One of the things I love about windsurfing it that you get to meet many really nice people. I've blogged about a few of them before - the great ABK folks; "our" speed and ice surfing teacher Dean; Cesar, the driving force behind speed surfing in Fogland; and windsurf shop owners like Jim and Andy, to name just a few.
Another one of these really nice guys, Jeff, somehow talked me and Nina into joining him to go to the East Coast Windsurfing Festival this weekend. He offered to drive there very early Saturday morning, a deal that was just to good to refuse. It certainly helped that the king himself, Mike Burns, had promised great wind for the weekend, and that Josh Angulo and many windsurfing friends will be there. Once there, I'll have to participate, which will be in racing. Hopefully, the conditions will be right to use my slalom board, which should be tons of fun. I had been toying with the idea to participate in the Maui Race Series when we are down there in July, so this should be good practice.
The open division will be probably be dominated by formula boards and huge sails, so I'll be in the division where the sail size is limited to 7.5 m. That was a bit of a problem - my largest sail under the limit is a 7.0, and that's a non-cambered, top-oriented sail. But what are friends for? Dani had jokingly offered to give me gear to race in Maui, so I asked him if he had a cambered 7.5 sail that I could borrow. If I tell you that Dani is a really nice guy, what do you think his answer was?
Well, first he offered me a choice between two cambered 7.5 sails he has. Then, he picked up the sail from his friend, and delivered it to my house. He also brought a 100% carbon mast for the sail, even though I tried to assure him that one of my 55% masts should work just fine, and that I would not have the money to replace his mast if I broke it. What a guy - somebody pinch me so I know I'm not dreaming!
Such random acts of kindness brighten my life for many days. I don't even think windsurfers like Dani are an exception - we meet extremely nice people on every one of our windsurfing trips. I think it's infectious - neither my lovely wife nor I are very social, but sometimes at the beach, you may not notice that. We also try to support ABK in various ways, and one of our boards has been out on a loan for half a year now. So yes, it seems that windsurfing does make people nicer.
Of course, sometimes you might meet a windsurfer at the beach who is not friendly, or worse. But in the few cases that I can think of, these guys were usually overworked, and barely ever could find the time to go windsurfing; if they could get a free day on weekends, the wind would often not show. So rather than contradicting my theory, it only confirms it - these guys just don't windsurf enough!
After buying a speed board and a slalom board in the last year, I wanted to buy some proper fins, too. The speed board came with three speed fins, but they are all about the same size; the slalom board came with one fin that works well with the 8.5 m sail, but needs a smaller fin for smaller sails. Here's a short story of my adventures trying to get fins...
I started by checking out the two local stores, but they more or less just had weed fins. Trips to stores in the Gorge were similar disappointing. So I posted on a couple of windsurf forums (iWindsurf and gps-speedsurfing.com), and got a few pointers. With some more research and web site checks, I found a couple of places in the US and Canada to order fins from.
The first place was very helpful initially, but I received only half of my order (a sail) - the fin I ordered never came. After a few emails, I got my money back without problems, but I still did not have a fin. I eventually found a couple of close-out fins that looked attractive, and bought them online. Delivery was no problem, and I love one of the two fins (a 28 cm Select) I got. I only tested the other fin (MFC Slalom 32) once and did not like it much then, but I'll have to give it another shot.
After sailing my new (used) 118 l slalom board with a 7.0 sail recently, it was obvious that the 44 cm pointer fin I have is a bit big for this sail, so I looked for something fast around 36 cm. I discovered Makani fins, and remembered hearing great things about their freestyle fins. There also was a blog entry about their slalom fin that sounded quite promising - and the fins cost much less than other speed fins, so I decided to give it a try. I ordered the fins online from the same place where I had found the last two fins. A couple of days later, I got an email with a tracking number, and another email with an invoice.
When I checked the invoice, I was shocked: it listed my complete credit card information - billing address, card number, expiration date, and even the security code that merchants are not allowed to store at all. All send as a PDF file via regular email - something that goes through several public mail servers and is by definition totally insecure.
WTF were they thinking? I think this is a serious issue. If they are stupid enough to send full credit card info by regular mail, how safely do you think their computer system is? The only reason I'm not mentioning the store's name is that I do not want to point hackers towards their computers...
So, in my two attempts to get slalom/speed fins, I was successful only once (assuming that the fin I ordered arrives in a few days), but at a pretty high cost to the security of my credit card. With both merchants, there were a couple of other minor things that went wrong when trying to order from them that I don't want to bore you with. Normally, I can understand if someone with a passion for windsurfing is a bit spacey when it comes to business - but there are limits. Next time, I'll bug our local merchants a bit more to see if they can order fins; or perhaps get them from a store where I know the owners personally, like Wind-NC. But if anyone has recommendations where to buy speed fins in the US, please let me know!
