Power + Speed + Lucky Gust = Speed

 We drove four days to get to Lake George, including one stretch where we drove 27 hours straight through because all the "road houses" near the Nullabor were fully booked). Getting to the launch requires driving several miles on a dirt road and sand, and crossing a little stream. At the launch, you are greeted by a very special smell that makes you question why in hell you wanted to go here. To start sailing, you first have to walk through a stretch of mud. When you get off the board, more often than not you are in knee-deep mud that wants to keep you, or at least suck your booties off your feet. When you finally manage to get your feet onto the board, they are covered in mud and/or weed that is so thick that your feet won't fit into the foot straps. The same question pops up again and again: why???

But despite all this, there are dozens of windsurfers from all over Australia who come to Lake George every year. A picture from our last trip gives a clue why:

That's Nina sailing Lake George in February 2019. The water level was almost a foot higher than this year, and many speedsurfers were complaining how choppy it was. We really did not understand what they were talking about - it looked plenty flat to us! 

This year, though, the lower water level means there are very large stretches where the water is glassy, even in 30 knot gusts. I thought that the super-flat water, together with some strong wind, is all it takes to break the magic 40 knot barrier that separates wannabe speedsurfers from "real" speedsurfers, and got quite frustrated when that was not the case. I ranted about my frustration in my last post, and fortunately, the post was read by Boro, who decided to give me a bunch of tips on how to go faster. Boro has done more than 40 knots many times in the US at much less ideal locations, and went on to get a top speed above 50 knot at the speed channel in Luderitz. 

Some of the things he suggested were similar to things I had heard many times before, and already tried to do, like going very deep downwind. But he made one suggestion that went against what I had heard from multiple sources before: to move the mast base far forward in the mast track. The common advice I had in my head was "mast track back for speed". On my borrowed Mistral 95 speed board, I had so far put the mast base in the middle of the track, and only moved it a couple of centimeters back and forward, without seeing a big difference.

 

Boro and I had a longer discussion about this (and his other tips) via Messenger, and he explained his rationale in detail. He summarized what it boiled down to a simple formula:

Power + Control = Speed

My two recent "fail" session, where many others went faster than 40 knots but I was stuck in the mid-30s, helped me really understand this. In the first session in Albany, I had plenty of control, but no power: I had rigged a 5.5 m sail, added a bit too much downhaul, and never released the outhaul to bag the sail out. I was perfectly in control in speed runs, but could not get the board to reach the speed I had gotten the day before, in several knots less wind. 

In my second "fail" session here at Lake George, I had plenty of power with my 6.2 m sail, but I was constantly fighting for control. I was holding back the entire time, doing just 25 knots when I should have done more than 30 on beam reaches. So when I did a few deep downwind speed runs in gusts, I started out too slow to reach top speeds, and was still too freaked out.

Interestingly, with our slalom boards at home, I generally had the mast base all the way forward. We had enough sessions in Texas over the last few years that I knew that this was the position that gave me the best control, and the most speed. But compared to here, Corpus Christi is quite choppy, and I am using a very different board, so I never had even tried the mast base all the way to the front.

Fortunately, it got windy the same day that Boro and I had the enlightening speed discussion. The forecast had only predicted 18-20 knots, but averages were closer to 25, with some stronger gusts. I pinched my way up from the Cockies launch to the glassy water near 5 Mile, and then further upwind towards Packing Point to the start of the speed run. I had headphones on that were connected to a phone running GPSLogit and announced my speed every 2 seconds. On the very first speed run, I heard the magic "40" announced three times in a row, and started woohooing out of the top of my lungs. When I got of at the end of the run, there was a small disappointment, though: the ESP GPS loggers showed a 2 second top speed of only 39.96 and 39.97 - so close! But that was already more than a knot faster than my previous PB, I was still fresh, and the wind was supposed to increase.

On the second speed run, I only got 37 knots: I had jibed at the end of the upwind leg, and forgotten to release the outhaul for the speed run. So just having the outhaul pulled in for going upwind made about 3 knots difference!

On the third speed run, with the outhaul released, I got lucky. I was in glassy water in the middle of the speed run, hearing "38" announcements, when a nice gust hit. Thanks to the forward position of the mast foot, I was in control, and the board accelerated until I heard "41" on the headphones. I finally had broken 40 knots! I was so happy that I momentarily forgot I was still going fast and let my attention slip, so the board did a huge wheelie, with the nose pointing up at a 45 degree angle and only the fin in the water. The head phone was still announcing "41", so a crash might have hurt, but I was too happy to be scared. Fortunately, I got things back under control without crashing. When checking the GPS units, both showed a top speed of 41.4 knots - I had smashed the 40 knot barrier!

I stayed on the water for another hour or two to get some more runs to improve my 5x10 second result, and ended up with 38.5 knots - almost exactly the same speed as my previous 2 second best. What a great day! I also played around a bit with the mast foot position, and concluded that about 3 cm from the front of the track seemed to work better than all the way in front. Nina also set two PBs for 2 and 5x10 seconds that day, but was a tad disappointed that she was several knots slower than I had been. When we later checked what speeds the other sailors had posted, there were a total of 51 postings from Lake George on the GPSTC site. Only a small number of sailors had posted 40 knot speeds for the day, and Nina had beaten quite a few of the other speeds. My speed ended up within about one knot of the top speed for the day, and only four speedsurfers posted speeds faster than mine - quite an amazing result, considering that a lot of guys here have previously done 44 to 49 knot top speeds! But despite the lucky gust I got, which must have been at least 30 knots, it was a "lighter" wind day compared to what a lot of these guys are used to. I also had just one run with 2 second averages above 40 knots (although a few others were very close), so I must have gotten a lucky gust. So we'll have to modify Boro's formula:

Power + Control + Lucky Gust = Speed

Here are my GPS tracks for the day:

The entire region in the bottom left where the tracks are green, which indicates a speed above 30 knots, was glassy even in the 30+ knot gusts - a stretch about 600 m long. In the approach, the "chop" was somewhere between a couple of centimeters and at most 10 cm high.

Besides moving the mast foot, a few other tips and lessons also helped getting faster. That includes using the adjustable outhaul to really bag out the sail on speed runs. But perhaps the next most useful thing for me was to use ear plugs to tune out the noise of the wind. In the past, I had used in-ear earphones that did that, but all of these "waterproof" earphone died of corrosion sooner or later. Now, I am using bone conduction earphones that have held up very well, but leave me exposed to wind noise. Several people, including Peter "waricle", said that ear plugs helped, so I tried them for this session, and they made a big difference. The "the wind is really loud so it must be crazy windy" factor fell away, and so did one reasons to "be careful" (read: slow). I am generally quite sensitive to noise, and very easily distracted by it, so maybe the earplugs worked better on me than they would for others - but whatever it is, I'll take it.

Yesterday, I was a bit tired, partly from the previous day's effort and partly from fighting a cold, so I decided to take it easy. It looked quite windy at the lake, but only a few 40s were to be had yesterday, with the top speed requiring a 7.0 m sail and 63 cm board. I used a 5.5 m, which had me comfortably powered. Since the sail was easy to jibe, and the speed strip was quite crowded, I decided to go for an hour. I was inspired by Kato, who has done a 29.2 hour the day before. Not that I can compare myself to him, he sails in a different league, but at least I could copy his approach. Here's what my tracks for the hour looked liked:

The tracks show that I made a bunch of mistakes. I had a wet jibe near the beginning, where it took me almost a minute to shake of the weeds and get started again. I also started going upwind again too early, thinking I had sailed long enough. Next time, I'll need to set up the GPS to track the hour! In the best 45 minutes of the run, my average speed was 26.5 knots. With my mistakes, the hour came out at 25.66 knots - a 0.6 knot improvement over my previous PB. Not bad for an easy day!

Compared to Kato's hour tracks, several things pop out. His average speeds were about 2 knots faster than mine, and more consistent. He also did fewer jibes, even though he sailed more than 3 miles further, since he got closer to the lake edges in many runs. But the biggest difference is the quality of his jibes. His jibes are more consistent, and his minimum speed is several knots higher. Even if we consider that he used a GT31 which records filtered data at 1 Hz while I used a u-blox based logger that records at 5 Hz with a lot less filtering, his minimum speeds were a couple of knots faster. So before trying another hour, I will definitely need to work on my jibes! Thanks to discussions with Mike (Decrepit), I already have a plan on what to do. I'll leave you with another 4 year old picture, jibing on Lake George:

 

Movie: Into The Weed

Sometimes, it takes a big trip to learn to appreciate new things.

Lake George

One of the things that had drawn me to Australia were windsurfing videos from Lake George in South Australia. In a good year, you can windsurf Lake George on glassy water in 25 knots, without any chop. So we ended our trip with a couple of weeks at Lake George.

But things did not seem to work out quite as planned. Before we even got there, we saw multiple reports that the water levels were much higher than ideal. In good years, the chop-killing weed reaches the surface; but in February 2019, the weed was covered with about 2 feet of water.

The trip from the Perth region in Western Australia to Beachport in South Australia took us a few days (partly because we did not drive at night, when there is a high chance that you hit a kangaroo). When we arrived in the afternoon, we drove to the launch light away, and it looked beautiful - very flat, with about 20 mph of wind. Unfortunately, we did not get to sail that day. The next day was quite windy - but cold! Temperatures dropped to about 14 C (57 F), and it rained a bit at times. Our summer wetsuits proved to be a bit too light for the wind, which also was very gusty. We started to question how smart is was to leave Western Australia for that. The last spot we had visited, Albany, had been fantastic, and rewarded us with several personal bests each; but we only managed low 30-knot numbers this day. Frustration again, similar to the first really day at Fangy Land: the better windsurfers got speeds in the high 30s, and one or two even got 40-knot top speeds.

It got a bit warmer the next couple of days, but the wind remained light. We got to meet a number of Australian speedsurfers in the local pub and on the beach, including the holder of the official 24-hour world record, "Kato". Kato saved me from rigging in dying winds one day by letting me use his gear in the last few gusts, and let me use his Mistral IMCO longboard another day where the wind again was light and gusty. In many parts of the lake, the weed was too close to the surface to fully extend the daggerboard, but I still had a blast, even though I had to use the 6.3 m sail, since Nina was using the 7.0 on the big slalom board. But another advantage of the light wind was that I was able to get some drone footage, without having to worry about the drone getting blown away. Here's some footage of Nina on the 7.0/112 l combo:

Unfortunately, our friends Mike and Dot had to leave a few days later, and the three "Teletubby Brokeback Speedsurfers" from Mandurah who shared the cabin next to ours also left when the wind forecast was very poor for several days in a row. That meant that we lost some of the gear we had used (or hoped to use) in very light or very strong winds: Mike's 4.4 m sail and 39 cm speed board for Nina, and the 112 l slalom board (a loaner from Jonski - thanks again!). On the bright side, it prompted us to switch to a lovely AirBnb place with lots of space, a super-friendly host, free loaner bicycles, and frequent sightings of kangaroos right next to our place - nice!

The wind finally returned for the last two days of our stay. Here is a GoPro short video that I took at the beginning of the first day:

This was in about 5 knots more wind than in the first video above, about 18 knots. At almost all windsurf spots, 5 knots more wind would have also created more chop - but not so here! The heavy weed limits how big the chop gets, and the water was very smooth. The wind picked up during the day, probably reaching averages near 25 knots before I stopped sailing, but the chop never seemed to get any bigger. Sweet! Well, I should be more specific: the chop did not get noticeably bigger in the middle lake, which is shallow and weedy. We actually ended up sailing a bit in the big lake, which is deeper at parts, and has substantially less weed; in the deeper parts, the chop is more comparable to the Hatteras Sound (think of the area near Avon, in the middle of the long distance race).

