" as the target.

Light wind freestyle on small boards for ... speed and planing jibes!

2011-09-14T21:10:00.002-04:00

Nina and I attended the ABK Clinic on Cape Cod last weekend. It was a great clinic - we learned lots of new things, met old friends, and made new friends. The weather was almost perfect - sunny, with air and water temperatures in the low 70s. Warm enough to be comfortable, cold enough so we could wear long wet suits to reduce scrapes and bruises from climbing back onto the boards. And that we did a lot - except for the morning of the first day, we had light wind for the entire camp.

I had discussed here before what finally convinced me to practice light wind freestyle on my 110 l Skate, instead of big monster boards: the amazing progress I had seen others make within a year. This time, my Skate initially felt big, after spending most of the summer on a 77 l board. But when the wind dropped and it was time to practice heli tacks, upwind 360s, pile drivers, and their various fin-first and clew-first variations, the board got small again very quickly. It took me a few hours of practice before I could do the tricks I had done last year - but then, I had not practiced any light wind freestyle for months. But the board grew on me again, and I did a few tricks I had never done before - nice! Not surprisingly, Nina picked up a few more tricks than I did, and can now do a few variations that I can't. That was just of time, anyway..

We stayed an extra day on Monday, since the forecast promised planing winds, and I really wanted to work on the spin loop. Alas, the wind remained light again - so Nina and I practiced sail chi. We eventually got the ducking for switch duck jibes and duck tacks on land, definitely progress (which, however, did not translate to the water, which was a bit choppy for my taste).

As Andy has correctly predicted, we went sailing again today. One reason was that the forecast and the early wind readings looks good; a second reason was that I needed to get away from work after having to deal with a rather saddening task this morning. We decided to go to Fogland because the drive is shorter, and the wind readings there looked better when we left.

When we got there, the wind had just picked up, and we could see some white caps in the bay. Nina was excited to try Vulcans, switch planing, and Flakas, but I just wanted some speed. So I cut the chatting with Fred and Sue short, and went out on my Warp 118 l and Matrix 7.0. Then, something pretty amazing happened:

If you look at the speed graph at the bottom, you can see that I planed through my first 7 jibes - I don't think I have ever planed through 7 jibes in a row before. On a regular day, I'd be perfectly happy with 7 dry jibes in a row! The conditions were quite nice, with flat water near low tide, but the winds were not so strong that planing through jibes was trivial: according to the iWindsurf sensors, wind averages during the runs were 17 mph, and gusts 21 mph. I think the meter readings may have been a couple of miles low - but I'm still very happy with the top speed I got on the one downwind speed run I did. On a "normal" good day in Fogland, I typically get speeds that are maybe 30% faster than the wind speed. This is the first time I got a speed that was 50% faster - cool!

I stopped after a few runs to talk to Fred (that's the other Fred), who had just arrived. By the time he left, the wind was going down, and the rest of the day was a mix of schlogging and mostly marginal planing, with a little basic light wind freestyle mixed in.

Still, these first 10 minutes today were just fantastic. I have no doubt whatsoever that the 2 days of light wind freestyle practice were responsible. The Skate 110 for me is an "almost sinker" - I really have to watch where I put my feet and weight to not drive the board completely under water. Working on tricks like upwind and downwind 360s in light wind for hours has hugely improved my feeling for the board trim and my sail handling. That has paid off big time in better jibes and better top speed for the given conditions. Did I mention that I was pretty amazed about todays top speed for the relatively low wind? I just could not wait to get home and plug the data into the computer to make sure they were no artifact.

One thing that amazes me is how fast and dramatic these improvements were. In total, I probably spent less than 8 hours practicing light wind freestyle last weekend. During our 6 weeks in Maui, were I sailed 37 days and perhaps 2 hours each day on average, I was constantly working on more control and better speed, but my overall gains there were maybe similar. I probably should have taken a lot more time to work on freestyle, and in particular light wind freestyle, there!

So, next time you have the opportunity join an ABK Clinic, stop worrying about the wind and sign up already! You'll definitely learn a lot of new stuff, and maybe some light wind freestyle is exactly what you need to get faster and better at your jibes.

So, once again, thanks to Andy, Brendon, Ed, and Meredith for a super clinic, and for working their obscure, but highly effective magic to create better windsurfers.

Fogland Speed Surfers

2011-09-06T21:13:00.001-04:00

It took us one year, but finally, the Fogland Speed Surfers were out in force this last weekend. We had typical Fogland summer winds - upper teen (mph) averages, gusts in the low to mid-20s, a bit more on Saturday and a bit less on Sunday.

For most of us, this was the first time sailing in Fogland after hurricane Irene. Afraid that we might get stuck on the road to the bay on the north side, almost everyone sailed the south side on Saturday. I was out on a 7.0 sail on my 118 l slalom board and the 110 l Skate; Nina was on her 100 l Skate and a 5.7; most other sailors were out on 6-7 m sails, nicely powered most of the day. Dani was nice enough to let me try his new iSonic 90 for a few runs, and I increased my top speed for the day within a few minutes on the board by 2 knots. The board jibed amazingly well, too - I wish I had one!

Of the Fogland Speed Surfers I saw on Saturday, only Cesar decided to drive to the bay. With his jeep, he did not have to worry, but mostly, he just wanted the flat and shallow water for speed runs. That worked for him - he got the fastest 2 and 5 x 10 second speeds of the day on his iSonic 122. At the end of the day, he stopped by again and assured us that the road was in good enough shape, so the next 2 days, most of us sailed the bay again.

Sunday and Labor Day has a similar SSW-SW setup, but the wind was a couple of miles lighter and a bit gustier. I started out with my 8.5 V8 sail on Sunday and a Makani 36 cm slalom fin. The combo worked great on the first runs in the flat water on the bay, although the fin was a bit small for the sail. That almost became a problem when I went out on the river, and the wind picked up at the same time - can you say "frequent spinout"? But before I could sail back to change fins, I heard a loud "boom" from my boom. I thought that a clamp at the end had opened up, even though I had taped it, and schlogged slowly back to the shore. While adjusting things there, the boom boomed again - this time completely breaking apart about 20 cm from the front. That meant a 60 minute walk back along the shore, followed by some paddling and a tow from Cesar (thanks again!). The rest of the day, I was a bit underpowered on my 7.0.

Conditions on Monday were similar, with less sun and just a tad more wind. Interestingly, I got my top speeds on Sunday and Monday on the river, not in the bay. The bay has smoother water, but runs are only about 500 m long, often with a wind drop in the middle - not the best thing if you're just marginally powered. Going out onto the river gives mile-long runs, and the swell on the river is often very smooth, with nice, long rollers and very little cross chop. Furthermore, the wave direction varies about along the run, so there are typically longer stretches that allow decent downwind angles for speed. I'm pretty happy with the 26 knots I got on my 118 l Warp on days there the maximum wind meter reading was 23 mph (in gusts). The 6 weeks in Maui definitely paid off here: last year, I always thought of the river chop as challenging; but now, it seems more like a flat speed strip to me.

The forecast for Monday had been quite good, so Nina had brought the 77 l Goya One along. She actually got planing on it with a 5.3, but just barely so. After switching to her 100 l Skate, she worked on Vulcans the whole day. She's definitely ready for the upcoming ABK camp in Hyannis!

Here's a short video from the last two days that shows quite nicely how flat the water in the bay is:

BTW, the Fogland Speed Surfers is an open group and welcomes new members. If you like sailing fast and have a GPS, join us! If you have any questions, a good way of contacting the team is through the "Fogland Windsurfers" group on Facebook.

Wind for the ABK Camp Hyannis!

2011-09-03T08:05:00.000-04:00

It looks like the wind is returning just in time for the ABK Camp in Hyannis next week (Friday 9-9 to Sunday 9-11):

I know that a lot of windsurfers hesitate to sign up for the camp because they only want to do the camp if it's windy. Well, it looks like the fall winds are back - sign up quickly! Last year, the camp was full, and I think some windsurfers who had wanted to sign up late had to be turned away. If all of you who have been waiting for a wind forecast sign up now instead of waiting until a couple of days before the camp, this also gives Andy the chance to expand the camp if necessary: he can ask an additional local ABK instructor to come to teach, and let additional windsurfers join the camp. He cannot really do this if the camp fills up just a day before. And a larger camp is actually a good thing, since it gives campers more options to choose what to learn (and you meet more local windsurfers).

The predicted wind direction for the first day is northeast, which is a great wind direction in Kalmus. In NE winds, we will be sailing in Lewis Bay - either near the small beach at the Lewis Bay side, or across from the channel at Egg Island:

We have sailed these spots during the last 2 camps, too. They have a good fetch across Lewis Bay, so the winds are surprisingly good for northerlies on the south side of the Cape. Spot 1 has plenty of shallow water for beginners and to work on waterstarts; spot 2 also has shallow areas that are great for instruction. We have had at least one day with plenty of wind to work on planing jibes, duck jibes, and other planing tricks the last 2 years.

Of course, it is possible that we'll have one or two days with less wind. I actually hope that we do! We'll be working on light wind tricks like helicopter tacks, push tacks, 360s, geckos, loop exercises, and more. There's a lot of things that can be learned in light wind which really translate into better high-wind sailing. That includes sail control and board control; I have seen many examples of windsurfers who practiced a lot in light winds, and improved way more than others who shunned light wind practice. In our 6 weeks in Maui, the only thing I really learned was how to deal with chop and high winds better; so far, I have always learned more new things in 2 days of light wind practice during ABK camps. Nina, who often chooses to work on light wind freestyle in marginal conditions when I try to plane, has improved a lot more than I have in the past year. That has paid off even in the high winds on Maui: during our last few sessions there, she generally had the better jibes, both with respect to success rate and to minimum speed. But most importantly, learning light wind freestyle (and getting over the initial hump) means an end to the dreaded "no wind" days! There's almost always enough wind for light wind freestyle, and it can be a lot of fun. Don't just take my word for it - look at what other campers had to say after the ABK Camp in Bonaire this January:

So, what are you waiting for? If you windsurf and live anywhere close to Cape Cod, sign up for the ABK Camp! See you there!

Better fall winds than no winds

2011-08-15T19:52:00.000-04:00

Ok, I admit it: I'm addicted. Just back from 6 weeks in Maui, where I sailed a total of 37 days, mostly on a 77l board with a 4.5, I just could not stop myself from going windsurfing in Duxbury today.

Temperatures were just below 70, and it was raining hard. What made it really seem like fall, though, was the wind direction: east, later turning to northeast. That's what we typically get in October or November - but from what I have heard, the summer here in the Northeast was stinky, anyway, with the typical SW winds mostly being absent. So maybe the early arrival of fall winds is a good thing...

I arrived when the wind had just dropped from 28 to 23 mph, and the water looked incredibly flat. Since Nina was not yet ready to brave the rain and cold, I had not brought the trailer, and only stuffed the 117 slalom board into the car. With barely a white cap in sight, I rigged the 7.0, which got me planing nicely. Oh how sweet it was to be on flat water again! The outboard footstraps, however, felt funny, and I just could not get comfortable with the front straps. And then there was the needle-like pain from the horizontally flying rain drops which was just a tad distracting...

The wind picked up steadily, and the 7.0 sail was starting to feel a bit big when the gusts approached the mid-30s. Funny how flat water works - in similar wind on Maui, the 4.5 would have felt big, and there's no way I would have been out on a 71 cm wide slalom board. The fog got a bit denser, too, and I was still the only one out on the water, so I called it a day. Putting things away in 30-mile winds and rain made me really appreciate the hot shower when I got home later!

Well, I got my fix for the day. I really missed the flat water! I did not get any good speed today, but I'll blame the rain for slowing me down:) Did not matter, anyway, since nobody else from our speedsurfing team was out, and we need at least 2 sailors out for the results to count.

Euro pin base => Lost board

2011-08-07T04:04:00.001-04:00

I remember reading a while ago in Jamin Jones' blog about unintentional disconnects at the universal - specifically, unintentional disconnects with the "euro pin" system. Well, when we got to Maui, I had forgotten about this, and used the euro pin adapters that were in the van we got as part of the house exchange. It worked fin for about 32 days - but you can probably guess what's coming next.

Today, we sailed at Sprecks, at least in part to celebrate our 3-year wedding anniversary. The anniversary is tomorrow, but the wind forecast was better for today, so we decided to go a day earlier. I had a hard time on my first run out; things got a little better when I switched down from my 93 l board to my 77 l Goya One. In my third set of runs, I was finally feeling good again: getting nice speed on the runs in, planing through a jibe on the inside, and having some nice jumps going out. Then, a jump over a bigger wave went wrong, and I came down with a pretty steep nose-first landing. I had not planned it that way, so I crashed, and hit the mast with my head. As crashes go, this one was not bad at all - nothing hurt, as I discovered when sorting things out. So I prepared for a waterstart - and discovered there was no board at the end of my sail! Looking around, I say the board drifting downwind about 20 m away from me! I tried to swim after it right away, but it picked up speed quickly in the 25-30 mph winds, and I did not have a chance. I could see that the euro pin adapter was still attached and intact on top of the board. I swam back to the rig and checked the bottom of the adapter, and that looked just fine, too.

