Mechanical mast base for speed?

One thing leads to another, and sometimes, the outcome is quite unexpected. The story starts with this years East Coast Windsurfing Festival. With light winds on both days, I used my Kona Mahalo for both racing and freestyle. The Mahalo is long and big enough to work as a tandem, but it served me well enough to get a trophy for both events. Still, I got the impression that the more old-style longboards were a bit faster on the small chop we had. So two days later, I picked up a Fanatic Ultra Cat, driving 6 hours to get the board. Since the Cat has a different mast track, I had to cannibalize one of my mast feet, so I needed a new one to replace it.

Two days ago, we stopped by Sailworld Cape Cod, on our way to a SUP demo they had with Starboard on Monument Beach. I looked for a mast base, but the only single-screw base they had was mechanical. I read somewhere that mechanical bases have dead spots, so I did not want to buy it, but Jim Ballantyne quickly pointed out two advantages that the mechanical mast bases have:

1. They make it easy to attach the rig without having to put the board on its side (and allow you to leave the board lying on it's back with the rig attached, without pushing the rig upwards).
2. Unlike tendons and rubber joints, they have no give, which makes them great for speed: every gust is directly transferred into the board, similar to the way body tension will.

So I was sold, and the very next day, we finally got enough wind to get planing without having to use the biggest sails. Nina sailed a 5.3 the whole afternoon, and I took out my Pilot 6.5 (there still is a gap in my quiver where my beloved Matrix 7.0 used to be). It was rather gusty and up and down in Fogland, but we were planing most of the time. After about 2 months without decent wind, I stuck to speed, even though the Pilot is definitely not a speed sail - it's more of an entry-level / freestyle sail, light, powerful, and easy to rig.

I was pretty happy with the speeds around 25 knots that I got right away - it has been a while that I was this fast. Around 5 pm, though, the wind picked up, and we had gusts of 32 mph. I tightened the downhaul and outhaul a bit, and went out again. Despite being close to high tide, the water in the bay was nice and flat, making it easy to hold down the sail that would have been a bit big in chop. In one gust, I had the feeling that I was almost blown off the water - I think that is when I hit my top speed of  the day, 29.2 knots (54 km/h). I was quite amazed when I saw this top speed. It's not much to serious speedsurfers, but pretty fast for my standards. I have only 10 sessions where I have sailed faster, and that usually was under much better conditions and on more speed-oriented gear. That the 6.5 Pilot handled this much wind, and delivered this speed, still amazes me. The GPS tracks show that I hit the top speed at almost 90 degrees to the wind, not at a deep downwind run. The downwind speed runs I made were not nearly as fast, since I did not catch a good gust once while going downwind. 

Looking at the results, I have to conclude that the mechanical mast base is a great thing for speedsurfing. I have not done any side-by-side tests where I switched back and forth between mast bases, but such a test would require steadier winds, anyway. On the other hand, they can't be too steady, since one of the advantages of the mechanical base is the direct translation of gusts into speed. But doing this test is high on my to-do list.

A second part of my equipment yesterday that also performed really well yesterday was the fin - a 39 cm Tangent Dynamics Reaper weed fin. I always loved the smaller (26-32 cm) Reaper fins for my other boards, but for the slalom boards, I tried several other weed fins first, including a ~ 43 cm Curtis Race fin, a Select weed fin, and a MUF delta. On all these fins, I had problems going upwind or spinouts, and sometimes both. In contrast, the 39 cm Reaper has performed beautifully on my 71 cm wide Warp 117. I had no problems going upwind even when barely powered on an 8.5, and no problems whatsoever when powered on the 6.5. Spinouts where very rare, even in chop, almost requiring concentrated efforts to produce. Spinout recovery was surprisingly easy for a relatively large fin. One or two smaller sizes for windier days are definitely on my wish list.

I have to thank Jim from Sailworld Cape Cod for both the mechanical mast base and the TD Reaper fin (Tangent Dynamics is his own brand). I hope he can join us to sail in Fogland sometime soon on a windy day!

Maybe it's my fault

Windsurfers up here in the northeast US are getting pretty frustrated - it has been a long time since we have had really good winds. There have been a few weekends where some lighter guys like Dani were able to plane on big slalom gear, but it seems it has been ages since we had a day with wind in the 20s.

Superstitious as any old windsurfer, I am starting to suspect that it may be my fault. The lack of wind has not bothered me, since I did not really have much opportunity to make it to the water in the last two months. The few times we sailed, like at the ECWF, I was perfectly happy with light winds. My theory is that the wind gods are rewarding and helping me - rewarding for sailing in light wind, and helping by keeping the better winds much further down south (OBX and Texas seemed to have a lot of good days) so that I was able to concentrate on moving closer to the water.

We have spent most of our weekend time in the past few months with getting our house ready for sale and related tasks. The work has paid off - we got a nice offer for the house within 5 days after putting it on the market, and it looks like the sale will actually happen. We have looked at houses near Hyannis on Cape Cod a bit, and will be driving down again in the next couple of days. The windsurf gear will stay at home again!