Here are my GPS tracks for the day (click on the image to see a larger version):

We started at the bottom-left corner, from a launch known as "5 Miles". The mast mount video above was taken right in front of the launch. We then sailed up to "The Spit" - a sand spit that separates the middle lake from the big lake above it. The sand bar is just perhaps 10 meters wide, and a meter tall, so the water behind it is perfect for speed sailing. I spent most of the day on the Falcon 89, and got a top speed of 34.8 knots on it - the fastest I had ever been on a slalom board. After a couple of hours, when Nina took a break, I got six runs on the Isonic W54 speedboard in. Three of the runs were above 35 knots, and the fastest had a 2-second top speed of 37.09 knots (68.7 km/h) - that's the second-fastest I have ever sailed, and only the second time I have sailed faster than 35 knots.

After hearing about my speeds, Nina wanted a few more runs on the Isonic. I ended up getting quite cold waiting for her, so I started to sail back to the launch, which was about 1.5 miles upwind. Since the wind kept picking up, getting back was reasonably easy and quick. I later looked at the GPS tracks of Hardie, who did more than 40 knots that day, and they confirmed that the wind picked up a few knots during and after our trip back. However, we were quite tired by the time we sailed back, and not quite sure how easy it would be to sail back upwind. I was definitely happy to have a few reserved left to manage the 7.0 m sail in gusts that must have been above 30 knots!

For the next day, the wind forecast had predicted a few more knots of wind, so we decided to drive out to the spit. It's just a 5 kilometer (3 mile) drive from the 5 Mile launch - but the road is "very interesting", with sand, huge potholes, and rocky areas. It took us 30 minutes to drive the last 3 miles!  But at least we now had the option to change gear whenever we felt like it.

I went out first on the 7.0/89 combo, and quickly got a top speed of 34.5 knots. The wind seemed to be picking up, and both local expertise and the forecast predicted an increase, to I quickly rigged down to the 6.3. Unfortunately, the wind had other plans, and stayed perhaps 5 knots weaker than the day before, so I had a hard time even getting 34 knots again. But the water in front of the speed (below in the image above) was just a few inches above the weeds - tons of fun to go back and forth in! I tried to improve my 1 hour personal best, but had a few problems jibing, so ended up 0.8 knots short of my PB. Nevertheless, these three hours of going fast for a couple of kilometers each run in "chop" than ranged from about 1 inch to maybe 3-4 inches were some of the best hours I even spend on a windsurf board. The SSE-SE wind was a lot steadier than the gusty SW-WSW wind we had on our first day of sailing at Lake George! Even Nina, who usually gets bored going in a straight line after a minute or two, sailed back and forth with a big grin on her face for hours, and ended up improving her 1 hour PB without really trying. After these two days, we both understood why windsurfers from all over Australia come to Lake George!

The Car

Our trip to Oz is almost over. Yesterday, we said goodbye to the Falcon:

We bought the Ford Falcon station wagon a few days after we arrived. On the inside, the lining under the roof had been removed, so it did not look pretty. But it drove well, and had only 220 thousand kilometers - about 100-200K less than similar 15-year old cars.

It has had a few little problems. The day after we bought it, we discovered that one of the doors in the back could not be locked. Back to the mechanic who sold the car. He "fixed" it - it was now permanently closed, and could not be opened anymore. Much better! The back seats were folded down to accommodate our windsurfing gear, anyway.

A day later, we discovered that the door on the back also did not close. Not feeling too smart now, but finally understanding why there were so many disconnected cables in the back, we almost drove back to the mechanic again. But before we had a chance, our windsurfing friend Mike fixed it for us.

The only other issue was a flat tire a few weeks later. A couple of tires were now close to the legal limit, and he were planning to drive through the Nullabor, where there are many hundred kilometers between towns. So we replaced all tires for AUD $360, hoping that the new tires would make it easier to sell the car.

The biggest bummer about buying a car was that we left Lake George a few days earlier than absolutely necessary, so that we'd have a few days in Melbourne to sell the car. Of course, conditions were perfect a couple of days later, and some guys got their magic 40 knots for the first time. At least one of them improved their previous best by about 4 knots. Who knows what we could have done? Maybe next time..

We ended up selling the car to a guy from Canada who is here for a year. It helped that the car was registered in Western Australia: transferring the registration can be done by mail; no safety inspection is required; and the registration (which includes insurance) can be extended easily over the internet, which he did right away. We got exactly the same amount we had paid for the car, so it cost us less than $600 for the registration and the new tires - a lot cheaper than any rental would have been! Perhaps we got lucky because nothing major broke, but the car was made to be used as a taxi, and it's supposedly good for a million kilometers. Seeing that there are lots of these Falcons around with more than 400K kilometers, that probably true.

How was Lake George, you wonder? We'll fantastic .. but that's a different post.

With A Little Help

Two days ago was our last day in Mandurah - and it was windy! Mike did not believe my prediction of wind between 25 and 30 knots, so we went to Fangyland instead of Liptons. Fine by me - I love Fangy's Weed Farm!

We arrived to plenty of white caps, and a big crew on the beach, getting ready to go out. It was still cloudy, but the end of the clouds was in sight, and several sailors predicted that the wind would pick up once the clouds were gone .. which it did. I got out just before that happened, so I had some time to get dialed in on the Falcon 89 with the Racing Blade 6.3. Nina went out on the RB 5.0 with Mikes 39 cm "wide" speed board. Yes, all of 39 centimeters. She had to suffer through plenty of comments on the board - one guy remarked that she should have a second board, one for each foot. He had a point - the board looked more like a water ski than a windsurf board! Since she does not waterski, it took her quite a while to get comfortable on the board. Once it became clear she'd keep using it, I switched down to our Isonic W54 speed board.

By then, the wind was quite strong. Meter readings on shore later showed 25 knots with gusts to 32, but it may have been a bit higher on the speed strip. Everyone was taking breaks at the end of the runs, which were a bit longer than a mile - almost 2 kilometers. That was rather nice - lots of tips on where the flattest water was, how to tune the gear, and so on were exchanged. One of the local legends, Stroppo, first showed Nina the run below the weed banks where the flattest water could be found, and then made sure I also knew about it. Very nice!