I think the board was going into the water nose-first at a pretty steep angle, maybe 60 degrees. Since this was unplanned, I had pressure in the sail, and was hooked in, so when I crashed, the adapter was pulled straight out of the euro pin. As Jamin Jones explains in the link above, there's just one little bit of metal preventing this - and it failed.

Some fellow windsurfers stopped by shortly afterwards and offered to help, but by then, the board was already out of sight. I was just 500 m from shore, with wind and waves pushing me towards Camp One, so I ended up just holding on to the rig and half swimming, half getting dragged to the shore. That took about half an hour, with a few interesting minutes in the breaking waves before Camp One, where the water was just about 4 feet deep. But eventually, I made it to shore with the rig intact. I walked downwind a bit to see if the board had landed at the same place, but was told by some fishermen that it had drifted by about 15 minutes earlier, on it's way to Kanaha or Kahului Harbor.

After a walk back to Sprecks and de-rigging, Nina and I walked the beaches from below kite beach to Camp One, looking for the board, but did not find it. It's sad enough about the board, because I really liked it, and had planned to take it home. It was old and not so pretty anymore, and we got it for $200, but it was very nice to sail. It took my freestyle fin from my Fanatic Skate with it which I had put in - no huge loss since I have plenty of big fins, and I'll need a smaller fin if I ever start the slidey tricks. But the board also took the 2-screw mast base and the euro pin connector with it, which I had borrowed and will need to replace. That will hurt double, first because it will cost close to $100, and second because I'll be replacing a system that is just obviously flawed.

One potential reason for any disconnects like the one I had today is always operator error. However, we can safely exclude this today: I had take the board-rig setup out for two sets of runs before, carrying everything to and from the water, turning the board over (and having it turned over by the waves), crashing a few times, and so on.

Despite loosing the board, I was lucky in many respects - it was the cheapest of the boards we used here; it happened a few days before the the end of our stay; I was relatively close to shore in side-on winds; I was wearing a floaty crash vest which gave me peace of mind; the water was nice and warm; and I had plenty of offers for help. Even so, this was a very unpleasant experience that I do not wish to repeat - so I will not use euro pin bases in the future when I can avoid it. Even more so since jumps with nose-first landings are definitely on the things that I want to learn!

Many many thanks to all the windsurfers in Sprecks who stopped by and offered help, and/or went to search for my board. Even though I ended up just drifting in, I really did appreciate your offers to help! Knowing that you guys were out there watching me made the swim in a whole lot easier.

One of the surfers who stopped by to help said he had seen two similar board-rig separations in the last 2 days. So in the future, I'll make sure to always have 10 or 20 feet of thin line in my harness pocket, so that I can catch and drag a board if I'm close enough.

--

I did get the board back two days later - a windsurfer had seen it drifting between Camp One and Kanaha, put it on the beach for a while, and then taken it home when nobody came to claim it. He responded to our ad in the "Lost & Found" section on the Maui Craigslist, and his wife brought the board into town today on here way to the gym. Thanks again, Bob & Stella!

Kanaha Wind Sensors

2011-08-06T16:09:00.002-04:00

Warning: this entire post is kind of pointless. If you're not a geek, I suggest you don't bother reading it :)
--
During the past 5 weeks here in Maui, we have often wondered about the Kanaha wind sensor on iWindsurf/Windalert. Sometimes, it seemed to understand the wind by 5-10 miles; sometimes, it seemed accurate; and every now and then, the wind sensor readings seemed to high.

Yesterday was a day where the sensor readings were both too low and too high within a 3-hour period. This is what happened on the water:

3:20 pm - 3:40 pm: First few runs on a 4.5 m sail, 77 l board combo. Very windy, I had to sail partially sheeted in quite often, which means gusts were above 40 mph.
3:50 pm - 4:30 pm: Next set of runs - more comfortable, but still fully powered, at first, then the wind dropped. Towards the end of the 40 minutes, I did not plane the whole time anymore (nor was anyone else, except perhaps the racers on slalom gear and big sails).
4:30 pm - 5:10 pm: The wind had dropped a lot, and almost everyone came off the water. Around 5, the wind picked up again a bit.
5:10 pm - 5:45 pm: I switched to bigger board (93 l FSW) with a big (30 cm) fin. I needed both the bigger board and some push from the waves to get planing. Towards the end, the wind dropped a little, so planing consistently became harder and harder.

Here's the Kanaha wind sensor readings for the day:

A few things here are very wrong:

The drop shown is just 5 mph, and even less in the gusts.
The graph shows that the wind supposedly picked up around 5 pm, and then was stronger than before.

That's not what happened on the water. The drop was at least 10 mph, and the wind after 5 pm was significantly weaker than earlier during the day, especially in the gusts. This is exactly what the (free) airport wind sensor shows:

The averages look a bit too low on the airport sensor, but the gusts look about right (perhaps a few miles low). What's easy to see on the airport sensor graph is that the wind direction shifted a bit, from ENE to NE. The Kanaha sensor is located "on the outer breakwater of Kahului Hbr", more than 2 miles from the Upper's launch spot. That's about half way to where the West Maui mountains start. Easterly winds would run straight into the mountains, so we'd expect a windward wind shadow. As the winds turn more northerly, the mountains redirect the wind (so that sailors in Kihei get the strong north winds). It seems that this can generate winds that are significantly stronger in the harbor than a couple of miles upwind at Uppers.

Even sailing straight out at Uppers, there's quite a bit of local variation in the wind. Of course, there's less wind close to the shore, where the trees block the wind a bit. But at some days, there's also a very noticeable drop in wind strength when you sail out between half a mile and a mile; other days, the wind seems to keep going up the further out you go. Keeps life interesting...

So, as many locals have known for a long time, the free airport sensor appears to more accurate than the Kanaha sensor - just make sure to add a few miles to the averages, or go by the gusts. The one drawback it has is that the readings are updated just once an hour. If you'd rather use the Kanaha sensor, keep in mind that it probably will be low for ENE directions, and may be high for NE directions. But then, who uses the sensors here, anyway? In the summer, the question usually is whether to rig 4.2 or 4.7, with 5+ m sails reserved for the "low wind" days. Since I don't own a 4.2 here, the question for me is between 4.5 and 5.0; I've used the 5.3 and 5.7 sails here only 8 of the 32 days we've sailed. To pick between these to sails is usually easy enough, and any "mistakes" can easily be fixed with a bit of efficiency or high-wind technique. Well, I warned you that the post is pointless, did I not?

4,5, 4.2, 4.5, 3.7, ...

2011-08-04T02:47:00.002-04:00

We're in the middle of a windy week here in Maui. It did not start out this way - on Sunday, I was on my "big" 5.3 m sail / 93 l board combo, and had to work to get planing. Monday was supposed to be even worse, so we took the day off - with no regrets when the wind picked up after 5 pm, since the forecast for the rest of the week looked great.

Indeed, the summer wind machine was turned on yesterday. Wind meter readings were in the upper 20s most of the afternoon, with gusts in the low 30s. I sailed my much-loved 4.5/77 l combo, Nina used a 4.2 and her custom Angulo board. I was fully powered, but very comfortable - amazing how 4 weeks practice here will get you used to chop and high winds.

Today, there were a lot more white caps than yesterday, but the meter readings were only a couple of miles stronger. I stayed with the 4.5, downhauling it a bit more and moving the boom down a bit for control; Nina switched to the 3.7. Wind meter averages during the time we were sailing were steady at 29, with gusts to 34; actual wind on the water was probably a bit higher, especially on the outside. I probably would have been powered on a 4.0, but the Manics are really nice, light, top-end oriented wave sails. I have the feeling I can sail them at any point between 0 and 100% power, and I definitely was sailing half-open a few times today in the gusts. Had a perfect blast, though - playing with swell and waves, practicing jumps, and going downwind on the inside for speed runs. I had my first planing inside jibe on the 77 l board today, which felt great, and set a new personal top speed for Maui (30.7 mph, just below 50 kmh). Yes, I have definitely gotten used to the chop and high winds here.

Nina had a bit of a hard time, though. It seems every time she takes out the 3.7, she's not having much fun - somewhat of a surprise since the 4.2 (same kind, same year) works well for her. Today, she hard a hard time going upwind, until she finally moved the harness lines back an inch. That worked, somewhat to her surprise - she had expected some back hand pressure with the harness lines to far to the front, but did not notice anything. Why? I think it's a combination of several things:

The Manics are really light-feeling sails, which don't deliver a lot of "grunt" - so whatever extra pressure might be on the backhand would be small.
Going from the 4.2 to the 3.7 makes it even easier to have the sail at the wrong angle - either not fully closed, or oversheeted and partially stalled. Since the sail is specifically designed to make killing power in it very easy, it still behaves very well at "wrong" angles, giving little indication that something is wrong.

The Manics are also top-end oriented, and very easy to control when overpowered - to the point where I sometimes don't even think I'm overpowered, even though I'm on 5.0 when everyone else is on 4.2 (and smaller boards). This made it easy for Nina to hold on to larger sails than necessary here. She was often on 4.2 when I was on 4.5, while at home, I'd typically use a 5.5 when she is on 4.2. On the lighter days here, I'd have to concentrate fully on efficiency to get planing on a 5.3 or 5.7 sail, while she was still powered on a 4.5 or 5.0 (I weigh about 1.5 x as much as she does, so in first approximation, my sails should be 50% bigger). So she missed out on opportunities to learn how to finesse the sail... Anyway, I found it very interesting to learn that her problems could be solved by moving the harness lines a bit.

After finally fixing the "power problem" (and successfully avoiding all turtles for the day), Nina discovered a new thing that can go wrong in Maui: timing when to breathe. Now, this may sound like a trivial issue, but when falling during jibes on the outside, some stupid big wave may just decide to break right where you are, and fall onto your head. Well, if you did not see this coming and happen to be breathing in at the same moment, you'll be breathing water - which, as Nina discovered, is a very unpleasant experience. But on the bright side, it gave her an opportunity to sail one-handed after starting again - she needed the other hand to wipe the tears and water out of her face. By the time she reached the shore, she was fine again, albeit still somewhat upset about the stupid wave.

We windsurfers are rather stubborn people, willing to take many days of learning and many bad days for a few great days of windsurfing. In the past 4 weeks here in Maui, it seems that on most days, one of us had a great time, while the other had a day of the "I'd rather forget about it" kind. In the last few days, I was mostly the lucky one, but overall, it's been a pretty even mix. I just hope that, after several great days in a row, it's not my turn again for a bad day! We should be even more wind for the next two days, so we'll just have to see.

This note is for Monika: Nina is perfectly fine, and has promised to not try any water breathing again while we're on Maui, so you need not worry.

Just say no to Speed Jibes!

2011-07-31T18:22:00.000-04:00

The title may seem a bit contradictory for a wannabe speed surfer, so let me clarify: I am talking about jibe where the sail is flipped first, and the feet are switched afterwards - also known as "Sail First Jibes" or "Euro Jibes". I will be using "Speed Jibe" here because that's the term used in the Tricktionary.

Here on Maui, many sailors do Speed Jibes. I have noticed the same thing at home on really windy, choppy days - so the naive observer could come to the conclusion that Speed Jibes are the jibe to do in windy and choppy conditions. Gullible as I am, I actually worked on Speed Jibes for a few days here.. but not without having Andy Brandt's voice in the back of my head, telling me not to bother with "Euro Trash Jibes". Matt Pritchard pretty much said the same during my private.

The final nail in the coffin came down when watching the racers at the Maui Race Series. Here's a video of one group jibing around a mark:

Everyone is doing Step Jibes, with some variation in how far the sail is laid down, but little variation in the timing of the step forward (for the purpose of this discussion, I'll treat Step Jibes and Laydown Jibes as the same). What I found amazing is that falls during the jibes where rare - despite having to jibe at a pre-determined spot, plenty of distraction (the other sailors), and quite a bit of chop. Any single one of these things is likely to make me fall when I jibe...

Going through the movies I made during the races, I actually did discover one Speed Jibe:

This one was from a sailor at the tail end of the pack - no big surprise, since he lost a lot of speed during his jibe. For comparison, here is a jibe by Phil McGain, who dominated the races, winning all races except the one where his universal broke:

Looking at other jibes in the movies from the races, I noticed a very strong correlation between stepping late and loosing speed during the jibe. In jibes that kept the most speed, the back foot moved forward at the same time that the sail was opened up. Even stepping a tad later, as the sail flipped to the other side, typically resulted in significantly more loss of speed. Two screen shots from the movies above illustrate why:

With both feet in the back of the board, the tail sinks, putting the brakes on big time. Compare this to the how flat the board is in Phil's Step Jibe when the sail is in exactly the same position of the board:

Well, if this isn't a convincing argument for the step jibe, what is?

