A Perfect Speed Strip?

At least one of our local speed surfers puts the blame on our lack of great speeds onto the speed strips we are using. Certainly, none of our local strips compares to spots like Sandy Point in Australia, where the wind blows across a nicely curved sand bar, with perfectly flat water right behind it.

We have been looking for similar spots in the area. Nina and I spend the afternoon walking out to a big sand bar in Cape Cod Bay that had a promising stretch of water on the inside. Perhaps the spot has some potential, but it is far from ideal. It is a long walk from the beach, maybe 30 minutes without gear; the sand bar drops of very gradually; and it will be useful only in a narrow tidal range.

One of my favorite spots for speed around here are little reef islands in Duxbury bay. In the right wind direction, the water behind the islands is perfectly flat, and the islands are low enough so that they do not disturb the wind too much. Alas, "Long Island" in Duxbury Bay is only 200 meters long, and the chop increases rapidly one past the island. We'd need something at least 2-3 times this long, so the search continues.

In the last 2 weeks, we have done a bit of driving around on Cape Cod. Today, we checked out the bay behind Nauset and Coast Guard Beach. From the town landing we stopped at, the grass islands in the middle of the bay looked very similar to the ones in Duxbury - just bigger! Going back to Google Earth, I found one spot that looks just about perfect for speed runs in NE winds:

The strip in the image above is 1000 meters long, and nicely curved for sling shots. It should work in NNE and NE winds, perhaps going up in NE and down in NNE. The fetch looks pretty good: the nearest dunes are more than one kilometer to the NE, and they are less than 20 feet tall (not nearly as tall as the area at the nearby Coast Guard Beach or Nauset Beach). A public town landing is close enough to reach the strip with a 10 minute walk and short sail. Definitely something worth trying out! Maybe next Wednesday - the forecast predicts NE winds in the mid-20s. Some long stretches of chitter-chatter water would be lovely...

NW Cape Cod Bay Launches

Fall is my favorite season for windsurfing in New England. A typical storm brings 3 days in a row of winds in the upper 20s to low 30s which shift from NE to NW, with some rain in the middle. The storm we just had this week followed this pattern, except that it was stronger, with wind averages around 40-50 mph for two days. We had missed the first day and opted for now sailing on the second (rainy) day, but when the sun finally returned on day 2, we needed to get some.

The winds had turned to NNW, which presents the challenge of finding a good launch. Corporation Beach in West Dennis would be great for wave sailing - but since we are complete beginners in the waves, and winds were still in the low 30s in the morning, that was not an option. Skaket Beach in Orleans would have been great, except for the tides: like Chapin in West Dennis, Skaket is sailable about 2 hours before and after high tide; at lower tides, the walk back to the beach is half a mile (almost 1 km) long. Yesterday's low tide was at 1:20 pm, so that was not an option.

Looking at Google Earth and nautical charts, I noticed another launch just 2 miles further west that seemed looked like it had a much shorter walk at low tide, Ellis Landing in Brewster:

There's a channel with deeper water that lines up nicely with NW winds going almost all the way to Ellis Landing, so we decided to check it out. But when we arrived there, we saw a bunch of trucks and bulldozers moving sand around. It seems Hurricane Sandy and the Nor'easter the week after had changed the shore line a bit, and they were busy moving sand from the next beach over to this one.

We ended up sailing from the next beach over, Linnell Landing. Just as we got ready, the wind dropped from 28 to 21. The forecast and other wind meters in the area indicated that it would drop even further, so we rigged big - 6.5 for me and 5.0 for Nina. As soon as I carried my gear a few hundred meters to the water, though, the wind picked back up, gusting into the low 30s. We had an hour of overpowered sailing before the wind dropped again. Our friend Dani, who had to spend some time to get the zipper on his dry suit working again, unfortunately missed the best winds, and ended up with just a few marginally powered runs.

When we stopped after a couple of hours, the walk back had gotten a bit longer - about 1/4 mile. Here's a picture of the beach at low tide:

On the way home, we drove by Ellis Landing to check it out. Indeed, the walk here would have been a lot shorter:

What looked even more interesting was the sand bar that formed a little protected bay, and a possible speed strip for NW winds. In the nautical maps, the water depth in this area was shown as too low for windsurfing at low tides; but it seems that the recent storms may have moved just enough sand to create a half-mile flat water strip. Definitely worth exploring the depths with a SUP sometime soon! From reading session reports on the GPS Team Challenge, I got the impression that a lot of the speed areas in Australia are also very tide dependent, with the best sailing usually confined to a small tidal range when the sand bars and water depth are just right. Maybe we will be able to find a similar spot around here, after all.

So it was a bit chilly at the start; the wind played games with us; and the water surface was not perfect: swell too small to play with, but to big for real speed - but we had a great day sailing at a beautiful spot on a sunny day.

Bummer

For once, I need to rant. Here's what today's wind meter reading for Duxbury:

Do you know any windsurfers who like strong, steady winds coming from the perfect direction at their favorite spot? I do.

We were there at 9. Whitecaps everywhere, but the low water levels limited the wind-driven waves to about 1 foot high, with very little cross chop. It looked perfectly doable, so we decided to go out. To play it safe, we decided to start on our 76 and 77 l wave boards with 3.4 and 3.7 m sails, with some hope to switch to speed gear later during dead low tide. But just as we started pulling boards out of the van, the Duxbury Harbor Master stopped by to tell us that the bay was closed. Bummer!