I was using GPSLogit with bluetooth headphones, and had heard "35" several times during runs. The GPS watch confirmed that I had set a new personal best, and finally (!!) broken the 35-knot barrier. That helped me relax a bit. Or perhaps the wind just picked up. Whatever it was, I saw a 37.6 on the dial after the next run. That was 2.8 knots faster than my old personal best - a huge jump! I had also tried to copy Stroppo's approach to a nautical mile run, and had improved my PB for the "nauti" (often spelled "naughty") my 2 knots. Sweet! I was getting a bit tired, and we had a big drive planned for the next day, so I decided to call it a day.

Nina said she wanted to stay out, since she was finally getting comfortable on the tiny speedboard. When she came in a while later, she was glowing - she had just improved her personal best by more than 3 knots, to 35.78 knots! At the end of the day, we each had improved our personal bests in three categories - top speed (2 seconds), 5 x 10 seconds, and nautical mile. Sweet, sweet, sweet!

It was time to say good bye to the local speedsurfers we had gotten to know during our stay, an extra-ordinarily nice bunch of people. Quite a few of them had also set new personal bests - the two teams I mentioned in my last post, the Mandurah Mob and the Pinnaroos, each set a total of 9 PBs that day. What a day!

The big question is: what made us (and others) go so much faster? Clearly, the conditions played a big role: strong winds and very flat water. But we had had quite similar conditions before at exactly the same spot, with no or just marginal improvements. But this time around, the wind direction was different, so the runs in smooth water were more than twice as long. Together with steady winds, this gave us plenty of time to get used to the conditions and to the higher speeds that were possible.

Just as important, though, was the company of better speedsurfers. Their friendly and freely given advice (both during the session and in and after previous sessions) was super-helpful. Mike's 39 cm speed board was essential - not only did it enable it Nina to go wicked fast, but it also freed our speedboard for my use (and the W54 was much more appropriate for the conditions than the slalom board!). So a BIG thanks to Mike, Stroppo, Ross, and all the others who have helped us!

Yesterday, we drove to Margaret River, and arrived just in time to witness a Severne team photoshoot, complete with helicopters and mast-high wave. The show was amazing, with super-high back loops, one-handed aerials, wave 360s, and more. I went to thank multiple world wave champion Philip Köster after the session, and got to shake his hand - cool!!!

Today, we drove on to Albany, another famous speed spot. After stops for a walk through giant tree tops and at the "Elephant Rocks", one of the most beautiful coasts I have ever seen, we arrived a bit late at our bay-front cottage, but I managed to squeeze a session on the big gear (112/7.0) in. This is another perfect spot, with weeds sticking out of the water that keep it really flat and create a "jibing heaven. Despite only about 16 knots of wind and a top speed below 29 knots, I managed to get an alpha 500 of 23 knots - just 1/3rd of a knot below my personal best! Sooo much fun! And there're more wind in the forecast for tomorrow :-).

Between all the fun, I somehow found the time to check our individual rankings on the GPS Team Challenge. Here's what the top 10 for the speedsurfers in USA teams currently looks like:

Somewhat magically, I already advanced to third place, within 2 points of the second place - and we still have a couple of weeks at super-flat, super-fast Lake George coming up! Nina is currently on the 8th place, ahead of 30 guys - the girl is fast!

Battle For First Place

Fangy's Weed Farm looked peaceful today:

Yesterday? A very different story! In the monthly rankings on the GPS Team Challenge, two local teams were tied for first place: the Mandurah Mob and the Pinnaroos. It was time for a showdown!

Our host Mike, team captain of the Mobsters, barely waited for the first white caps to show up on the ocean to head out to Coodanup, where Fangy's Weed Farm creates some of the flattest water I have ever seen. In 2017, this was perhaps the secret weapon that brought the Mobsters the victory in the battle for first place in Australia - but since then, large groups of "pesky Pinnas" have invade the weed farm on a regular basis. Yesterday was another invasion day - 6 Pinnas showed up hoping the good forecast would come true, matching the number of Mobsters.

But the Mobsters had a good plan: go for distance, and perhaps improve the 1-hours speeds at the same time. I tried to help with the only thing I could think off: distract the Pinnaroos' team captain by offering her jibe advice, and even showing her a bit of sail chi on shore. This kept her too busy to advice her team mates on strategy - although in all fairness, it might have been too late by then, since Mike and his team mate Slugger already had been on the water for a couple of hours.

My little sail chi distraction did serve a second purpose: it made me hit the water just as the wind picked up, so I was very nicely powered on my 7.0/112 combo right away. I had planned on giving some more jibe advice on the water, but had way too much fun on the flat water to stop. The wind direction (SSW) was perfect in that it created really nice long runs, so I changed my plans and went for 1-hour speed instead. Whoever invented this category for the GPS Team Challenge must love going back and forth as much as I. The "short" runs were about 1.5 km long, mostly right at the edge of the weed, but sometimes just below weed beds in "chitter-chatter" water, and a few times straight through the middle of the weed (made possible by the incredible Fangy Fins).

All the time, I saw Mike and Slugger go back and forth like the real speed machines they are. A few times, I followed Mike around, but I had to really concentrate on speed, or he would have left me behind very quickly. Impressive!

At the end of the day, the deed was done: the Mobsters had jumped to second place in the distance ranking for the month, and also improved their ranking in the 1 hour category, jumping way ahead of the pesky Pinna invaders:

I had a blast watching the action from the water, and got inspired to try harder. This time around, I sailed in my favorite conditions: lighter wind (perhaps 22 knots) and big gear (7.0/112/22). Jibing was just too much fun, and the wind direction also had the alpha markers in a perfect position, so it was no big surprise that Nina and I both improved our personal bests in the alpha 500 category a bit. When I looked at the postings from the Pinnas and the Mobsters, however, I was in for another surprise: of the 14 windsurfers from the two teams and the "USA" team, I ended up with the fastest 1-hour and 2-second numbers! The hour was perhaps not surprising, since that's perhaps my best category; but the 2-second "top speed" category was a big surprise. I'll blame it on the new "Stroppo's Curves" approach, which I tried many times in the middle of the runs. Big thanks, Stroppo!
Here's a table with the results from the 14 sailors from the 3 teams at Coodanup yesterday, with rankings in each category and an overall ranking (the sum of all categories):

Mark ended up in first place - well deserved, he set three personal bests that day! I ended up in second place overall, which makes me very happy. In conditions I'm familiar with, I'm not half bad after all! It's good that I did not get first place overall - that would have inflated my ego way too much, probably enough to have my head explode. Chances are I would not mind much since I'd die in a state of happiness, but I'd be really sorry for Mike and Dot having to clean up the mess!

40 Knots Or Not

It was wicked windy a few days ago when a big storm system pulled through. We followed the local experts who drove an hour south to Australind, looking for the strongest wind and the best spot for westerlies. Once we got there, the rain and chop made it quite uninviting. After driving up and down the bay looking in vain for a spot that was both flat deep enough, the final straw came when Hardie sent a screen shot from his top speed at Mandurah: he had gotten a 40-knot reading on his GT-31!

Back we drove, and sailed in Mandurah Bay at Coodanup. For once, it did not deserve the name "Fangy's Weed Farm", since a high storm surge covered the weed completely. The there actually was some chop - although it should more correctly be labeled "mini-chop", since it was just maybe 5 or 10 centimeters high. To keep things interesting, the weed had ganged up at some spots, building "weedbergs" (the weedy equivalent of icebergs) which were big enough for birds to stand on. Sailing into these at speed created interesting "sudden drag" situations, but the high-rake fins we used parted the weedbergs without catapults.

I ended up with a top 2-second speed of 33.6 knots and 32.6 knots for 5x10 seconds, which is the 3rd-best I ever did. Nina got two new personal bests for 2 seconds (32.6 knots) and 5x10 (31.5 knots). However, we both ended up disappointed, since our top speeds were about 5 knots slower than the speeds many others got, and almost 10 knots slower that the 42.3 knots that Stroppo, speed king of the day, posted!

Here's a summary of the local speed surfers' top speeds (2 seconds):

• Fastest speed: 42.288 knots (Stroppo)
• Above 40 knots: 5 sailors
• 37-39.9 knots: 8 sailors
• 31-34 knots: 9 sailors
• Spots with 40+ knot results: Coodanup (3), Australind (1), Melville (1)

The numbers may change a bit since not everyone has posted yet; I think we'll see at least one 40+ knot posting.

Seeing these numbers made me feel a bit better, because we're at least in the largest group. The spread of 10 knots is quite amazing - what causes it? There is probably a small contribution that the gear makes. For example, whenever a heavy gust hit, Nina was very overpowered on her 5.0 meter sail and 54 cm speed board. Stroppo, who is close to twice her weight, used a 6.0 and a 47 speed board - no surprise he was able to stay in control! Sail sizes should (in first approximation) increase of decrease in proportion to weight, so Nina's sail should have been somewhere in the 3.x meter range, or at least much closer to 4 square meters. I was on a 5.6 m sail, which is close to what most guys my weight used. My board was an 89 l slalom board, and about 10 cm wider than the speed boards used by most others, which might have slowed me down by a couple of knots. Indeed, when I got hold of Nina's speed board for a run, I did immediately got my best speed of the day. But looking at the faster windsurfers, there's still a 3 to 5 knot difference between the fastest guys and the next group.

Our host Mike, who did 37.7 knots on a 4.7/43 combo, gave me his GPS tracks to compare to ours. Here is a polar diagram which shows the maximum speed relative to the wind direction for Nina (in red) and Mike (in blue):

The left half of the diagram shows the starboard tack runs, the right half the port tack runs. On starboard, Nina's and Mike's speed were about the same for most angles; but Mike went deeper downwind, and reached a slightly higher top speed at about 137 degrees. On the port tack (right side), Mike's speeds were about 2-3 knots faster than Nina's over a wide range. Again, he went deeper downwind, and got his top speed at about 145 degrees. Going about 15 degrees deeper increased his speed by about 3 knots.
After the session, Nina said that she simple could not go deeper because she was so overpowered. She was on a 5.0 m sail and a 54 cm wide board; Mike was on a 4.7 and a 43 cm wide board. Seeing how deep Mike's top speed angles were, he was certainly fully powered even on the deepest angles, where the apparent wind is significantly lower than when sailing on a beam reach (90 degrees to the wind).
The difference between the starboard and port tracks points to another very important factor: being familiar with the conditions. There was enough chop to make both Nina and me "put on the handbrakes" - we were definitely not going all-out. We both felt more comfortable doing speed runs on starboard, even though port was the better (inbound) direction. I think that is because at our typical sailing spot, Kalmus Beach in Hyannis, we generally go out against the chop, and come in more parallel and over the back of the chop. So we are much more used to dealing with chop on the starboard track.

It is also interesting to compare Mike's track to Stroppo's tracks, since Stroppo was significantly faster than anyone else. Here is the polar diagram (Mike in blue, Stroppo in green):

Stroppo did not do any speed runs on starboard, so we can ignore the left half of the diagram. On the port side, Stroppo was going a few knots faster than Mike, with a bigger difference at deeper angles - up to about 127 degrees. Beyond that, Stroppo's speeds actually dropped, while Mike's speed still increased for another 20 degrees or so.
The reason for this can be found in the sail sizes: 4.7 for Mike, 6.0 for Stroppo. But Stroppo is about 60% heavier than Mike, and sail sizes scale (roughly) proportional with body weight. For comparable power, Stroppo should have been on a 7.5! That seems way too big for the wind, so let's do it the other way around: for comparable power to Stroppo's 6.0, Mike should have been on a 3.7!
Arguably, the linear sail size relation does not fully hold for race sails; however, a sail closer to 4 square meters would have been more similar in power to Stroppo's 6.0.
Watching the two of them on the water, it was quite apparent that Stroppo was on the (relative) smaller gear: Mike had a much easier time to get going, while Stroppo often had to wait for gusts. The (relative) bigger sail enable Mike to go deeper downwind; but the smaller sail gave Stroppo more control in the big gusts, which he skillfully converted to more speed. Looking at the fastest runs for both of them, the top-speed angles varied a bit, but in general, Mike's top speeds were reached at a roughly 15 degrees deeper angle.

Another observation from Stroppo's tracks was that he did not do "slingshots", where the angle suddenly changes. Instead, Stroppo's angle changed very gradually to deeper and deeper angles - here is an example (from his second-fastest 2-second run, 41.18 knots):

The near-constant acceleration over the entire run is quite impressive. His fastest run look very similar, but he apparently caught a good gust near the end of it, which gave him the extra boost to reach a 1-second top speed of 42.4 knots. Very impressive! Since the technique is quite different from the slingshot, it deserves its own name - how about "Stroppo Curves"?

I must admit that I find Mike's speeds, and the speeds in the high 30s to low 40s many others had, almost as impressive. Mike is more than a decade older than I am, and must have been quite overpowered in the gusts, but had way more control to convert the gusts to speed than I did. Perhaps the more appropriate board (43 cm speed vs. 59 cm slalom) helped, but there's definitely a skill difference, too. But whatever the causes were, it was very fascinating to be able to share a great day on a fantastic spot with so many good speedsurfers!

Wave Sailing at Avalon

On Sunday, we left Geraldton and drove back to Mandurah, where Mike and Dorothy kindly offered us to stay in their home right at the beach at one of the wave spots, named Avalon. Yesterday, we got a bit of swell and just enough wind to plane, so Nina and Mike went out from the launch across the street (Nina on 4.7, Mike on 5.3). The wind was light enough to allow my little drone to fly. Since the break was close enough to the beach, I managed to get a bit of video footage. The breaks between the sets were large, and with my limited drone skills, I did not catch them on any decent wave rides, but I think the scenery and colors are quite beautiful:
I did not have wave gear to join them, but I later had a lovely flat water session at Liptons. I love the spot - perfectly flat water for jibing fun at both ends, with a mile-long run in between. The wind varies a bit, often being light in the middle and stronger towards shore, which is clearly visible in the GPS tracks:

The wind was a bit on the light side for my 7.0/112 combo, so no great speeds - but finally getting a relaxing session in flat water was fantastic!

Shark Bay and Lancelin

After Cervantes, we drove one hour south to Lancelin. Nina had booked us a very lovely apartment about 200 meters from the ocean. A couple of times, I rigged on the front lawn and carried my gear down to the beach for a quick session. That was fun the first time, but the second time, the wind direction had changed, and the runs were very short - after 400 meters (a quarter mile), a reef forced me to turn around. Jibing the 7 meter slalom sail every 30 seconds makes for a good workout, but gets old quickly. So the next time the wind was up, we went to the Ledge, where the Lancelin Ocean Classic marathon race starts. The start is nice and protected by a reef about 100 meters from shore. Once past the reef, there's big ocean swell; the place most similar that I have sailed is Jericoacoara past the point on a 4.5 m day. I generally sail my slalom gear only on flat water, so being out in head-to logo-high swell was quite interesting - but also fun. However, I certainly had no desire to sail a 22 km downwinder in a crowd of 100 windsurfers in these conditions!

Nina was thinking about participating, but there were a couple of issues. Once was that the race organizers announced two or three days before the races that they would require proof of liability insurance, and charge an extra $25 if you did not have it, bringing the total entry fee for the race to $125. In past years, Nina would have had a decent chance to recover some of the fee in prize money, but the organizers did not post any information about prize money anywhere. "No worries"?

The other thing that kept Nina from signing up was that her biggest wave sail was a 4.7, and she definitely did not want to do the race on a slalom sail. After pulling a muscle yesterday at Coronation trying to water start my 6.3 Racing Blade in the waves, I can understand that! Getting the sail out was hard enough, but then the next wave would come and kill the wind, dropping the sail right back onto my head. On the bright side, this keeps me from trying to go out again today with slalom gear on a wave spot, and gives me a bit of time for blogging while Nina is having fun on the water.

Back to the sail choice: one problem at Lancelin is that it's unpredictable when the wind will pick up - sometimes it is there for the race start around 2 pm, sometimes it comes half an hour or an hour later. Furthermore, some of the legs are very deep downwind, so bigger gear is needed - the winner (former PWA World Champion Matteo Iachino) was a 7.8. So there was a good chance that the 4.7 would have been too small - not something Nina wanted to bet $125 on.

While we did not race ourselves, we watched the start, and then drove back to the finish to see the first racers cross the finish line. It was quite a spectacle to see about 100 windsurfers and 90 kites at the starting lines! 

The next day, we got up very early (just about when the guys across the street finally ended their party), and drove 800 km (500 miles) to Shark Bay. We thought that we had picked great days to check out one of the best speed spots, with a wind forecast of around 22-25 knots and the tide levels being just right. However, after we had already made the decision to go and booked the hotel, we received a warning that the wind at Shark Bay tends to be 10 knots above the forecast! When we got to the beach in the afternoon, it did indeed look like at least 30 knots. We went for a quick test run just to verify that we could control our smallest speed sails in these conditions, but considering the lack of sleep and late time, we did not do the 2 km bay crossing to get to the speed strip. Instead, we decided to come back earlier the next day, before the wind got really strong.

That was a good plan, except that the wind did not quite play along. It kept blowing all night, and still was around 30-35 knots, with stronger gusts, when we got back to the launch around noon. The water level did not seem right, either: it was supposed to be a foot higher, but looked exactly the same as the day before. 

We cautiously made our way to the speed strip. We walked more than we sailed since we wanted to stay away from the deep water, as Nina was not sure she'd be able to water start or flip the sail. We were sure we had discovered the speed strip when we discovered the alpha markers - but the water levels were so low that sailing near the marker was not an option, even though our fins were just 18 and 20 cm short. Typically, the speed strip allows for a 600-800 m long approach in shallow and flat water, before the final "speed up" strip close to a sand bar and a deep sling shot close to the shore. But  given the shallow water, our approach was cut down to perhaps 50 or 100 meters, not enough to get settled and pick up speed - at least not with our limited skills. By the time we got back to the launch, the tide had gone down even further:

While we did not get to sail much, and did not get any speed runs, it was still a fun day. The area and the water was just beautiful - definitely one of the prettiest spots I have ever sailed.