Recently, I talked to a windsurfer who had just bought a Tabou Rocket 145, and mentioned the test summary of the board in the June issue of the Windsurfing Magazine. The board got excellent scores in most categories, except in "ease of use":
What's going on? The Rockets are generally easy to sail, even more so in the big versions. Most of the other "Light Air Shortboards" also have poor scores in the "ease of use" category.
Well, my lovely wife and I were at the board test in Hatteras, and sailed many of the large boards - and most of them deserve very high marks in for "ease of use". A look at the test sheets that we filled out points to an explanation:
Well, there was no "ease of use" category. There was a "Freestyle" category that did not apply to any of the boards in the test, but in the orientation meeting, we were told to instead use it to rate the boards for "fun". It appears that the "waves" scores were interpreted as "ease of use", but the testers were not aware of this! (Well, at least neither my wife nor I were, and we paid close attention at the orientation meeting). This would explain why the Angulo Kihei 155 got a a high score in the "ease of use" category - this board sailed like a much smaller board, and made it really easy to play with the chop and wind waves.
Unfortunately, this "ease of use" = "waves" score mixup does not appear to the the only problem with the writeup. Looking at the "spider web" graphs, it would seem that the F2 Xantos 140 was the worst board in the test; both the Exocet Twixx 145 and the Naish Nitrix have higher scores in all categories. This absolutely cannot be correct. One of the two higher-scoring board was universally disliked; at the discussion session at the end of the board test, lots of windsurfers offered negative feedback on the board, and we were told the same thing had happened during the first week. The other of these two "high scoring" boards had split opinions among the testers: some liked it, others disliked it a lot. In contrast, the lower-scoring F2 Xantos was loved by many sailors (myself included), and just mildly disliked by a few others.
One good way at looking what board was really well liked is to check how often a board was picked as a favorite. Here's a list of how often the different large board were picked as favorites by the testers:
The following boards were not picked as a favorite board by any testers:
Exocet Twist 145, Naish Nitrix 155, RRD Fire Ride 155.
A note about the list above: the Fanatic Ray was available only during the second test week, so none of the first-week only testers had a chance to try it. I wonder how many "favorite" votes it would have gotten if it had been there both weeks...
If you compare the list above with the charts on pages 60-61 in the June 2011 issue of the Windsurfing Magazine, it seems that someone has mixed up a few charts. Yes, some boards were a bit more controversial than others, but there's just no way that a board that was most often picked as a favorite has much lower scores everywhere than a board that was picked by nobody!
A total of 37 testers worked (and played :) hard for 2 weeks to evaluate the boards, so it's kind of sad to see the work diminished by what looks like an editorial mistake. A lot of times, the graphical summaries are the first thing windsurfers look at when deciding about a new board to buy, and the apparent mix-up may prevent many readers from trying or buying boards they would love. Fortunately, the write-ups ("Best board for...") are spot-on.
We just had three great days of wind sailing, with wind in the upper mid-to upper twenties two of the three days and plenty of sun. It started Wednesday afternoon with SW winds. We went to Fogland for some flat water fun - duck jibe tries with a 5.0 for Nina, and speed runs with a 7.0 on my Warp SL 71 for me. Here's a short video of one of the earlier speed runs:
I had a bit of a hard time to find a nice combination of flat water and wind. With 25-30 mph winds, the chop in the middle of the bay gets big enough to slow me down. I tried going up towards the street, but never caught good wind there. I had better luck at the tip of the peninsula, where the water was nice and flat and the wind was offshore; but as you can see in the video, the wind dropped quite a bit there because the peninsula created a bit of a wind shadow. Another minor issue I had was that the only speed fin I currently have for the Warp is 44 cm long - great for an 8.5 m sail, but about 20% too long for the 7.0. I tried putting in a weed fin that I have for my speed board, but at 28 cm, it was a bit small. When sailing the weed fin, I was glad that I sometime ride freestyle boards with small fins, because I did need the "sail forward, dig the windward rail" technique to get back upwind on this fin. So after a few runs, when the wind had gone down just a bit, it was back to the 44 cm race fin.
I think the combination of the wind shadow and the long fin kept me from finally breaking 30 knots - although I did get very close, and set new personal bests for 5 x 10 second average speed and 500 m alpha. This was the first time I sailed the Warp fully powered in more than 20 mph winds, and I think I learned a few things. Perhaps the most important one is that even the Warp, which has a relatively conventional and narrow shape for a slalom board, really wants to be ridden "pedal to the metal". At full speed, it's on top of the water and pretty much ignores the chop; but whenever I tried to slow down a bit, things got harder to handle. But after a couple of hours, I got used to this, and ventured out onto the river, where the chop is quite a bit higher - no problem. The only thing that I did wrong was to switch from a downwind course onto a beam reach course about halfway through the mile-long run. Looking at the GPS tracks later at home, I discovered that I should have been able to obliterate my personal bests for the nautical mile if I had stayed off the wind. As it was, I still got my second-best ever average for the nautical mile (and the water was a lot flatter when I set my PB behind the sand bar in Duxbury).
