Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Sunny & light

That's the view from my balcony right now - quite a crowd of windsurfers on the water on a warm and sunny day. I'd usually be out there with them, but the soft beds here have screwed up my back a bit, so I'm taking it easy. The wind is supposed to pick up all afternoon, and I'll be out there later. That will be an improvement over yesterday, when walking hurt, and I stayed off the water completely. Nina did go out on here "big" gear - a 100 l Skate and a 5.7 wave sail, and she was planing almost the whole time, when many others were going slow and getting frustrated. The freestylers tried to get going on their 5 m sails without much success - well, they do have a few pounds on Nina. After they gave up, Nina just had to show them a nice planed-though duck jibe right on front of their houses. It seemed most of them did not recognize her due to her bright red hair :-)

The day before yesterday was similar, with just a few guys on big slalom gear planing consistently. Nina did light wind the entire time and made her first light wind duck tack - nice! Before that, though, we had a couple of very windy days: 3.7 and 4.5 for Nina, 4.0 (fully powered!) and 5.7 for me. It was quite a bit colder, with north or northwest winds and a lot of chop. The windier of the two days was quite challenging for me - I guess I sailed too much in flat water recently. It took a couple of hours and some equipment adjustments to get comfortable in these conditions.

The wind forecast for the next few days looks mediocre, with 20+ mph winds only early in the morning or shortly before sunset. However, the weekend promises to bring strong SW winds and warm temperatures all day Sunday - so there's something to look forward to.