The next day, we drove back south to Geraldton, our temporary home to check out Coronation Beach, one of the most famous wave spots in Australia. Shortly after leaving, we saw a family of emus right next to the street - cool!

The next stop was Eagle Bluff, which offers a great view of Shark Bay:

On the way to Geraldton, we stopped at Port Gregory, a small town best known for it's Pink Lake:

The pink color is due to carotenoid-producing halophine micro-algae, Dunaliella salina, which is used for cosmetics and dietary supplements. The town also spots a large reef-protected harbor:

One of the speedsurfers from Perth recently windfoiled there, and called it "foiling heaven". For speedsurfing, it's not quite as ideal, since the typical wind direction is at about a 45 degree angle to the reef, and waves break over the reef, creating some small chop and considerable current. But I certainly can see how this could be a great spot for foiling!

The next two days are predicted to be light wind days, which seems to be the typical pattern here: 2-3 days of light wind, then 4-5 days of good wind. When the good winds return, we'll be back in the Mandurah region for some speedsailing at the various Mandurah Bay spots. I can't wait!

Cervantes Windsurf Challenge

One of the things we had been looking forward to as part of our trip was the Cervantes Windsurf Challenge. A 7 km downwind course with "super-flat gybe locations" sure sounded like fun! So thought 75 windsurfers, most of them on full slalom gear. Here's a picture to part of the group approaching a jibe mark:

I think this was taken at the first jibe mark after the fastest guys had already passed it. I don't really fancy jibing around in a crowd, so in the first race, I let just about everyone else start before I took off, and then sailed the first mark wide. Plenty of others had similar intentions, but with a few crashes at the mark, the field was sufficiently drawn out afterwards to have plenty of space, making the sailing fun. Fun of the slightly scary side, since I was fully powered on my 7.0/112 l slalom combo. Normally, I probably would have sailed a 96 l freeestyle-wave board with a 5 meter sail in these conditions.

The wind kept picking up. Even though I rigged down to a 6.3 in the break before the second race, the race ended up in the "more scary than fun" category. Of course, that was mostly my fault, since I did not wait long enough at the start, and ended up being surrounded by tons of other sailors for a while. It took several crashes and longer swims around the marks before things quieted down a bit around me.

Up until this day, the wind had always kept picking up after lunch, so I needed smaller gear for the two afternoon races. Unfortunately, our 90 l board had a ding that needed fixing, and Nina was using the speedboard with the 4.7 m wave sail. The only "smaller" option would have been to rig a 5.6 m slalom sail for the 82 l wave board, using the mast we had gotten for the wave sails and never tested for the slalom sails. But since the wave board only had a little 20 cm wave fin, that did not seem like a viable option. By the time I had de-rigged the 6.3, all the vegetarian sandwiches had been taken, anyway, so it was time to walk back to the apartment and get some food instead of racing in the afternoon. Nina stays on the beach and raced all four races. In the evening, there was a fun party at the Lobster Shack, where we got to meet a few of the speedsurfers that I had read about for years. Cool!

The wind on Sunday was very light; one race was started, but not scored since most sailors did not plane through the course. Results were announced in the afternoon - Patrik Diethelm and Karin Jaggi had won the Men's Open and Women's racing. Kellie Tusler, with whom Nina had had several close races, often trading places at the jibe marks (where Nina was faster thanks to her easy-handling wave sail) and the straights, where Kellie's large race sail was faster, finished second.

A day or two later, Cervantes Windsurf Challenge posted the race results on Facebook - here's the second page (click on the image to see the larger version):

Something was obviously wrong: they had scored me in four races (red box), even though I had done only two. Worse, they had no score at all for Nina in any of the races! The results in the two races I had done did not seem right, either - I had done reasonably well in race 1, probably finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack, but had done a lot worse in race 2, with just a few windsurfers coming in behind me. But the spreadsheet showed me coming in as 42nd and 47th.

I sent the race organizers a message though Facebook, and got back a number of messages about "misinformed data", "no number no result", but also stating that the 4 judges on the beach had problems reading the number on Nina's NP sail. Here's a show of her and my sail near a mark:

Nina is on the green-purple sail with sail number "N", I am two spots behind on the orange sail with sail number "NI" (the numbers are on the other side of the sail, towards the beach were the judges were).

Apparently, the judges had misread Nina's number as "NI" in every single race, and assigned here ranks to me. The did not score our second sail at all. They were aware that they had a hard time reading Nina's sail number (possibly because of glare from the sun), but at no time did they try to check with Nina to double-check (and everyone was standing on the beach for about 30 minutes between the races). That was quite different from the long distance race in Hatteras, where a guy on a jet ski was assigned to verifying any sail numbers that were hard to read, and the president of US Windsurfing was running along the beach for the same purpose. Habits are different in Australia, it seems - many windsurfers went straight to the judges after finishing to check their rankings. At most races in the US that we have been to, that would not have been welcome at all; instead, preliminary results were often posted soon after the races so everyone could check for problems.

So, how well did Nina do? We cannot know with absolute certainty, since there was confusion with here and my sail number. However, we can be 99% sure based on our GPS tracks for the first two races:

Nina's tracks are in red, mine are in blue. I had a better top speed since I was on a race sail, while Nina was on a wave sail. I finished the first race ahead of her, and saw her come in as I was going to shore. In the second race, I came in a couple of minutes after her. This supports that the scores shown for me in the table above were indeed Nina's scores in all four races: it would put me in the mid-to-high 30s in race 1, and low 50s in race two. If you look at how much time I spent fooling around near the third mark in the second race, you can see where I lost about 15 spots between the two races! Nina sailed much more consistently.

