Twisted

After many days of good forecasts that did not happen, the wind finally came yesterday. It had been windy all night long, and meter readings early in the morning were around 25. When we got to the beach, they were 23. When we got onto the water at around 10 am, they dropped to 20. Still enough to have fun, after a bit of re-rigging and switching boards.

Martin was smarter. He was at the beach at 8 am. When I started re-learning my Carve 360s, he showed me how it's done, carving through one in style, with the sail all the way down to the water. Thanks, Marty! I got a few good ones right after that. Seeing how it's done helps. A lot.

Then I saw Marty go for loop crashes. I asked him about it, and he said he was working on the sail ride part. So I figured I'd show him a Gecko Loop. That's a non-planing trick where you can practice pushing yourself up on the boom to ride the sail. I had just learned it at the ABK camp in Hatteras a couple of weeks ago.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that (a) I had learned the move in about 10-12 mph wind, and (b) when the wind picked up to 15-18, my tries got very bad, so that I quickly stopped. Here are a couple of pictures from these later tries:

In this try, I at least got the nose into the water, although not quite enough. Otherwise, the board is too flat - it should be tilted to the leeward edge is in the water, and the windward edge up. My back foot came out of the strap.

In this try, the board is even flatter - I did not even get the nose to go down. Fortunately, both of my feet got ripped out of the straps. This is somewhat similar to many bad loop tries I have done and seen where the timing is off.

When I tried to show Marty the Gecko Loop yesterday, I combined the worst elements of the two pictures above. I kept the board way to flat as in the second picture; but I also had my front foot nice and tight in the foot strap, so that it did not come out. That twisted the ankle in ways it was not supposed to be twisted. Quite a few tendons on the inside screamed at me in protest.

I took a little break to see if they would calm down, and then went back out for a trial run. But every little bump on the water sent little pain signals from my ankle, so I had to call it a day. Too bad, since the 25 mph wind returned a few hours later, and it was sunny and warm. But at least we were early enough to get a seat at one of our favorite places on Main Street, and were pleasantly surprised that the new cook at Gringo's can make some decent veggie tacos. So overall, I'll call the day a win - several good things (wind, sun, friends on the water, and decent food) beat the one bad thing. Seems I was lucky, anyway, and did not break or tear anything: a day later, I can walk (mostly) without pain, so this seems to be just a little strain that should go away in a few days. Maybe even in time for more wind on Tuesday...