Of course, there is plenty of stuff that can go wrong during a Step Jibe, too. Here's an example of a bad jibe that Matt Pritchard caught on video during my first private with him:

I have been working on the things that Matt suggested to improve my jibes in chop:

Keeping the front arm long during the entry and oversheeting.
Stepping forward when the sail moves forward, and bending the front knee to put weight on it and flatten the board out.
Looking where I'm going (instead of succumbing to the dreaded disease called "Sail Fascination"), especially during and after the sail flip.

A couple of days ago, we went for a late windsurf session after work. Nina had some shoulder pain and decided not to go sailing, so she took videos from the beach. Knowing that this would be a short session, I worked a bit harder, concentrating on my jibes. I definitely noticed some improvements during the session, and felt pretty good about the last jibe, even though I did not plane through. Here is the video, with an inset from the clew-mounted GoPro HD:

When my typical (rather than my best) jibes in chop look like this, I'll be quite happy. My arms are straighter than usually, I oversheet nicely, and I look where I want to go (at least at the end). Still, there are a few things that can be improved that even I noticed:

The front arm should be straighter during the carve.
Knees should be bent a bit more during the entire jibe.
The step with the front foot to the back is pretty big, which sinks the tail a lot. Just sliding the foot out of the foot strap and placing it right behind it should keep the board flatter, and thereby keep a bit more speed.

This might sound a bit like nitpicking. But looking at lots of boom cam videos, I found that I make the same mistakes in most jibes; the difference between the dry jibes and the wet ones is mostly in how badly I'm doing these things wrong.
--
Enough about jibes, here's a brief summary about what else went on during the last week. We did not sail last Sunday and Monday - Sunday because we needed a break, and Monday because the wind came up very late, after we had already given up hope. On Tuesday, I tried out sailing with slalom gear in Kanaha (iSonic 101 and Vapor 6.7). That ended up being too much of a change - just getting into the tight outboard footstraps after being used to big center footstraps was a challenge. After a couple of runs, I switched the board to my trusted Angulo FW 93 so I could concentrate on just the difference in going to a cambered race sail. The sail felt very slippery, I would have loved to try it on flat water - but for Kanaha, I switched back to my 5.7 Manic after a few runs. This gave me a whole new appreciation for how easy the wave gear is to sail under the conditions here - and on the skills of the racers that practiced on even bigger slalom gear the entire time.

Last Thursday, we went to Kihei for the first time, since winds there looked a lot higher than in Kanaha. We sailed from the Sunset launch, since that was the first spot where we saw a lot of other windsurfers. The sailing was very interesting. The wind was side shore at the launch, and the waves had about 3 miles to build up, so the water was definitely not flat. With gusts in the 40s, I found myself keeping the 4.5 I used pretty open a lot, and using all the things Matt had told me to keep control. The session was fun, even though my top speed ended up being rather low. The rigging area with perfectly manicured lawn was nice, but the water was much dirtier than on the North shore. I paid for that with a headache the next day - something that happens to me at home sometimes the day after sailing, but has not happened after sailing Kanaha or Sprecks.

Nina sailed only a short time in Kihei before her fingers started hurting badly - maybe from holding on so hard in the crazy gusts. She had a much better time yesterday in Kanaha, until she hit a turtle on her last run that stopped the board dead, and sent her catapulting and hitting the mast with her head. Fortunately, both her head and the turtle's shell are very hard, and neither Nina nor the turtle seemed to have any lasting damage. In Nina's case, that's a safe bet, she has neither a headache nor bruises; in the turtle's case, we can only hope. During the races earlier that day, one of the racers had hit a at turtle full speed, and got catapulted over the handle bars. That ended the day for the sailor, but again, the turtle was hopefully ok. I usually have between 1 and 10 turtle sightings a day; if turtles were easily damaged by windsurf boards and fins, the dozens of sailors on the water anytime it's windy would have had a negative impact by now. It seems that the turtle shells of Maui turtles are a lucky case of evolutionary pre-adaptation to windsurf fins :)

30=32, but 24-30=sh*t

2011-07-24T00:43:00.000-04:00

Did you guess from the title that I am talking about harness lines? If not, don't worry about it :)

For more than a year now, I have been sailing single-point harness lines. They worked great for me (or so I thought). One big advantage is that swapping lines is so easy: my wife and I sometimes use the same boom, but she's about 9 inches shorter than me, and uses a lot shorter lines. I have been using 26 inch lines for speed and 30 inch lines for choppy conditions and freestyle.

All was fine until I took a private lesson with Matt Pritchard on Maui. For the larger part of the lesson, he was sailing close behind me, and he noticed that my sail was moving (opening and closing a bit) a lot. He suggested that I switch to traditional harness lines that have two separate connection points. I had noticed this before in a boom cam video I had made while speedsurfing, and I learned many times that ignoring the advice of windsurf teachers is foolish, so I went looking for new lines. I made a couple of interesting discoveries along the way that I summarized in the title..

My first idea was to get some NP Vario lines. Before switching to single points, we had always used vario lines to accomodate our different length preferences. But more importantly, Anders Bjorkqvist, a fellow blogger and speedsurfer, had suggested these particular lines because they tend to break in bad catapults (like when hitting a sand bank at 40 knots). I have broken a boom and a sail in catapults, and seen others inflict even more damage, so I liked Anders' argument that a broken harness line is much cheaper to replace than anything else that might break - and if the catapult is bad enough, something must break.

So I went to the Neil Pryde Maui store, and picked up 24-30 in vario lines. These work beautifully when used at 24 or 25 inches - but when close to fully extended, they tend to dangle around a lot, making it really hard to hook in in high wind and chop. Here's a short video illustrating this:

For comparison, here's a hook-in into fixed lines:

A lot faster and easier! This was on the first day I was using the fixed lines, so I still looked down at them in the video. However, that was not necessary most of the time, since they will stay exactly where you put them. With the vario lines run at close to full extension, you absolutely have to look down - you have to time the hook-in with their swing! A real PITA in chop and high wind!

So I figured that I'd use the vario lines only for speed surfing, where bad catapults are most likely, and went to look for fixed lines. Earlier this year in Andy's Wind-NC shop, I had learned that lines from different manufactures with the same length label are not actually the same length, so I went with Dakine lines, the same brand as my single-point lines. I got some 30 inch lines - but when I tried them on the water, they were noticeably shorter than my 30 inch single-point lines! They felt uncomfortably too short, and my stance on the boom cam video looked really bad, with arms bent way too much. So a couple of days later, I went back to one of the many windsurf shops here, and got a pair of 32-inch Dakine lines. There worked just fine - finally! So, 32-inch 2-point lines are the same length as 30-inch single-point lines; and NP Vario lines near full extensions are sh*t (the NP Maui store did not have any longer vario lines than 24-30).

Oh yes, some of my regular readers may wonder about the windsurfing the last few days. We have had an unfortunate change in wind patterns: the evening drop-off has moved forward from 6-7 pm to around 4 pm for the last 2 days. We got caught schlogging the first day, but went earlier yesterday and caught one hour of good wind before it died down. We had some swell and breaking waves in Kanaha, which I used for a bit of chicken play and to get my hair washed, before I decided to leave the waves to the better sailors. Still, a fun session, with a nice nautical mile run above 20 knots, and a few jibes where I looked where I was going (surprise - it works!). In contrast, today was a lot of work. Wind averages were above 20 until noon, but dropped to about 17 mph when we made it to the water. Even the "big" 93 l board and my biggest sail (5.7) did not get me planing consistently. Well, schlogging upwind needs to be practiced, too... Back home, we saw that the wind meter readings for Kihei looked better, with averages in the mid-20s, and gusts in the 30s. Apparently, this would have been a good day to sail in Kihei for the first time. Well, on the upside, we got home early, so I had enough time and energy to blog.

Jump, jump, jump, jump

2011-07-22T13:03:00.000-04:00

I had another lesson with Matt Pritchard 2 days ago - jumping. Here's a video:

The lesson was great, my jumps definitely improved a lot during the hour on the water. It's not that Matt told me something I had not heard before - but having specific instruction on the water which thing to focus on was really helpful. Seeing his many jumps as an example was just as helpful, and cool. I loved the way he set down very gently after the jumps - I did not even know that's possible.

During the lesson, we focus on board control in the air (exposing the underside), and I definitely got a feeling for that. Next, I'll have to work on staying sheeted in. The wind was in the 30-40 mph range during the lesson, so staying sheeted in was not so easy even when just sailing along...

Yesterday, I got skunked for the first time here. Wind in the early afternoon was great, and during the past 3 weeks, the wind always stayed up until 6:30 or 7 pm. When we finally got to Kanaha (after getting new harness lines - the NP Vario lines are impossible to get into in high wind), the meter showed 32 averages, so I rigged the 4.5. But by the time I made it onto the water, the wind had dropped more than 10 mph. I ended up barely planing for 15 seconds, and schlogging for 20 minutes. No fun...

Lessons from Matt Pritchard

2011-07-19T02:57:00.002-04:00

Today, I finally had a private lesson with Matt Pritchard at Sprecks. Conditions were great, I was fully powered on 4.5 with a 77l board. I did not have a set agenda, other than wanting tips to help me adapt to Maui conditions. The chop here on a typical 25-30 knot day is quite different from the flat water in Fogland or Bonaire..

We started with a few runs where Matt followed me to watch what I was doing. Every time I fell, Matt jumped into the water next to me, and made suggestions. After a few runs, we went back to the beach for a slightly longer discussion.

The first thing Matt fixed was my stance. I was trying to do something like the typical figure 7 stance that works so well on flat water and with big fins. In Maui chop with a 22 cm wave fin, the main thing that happened was spinouts. So the things Matt suggested were:

To turn the hips more forward, and to look upwind over the shoulder.
To bend the knees a lot, so that I could absorb the chop as needed.
To put more pressure on the front foot, with the goal to (at least) have about even pressure on both legs.
To really hang down to put all the weight into the harness (I am temporarily using a seat harness because my ribs hurt from an earlier crash).

No rocket science here - I had read about most of these things before. Making these adjustments had a dramatic effect: no more spinouts, a much quieter board, more control, less work. We had some gusts where the meter readings were in the mid-30s, and the actual wind probably around 40, but things staid well under control. Those adjustments alone would have been worth the cost of the lesson! I only wish I had scheduled the lesson a lot earlier...

Here are two "before" and "after" pictures:

The "before" picture is above - a very upright stance, knees straight, hips inward.

The "after" picture shows some progress: hips are twisted forward, the body is further out with more pressure on the harness lines, and the knees are bent, at least a bit. This picture was taken about 15 minutes after the last one, so the stance is still new to me. Here's a picture from a PWA slalom race that shows the figure 6 stance better:

An interesting thing Matt said was that the board and fin were to small for me. He is probably about my weight or a bit less, and he was out on a 96 l board the entire time; I have also seen him use a 106 l board in similar conditions. I have a 93 l board here that I love, but when the wind picks up, I usually switch to the smaller board because the big board became too bouncy. I should add that the 93 l board also has a big fin (30 cm), so keeping something like a figure 7 stance with pretty stiff knees does not usually cause spinouts. However, going through the chop at full speed with stiff knees starts to hurt pretty soon!

It appears that the common desire to switch to smaller and smaller boards as the wind picks up is linked to failing to adapt the stance to the conditions. I think that just switching to a figure 6 stance with long harness lines, deeply bend knees, forward-twisted hips, and full weight in the harness will make a modern "larger" board like the Angulo Change FW 93 behave at least as well as a 77 l wave board. Can't wait to try it out!

I have to admit that just the suggestion of a 2-times Super-X world champion to use a larger board would be good enough for me; but just as good a reason are the wind holes here in Maui. I had to schlog the 77l board twice today, and a few times before that. Yes, it can be done, but it's all work and no fun. Schlogging the 93 l board is 10 x less work - and it's a lot easier to plane through jibes on it, too.

The stance fix was easy, and we then went on to my jibes. Funny enough, my first jibe was dry, and the second one was fully planed through - the only reason I fell was that I did not get into the footstraps again fast enough (and probably also that I did not bend my knees enough after the transition). But the next ones were the more common wet variety, and we went to work.

One thing Matt explained was the timing in the big outside swell. I had tried to figure this out for three weeks know, but the only thing I was able to say for certain was that starting to carve on the wave front generally did not work - I'd run uphill into the next wave, and loose all speed. So Matt explained his approach in the local setup, where the goal is to end up in the trough between 2 waves for the sail flip, so that the next wave pushes you back onto a plane as you accelerate. Tried this a bit, and that worked just fine. But or course, there were plenty of other things to fix!