The reason was that the NWS had issued a storm warning. They explain: "A storm warning means winds of 48 to 63 knots are imminent or occurring". Well, we got 48 knot gusts after 1 pm, but I think the less than 40 knot averages until noon would have not been a problem. The water, already flat when we came, got visibly flatter while we packed back up to leave; the tide was low enough to stand in most of the bay; there was no debris on the water, not even reeds; and it had not even started raining yet  - except for the slightly chilly temperatures, this was the perfect day to sail in 40 knot winds.

We drove around the neighboring towns a bit to look for alternative launches, but nothing looked to promising, so back to the Cape it was. We checked out our local lake on the way home, but it looked way too gusty (like 5-55). After lunch, we actually did discover a sailable spot about 3 miles from our house - a local bay with 500 m runs and a pretty decent fetch, with the option to sail out into the ocean through a narrow channel. Water on the ocean looked ok, too, but it would have been offshore, a bit risky given the wind and temperatures. But no need to go out - runs inside the bay are comparable in length to runs in the bay at Fogland, one of our favorite spots.

However, by then the rain had gotten pretty nasty, and it was getting dark soon, so we just gave up on sailing for the day. There is a bit of hope left for tomorrow, but the wind will turn N and then NNW, which means gustier and more chop in Duxbury Bay. Tides also don't play along nicely - in N winds, the north side of the bay is better, but it will be to shallow there. Sailing on  the south side of the bay means that you have to get away from the Powder Point Bridge, which throughs a nasty wind shadow in N winds. With the wind then turning more westerly and going down a bit, getting back to the launch side means going upwind for a mile in chop while barely powered. All that in driving rain - nope, no comparison to today, I think.

Too Much Wind?

It's beautiful and sunny, if a tad chilly, today on Cape Cod, but this will change tomorrow. Clouds and then rain will come; temperatures will rise a bit, but it will feel colder because it will be very windy. Here's what on computer model predicts:

Winds of about 50 MPH, gusts up to 60 mph - that's would be enough for the professional storm chasers, but it's too much for regular windsurfers. Fortunately, other computer models predict a bit less:

Winds "only" in the high 30s, with gusts below 50 until 1 pm - I have sailed in similar conditions. But which prediction will be closer to the truth?

The first chart if the GFS model for Chapin on Cape Cod; the second chart the NAM model for Duxbury. The NAM model has a higher resolution, and is often more accurate - but for Duxbury in the fall, if often under-predicts the wind. I think the actual wind will come in somewhere in between the two charts, perhaps like the NAM model for Chapin predicts:

To be clear - I have no intention to sail at Chapin, I am just using the forecast because in the past, the Chapin forecast has often predicted winds in Duxbury Bay quite well.

With the winds coming from the northeast, it will be chilly (mid-40s F, about 7 C) and cloudy. So why am I thinking about going sailing? Well, for one thing, the water is still relatively warm (above 50 F / 10 C). Then, the predicted NE wind direction is ideal for Duxbury Bay, which is protected by a large sand bar. At high tide, NE winds in the 30s still can create a lot of chop in the bay, and make sailing very challenging. During a similar storm last year, two of our local speed surfers who both sail orders of magnitude better than I went out, but neither got any speed they deemed worth posting. But tomorrow morning, the tides will line up just right:

Low tide will be at 11:17 am, with a water level of +1.79 feet. At a normal low tide ( 0 feet), Duxbury bay becomes unsailable, because the water levels are too low; but at +1.8 ft, most of the bay will have water deep enough for windsurfing - here's the depth chart:

Green areas can be dry at a normal low tide, and might be too low for sailing tomorrow. But in the blue areas, the water depth between 9:50 am and 12:50 pm will be mostly between 3 and 5 feet - taller windsurfers should be able to touch ground at most spots. When we recently sailed Duxbury Bay in 25-30 mph winds, the water got very flat as we approached low tide; unfortunately, we had to stop about 2 hours before low tide, when the water levels dropped below 2 feet (that day, low tide was slightly negative). Tomorrow, however, should a perfect setup of strong and increasing winds and sailable low tide.

If you think about joining us tomorrow in Duxbury, there are a number of things to remember:

• Boots are an absolute must when sailing Duxbury Bay. There are lots of sharp shells on the ground that will cut your feet if you try to sail barefoot.
• Helmets are definitely a good idea, if not a must, in the expected 40+ mph winds. 
• Bring warm gloves or mittens! Open-palm gloves should be warm enough.
• The wind may come in stronger than the models predict, and/or increase faster. Even at low water levels, walking through the muck to get back may be very difficult.
• The dept chart shown above is a few years old, and water depth may have changed. There are rocks in the water, so there is a chance of very sudden stops from hitting something! Also, there may be piles of reeds in the water that can stop you dead. Two more reasons to wear a helmet..
• The tide may come in higher or lower than forecast. During the last storm, tides at other places were about 2 feet higher than predicted because the wind was pushing the water towards shore. This might happen in Duxbury Bay, too!
• The harbor master may tell you that you cannot windsurf. He takes his job seriously, and will generally not let you go sail in really strong winds if you are alone. However, he has let two of us (Nina and me) sail in 35+ mph winds before after checking that there were at least 2 windsurfers going out. We hope to be there tomorrow morning before 10 am, but if the wind comes in even stronger than forecast, we may cancel.
• If you have never sailed in 35+ mph winds and 45+ mph gusts, I suggest that you wait for a warmer day. Sailing in winds this strong is dangerous!

For those who go out tomorrow, it will be a day to remember. I still have vivid images in my head from an overpowered 3.7 day in Tarifa 30 years ago! We hope to sail our smallest sails (3.4 for Nina) and boards (the F2 Missile will come along), and if it's flat enough, personal speed records will be broken.