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| Nina winging in 30 mph. Picture by Eddie Deveraux. |
It was windy in Kalmus yesterday, with averages in the low 30s and gusts to 40 mph:
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| iWindsurf meter readings for Kalmus 8/3/2020 |
We went in the afternoon, when the wind was nice and steady. Nina wing foiled for almost 3 hours, and reported that she may have gotten closer to the upper end of the wind range for her 4.2 m wing. It was fluttering at times, and upwind angles were a bit compromised since she could not move the wing to the side as usual - too much power!
I decided to go for a session on the "slapper", as Australian wind foilers like to call windsurf boards. But since I'm not the biggest fan of high tide slapping in Kalmus WSW voodoo chop, I went over to Egg Island for some really flat water. I tried to get a few guys to come along, but without success - Gonzalo, who had indicated interest, decided to rig down from 4.7 to 4.2 after a few trial runs, and I did not have the patience to wait for him. High tide is the best time for speed runs along the sand bar, and the tide had been dropping for a while already! Besides, he had sailed Lewis Bay on a longboard many times, so he knew the way.
I ended up having the "kiddie pool" at Egg Island entirely for myself. I'd rigged my old 5.5 m Matrix sail since it has a ton of high end, and that was a perfect choice. The wind behind the sand bar tends to be a bit lower, and the flat water also allows for larger sail sizes. How flat, you ask? Have a look:
I was working on my sail-first jibes for foiling, which are a ton of fun in flat water. I learned on reason not to let the mast get way to the outside of the turn: the sail is a lot heavier than the freestyle sail I normally use, and when whipped around by the strong wind, was too heavy to be pulled back in. That resulted in a few fun high speed crashes before I got my act halfway together. Still needs a bit of work, since my speed dropped from a 30 knot entry speed to 12 knots after the sail flip. But it was fun, anyway!
I ended up getting a 32 knot top speed on my GPS watch, which is the fastest I've ever gone on a freestyle board. The little 22 cm weedie from Maui Ultra Fins held astonishingly well, even though it's the freeride version, not the speed or slalom version.
After about 2 hours, the tide dropped low enough to expose parts of the outer sand bar that is submerged during high tide. It's oriented at a right angle to the WSW wind, so it creates a nice setup to work on alphas (500 m runs with a jibe in the middle, and the ends of the run have to be within 50 meters). For that, I reverted back to the step jibe:
I just did a few tries before heading back to Kalmus through the chop. Since the wind was still up, going back upwind was super easy. Here are the GPS tracks:
By chance, the session ended up counting for the GPS Team Challenge, since Kipps set a couple of nice PBs sailing on the other coast. Together with a few decent numbers from the day before, that put our team on the #2 spot in the monthly rankings:
Unfortunately, that won't last, since other teams will post better sessions over the rest of the month. But I'll enjoy it while it lasts!