One of these things is the dreaded bent front arm. In Kanaha, we have often watched the slalom guys do beautiful step jibes, fully planing and always in full control. But most of the not-so-great jibers, myself included, will always bent the front arm at some point, even if they start with a straight arm and a decent oversheeting. In my case, it's a bad habit that I practiced many many years before learning the correct way in ABK camps - so unless I concentrate on leaving the front arm long, it bends automatically. The interesting thing that Matt pointed out is that at the same time, the legs go straight. This, in turn, sinks the tail, and takes a lot of speed out of the turn. On flat water, I can often work around this a bit and still plane through - but in chop, loosing all board speed and standing up straight is a recipe for practicing waterstarts a few seconds later.

Besides the bent front arm, I'm also very likely to be so utterly fascinated by the sail or the nose of the board that I cannot tear my eyes off it, instead of looking where I want to go. I know this is a common mistake, but I was quite unaware that I made it, until Matt pointed it out. Two more things he mentioned that I think will be very helpful are to thing of the back arm and the back leg as being linked, so that the leg moves as soon as the sail transition starts; and to not just step forward, but to bend the front knee and really put weight on the leg to flatten the board out and drive it forward.

Matt was happy with the last jibe I did, where I apparently remembered to do everything he told me to. I think it will need a few more days of practice, but I think I have a better understanding now of what to look for when analyzing my boom cam videos, and I'm definitely motivated to work on it.

Well, a great lesson and a great day, with enough stuff to work on to keep me entertained for a while. As my Karate teacher used to say - the basics have to be right first, everything else will follow!

For all of you who plan to come to Maui for windsurfing - try to schedule a lesson (or a few) with Matt while you are here - the earlier, the better! If you are a flat water sailor like me, who has a hard time getting really comfortable out here, he may give you pointers that make your sailing easier within minutes. Or if you are better or more adventurous, he'll be glad to teach you the loop or other tricks. And, since Matt does get to spend a considerable time windsurfing, he is not just a great teacher, but also a real nice guy.

Windy days

2011-07-17T16:03:00.002-04:00

It's been windy the last 3 days here on Maui, full power on 4.5-5.0 for me, 4.2 for Nina. And that's before the 4 pm, when the wind picked up a notch every day. Wind meter readings were in the mid-20s, with gusts in the low 30s; actual wind on the water was probably 5 mph higher.

Here's a video of Nina sailing yesterday. The first segment shows her working on a hand wash jibe; the second segment shows her coming in a bit later when the wind had picked up a bit:

I have finally gotten myself to try a few 360s, but mostly, I have been working on getting my jibes dry and on staying in control when fully powered in the chop here. With the jibes, I feel like I'm re-learning, and finally have reached the stage where the outside jibes are mostly dry (that is, as long as I am fresh - after an hour or two of sailing, the success rate goes down a lot). Still, much better than not even trying like last year, or falling all the time. However, planing through is still quite rare and mainly a matter of luck in timing the waves. Hopefully, this will improve a bit after a private lesson with Matt Pritchard tomorrow afternoon..

The other thing I have had some fun with is playing in waves. Most days, we get some gentle breaking waves between Sprecks and Camp One. Usually, these waves are perhaps shoulder-high, and the water is deep enough so that there is little chance of gear damage. But for a flatwater sailor like me, it's still plenty to get the adrenaline going, and to get some nice crashes. More often than not, I find myself going for the path between the breaks rather than for jumps when going out. Looking back at the GPS tracks after yesterday sessions, I discovered that this also is the best way for speed runs. The water before and between the breaking waves can be incredibly flat, and going parallel to the waves gives a deep downwind angle for speed runs. The slightly scary thing (besides the waves) is that you are going downwind, away from the launch site - but when fully powered, going back upwind is no issue. Maybe one of these days I'll try this on slalom gear instead of wave gear :)

West Maui

2011-07-15T01:57:00.001-04:00

Yesterday morning, we went on a road trip around the western part of Maui. This road is much less traveled than the "Road to Hana" on the eastern side, and for good reasons: the first hour of the trip is a very narrow, winding, and often steep road that more often than not is just one lane. Additional hazards include falling rocks and slick roads after rainfalls. For me as the driver, this part of the trip required just as much concentration as sailing in 30+ mph winds and high chop - so it sure was fun, even though I often had to slow down to 10 mph. I did not see much except for the road, but the girls took some pictures:

Judging by their exclamations and the pictures, this was indeed a very scenic drive. Of course, we stopped a few times so I could have a look, too. This is a rock formation that we usually see from the other side when windsurfing:

We also had to stop at the "bell rock", which supposedly makes a bell-like sound when hit hard and at the right place:

It did not ring a bell for us - perhaps this is just something the Hawaiians use to make fun of tourists? Maybe there's a little web cam somewhere, linked to an address that only the locals know...

I mentioned the rock fall hazard, didn't I? Here's a picture of what was lying on the street at various locations:

Fortunately, this was where the road was wide and straight again. Something like this in the one-lane parts of the road, with nowhere to turn around, could have caused some serious problems.

The coast line was quite dramatic, so here are a few more pictures:

Close to the tip of the island, the road got bigger and more boring, with lots of other cars on the road. we stopped in Lahaina for breakfast on the beach, and then made it back home and finally to Sprecks.

The sailing was close to perfect. I was on a 5.0, just powered at first and fully powered at the end of the session. We met with our friend Scott and took some pictures and videos - here are two pictures:

That's me in the picture above. Not sure if it was I or the board who decided to take off there; in either case, I need to work on getting the back leg up and sheeting in some more.

In the picture below are Nina on the right and Scott on the left:

Today, my daughter and I went to an arcade for some fun, and later drove out to Sprecks to meet Nina and Scott. Arriving at Sprecks at close to 4 pm, I had to pick a bad parking spot, and we needed plenty of helping hands to push the van to get it back out later. Fortunately, the windsurfers at Sprecks all seem nice and eager to help, so we eventually made it out again. My thanks to all the helpers!

In between, I took the 4.5 that Nina had rigged for a spin, together with my 93 l Angulo (no way Nina would let me touch her custom!). Just about then, the wind had picked up a lot, and I was overpowered on the 4.5. I had been to lazy to take my usual 30 in harness lines of my boom, and just slapped 28 in lines on. To cut even more time, I went barefoot, instead of in booties as usual. These two changes were just too much, things felt uncomfortably out of control. At some point, I lost the rear footstrap in the air, and came down on the board with my ankle for a nice scrape. After going back to get the booties and move the boom lower, things got better, and I finally had a few dry (if ugly) jibes. Speed was slower than yesterday, though, even though the wind was stronger. The wind direction was a bit different, though (more easterly today), and there were no breaking waves to create nice ramps and flat water for speed runs. Looking at the GPS data at home, I discovered that Nina had beaten me in the 2 and 10 second top speeds. I think this is a first, usually I am about 3 mph faster. Her new Angulo custom board sure is fast!

With my daughter returning home today, the vacation part of our trip will come to an end. We'll have to work more now, but we should get an hour or two of sailing in most days. It will mostly be at Kanaha, though - no more late trips to Sprecks for me!

Lazy beach day

2011-07-12T23:41:00.000-04:00

With a bad wind forecast for the day and just a few days left before my daughter has to leave, we decided to go boogie boarding today. After renting boards for $6/day at the Maui Windsurf Company, we followed the suggestion of the store owner and drove to a little beach in Wailea.

The beach was very lovely, the waves were ok for some little rides, just enough to keep it interesting for a while. Here are a few pictures:

As you can see on the last picture, it was pretty windy; the airport sensors showed averages above 20 for the entire afternoon. I would not have minded going windsurfing, but foolishly, I let the girls pick a restaurant right next to a little shopping mall for lunch. After lunch and mandatory ice cream, there was some extended shopping that had to be done (or so I was told). By the time we were back in Kahului, it was late afternoon - just about the time that the wind often drops. So no windsurfing today - but there should be plenty of wind again tomorrow. We'll probably do some driving around the beautiful island in the morning, but the afternoon is reserved for windsurfing! That said, I still find it amazing that not sailing the whole day even though it was windy, warm, and sunny does not bug me much...

Maui Rules!

2011-07-12T15:39:00.000-04:00

We had a great short windsurf session yesterday. Nina sailed on her new custom board for the first time, and loved it even more than the original it was based on; the small tweaks Mark made to adjust the board to her definitely worked. She was overpowered on 4.5, but did not mind. I was fully powered on 5.3 / 93 l. Nina's 4.5 would have been big enough for me, but it sure is nice to be powered. We ended up sailing during the windiest hour of the day, with meter averages around 25, gusts of 30.

The session was short because we squeezed it in between quite a few other things: work early in the morning, an aquarium visit, and a sunset drive to the Haleakala crater (up 10,000 feet, or 3 km - that would count like a decent mountain in the Alps, too). Both the aquarium visit and the crater drive are things you should definitely try to squeeze into a Maui vacation. The coolest thing in the aquarium is a underwater tunnel where you can stand under huge rays and sharks swimming right above and next to you - close enough to scare a few kids :)

Here are just a few pictures from the day:

Light wind on Maui

2011-07-11T01:51:00.003-04:00

Well, it happens on Maui, too: we had light wind today, where my "big" gear (a 5.7 m sail and 93 l FSW board) was not big enough to get me planing consistently. At first, the wind meter readings showed averages of 17, gusts of 20, and I was planing maybe 2/3 of the time. Nina rigged a 5.0, but the wind was too low to test her new custom, so she took the Goya One 77. She planed a bit more than I did, but had to work hard for it. Then, the wind dropped off more, and I practiced schlogging a sinker again (although, I have to admit, the 93 l board is starting to feel bigger).

Today, the only guys who were planing most of the time were the slalom racers, who used race sails in the 6-7 m range. For the next 2 days, the computer models predict just a tad more wind; unless the wind meter readings look better than today, we may not go sailing. After all, there are still a few other fun things we can do before my daughter has to fly back home in a few days.

Dolphins, sunset sail, and a new board

2011-07-10T16:12:00.000-04:00

Windsurfing has taken the back seat the last few days. One reason was that we had to start working; the other one was that we wanted to get some sightseeing in before my daughter has to fly back next week.

The windsurfing we did was at Sprecks. I had one great day and a so-so day; Nina had a so-so day and a great day. The so-so days were caused by being underpowered. On the second day, where Nina had a lot of fun, she was on a 4.2, and I was on a 4.5. Usually, I'd be on at least a 5.0 or 5.5 when she is on 4.2, and indeed, I had started the day on a 5.0. However, I took the sail out in the windiest 30 minutes of the day, and then decided to go down to 4.5. Still, the day had some memorable moments, including a few decent wave rides, and the fall where my back foot was ripped out of the foot strap by a rogue wave, leading to a perfect split wipeout with lots of water up the nose. There also was the mandatory waterstart in light wind just before the impact zone, followed by schlogging into the waves - enough to keep a flat water sailor like me on the toes.

On Thursday, we went on a half-day snorkeling trip on a small (~15 persons) raft. We had a substantial amount of south swell, and it was raining for half of the trip, so we all got quite cold, despite renting wet suit vests. Waves were breaking on Lanai, making snorkeling there impossible, so we went to a sanctuary near the western tip of Maui. Snorkeling was nice, with plenty of interesting fish and nice corals. We also saw several sea turtles while snorkeling, cool. I took some pictures and movies with a wrist-mounted GoPro, but they turned out a bit disappointing. But on the way back, when we encountered a large group of spinner dolphins, I got some nice underwater pictures of the dolphins by leaning over the side of the raft. Here are a few:

Yesterday morning, we picked up Nina's new custom board from Mark Angulo:

Nina did not get a chance to try it yesterday, because we had planned a sunset sailing trip out of Lahaina. The trip was great - perfect weather, nice wind, great crew. Here are a few pictures:

Spoiled

2011-07-05T01:33:00.001-04:00

We're in Maui for just a week, and we're already spoiled. We went sailing in Kanaha today to meet up with our friend Scott, who is on Maui for 2 weeks. The wind was light, so I finally rigged my 5.7; Nina went out on a 4.5. During the first 30 minutes or so, I was planing only about half of the time, until the wind picked up a tad. After planing consistently for a few runs, I mounted the GoPro camera with the Clew-View attachment to take some video. Not much action here, but the scenery is nice:

Thirty minutes later, the wind dropped off again so that I was going slow most of the time - things turned from fun to work, and I did not like it. Back home, that would have been an average to good day, except that both sail and board would have been bigger; but here, I found myself being a bit unhappy. Spoiled rotten already! Fortunately, the wind forecast for the entire next week looks good, with computer models predicting 20 mph winds. With the added thermal & venturi effects, actual winds will probably be in the mid-20s or higher (for our German non-windsurfing reader(s), that's 6-7 Beaufort or "Windstärke"). It will be nice getting some practice on 4 m sails and sub-80 l boards :)

Dialed in

2011-07-04T16:38:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, the wind was a bit light for Maui standards: Nina was on a 4.5 / 77l FSW board, I was on a 5.0 / 93 l FSW board. Lots of fun - after a week here, I finally felt fully dialed in (I'm sure it helped that the wind was on the lighter side). Had some nice chop hops, worked on the sail-first jibe, and went for long distance speed so that we could post our first session on the GPS team challenge.

On most of my outside jibes, I had problems timing the swell and my turns. More often than not, I sailed uphill while going downwind, and lost all speed. However, I did get lucky with the timing on one wave, planing fully through with a minimum speed of 11 knots - a new personal best for non-flat water. I also sailed about 25% more distance (48 km) than ever before in Maui. Here are the GPS tracks:

Nina first had some problems slipping on the old Goya during jibes, and had to go back in to get her booties. Then, she saw some big bloody bait out in the ocean, and decided to stay inside the reef until all of her jibes were dry. At times, she was a bit overpowered on her 4.5. Her speed results for the day were pretty good, since she went upwind on her way out, and then had to go downwind when coming back in.

Today looks like another light wind day, perhaps even lighter than yesterday. Maybe I finally get to try the 5.7 m sail :) We'll go down to Kanaha, anyway, to meet our friend Scott, who just arrived yesterday from Boston.

Zip lines, gear, and races

2011-07-03T00:23:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a day to try something other than surfing - ziplining. We first stopped at the Lavender Farm, here are some pictures:

Next stop was ziplining, a first for all three of us. Lots of fun - here's a video from a helmet-mounted GoPro Hero HD:

Afterwards, we started to drive up to to the crater, but got fooled by the rental car: going uphill made the car think the gas tank was almost empty. Since there was no gas station anywhere close, we played it safe and turned around. By the time we finally found a gas station, everyone was to tired to turn around once more for the long drive up. Well, we have a few more days...

For today, we had planned to watch the Maui Race Series, and to get a board Nina can use until she gets here custom. I had played with the idea of entering the race, but after having a bit a hard time with dry jibes here, and seeing the racers train on full (and usually relatively new) slalom gear, I decided that playing an obstacle would not be much fun. Instead, we watched the races for a while from the beach. Without a doubt, every single one of the racers sails better than I do, so I still have a lot to learn...

We had picked up two older Goya boards at the local store to try out, a FSW 77 and a custom wave 75. At the beach, we added a Tabou Da Curve 79l to the test quiver. Nina went out first on a 5.0, and liked both the Tabou and the Goya 77. The wind was steadily picking up, and she was starting to feel a bit overpowered, so I took the same gear out for a ride. The Goya One 77 was ridiculously easy to sail. I made my first jibe dry, something that's rare in chop or when I'm on a new board. The Tabou was almost as easy, but a bit more fun. The only board I did not care for was the Goya custom - its actual volume seems closer to 70 l than to 75, and the rocker curve is too dramatic in front, which made getting on a plane much harder. Note that wind meter reading during this time were about 20-25 mph; on flat water, I'd be on a 118 l board and 7.0 sail under these conditions. Quite amazing that I was able to plane easily on 2 of the 3 sub-80 liter boards with a 5.0 sail. There's something about the wind here that's different - perhaps the meters read low, because they are close to shore?

We decided to get the Goya FSW 77 and the Tabou for a total of $400. That's about what we typically pay to rent windsurf gear for a week, so it's a really good deal. We hope to take the Tabou home with us, but the Goya is pretty beat up already, so it will be the board for trying loops and other tricks were the chances of damaging the board are increased. The fact that it is so ridiculously easy to sail will certainly help trying new things. Now we only need wind - but so far, we have had 5.0 or better conditions every day we wanted to sail :)

This trip has already changed a few things in our windsurfing. Now, my big board is 93 l, and my small board will be 77-79 l. That will be the size of Nina's big board, and her small board will be 71 l. My big sail will be 5.7; I doubt that Nina will use anything bigger than 5.0 here. For someone used to rigging 8.5 meter cambered sails in the summer to get planing, that's quite a change. But at home, where 2 "windy" days a week make it a windy week in the summer, I could never imagine to stop sailing after just a few short runs while the wind was still blowing. Here, there's always a windy tomorrow.

Finally, a few more pictures from the beach today:

Maui Day 4: Windy!

2011-07-01T17:37:00.001-04:00

Nina and Mark Angulo with the prototype

We started the day with a trip to Mark Angulo's place in Haiku, where Mark and Nina discussed the custom board she has ordered. The board will have the same shape as on the board in the picture that Mark had built for himself, but with two changes: the footstraps will be closer together, and it will be a twin fin board, not a quad. That was based on (a) Nina testing it with 2 fins, and liking it a lot, and (b) Mark's opinion that twin fins are usually better than quads. The colors will probably also be different - Nina left the design up to Mark, with the only restriction not to make it pink or purple. I can't wait to see it!
This was a real fun visit. My daughter remarked that it was hard to say who was more excited, Nina or Mark. We also met Mark's lovely wife, and chatted a bit about the windsurf lakes in her native Italy.

On the way back, we stopped in Haiku for a second breakfast, and then at Ho'okipa to watch the surfers for a while. Here are some pictures (the last three are a tribute to GP, who's blog I love, especially when not on Maui):

And finally, a few pictures of us:

Almost forgot - I actually sailed a bit, too, overpowered on 4.5. After a hooked-in nose landing and catapult, the line at the end of the boom came loose - seems I had not checked the knots on the new boom. That was an interesting 5 minutes in deep blue water, retying knots and thinking about how rare shark attacks are in Kanaha. Back in the shore, we met "The Bob", who is in town for the long weekend with his family - nice!

I thought my sailing was not good. Most of the time, my sail was pretty open, and the board rather bouncy. With wind readings in the upper 20s and gusts in the mid-30s, at least a smaller fin would have been in order, but I had lost the little nut in the fin I had brought. When I looked at the boom cam video later, though, it did not look nearly as bad as I thought, and definitely much better than last year. Funny how perceptions work.

There'll be no sailing today - ziplines and crater tour are on the menu.

Maui Day 3: Sprecks

2011-06-30T00:58:00.001-04:00

We went to Sprecks today for a short session. Here are some pictures:

Nina sailed first, and loved the board - we might just have to take it back, too. Then, I went out on the same gear, and was nicely powered on a 4.5. I think the wind picked up a bit just as I went out, but still, it's amazing that we both were planing comfortably on the same gear. I'm about 50% heavier than Nina, and usually, that's reflected in the sail size (e.g. 5.0 and 7.0); in addition, Nina also usually sails a smaller board. Despite this being a short session, we both had a lot of fun. I was lazy as usual, but Nina worked a bit on jumps and shove-its:

Judging by how much easier the sailing was today compared to last year, I think we learned a few things in the past year (although the Angulo boards certainly help!). I can't wait so see what we'll learn in our time here!

Maui, Day 2: Going Custom

2011-06-29T02:45:00.000-04:00

On our second day of sailing in Maui, we had a bit less wind then yesterday - 5.0 for me, 4.2 for Nina. I used my new Naish "Wave Pro" hybrid boom, and was very happy with it. Nina sailed the Angulo custom 71 l board again, a board that Mark Angulo had made for himself. She loved it, but wanted the footstraps a bit closer together - so she went ahead and ordered one, which made Mark very happy. The board will certainly be a head turner; today, she could not spend 10 minutes on the beach without someone checking out the board.

We sailed for about 2 1/2 hours today, until I noticed that yes, indeed, using a seat harness requires fitter legs than a waist harness. Getting used to the gear, we ventured out more into the deep blue water a mile from shore. The ocean swell there gets nice and large - Nina complained about the lack of wind between the waves. It was an absolute blast, though. My GPS showed that I sailed faster and more distance than ever before on Maui (all 8 days of sailing there), and that I also did my best jibes here so far. They still were not great, though, just borderline plane-through in the best two. The jibes will have to improve a lot before I really consider starting in the Maui race series! Still, there's some significant progress relative to last year. The Angulo Chango FW 93 certainly helps: while a tad big for the chop here, it carves very nicely, making the chop disappear during the jibe.

For tomorrow, a short session in Sprecks is on the menu, with an afternoon visit to the aquarium. I'll try to also post some pictures then.

Maui Report, Day 1

2011-06-28T02:41:00.001-04:00

We are on Maui for the next 6 1/2 weeks, thanks to a house swap. We'll have to work after a week or two, but for now, it's just vacation time. Today's objective was getting gear, and taking it out for a first run.

We started with stops at three windsurfing shops to ask about used gear, since rental prices for such a long time would total several thousand dollars for the two of us. We got excellent help at the Naish store and at Second Wind. Neil Pryde Maui was rather different. Their web site lists used booms in 3 different sizes for sale, but they did not have any at all. Apparently, the web site never gets updated just because they sell stuff. They also seem to be proud of the exorbitant prices for their new stuff: hybrid aluminum-carbon booms cost $600, carbon booms $1200. Similar stuff in the Naish store costs about half as much. Go figure why you see less and less NP gear on the water!

After that, the day got a lot better. First, we drove to Mark Angulo's house to pick up two boards to try - a 93 l FW that had been sent to Maui for the board test, and a 71 l custom for Nina. Mark is just as nice as his brother Josh, who had arranged this for us. Mark was very interested in getting Nina's opinion on the board.

We took the board to Kanaha, were the sensors showed typical June winds in the mid-20s. I was fully powered on a 4.5 m wave sail, Nina was on a 3.7. My primary goal was to check the condition without breaking or hurting anything. I was pleasantly surprised to have nice runs after a few dial-in runs, and 50% dry jibes (with a couple more "should haves"). I also got a nice top speed of 47 km (25.7 knots) - not bad for a board and sail I never used, and the considerable chop. Nina liked her board, too, but was underpowered close to shore, and did not go out far. On the short runs were she got planing, she loved the way the board made the chop disappear, and how it jibed. She even had a "reverse" planing jibe - entering the jibe non-planing, and accelerating onto a full plane during the entry. Tomorrow should be very interesting!

The Flaka entry

2011-06-21T21:48:00.000-04:00

We have 50 days of windsurfing everyday on Maui coming up soon - so it's time to think about things to learn. A recent blog post by the Canadian Guy certainly encourages thinking a lot about moves before trying them. He got his first Vulcan in 155 attempts, compared to more typical counts in the 300-1000+ range. He studied plenty of how-to-articles as well as blog and forum posts to prepare for the move. Understanding and visualizing the move probably helped him cut out a few hundred tries.

One move I'd like to try during the next 2 months is the Flaka. Some windsurfers have a hard time learning the Flaka, but others think it's easier to learn than the Vulcan. A few things that I find attractive about it are:

I've seen Flaka being completed after a tiny little 45-90 degree jump.
Compared to the Vulcan, there's a lot less to do - the hands remain on the boom the entire time.
The Flaka is a natural progression from the upwind 360s, which can be learned in light wind and then practiced in high wind. The only things to add are the initial jump, and the slide.

However, I have one big problem with the Flaka theory: I do not believe the explanation that my favorite windsurfing teacher gives about the mechanics of the move. I think his "quadrant" theories are great for the spin loop and the Vulcan. However, if my memory serves me right, he also thinks that the initial sail throw for the Flaka is into the forward-leeward quadrant, and that mast base pressure makes the board turn upwind.

I looked at the Tricktionary videos, and at least 15 other videos of Flakas in many variations - regular, one-handed, air flakas, and double flakas (mostly at continentseven.com). In all of the videos I looked at, the initial sail throw is to the windward side, typical into the forward quadrant. Here are screen shots from 4 of these videos:

The videos are showing Daida Moreno, Sarah-Quita Offringa, Davy Scheffers, and Piotr Konkel just as the boards are about to leave the water. In each case, the mast is tilted to the windward side, not to the leeward side. The mast remains there while the board is starting to turn, and the nose is coming down:

Note that between the first and second pictures, the boards have turned about 45-90 degrees. This turn cannot be caused by mast base pressure - any mast base pressure would turn the board the other way, away from the wind. Instead, what appears to be causing the board rotation is the "unwinding" of the body, from the shoulder down to the hips and eventually to the feet:

In the third series of pictures, the boards have rotated 180 degrees, and the back legs that were bent in the middle picture are straight again. Now, backwinded sail steering is taking over to push the nose of the board around the rest of the way.

Here's an animated picture series from Daida's Flaka, where the initial oversheeting to (a) depower the sail, and (b) pre-wind the body, can be seen nicely. After the oversheet, watch her body twist the other way, from the hands down to the hips and finally the feet:

So, according to this analysis, the Flaka is a two-part move: in the first part, the board is turned by twisting the body, with the sail basically being neutral; in the second part, the board is steered around the rest of the turn with backwinded sail pressure. This switch, together with the considerable commitment required for the first part, may explain why the Flaka can be hard to learn (especially if you have not done your light-wind homework :).

Back in the seat

2011-06-19T10:46:00.000-04:00

It's always fun to see forum discussions about whether seat or waist harnesses are better, especially when the opinions are presented with crusader-like intensity. I have to admit that I am faithless in this particular issue...

I had used a seat harness for more than 20 years until Andy Brandt told me to switch to a waist harness for freestyle (and, I believe, to improve my stance). So I did, without any problems. When I had tried a waist harness a few years earlier, it had given me back problems, but not this time. A bit later, when I got more into speedsurfing, I tried the seat harness again, but I did not like it, not one little bit, anymore.

Fast forward to the East Coast Windsurfing Festival: after the first day of races in high wind, which gave me plenty of opportunity to practice my catapults, and a night in a random hotel, I woke up with considerable back pain. I blamed the bed - some beds just screw up my back. Over the next few days, my back got better, but after a light wind session, some of the pain came back. So when we went windsurfing in Fogland yesterday, I decided to bring my seat harness again.

The wind yesterday was marginal. I'm a lazy sailor who likes to hook in as soon as I start moving, and thing about planing later. That did not work well with the seat harness; however, I did get to practice jumping up on the board to get out of the harness lines again. Things got better when the wind picked up so I could plane. I was quite amazed how different the feel of the seat harness was; it sure felt good on my back. It also felt better on my hips, where a few small muscles sometimes start complaining after sailing for a couple of hours. At the end of the day, the pain in my back was gone completely!

Besides the back pain, another motivation to try the seat harness again were the many blog and magazine articles that state that seat harnesses are better for speed and slalom. Indeed, I did have the feeling that the seat made it easier to keep the nose of the board quieter, probably because it's easier to keep constant harness line pressure. The GPS tracks did not show any difference in speed relative to the waist harness tracks, but the wind was very much up and down, so that means little.

So - why is the waist harness giving me a bit of back problems now, when it it worked perfectly fine for more than a year? I think the problem is that I stopped cross training - windsurfing is pretty much the only sport I am doing now. When I originally switched to the waist harness, I still did karate on a regular basis, and to the gym (boring!) every now and then. Both involved quite a bit of core training. So, time to start some core & cross training again! But at least for now, I think I'll switch back and forth between waist and seat harness, depending on what the conditions are, and what I'm doing in a session.

Josh Angulo's loop pictures

2011-06-17T17:36:00.005-04:00

One of the many highlights at last weekend's East Coast Windsurfing Festival were Josh Angulo's loops. Fortunately, Richard Burns (Mike's brother) got pictures of one of the loops. Here's an animated GIF:

Richard's camera angle was great to see a few things of interest for all of us who would like to learn to loop. Here are the individual pictures:

This is shortly after taking off from a small piece of chop. We can see here:

Josh's front hand is all the way back to the harness line (and he sails the harness lines further back than most of us - check out how he adjust the lines in James Douglass' "Angulo-vision" video).
His grip is very wide, so his back hand is very far back on the boom.
The board is tilted so the entire underside is exposed to the wind. I looked at a lot of other speed loop videos, and the board is tilted at least somewhat in all of them.

Look at the angles in Josh's knees in the shot above and in the next shot in the series:

Here, Josh's back leg is pulled up, and the front leg is extended, pushing the nose of the board towards the water and to leeward. His front hand has moved backward on the boom a bit, and is now over the harness lines. The mast is starting to move to windward, and Josh is starting to look back.

The mast is tilted windward at almost 45 degrees, ready to push the nose downwind.
Josh is pulling himself up over the boom and looking back.

As the nose clears the water, the pressure on the mast base is pushing the board around. Josh is making himself smaller to facilitate the rotation.

At this point, the board has turned 180 degrees, and Josh is falling towards the water. I think the rest of the rotation is completed just from the momentum he and the board have now. Josh landed this loop standing, almost ankle-dry (for those who watched the heat: the pictures are from the second loop).

The picture series illustrates nicely what Andy Brandt teaches about the loop: it's mostly done by sail steering in the air (mast to windward), and not by "just sheeting in". Josh is just starting to sheet in in the last picture, as he is falling towards the water. The "sheet in" advice might work for very vertical forward loops of high waves - but when learning loops in small chop or waves, imitating Josh in the pictures above will certainly work better, and keep you and your board safer.

Thanks to Josh for showing how to loop; Richard for catching him on camara and letting me use his pictures; and Mike, Christina, Tom, Jill, and all the other ECWF organizers for making it all possible,

ECWF raffle: No more excuses!

2011-06-14T18:00:00.003-04:00

This is the second part of my report from the East Coast Windsurfing festival. I'd love to tell you more about the freestyle competition, but I did not see much of it - just one heat in the amateur divisions (men & women), and one heat in the pro division. In the pro division, Mike Burns, Chris Eldrige, John Sassone and Sergey Andreev threw down a bunch of complicated switch - duck - slide tricks that I don't even know the names of. If they were affected by the wind shadow close to shore, they did not let it show - cool stuff.

Josh Angulo also competed in this heat, and started right away with a few simpler tricks like 360s. I don't know if he can do the switchy - slidey tricks that the other competitors showed, but I don't care - Josh clearly played to please the crowds. He threw a couple of high, incredibly slow forward loops, which got a lot of applause from the crowds; and he even threw in a body drag, which most sailors on the beach could at least imagine doing themselves. Well, those tricks are easier than the ones I can't name, so he placed last in the competition - but I'm sure he scored very high with a lot of the watchers on the beach.

In the amateur divisions, it was cool to see a lot of the competitors try tricks that they had not 100% down yet. Together with the excitement of the competition and the chop, that meant a lot of falls. However, attempts also counted towards points in the amateur division, which created a lot of action on the water. Even the little bit I saw definitely motivated me to practice my freestyle a lot more to participate in the fun next year.

On the second day just before the award ceremony, the raffle winners were announced. This seemed to go on forever, there were so many prizes - hats, T-shirts, extensions, mast bases, rig winches, mast protectors, a Clew-View mount for the GoPro camera, and a skinny 430 mast as the main prize. You had to be there to get your prize, so quite a few winners who had left already missed out. That included the main prize, where it took three tries to find a winner that was present. I was afraid we'd run out of raffle tickets - it seemed everyone was winning something. Big thanks to the sponsors: Ocean Air Sports, Fanatic, North, Nolimitz, Chinook, Hampton Watersports, Windsport Magazine, and the New England Windsurfing Journal. They all earned lots of cookie points for supporting this great event (which, I am sure, will convert into sales over time).

I was especially happy about my raffle win, a mast protector from Ion (donated by Ocean Air):

It's intended to protect the nose of the boards from damage when learning the loop, and other crazy tricks. The padding seems perfectly set up to absorb and distribute any impact forces, so I'm sure it will work. I wish I had had this baby last year, when I broke the nose of my board when trying loop exercises! Well, I got it now, so I'm all out of excuses. This baby will come with me to Maui!

East Cost Windsurfing Festival: Racing

2011-06-13T18:24:00.002-04:00

We spent the last two days the East Coast Windsurfing Festival in Long Island - what a great event! And I'm saying that after making quite a fool of myself in racing - but more about that later. We had one day of great wind on Saturday, and a light wind day on Sunday. Here is a video of the relay race on Sunday which nicely illustrates the fun atmosphere:

The relay race was a lot of fun. Ironically, Josh Angulo's team finished last, with Josh as the last racer of his team also being the last sailor on the water. That was the punishment for Josh dominating the high-wind races the day before, including placing both 1st and 4th in the same race (see Peconic Puffin's blog for details, and make sure to check out his other blog entries about the festival for results and interesting stories, too).

A day before, the races had been a tad more serious, and we also had a lot more wind. Here is a replay of my GPS recordings from the third race:

As you can see in the replay, there is plenty of room for improvement in my racing. My start was actually good; thanks to a start further out in the water than most other sailors and the rapid acceleration of my Warp SL 71 slalom board, I was leading the pack on the first reach. Until I tacked and fell...

Well, that was not the only fall in this race. At the third mark, I did not manage to make it around two sailors in the water, and instead joined them. Another fall and problems to get going again after the second jibe mark, followed. And this was one of my two good races - I placed in the middle of the pack in this one. Here's a race-by-race description:

Race 1: Catapulting Peter
Being just a tad competitive, I had decided to borrow a cambered 7.5 m sail for the race, instead of using my trusted old Gaastra Matrix 7.0 that I could sail in my sleep, and on boards from 62 l to 280 l, flat water or high chop. When I rigged, the wind looked marginal, so I trimmed it for power. I had time for a quick run before the races started, but that was barely enough to get the harness lines adjusted. Just as the race started, the wind picked up, and board and sail explained to me that I had way to little practice in (a) sailing my new slalom board in chop, and (b) sailing cambered sails in fully powered conditions, especially in chop. My gear was nice to me and started out with a nice small catapult early on. I did not listen, however, and kept sailing on, so the gear decided to send some clearer messages with increasingly more violent catapults and crashes. When I still stubbornly ignored it and tried again, the mast decided to smack me into the face during a messed-up tack - that really hurt, and the message started to sink in. After one or two more crashes, I took the shortcut to the shore, rather than trying to finish the race that most other races had completed a while ago. I had to think a lot about Aaron, the Human Catapult, during this race...

Race 2: Tuning the gear
I had read that one should tune gear weeks before a race - but since I had not done that, I spent the time of the second race and the following freestyle heats to adjust my gear. I had a 6.5 non-cambered sail ready to go, and also switched to a smaller fin that I had gotten just a day before. After a trial run and some more down hauling (thans to Josh Angulo for the tip!), the sail was fine, but the fin was too small for the chop and my limited skills. Switching to a huge monster weed fin cured that problem, and I finally had gear that I was comfortable with.

Race 3: Slow is good
My primary goal for the race was to finish it, with some hope not to finish last. However, I did remember a few things from Andy Brandt's racing lecture at the Hatteras camp last year - namely that a good start is important. I had also noticed that the wind was better on the outside, so I started further out than most other sailors, and got off to a flying start, fully planing and leading the pack after a few seconds (see the GPS replay above). That lasted until I decided to tack. Not only was my tack too early, it also was wet, and about half of the field had passed me by the time I was back up. I made up some ground on the rest of the upwind leg and the first two downwind runs; but at the third mark, with one sailor already in the water and another one going down right in front of me, I took a little break and joined them in the water. With the current pushing me against the buoy, it took a while to get going again, and planing remained elusive for a while. Another crash at the next jibe mark followed. Still, I came in 10th of about 19 or 20 finishers, which I was rather happy with.

Race 4: Tactical errors
For the next race, the wind had gone down a bit, and shifted direction even more, so that one or two legs of the race now were almost straight downwind. Besides the usual falls during tacks & jibes, I made a whole bunch of tactical mistakes in the race. Somehow, it seemed I misjudged angles on every single leg of the race, which probably added about unnecessary 6 tacks, as well as several falls. I found myself fighting for third-to-last place in the race - oh well.

Race 5: Angulo Kihei 155 in light wind
The wind was light for the second day of races. I had only brought the 118l slalom board, while most competitors had old or new longboards with monstrous daggerboards, ideal for the conditions. Fortunately, Josh Angulo had brought a Kihei 155l board for demo'ing. I had tested the board in high winds in Hatteras, and loved it. It was clearly better suited for light wind than my slalom board, and he was kind enough to let me borrow it for a race. Indeed, the board was a joy to sail, and I managed to stay in the middle, if not the front third, of the pack. Really not bad, considering that everyone in front of me was on a board that was 4 feet longer and had a daggerboard!
At one buoy, I did a quick turning jibe close to the buoy. I think that surprised the sailor behind me a bit, who could not turn his longboard in time, and touch my board lightly with his. More from the distraction than from the impact, I started to loose my balance, and was about to fall when I felt a helping hand in my back. That was enough to regain my balance. I thanked the other sailor, who pointed out that me falling would have been bad for him, too - but I still think he primarily did it because he's a nice guy. I definitely liked the spirit of the gesture! The owner of the helping hand turned out to be the author of a windsurf blog that I love: The Peconic Puffin.
I finished the race somewhere in the middle of the pack, which I was pretty happy with. I definitely love the board!

Race 6: Slalom boards for light wind?
I had to return the Angulo Kihei 155 after the first race and switch to my 118 l slalom board. With the heavy 7.5 m sail and little wind, I was constantly fighting to keep the nose of the board above water, and had no chance to keep up with the long boards. I think I was passed by just about every one in this race, even though I did not fall. But looking at pictures from the open division, even Josh Angulo on a bigger slalom board was not able to keep up with the fastest sailors on the longboards - so I think I can blame the equipment here. It was still fun to be out there.