So, Nina ended up with 124 points after one discard, two points ahead of Kellie. Correctly scored, Nina finished the second in the women's racing, beaten only by multiple world champion and current speed record holder Karin Jaggi. But she got neither the medal nor the cash price, nor the applause at the ceremonies. She did not even get a proper apology for the mistake when I had contacted the organizers by message - she only got one after she posted a "Don't recommend" review on the Cervantes Windsurf Challenge facebook page (quickly followed by a request to remove the "unfair" review).

For me, this was the last slalom race I ever entered, simply because I just don't care for sailing in big crowds at the edge of control. Unfortunately, this entire episode has also demotivated Nina a lot. She had originally considered to participate in the Lancelin Windsurf Marathon this Saturday, and possibly at a Safety Bay slalom later this month, but why would you do that if you end up with nothing but a bad aftertaste?

For any other non-Australians thinking about racing at the Cervantes Windsurf Challenge, I would not necessarily discourage that - just make sure that check your rank with the judges right after every race. Also, you should be comfortable sailing your gear in 4-5 ft swell and chop, and in being in a slalom starting line with more than 70 other windsurfers - the announced goal for next year was 100.  The often-used strategy of overshooting marks by a wide margin to avoid the crowds is also somewhat limited, since there are either shallow reefs or the shore within about 50 meters of most marks. Some comfort with not knowing the exact rules also helps - there is no official "notice of race", and I still wonder whether we sailed a PWA-style "no rules" slalom or one where regular right-of-way and racing rules apply; true to the "no worries" philosophy, that issue was never touched upon in the skipper's meeting. But a large majority of participants seemed to be just fine with that, and had fun.

Here are a few more pictures:

Fighting for control (I think I lost..)

GPS Challenge Winners - Nina was 3rd in Women's

The Pinnacles, 17 km from Cervantes

Coodanup Pictures

We had two days in a row of sailing at Fangy's Weed Farm in Coodanup, Western Australia. If you wonder why it's called "Weed Farm", check this picture:

Nina stood in the weeds today for a while to take some pictures:

Droned at the Weed Farm

The little drone I bought for our trip wanted action. The wind played along - at about 15 mph, the Spark would be able to fly against the wind. Mike was game - he wanted to get "droned". When we explained to him that "droned" sounds a lot like the German "(zuge)droent, he stated that he wanted to get droned in the weed farm. So to Coodanup we went.

Unfortunately, I had never flown the "flying camera" for any noticeable distance before, so I misjudged how far out I had to fly. I stayed way too close to shore - about 200 meters out, while Mike and Nina sailed about 800 meters out. Here's a picture that shows the problem:

The green tracks are from the drone, the red and blue tracks are from Mike and Nina. No suprise I could not really see them on the phone's screen! When I play the video on the computer, you have to look really hard to find them. See for yourself:

Australia!

We have been in Western Australia for a week now, and I finally got some time to blog. We've been busy getting a phone, getting it to work, shopping for a car, getting it fixed, windsurfing, and getting more windsurfing gear for Nina so she can freestyle and wave sail a bit.

There are lots of fantastic things that deserve their own blog post - the city of Perth; the weather; the highly civilized driving on perhaps the best road system I have ever seen; wonderful bakeries and other great food; Christmas decorations (yes, they definitely deserve their own post!); and, most of all, the wonderful people we have met. But, this being a windsurfing blog, I'll start with the windsurfing.

We had arrived Friday afternoon, and Sunday was Nina's birthday. So she got to pick what we'd do, which ended up being ... checking out a car! It was a station wagon that we ended up buying, but it fortunately was on the way to Mandurah, where Fangy's Weed Farm is located. If you want to find this place on the map, look for Coodanup and Mandurah Bay in Western Australia - but the map won't tell you what makes this place special. Neither does the picture of the launch site:

The main sailing area is about half a mile to the right, hidden behind the trees. It's about knee-deep, sometimes shallower, with thick seaweed growing right to the surface. In some areas, the water surface looks more like a lawn than anything else - and you can sail right through this "magic carpet". You do, however, need a specialized fin - a regular weed fin won't make it through! Fins need to have a rake of at least 50 degrees to shed the weed, and they need to be quite short - 22 cm or less is the norm.

To get us on the water required the help of two local sailors, Mike and Ross, better known as "Decrepit" and "Fangman". Fangman had developed his own fins especially for the local conditions which work a lot better that most other high rake fins, and he had prepared three fins especially for us. Mike, with whom I had had a bunch of email exchanges about GPS prototypes, came of the water when we arrived and drove to Fangy's house to pick the fins up, since Ross was up in Lancelin. When we discovered that the Fangy Fins did not fit quite right, Mike gave Nina one of his fins (also self made, with a stainless steel front edge), and let me use his board. Another local sailor lent us a couple of fin screws that somehow had not made the trip.

The sailing was perhaps the most unusual windsurfing I have ever done. We sailed straight through weed beds which would have meant instant catapults with regular slalom setups, without slowing down, except for an occasional tug when you hit an unusually dense patch. If you managed to hit one of the channels where the weed had been pushed down, you'd accelerate, since the water was mirror-flat in 25 knot wind. A bit behind the thicker weed patches, the surface of the water would clear, and the "chop" would build up to a centimeter or two.

Still slightly jet-lagged due to the 13 hour time difference, we kept the session short, but came off the water with big, fat grins. Nina had set four new personal bests, I had one (plus the second-fastest session ever, in a lot less wind than in the fastest session!). When we returned to the same spot two days later, Nina again improved her top speeds, setting two new PBs.

Our third session was yesterday in Safety Bay. The spot was quite nice, somewhat similar to Bonaire in the setup with a large shallow section next to a deeper section (but the launch is in the deep section). That was a short session - Nina's mast broke in the middle of her third run, and she had to swim back for 20 minutes. But in the evening, she picked up two freeride sails and a mast for free from a local freestyler. It is quite incredible how many nice and helpful people we have encountered in our first week here! It has already restored my faith in people - wonderful in these times where consideration for others seems to be out of fashion in many parts of the world.

Nina in Perth

Christmas kangoroos