ABK Clinic Hatteras, day 1

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!