Plans for next year
I was not sure whether or not I would like racing, and I certainly did worse than I thought I would - but I am absolutely planning to be back next year. The races showed some weaknesses in my sailing that are all-too-easy to ignore when just going out for fun. The great friendly spirit of the competition and the other windsurfers certainly make it easy for a racing newbie like me to join the fun. Here's a list of what I learned, and plan to do for next year:

Practice tacks & jibes in difficult conditions. I can jibe and tack beautifully in perfect wind and flat water, so I usually seek out the easy spots to sail and turn around. That's not an option at a race, where other sailors and the marks define where you must jibe, regardless of chop and wind. In my case, that resulted in more wet turns than dry ones. With mostly dry turns alone, I probably would have placed in the top quarter in the high wind races. So I'll go seek out more difficult spots, like the river in Fogland or the voodoo chop in Kalmus, for more practice in less-than-ideal conditions. Or when the conditions are easy, I use more difficult gear - larger sails and smaller boards.
Bring a longboard for light wind races. We have a Kona Mahalo that's just wonderful for light wind. It's not quite as sleek as the Mistral or AHD long boards other had, but it should give me good fighting chance.
Share a room and get some sleep. We hesitated to sign up for the ECWF because hotel rooms on Long Island are between $150 and $200. For 2 nights, a trip with gas and ferry costs would run more than $500, which seemed too much. We ended up going when Jeff offered to drive on Saturday, but we had to get up at 2 am, and got little sleep in the car. That does have a negative impact, as I learn every time I fly to Bonaire. Next time, we'll leave on Friday, and reduce the costs by sharing a hotel room with other windsurfers (which we also did this time, and which worked perfectly fine).
Practice pumping! That was very important during the light wind races, and it's a must for using smaller sails in higher winds, so it's a great idea, anyway.
Use comfortable gear you know well. When you start course racing, there will be plenty of unknown - the rules, the other sailors, the conditions, and so on. Adding more variables by using and unknown sail was a really bad idea - a smaller, slower sail that I know well would have gotten me to the finish a lot faster. So if you get new gear specifically for races, make sure to get plenty of practice on it!
Have reasonable expectation. You may be a great sailor, but you will not win your first race. The first time is just for learning - after that, you can work on improving by using what you learned.

My lovely wife, who originally did not even want to join the races, did much better than I did. From the list above, she certainly followed steps 1, 5, and 6: no big expectations, using the same Skate 100 board and 5.0 l wave sail she used most of the time, and she's worked on difficult moves much more than I have. So she placed 3rd in racing and also in freestyle - well done. Now, she is super motivated to practice a lot for next year's event, and so am I.

Finally, some pictures from the second day:

Start lineup

Just kidding - I'm not really in front

Open class start

Love the attitude!

Josh giving Jeanne a hard time because she did not chose him for her team

(Jeanne did not know she could...)

That's the spirit!

Team # 1 (no Josh Angulo here!)

Josh Angulo digging in hard

Happy raffle winners

Christina happy about her 2nd place

The top racer ladies

The open class winners

Happy trophy winners

Does windsurfing make people nicer?

2011-06-09T20:22:00.002-04:00

One of the things I love about windsurfing it that you get to meet many really nice people. I've blogged about a few of them before - the great ABK folks; "our" speed and ice surfing teacher Dean; Cesar, the driving force behind speed surfing in Fogland; and windsurf shop owners like Jim and Andy, to name just a few.

Another one of these really nice guys, Jeff, somehow talked me and Nina into joining him to go to the East Coast Windsurfing Festival this weekend. He offered to drive there very early Saturday morning, a deal that was just to good to refuse. It certainly helped that the king himself, Mike Burns, had promised great wind for the weekend, and that Josh Angulo and many windsurfing friends will be there. Once there, I'll have to participate, which will be in racing. Hopefully, the conditions will be right to use my slalom board, which should be tons of fun. I had been toying with the idea to participate in the Maui Race Series when we are down there in July, so this should be good practice.

The open division will be probably be dominated by formula boards and huge sails, so I'll be in the division where the sail size is limited to 7.5 m. That was a bit of a problem - my largest sail under the limit is a 7.0, and that's a non-cambered, top-oriented sail. But what are friends for? Dani had jokingly offered to give me gear to race in Maui, so I asked him if he had a cambered 7.5 sail that I could borrow. If I tell you that Dani is a really nice guy, what do you think his answer was?

Well, first he offered me a choice between two cambered 7.5 sails he has. Then, he picked up the sail from his friend, and delivered it to my house. He also brought a 100% carbon mast for the sail, even though I tried to assure him that one of my 55% masts should work just fine, and that I would not have the money to replace his mast if I broke it. What a guy - somebody pinch me so I know I'm not dreaming!

Such random acts of kindness brighten my life for many days. I don't even think windsurfers like Dani are an exception - we meet extremely nice people on every one of our windsurfing trips. I think it's infectious - neither my lovely wife nor I are very social, but sometimes at the beach, you may not notice that. We also try to support ABK in various ways, and one of our boards has been out on a loan for half a year now. So yes, it seems that windsurfing does make people nicer.

Of course, sometimes you might meet a windsurfer at the beach who is not friendly, or worse. But in the few cases that I can think of, these guys were usually overworked, and barely ever could find the time to go windsurfing; if they could get a free day on weekends, the wind would often not show. So rather than contradicting my theory, it only confirms it - these guys just don't windsurf enough!

Buying speed fins in the USA

2011-06-07T20:34:00.001-04:00

After buying a speed board and a slalom board in the last year, I wanted to buy some proper fins, too. The speed board came with three speed fins, but they are all about the same size; the slalom board came with one fin that works well with the 8.5 m sail, but needs a smaller fin for smaller sails. Here's a short story of my adventures trying to get fins...

I started by checking out the two local stores, but they more or less just had weed fins. Trips to stores in the Gorge were similar disappointing. So I posted on a couple of windsurf forums (iWindsurf and gps-speedsurfing.com), and got a few pointers. With some more research and web site checks, I found a couple of places in the US and Canada to order fins from.

The first place was very helpful initially, but I received only half of my order (a sail) - the fin I ordered never came. After a few emails, I got my money back without problems, but I still did not have a fin. I eventually found a couple of close-out fins that looked attractive, and bought them online. Delivery was no problem, and I love one of the two fins (a 28 cm Select) I got. I only tested the other fin (MFC Slalom 32) once and did not like it much then, but I'll have to give it another shot.

After sailing my new (used) 118 l slalom board with a 7.0 sail recently, it was obvious that the 44 cm pointer fin I have is a bit big for this sail, so I looked for something fast around 36 cm. I discovered Makani fins, and remembered hearing great things about their freestyle fins. There also was a blog entry about their slalom fin that sounded quite promising - and the fins cost much less than other speed fins, so I decided to give it a try. I ordered the fins online from the same place where I had found the last two fins. A couple of days later, I got an email with a tracking number, and another email with an invoice.

When I checked the invoice, I was shocked: it listed my complete credit card information - billing address, card number, expiration date, and even the security code that merchants are not allowed to store at all. All send as a PDF file via regular email - something that goes through several public mail servers and is by definition totally insecure.

WTF were they thinking? I think this is a serious issue. If they are stupid enough to send full credit card info by regular mail, how safely do you think their computer system is? The only reason I'm not mentioning the store's name is that I do not want to point hackers towards their computers...

So, in my two attempts to get slalom/speed fins, I was successful only once (assuming that the fin I ordered arrives in a few days), but at a pretty high cost to the security of my credit card. With both merchants, there were a couple of other minor things that went wrong when trying to order from them that I don't want to bore you with. Normally, I can understand if someone with a passion for windsurfing is a bit spacey when it comes to business - but there are limits. Next time, I'll bug our local merchants a bit more to see if they can order fins; or perhaps get them from a store where I know the owners personally, like Wind-NC. But if anyone has recommendations where to buy speed fins in the US, please let me know!

Windsurfing Magazine Board Test

2011-06-06T19:14:00.001-04:00

Recently, I talked to a windsurfer who had just bought a Tabou Rocket 145, and mentioned the test summary of the board in the June issue of the Windsurfing Magazine. The board got excellent scores in most categories, except in "ease of use":

What's going on? The Rockets are generally easy to sail, even more so in the big versions. Most of the other "Light Air Shortboards" also have poor scores in the "ease of use" category.

Well, my lovely wife and I were at the board test in Hatteras, and sailed many of the large boards - and most of them deserve very high marks in for "ease of use". A look at the test sheets that we filled out points to an explanation:

Well, there was no "ease of use" category. There was a "Freestyle" category that did not apply to any of the boards in the test, but in the orientation meeting, we were told to instead use it to rate the boards for "fun". It appears that the "waves" scores were interpreted as "ease of use", but the testers were not aware of this! (Well, at least neither my wife nor I were, and we paid close attention at the orientation meeting). This would explain why the Angulo Kihei 155 got a a high score in the "ease of use" category - this board sailed like a much smaller board, and made it really easy to play with the chop and wind waves.

Unfortunately, this "ease of use" = "waves" score mixup does not appear to the the only problem with the writeup. Looking at the "spider web" graphs, it would seem that the F2 Xantos 140 was the worst board in the test; both the Exocet Twixx 145 and the Naish Nitrix have higher scores in all categories. This absolutely cannot be correct. One of the two higher-scoring board was universally disliked; at the discussion session at the end of the board test, lots of windsurfers offered negative feedback on the board, and we were told the same thing had happened during the first week. The other of these two "high scoring" boards had split opinions among the testers: some liked it, others disliked it a lot. In contrast, the lower-scoring F2 Xantos was loved by many sailors (myself included), and just mildly disliked by a few others.

One good way at looking what board was really well liked is to check how often a board was picked as a favorite. Here's a list of how often the different large board were picked as favorites by the testers:

7x : Fanatic Ray 145, F2 Xantos 140, Tabou Rocket 145
5x: Starboard Ultrasonic 147
4x: Goya FXRS 144
3x: Angulo Kihei 155
1x: JP Super Lightwind 154

The following boards were not picked as a favorite board by any testers:

Exocet Twist 145, Naish Nitrix 155, RRD Fire Ride 155.

A note about the list above: the Fanatic Ray was available only during the second test week, so none of the first-week only testers had a chance to try it. I wonder how many "favorite" votes it would have gotten if it had been there both weeks...

If you compare the list above with the charts on pages 60-61 in the June 2011 issue of the Windsurfing Magazine, it seems that someone has mixed up a few charts. Yes, some boards were a bit more controversial than others, but there's just no way that a board that was most often picked as a favorite has much lower scores everywhere than a board that was picked by nobody!

A total of 37 testers worked (and played :) hard for 2 weeks to evaluate the boards, so it's kind of sad to see the work diminished by what looks like an editorial mistake. A lot of times, the graphical summaries are the first thing windsurfers look at when deciding about a new board to buy, and the apparent mix-up may prevent many readers from trying or buying boards they would love. Fortunately, the write-ups ("Best board for...") are spot-on.

Three great days

2011-06-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

We just had three great days of wind sailing, with wind in the upper mid-to upper twenties two of the three days and plenty of sun. It started Wednesday afternoon with SW winds. We went to Fogland for some flat water fun - duck jibe tries with a 5.0 for Nina, and speed runs with a 7.0 on my Warp SL 71 for me. Here's a short video of one of the earlier speed runs:

I had a bit of a hard time to find a nice combination of flat water and wind. With 25-30 mph winds, the chop in the middle of the bay gets big enough to slow me down. I tried going up towards the street, but never caught good wind there. I had better luck at the tip of the peninsula, where the water was nice and flat and the wind was offshore; but as you can see in the video, the wind dropped quite a bit there because the peninsula created a bit of a wind shadow. Another minor issue I had was that the only speed fin I currently have for the Warp is 44 cm long - great for an 8.5 m sail, but about 20% too long for the 7.0. I tried putting in a weed fin that I have for my speed board, but at 28 cm, it was a bit small. When sailing the weed fin, I was glad that I sometime ride freestyle boards with small fins, because I did need the "sail forward, dig the windward rail" technique to get back upwind on this fin. So after a few runs, when the wind had gone down just a bit, it was back to the 44 cm race fin.

I think the combination of the wind shadow and the long fin kept me from finally breaking 30 knots - although I did get very close, and set new personal bests for 5 x 10 second average speed and 500 m alpha. This was the first time I sailed the Warp fully powered in more than 20 mph winds, and I think I learned a few things. Perhaps the most important one is that even the Warp, which has a relatively conventional and narrow shape for a slalom board, really wants to be ridden "pedal to the metal". At full speed, it's on top of the water and pretty much ignores the chop; but whenever I tried to slow down a bit, things got harder to handle. But after a couple of hours, I got used to this, and ventured out onto the river, where the chop is quite a bit higher - no problem. The only thing that I did wrong was to switch from a downwind course onto a beam reach course about halfway through the mile-long run. Looking at the GPS tracks later at home, I discovered that I should have been able to obliterate my personal bests for the nautical mile if I had stayed off the wind. As it was, I still got my second-best ever average for the nautical mile (and the water was a lot flatter when I set my PB behind the sand bar in Duxbury).