As usual, Nina worked harder than I did, practicing duck jibes, shove-its, and 360s all day long. She got really close to completing a duck jibe, but not without exploring the many ways to crash in duck jibes. One spectacular fall had her face plant at full speed into the water so that her entire face hurt for the rest of the day...
Even though the conditions were great, we saw very few other windsurfers. One of them, however, Jeff, praised the wave sailing conditions at Horseneck beach, so when the wind turned to westerly the next day, we decided to do some beginner wave sailing. Here's a short video:
The quality of the video is not great - the angle to the sun was bad, and there were too many drops of water on the lens. I had treated the lens with Rainex, but the Clew View mount (which I otherwise love) places the GoPro exactly where the drops come off the boom, as you can see in the video. Mounting the camera upside-down, as I had done in the first video above, fixes this problem, but I don't like the view angle as much. I think that a mount which places the camera either a bit higher, or directly below the boom (instead of below and behind), might have fewer problems with water dripping onto the lens.
As Jeff had promised, getting out through the break was not bad (although it got more challenging for us wave-sail beginners as the tide came in). The wind was very much up and down; down when we rigged, which prompted us to go "big" (5.5 and 4.2), and then up after the first few runs, which had me way overpowered. And while the breaking waves near shore where small enough, the non-breaking waves on the outside where quite often taller than Nina. They also were not very nicely organized, probably because of the wind directions and the cross currents caused by the little island. In comparison, the waves and swell in Cabarete on a typical 5.0 summer day are much better organized and easier to sail. So this was definitely more an "interesting" than a "fun" session, and we stopped after spending less than an hour on the water (with plenty of breaks in between), when Jeff and the other local sailors also got off the water. Since it was still somewhat early, we decided to drive over to Fogland, which is only a 20 minute drive away.
In Fogland, we were greated by NW winds in the upper 20s, and smaller, much more organized looking waves. I sailed my 82 l board for the first time in a while, which was quite a change after mostly being on larger freeride and slalom boards recently. I definitely had a lot more fun than at Horseneck, and I was pleasantly surprised when the GPS registered a top speed of 28 knots, even though the chop was big enough to keep me from making any deep downwind runs. Maybe I am finally learning how to sail a bit faster...
We got home too late to put away the trailer and the gear, so when the wind and forecast looked good again the next morning, we decided to go sailing in Fogland once again. When we arrived, a couple of windsurfers where just leaving, and they mentioned that the wind had been very much up and down. Indeed, the iWindsurf reading ranged from 8 to 30 mph, so rigging "right" was just impossible. We switched back & forth between boards a bit (Warp SL 71 and Skate 110 for me, 76 l wave board and Skate 100 for Nina), and had plenty of opportunity to practice schlogging. But in between, the wind was great, and Nina finally made her first fully planing jibe. For once, she was sailing with the GoPro camera, but the camera stopped recording exactly 2 minutes before she made her best jibe so far! However, her GPS was on, and it showed a minimum speed in her jibe of 8.9 knots, which is definitely fully planing (jibes with minimum speed above 5-6 knots can look liked plane-through jibes from afar if you accelerate again right away, but jibes above ~8 knots are definitely planed through). Considering that she learned how to initiate jibes when planing less than 1 1/2 years ago, this is pretty cool - I know many, many windsurfers who worked on planing jibes for many years before every planing through (I am one of them). But then, she learned it the right way at the ABK camp in Bonaire, so maybe her success is not surprising.
Ok, I am biased, but still I think she did quite well. Before yesterday's jibe, here minimum jibe speeds have been going up steadily, and Andy Brandt called one of here jibes in Corpus Christi last month "planed through" (here minimum speed on that jibe was 5.8 knots). I think that planing through a jibe may be technically about as difficult as a learning the Vulcan. For the Vulcan, 500-1000 tries before landing the first one are not uncommon, although some windsurfers may get it in 250 or 300 tries. Nina had more than 100 high wind sessions since last March; many of those included 3-5 hours on the water, and relatively short runs (e.g. 1/4 mile in Fogland). Nina's 3-hour session yesterday had more than 30 jibes, according to the GPS records - so she probably did more than 2000 planing jibes before planing though one yesterday. Now, when we are driving home, she usually is doing Vulcans in her head - it will be very interesting to see how many tries she'll need before the lands the first one. My bet is that she'll land the first one before I do - I better keep working on the loop so I can have a trick she can't do. So what if the loop is easier - it looks at least as cool...
I've been windsurfing for more than 30 years, although this includes several multi-year periods where I did not windsurf at all. I got really hooked again a few years ago, after getting married to my lovely windsurfing wife, and starting to take ABK clinics. ABK also introduced us to windfoiling, which then led to winging. We mainly wing and windsurf on Cape Cod, with regular trips to places all over the world.