From what we have seen on our first visit and on the web, we'll be able to find a nice house within a 10 minute drive from Kalmus. Getting much closer makes little sense - the houses right at the ocean cost at least 10-fold more, and anything a bit further back would require a drive, anyway. And while we will probably sail a lot at Kalmus, Lewis Bay, and the Kennedy Slicks, we will also be driving to other places in northerly winds. Being closer to Kalmus would only make these drives longer.

Our hope is to find a place that we really like by the end of this week. Banks need a bit longer these days to approve the mortgage, but if everything goes ok, we should be able to move to Cape Cod in September. The last couple of years, we had plenty of wind from September through December, and this year should be at least as good - all the wind that's not showing up now has to blow sometime! Fall is the best time, anyway: the water is still warm until the beginning of December, the beaches are empty, and the boats are off the water, so that Hyannis Port Harbor transforms back into the Kennedy Slicks. Who knows, maybe we'll even find a house with a jacuzzi to warm up after winter windsurf sessions - or perhaps we'll install a sauna. One thing that's certain, though, is that the house will have a guest room for visiting family and windsurfer friends. Hope to see you all on the Cape soon!

ECWF 2012 freestyle movies

We had a blast at the East Coast Windsurfing Festival in Long Island last weekend. I'll post a longer report later, but I wanted to share a few movies from lightwind freestyle heats. I was quite impressed by the level of moves I saw - all the competitors were edging each other on and up to new levels. I know that several competitors completed tricks in the competition that they had never (or almost never) completed before. Jake won the "Best Move" award for a triple combo that included a Guillotine, a Matrix, and a Sleepy Hollow. I did not see the move because I was in the same heat, but I saw enough of his tricks to know that he beat me fare and square. So here are movies from three heats:

Light winds & longboards

I just read Mike Burns' blog about preparing for the East Coast Windsurfing Festival. Mike is organizing this great event which will take place a week from now in Long Island, NY. As he points out, the last month has not brought a lot of wind to the area - quite untypical, since May can be a great month, with thermals enhancing underlying SW flows.

Well, I have to admit that I actually do not wish for a lot of wind for the ECWF. Ok, if we get strong winds, I'll take it and be happy; but if it's light, I'll be just as happy. This year, I am planning to bring our Kona Mahalo to the event if there is any chance for non-planing conditions. I love sailing the Mahalo in light winds: it brings back the gliding sensation of old long boards like the original Windsurfer, the Windglider, HiFly boards, and so on. I'm curious to see how it will do against the racier longboards like MegaCats and Equipes at light wind races. Last year, when I had to sail my 117 l slalom board in light winds, my best hope was not to finish last - and even that required a lot of effort!

Besides the long outlines and high rails, a 56 cm fin, and a long daggerboard for racing, the Mahalo also offers plenty of stability for light wind freestyle. As my karate teachers have pointed out more than once, I am a bit challenged in the balance department, and tricks like duck tacks or back-to-back sailing in light wind are a tad too much for me on my 110 l freestyle board. But on the 280 l Mahalo, we can play. And play we did last weekend, when we had nice weather but little wind. Nina took my Skate 110, which seemed huge to her after she had just transfered most of her tricks to her new 90 l Skate. I fooled around on my Kona Mahalo. On my Skate, board steering can be done by simply shifting weight from one foot to the other; but on the Kona, I have to take several steps to accomplish similar, albeit less dramatic, things. So I admit that it is not the best board for tight upwind 360s - but for learning the sail handling in duck tacks, it's perfect. After a couple of hours of practice, my duck tack success rate went up to 80% or higher, which made me quite happy.

Back-to-back sailing it about as old school as it comes; I remember trying it on the original windsurfer more than 30 years ago. Andy Brandt is the master of back-to-back, and I was lucky enough to hear his lecture at the recent ABK camp in Long Island. With the huge Mahalo and the perfectly flat water of Fogland, it only took a few tries to get the trick - cool! I still have plenty of work to do on the exit, which ends up being wet more often then not. But I have to leave some things for future ABK camps :-)

On both days in Fogland, our friend Dani was also sailing. He actually managed to get planing a few times in puffs, but most of the time, even his 8.5 m sail and slalom board did not get him going. So on the second day, we showed him a few basic light wind skills & tricks - sail 180s and 360s, clew first sailing, and backwinding. He picked up everything very quickly, and even added a few things just from watching Nina, like fin-first sailing. Dani is a hard-core speed junkie, but he definitely enjoyed doing something else in light winds:

Dani's "partner in speed" Sabah was also there and played along, initially even with a cambered 8.5 m race sail. Just like Dani, he progressed quickly and enjoyed himself a lot. Here are a few more pictures:

So if we should have light winds at the  East Coast Windsurfing Festival, we'll have plenty of fun with light wind freestyle and longboard racing. If the wind is strong, I'll race my slalom board, but I'll probably sit out the freestyle competition and instead watch Mike Burns, Chachi, Chris, Jake, and others through Vulcans, Spocks, and plenty of tricks I can't even identify. Either way, it will be great!