As usual, Nina worked harder than I did, practicing duck jibes, shove-its, and 360s all day long. She got really close to completing a duck jibe, but not without exploring the many ways to crash in duck jibes. One spectacular fall had her face plant at full speed into the water so that her entire face hurt for the rest of the day...

Even though the conditions were great, we saw very few other windsurfers. One of them, however, Jeff, praised the wave sailing conditions at Horseneck beach, so when the wind turned to westerly the next day, we decided to do some beginner wave sailing. Here's a short video:

The quality of the video is not great - the angle to the sun was bad, and there were too many drops of water on the lens. I had treated the lens with Rainex, but the Clew View mount (which I otherwise love) places the GoPro exactly where the drops come off the boom, as you can see in the video. Mounting the camera upside-down, as I had done in the first video above, fixes this problem, but I don't like the view angle as much. I think that a mount which places the camera either a bit higher, or directly below the boom (instead of below and behind), might have fewer problems with water dripping onto the lens.

As Jeff had promised, getting out through the break was not bad (although it got more challenging for us wave-sail beginners as the tide came in). The wind was very much up and down; down when we rigged, which prompted us to go "big" (5.5 and 4.2), and then up after the first few runs, which had me way overpowered. And while the breaking waves near shore where small enough, the non-breaking waves on the outside where quite often taller than Nina. They also were not very nicely organized, probably because of the wind directions and the cross currents caused by the little island. In comparison, the waves and swell in Cabarete on a typical 5.0 summer day are much better organized and easier to sail. So this was definitely more an "interesting" than a "fun" session, and we stopped after spending less than an hour on the water (with plenty of breaks in between), when Jeff and the other local sailors also got off the water. Since it was still somewhat early, we decided to drive over to Fogland, which is only a 20 minute drive away.

In Fogland, we were greated by NW winds in the upper 20s, and smaller, much more organized looking waves. I sailed my 82 l board for the first time in a while, which was quite a change after mostly being on larger freeride and slalom boards recently. I definitely had a lot more fun than at Horseneck, and I was pleasantly surprised when the GPS registered a top speed of 28 knots, even though the chop was big enough to keep me from making any deep downwind runs. Maybe I am finally learning how to sail a bit faster...

We got home too late to put away the trailer and the gear, so when the wind and forecast looked good again the next morning, we decided to go sailing in Fogland once again. When we arrived, a couple of windsurfers where just leaving, and they mentioned that the wind had been very much up and down. Indeed, the iWindsurf reading ranged from 8 to 30 mph, so rigging "right" was just impossible. We switched back & forth between boards a bit (Warp SL 71 and Skate 110 for me, 76 l wave board and Skate 100 for Nina), and had plenty of opportunity to practice schlogging. But in between, the wind was great, and Nina finally made her first fully planing jibe. For once, she was sailing with the GoPro camera, but the camera stopped recording exactly 2 minutes before she made her best jibe so far! However, her GPS was on, and it showed a minimum speed in her jibe of 8.9 knots, which is definitely fully planing (jibes with minimum speed above 5-6 knots can look liked plane-through jibes from afar if you accelerate again right away, but jibes above ~8 knots are definitely planed through). Considering that she learned how to initiate jibes when planing less than 1 1/2 years ago, this is pretty cool - I know many, many windsurfers who worked on planing jibes for many years before every planing through (I am one of them). But then, she learned it the right way at the ABK camp in Bonaire, so maybe her success is not surprising.

Ok, I am biased, but still I think she did quite well. Before yesterday's jibe, here minimum jibe speeds have been going up steadily, and Andy Brandt called one of here jibes in Corpus Christi last month "planed through" (here minimum speed on that jibe was 5.8 knots). I think that planing through a jibe may be technically about as difficult as a learning the Vulcan. For the Vulcan, 500-1000 tries before landing the first one are not uncommon, although some windsurfers may get it in 250 or 300 tries. Nina had more than 100 high wind sessions since last March; many of those included 3-5 hours on the water, and relatively short runs (e.g. 1/4 mile in Fogland). Nina's 3-hour session yesterday had more than 30 jibes, according to the GPS records - so she probably did more than 2000 planing jibes before planing though one yesterday. Now, when we are driving home, she usually is doing Vulcans in her head - it will be very interesting to see how many tries she'll need before the lands the first one. My bet is that she'll land the first one before I do - I better keep working on the loop so I can have a trick she can't do. So what if the loop is easier - it looks at least as cool...

Marginal winds

2011-05-31T20:57:00.000-04:00

May has not been great for wind here in the Northeast, with lots of rain and fog. During the last week, we went windsurfing three times in Fogland, which lived up to its name and greeted us with fog two of the three days.

The first day had a decent forecast, and we went hoping for some thermals and tunneling up the bay, which can create wonderful conditions. Alas, the fog never really lifted, and we ended up doing light wind tricks. I had brought my good old Bic Techno 293 to work a bit on duck tacks. However, I got to try my new Gaastra Pilot 6.5 m sail for the first time, and loved it. No real surprise here, I bought it because I had liked it a lot in January on Bonaire, where it became my go-to sail. Still, I just loved how light it felt - definitely a great sail for freestyle. Nina loved it too when she tried it, which makes this sail really exceptional - usually, she does not like the sails I love, and vice versa.

Towards the end of the session, when the wind became a bit too light for duck tacks, I decided to work some more on heli tacks. I have been doing heli tacks for a while now, and they are easy enough now on a big board in light winds. Nevertheless, when I concentrated on the foot work, I finally understood something that I heard in many lectures for different tricks: minimize your body movements. That's a big element in Andy Brandt's duck jibe lecture ("don't duck!"), but also a part of the planing tack, where steps that are too big carry you right past the mast and into the water. When I focused on where I stepped during the heli tack, I discovered that bringing the feet close together before the final steps allows you to keep the body much stiller. That makes the whole trick easier, and easier looking, since there's little movement, except for the sail. Most likely, "discovering" this is based on sub-conscious memories of something that Andy or one of the ABK instructors told me a long time ago when watching my heli tack attempts. I often learn this way: at first, not understanding or perhaps pretending to do what I am told, and then understanding what it's all about a year or two later. It's really good that the ABK instructors have so much patience...

The next day of windsurfing was last Saturday - a late decision when we saw the wind pick up above the forecast. Again, I grabbed my Techno 293 since I did not want to waste time digging my slalom board out of the shed. We made it to Fogland in time to catch the tail end of two hours of decent wind (averages 17-18 mph, gusts up to 22). But while I had loved the Techno for light wind the day before, I really did not like how it felt when planing. The GPS speeds where ok for the conditions, but it felt like I was dragging a parachute in the water behind me. All the sailing on fast and lively freestyle and slalom boards has spoiled me, I guess. I even went and put a big fin into my Skate 110 so I could put my 8.5 m sail on it. That worked even better than I remembered, but the wind had dropped too much, so I only got a few planing runs in gusts in. Still, it was a lovely day in Fogland, seeing old friends again and even some sun (finally!).

The prospect of sailing with friends again was one reason we went back to Fogland the next day. Another reason was that this was predicted to be the last windy day of the month, and we were hoping to improve our standing in the GPS Team Challenge a bit. The first thing we noticed when driving to the beach was a light wind freestyler, a rare sight in Fogland. This turned out to be Nico, out for his first session of the season, working on 360s, duck tacks, switch duck jibes, and a few tricks I don't even know the name for - nice!

Dani showed up again with his new Ray 115 and his Maui Sails TR7 8.4, and this time, I brought my Warp SL 71. Dani is about 50 pounds lighter than me, so he planed most of the day; I often needed gusts to get going (which maxed out at 20 mph), but had about one hour where I was planing most of the time. I took the Warp out onto the river, and was amazed how well it handled the river chop. I actually did get my top speed out in the middle of the river, rather than in the flatter water of the bay. For the conditions, I was happy with my top speed of 28 mph. Dani and Sabah also got some good nautical mile runs on the river, so we managed to improve our ranking in this category by a few spots - not bad considering that we were just barely planing most of the time. Cesar, Fogland's great speed sailing motivator, also showed up for his first season of the year, but he'll need a bit more wind before his speed machines leave us in the dust again.

Compared to planing on the Techno the day before, surfing the Warp was a entirely different world. Despite being 9 cm narrower and a lot shorter, the Warp planes up just as quickly; pumping it onto a plane is a whole lot easier, since it's so much lighter. Once on a plane, it is and absolute blast to sail - my hands wanted to leave the boom all the time to drag in the water or wave to other surfers. I can't wait to sail this board in 25-30 mph winds on perfectly flat water!

With marginal winds and short runs in the bay, I had to tack most of the time to get back to where I started. With 8 more liters than my Skate 110, the Warp feels big when tacking, even though I still managed to push the nose under water during most tacks. But then, it seems easier to push the nose through the wind when it's under water - whatever works! With so little good wind recently, I sailed for more than 4 hours, and my tacks got wetter and wetter as the day progressed. It will be interesting to see how my windsurfing develops when I will have the luxury of being at a place where it's windy every day for several weeks in a row. With just an hour or two of sailing every day, maybe I'll try more new things, and spend less time trying to hang on as longs as possible...

Lost in the fog

2011-05-24T20:42:00.001-04:00

It's been 15 days since the last decent windsurf session, so the withdrawal symptoms were getting bad when we finally had a good wind forecast for today. As the day got nearer, the numbers dropped, but Windguru still promised some gusts of 28-30 knots. When we got up early to check the meter readings, some sites posted averages in the low 20s - good enough for me!

By the time we made it out to Cape Cod, the wind in West Dennis had dropped down to 18 mph - but since I had planned to use my Warp SL 71 slalom board, no problem. I rigged my newly repaired 8.5 V8, and sailed away. The fog was pretty dense, with visibility limited to maybe 250 yards, but the wind was onshore, and the beach in West Dennis goes on forever, so I did not expect any problems. Hah! Here are the GPS tracks from the start of this session:

I started on the left side in the image above. The wind was marginal, so I had to go downwind and get away from the shore a bit to get planing. At the end of the first leg, I did not see the shore anymore; after jibing and sailing back towards shore, I was pretty far from where I had started. I could not see the spot where I had started anymore, which surprised me a bit. I assumed (correctly) that I was downwind of it, and went back out, with the plan to go upwind. Unfortunately, for most of the next two legs, I had no visual indicators where I was going, and ended up going downwind instead of upwind. As I approached the shore, I saw a few people standing in the water, and assumed that they were kite surfers. I came to the conclusion that I had gone to far upwind. The regular kite place is upwind, and the West Dennis police apparently had started to ticket kiters who sailed to far downwind a few days ago, so this seemed reasonable. I did not actually see any kites, but as I said, the fog was rather dense (and some of it might have entered my brain at this time :). So I decided to go "back" downwind. But when I got close to the shore after the next 2 runs, I did not see the expected scenery, but instead some unfamiliar looking houses. By now, the wind had dropped, and I was schlogging the entire time. Some half-hearted attempts to go upwind did not get me into more familiar territory, and I decided to go ashore and ask someone where in hell they had hidden the mile-long West Dennis beach. To stay clear of the sea walls there, this required going a bit further downwind...

Most of the houses on the beach down there appeared to be empty summer houses. Fortunately, one of the houses was being renovated, and a rather amused-looking carpenter pointed me in the right direction. It was the direction that I would have guessed, but after guessing wrong about where exactly I was a few times, asking someone else just seemed safer.

So I had a long track back. Fortunately, the wind had picked up again, and I could plane most of the time. I started to worry that my lovely wife, who was also out sailing, would worry about me - but it turned out that she also had gotten a bit disoriented in the fog, finding herself unexpectedly far downwind of the launch site. So she correctly assumed that the same thing had happened to me. As I was tacking back up, the fog finally lifted a bit, and I could see her sailing.

When I finally made it back, I decided to swap fins and to try my new Clew-View mount for the GoPro camera - but that's a story for another time. I got one more good run in before the wind dropped again, and we decided to call it a day. Of course, the wind teased us and picked up again just as we were about to leave. Fortunately, family duties prevented us from rigging again: once again, the wind dropped off after a few minutes, and then stayed down for the rest of the day.

So, that was a rather long story for relatively little action - there was never any element of real danger. Water and air temperatures today were comfortable; the tide was low, so that I could touch ground most of the time when I fell in; and the wind was onshore and moderate. However, I certainly will think twice before venturing out in dense fog in the future if there is any potential element of danger, like strong or offshore winds, or cold temperatures. In fog this dense, finding someone who is in trouble would have been a real challenge for any rescuers.