Fun in 4 to 30 mph winds

 We used to think that Kalmus in west wind is pretty much unsailable. A few times when we got caught when the wind turned from WSW (which is great) to W while windsurfing, we did not like it, not one little bit.

But it was a beautiful sunny day today; the wind was from the west; and BaHa did not look great because the wind was a tad strong for foiling, but predicted to drop - and the launch tends to have tons of greenheads this time of the year. Ever since Nina got her wings, she does not really mind gusty wind anymore - so to Kalmus we went.

To make a long story short, I'll just show you a picture with the GPS tracks and the wind readings for the time we were on the water:

The meter showed lulls of 4 mph and gusts to 30. The lulls were not quite that low on the water, but close enough, and the gusts felt like at least 30 mph. But we still had plenty of fun. When the wind averages dropped to 12 mph at 12 noon, Nina switched from her 4.2 m wing to the 5.4. I stayed with my 5.6 Freek, which I like more and more for foiling. I had to wait for wind to get going every now and then, and even came off the foil in lulls once or twice, but I was foiling most of the time - at times barely, at other times barely holding on, but always having fun. Here's a short video:

I Wish

 Eddie recently posted a picture of me foiling at Kalmus:

He said in the comments that I was shredding. I wish!  This picture was taken when I came into shore and stopped in water too shallow for the mast. So I killed speed by going upwind, and tried to tilt the board sideways so the foil would not hit the ground, before I fell off backwards. But the picture looks cool.

The board in the picture is my new Progressive Riser 6.10 foil SUP that I bought for winging. This session was my 3rd on the board, and the first were I actually had fun. The board supposedly has 130 l, which should be plenty, but most of it is in the back, and the nose is 1 1/2 feet shorter than on my zombie foil board. Slogging the board is physical exercise, and not the fun kind. But when nicely powered as in this session, it's an awful lot of fun - less sensitive to the wind pushing it around, and very turny. That was a great session.

Yesterday, I took it out for a wing session -  my first ever. Most of the session was spent walking back upwind, after going downwind while trying to stand up. It took more than an hour to figure out how to sail upwind (not on the foil), and about as long to get two very short foil rides. The second time, I had my feet placed a bit wrong, which resulted in very rapid curves as soon as the foil came out, followed by the crash. But this was about what I had expected for the first session. Winging is not easy! It will take a few more sessions before I get an idea if I like it. I would not have even tried it if I had not seen my lovely wife having fun on the same wing in 14 to 30+ mph winds. She makes it look so easy - I wonder if it will ever be that easy for me. Here's a short video of her foiling through a jibe:

GoPro GPS and Race Render for Jibe Analysis

A few days ago, Nina pointed out that GoPro cameras are not that expensive anymore. Since I always was curious how much speed she kept in foiled jibes when winging, and GoPros that are newer than our ancient 3+ have a built-in GPS, we just had to order one.

After a couple of snafus with non-fitting accessories and rotated videos, I finally got some useable footage from the camera yesterday. Here's a short video:

I can't say that I am a great fan of the GoPro Hero 7 Black. It's much heavy and slightly larger than the old GoPro 3+, and gets less than half of the battery life, even at low resolution and with image stabilization turned off. The desktop software that GoPro provides to get the GPS speeds showing in the video is poor (if you ask me about it on the beach, you may hear less "friendly" words).  But fortunately, there's very nice third-party software available that even runs on Macs: Race Render.  Race Render makes is very easy to add different gauges and graphs to the video that show the data from the GoPro GPS. You could also use an external GPS, but that would require synchronizing, which could be a bit difficult. 

Here's a screen shot:

The movie from the GoPro 7, which I had mounted on top of my helmet, is shown as a small inset at the bottom right. The main picture is from the old GoPro 3+, mounted at the end of the boom with a ClewView. Race Render makes it really easy to synchronize the videos.

On the top right is a heading indicator; the display is adjusted to that the top is dead downwind (we'll get back to that in a minute). Below is a speedometer, and below that a speed graph. The picture above is from the jibe entry, shortly after unhooking and starting to carve downwind. The next picture is a second or two later,  after oversheeting a bit:

At this point, my speed has already dropped from 30 to 24 mph. The next picture is dead downwind:

I've started to open up the sail for the sail flip; speed is down to 18 mph.

In the picture above, I'm just letting go with my back hand. The picture below is in the middle of the sail flip:

By now, my speed is down to 15 mph - I've already lost half of my entry speed. The speed will drop a bit more before I grab the boom on the other side:

13 mph is the lowest speed in this jibe, according to the GoPro GPS. I was also wearing a Locosys GW-60 GPS watch, which reported a very similar minimum speed of 14 mph for this jibe.

I was doing sail-first jibe as a practice for foil jibes. The image above is just as I am switching my feet. I'm approaching the new beam reach and have power in the sail again, so I'm not loosing any more speed.

A few seconds later, hooked in again and getting into the front strap. My speed is already picking up again.

There are a few things that I could have done better in the jibe, but that's not what the post is about. I mostly wanted to share how useful the built-in GPS from the GoPro could be together with the video when working on improving jibes, and that Race Render is a pretty cool tool for this. There's a free version that has most of the functionality, as well as several paid versions that allow customizations and removing the Race Render logo that the free version puts in the movie. 

No More Rail Rides!

 I wanted to do rail rides ever since I learned windsurfing a few decades ago. Eventually, I learned to do them on longboards thanks to ABK Boardsports clinics. 

Foiling has replaced longboarding on lighter wind days now. But it seems my body still wants to do rail rides:

Unfortunately, my body forgot to tell my brain in advance, so it was completely unprepared and panicked:

I can highly recommend to not try this kind of crash. I hit the water in front of the foil, and the board and foil were still moving forward. Fortunately, I foil slowly, so the foil hitting my leg did not really hurt.

Apparently,  this only encouraged my body to try again (of course, also without advance notice to the brain, which would have vetoed the idea). This time, it was in the middle of a sail-first jibe try:

This clearly was over-ambitious: not only did my body try a leeside rail ride this time, which is harder than the regular rail ride - but it also went for the one-footed, one-handed version. As soon as my brain noticed what was going on, it ordered my body to bail, and the board continued on it's own:

At least this time, I fell away from the foil, so the crash was harmless. But seeing that my body apparently was up to no good, I decided to not try any more jibes that session. So the foil jibe remains elusive. But on the upside, I discovered a new way of messing the foil jibe up. Perhaps if I remember to not do rail rides on the foil, I can get a step closer to making one! It would also help to place the backfoot more to the rail, and to not let the mast escape to the outside of the turn. The mast on the outside probably caused the leeside rail to come up, and the foot placed too close to the center meant I had no leverage to push it back down. Maybe next time...

After the session, I watched Spencer and Coon foiling a bit. Both of them had foiled just a few times before, and while the both got some decent runs, at other times, their attempts looked more like attempts to tame a wild bronco. That looked awfully familiar, and made me feel a tad better (or perhaps the after-foil beach beverage was to blame for that part). 

Here's a short video from after the rail ride attempts: