We windsurfers know that wind requires sacrifices. Currently, Nina is the sacrifice. She had to fly to Germany because her mom is in the hospital. Nina makes a great wind sacrifice! The wind started the day she left, and has continued for 5 days afterwards, with averages above 20 mph every day. I just had to go windsurfing (or, just one day, windfoiling) to distract myself from her absence. Here is a summary of the sessions from the GPS Team Challenge:
The session on the 3rd was with Nina, before she left. Two foil sessions are not listed; both days, I was overpowered on 5.6.
Yesterday's morning session was interesting, because I got to sail the Turtle Island Slicks for the first time. The wind was a bit too southerly and too weak for a really fast session, but the spot worked and was fun. To show my thanks to the wind gods, I sacrificed my carbon boom in a slow-motion catapult when I got too close to a spoil island on the way back to the launch. Fortunately, the boom held together for the 2 mile run back from the crash site, after I had flipped it around so the "good" side was on the windward side.
As superstitious as I may me, I had not
really planned to sacrifice the boom, so this was a bit of a bummer. Fortunately, the sun came out while I was having lunch, which in Corpus Christi means one thing: more wind! So I hurried back and got a second session in on smaller gear. I stayed far away from any spoil islands, and ended the day without any additional sacrifices. Here are the GPS tracks:
Today's forecast was not very promising - 4 mph less wind, showers in the morning, and "mostly cloudy" in the afternoon. But the weather here often is nicer than predicted, and after about 10 rain drops in the morning, the sun came out a bit - actually, a bit more than yesterday. You all know what that means! By the time I made it to Grassy Point, the nearby wind meters were showing 25 mph averages. Time for the 6.3 and the 72 l speedboard! Here are today's tracks:
The tracks show where the water is shallow and flat. For about the first mile from the launch, the water is mostly hip- to chest-deep, with a few deeper shipping lanes; for this part, the chop can get a foot or two high. After that, the water depth drops to knee- to hip-deep, and it gets pretty smooth! Not quite as smooth as the best Ozzie speed strips, though - a little bit of chop remains, and deep-downwind runs would require a bit more skills than I have. But even at angles that were just 10 or 15 degrees from square, I managed a nautical mile that of almost 30 knots - my third-fastest nautical mile ever, and the fastest one I have sailed in the US (the others were in Fangyland and Lake George, on
very very flat water). Not bad for only my second session on the speedboard in almost a year! But as fun as the last few days were, it was just half the fun sailing without my lovely wife. The wind is predicted to take a (welcome!) break for the next few days; hopefully, it will return when she returns!
