Join the ABK Camp in Hatteras 10/26 to 10/28!

It is finally getting chilly in New England, so it's time to head towards warmer climates: Cape Hatteras in North Carolina! Up here, I have already seen dry suits come out, but in Hatteras, I expect at least a few days in board shorts and/or shorties.

Hatteras is definitely one of my favorite spots for ABK camps. The water is shallow for half a mile or so, but you can do runs that are several miles long if you need a little break from instruction. We usually have a room in one of the gorgeous houses right on the water, about 150 feet away from where the camp takes place. Video reviews in the evenings are done right in the house - warm, comfy, and usually with well-earned beers.

This year, we are renting the "Getaways" house from 10/20 to 10/30. It's actually not right on the water - it's set back perhaps 150 feet. Still, that's closer to the water than almost any parking lot on Cape Cod, and we can leave our gear rigged the entire time. This is in Waves - I actually like the sailing in Waves better than in Avon. A couple of our friends will join us in the house, but we still have two rooms available for ABK campers. The rooms are $120 for just the camp period (3 days/nights), extra nights $40; it gets cheaper for anyone who stays longer. If you are interested, send me an email or Facebook message, or ask Andy Brandt for my contact info if you don't have it.

In past Hatteras camps, we have had nice mixes of light wind, planing conditions, and usually one or two days of crazy winds in the 30s. I really like this mix - light wind exercises prepare for things like planing jibes and duck jibes; planing there is usually great since the chop stays small and I can usually stand when I fall; and the crazy conditions keep the ego from getting to big, and create lasting memories. On a crazy windy day last year, even working on tricks for overpowered days like Shove Its required some guts - but even the total beginners stayed out the whole day and learned a lot. So, come on down to Cape Hatteras to join us, and add a few days to warm up before the camp if you can!

Rocktober!

Today, October showed why it's called Rocktober in New England: we had SW winds with averages up to 35 mph, and gusts in the low 40s. This is the first time in months we saw this much wind: the summer seemed rather windless, with my 8.5 m sail being the most used sail; September got better, with 7 days on mostly 5.5 m; but today's call was for the 5.8 m speed sail and some Slicks sailing.

High tide around noon and WSW winds would have called for sailing the Kennedy Slicks, but there are still at least a dozen boats anchored in the harbor, so we went to Egg Island instead. It seems the sand bars have changed a bit since we sailed there last year - the second sand bar that's ideal for speed was fully submerged, even 3 hours after high tide. So we had to sail inside the little bay that is formed by the two sandbars, one of them submerged. The problem with that is that at the end of the speed run, you are sailing full speed towards the tip of the first sand bar that wraps around. Jibing there is possible, but the radius has about 50 meters or less, or you hit sand again...

Needless to say, the first few runs were scary. We missed the strongest winds in the morning, since we had to wait for our sauna to be delivered (which arrived with fork lift damage and had to be sent straight back to Canada). But gusts were initially still in the mid-30s, plenty for the first real speed session of the fall season. When I arrived at Egg Island, Dean had already been playing there for a while, and gave me some helpful pointers where to sail. By the time I had finally gotten comfortable with speed again, though, the water level had dropped enough to keep maybe 50 meters away from the sand bar, and therefore in a bit of chop.

Nina came a bit later on her  90 l freestyle board and a 3.7 m sail. The wind had gone down a bit, and she was underpowered and under-happy at first, until the wind picked up a bit again. She did some nice duck jibes ("boring", she says), but got blown off the board in donkey jibe attempts, and did not get enough pop in the small chop during her flaka and vulcan attempts. Still, she ended up having fun in the relatively smooth water.

With a total run length of only about 400 m, which included a rather gusty start area, it was more a day for 2-second top speeds than for 10-second averages. I saw 30 and 31 knots on the dial of my GPS many times, which made me quite happy - I'd seen 31 only once before, about a year ago at the same spot. I ended up being only 0.07 knots below my personal best for 2 seconds, despite shorter runs this time and a couple of mph less wind. Not bad.

Dean managed to get 36 knots on his dial (35.94 knots for 2 secs), beating my speed once again by almost 5 knots. Some of that is probably due to his earlier start that allow him to catch some gusts into the 40s. But I am not sure that I would have managed to go much faster in stronger winds - I'll need a few more days in the 30s to get used to overpowered speed sailing again. I cannot blame his gear for his faster speeds anymore, since I finally was out on a 90 l slalom board and a cambered speed sail today. But I may catch up a bit by using better fins in the near future (I was on a "regular" 28 cm weed fin today). I tried several of Dani's Vector speed and slalom fins recently, and they felt a lot faster. Actual speed differences where only about a knot or less, but that was in a lot less wind - I think the faster fins will really start to shine in stronger winds.

So Rocktober is living up to its name on the very first day of the month. We're back to a pattern where SW/WSW winds on a sunny day come in much stronger than forecast, which should remain with us for the next couple of months. Oh, did I mention that we had plenty of sun today, and water and air temperatures in the upper 60s (near 20 C)? Fall rules!

ABK Clinic Cape Cod, Day 1

The ABK Clinic in Hyannis started yesterday, and we had a fantastic day. The camp was sold out more than a week in advance; at least 5 windsurfers had to be turned away. We have 20 students and 4 teachers (Andy, Brendon, Tom and Ed); several of the student had never windsurfer before, and decided to start with an ABK camp. Definitely the right decision - in the video review at the end of the day, they all looked fantastic sailing.

The weather was wonderful, with sun all day and temperatures in the 70s. The wind was light in the morning; only two guys on huge sails planed some of the time, everyone else was on small sails. I sailed my new WindSUP 10 for the first time, and it is an excellent board for light wind sailing and freestyle. When the wind picked up to 15 mph in the afternoon, it planed up quite easily with a 6.5 m sail. Andy took it for a brief spin and seemed positively surprised that he could catch the little wind waves easily. I had some fun with it, but then switched to my Skate 110 so I'd practice tricks instead of just mowing the lawn. The Skate 110 does plane early, but not nearly as early as the WindSUP - I had to work harder to get it going, and sometimes had to wait out the lulls.

I did not work on anything new yesterday, but rather tried to reproduce stuff I had done before. The duck jibe came easy, but the 360 took 20 tries or so. I fooled around with the jump jibe, and early slow tries were fine. When I decided to do it with speed, I had a few more problems that got worse when Andy gave me pointers - but I know know what to do, and I just love the move.

Video review was funny, as usual, and I re-learned a few basic things. Then, Martin, Graham, and Jonathan followed me to our new house, where we ordered pizza and warmed up in the jacuzzi - nice. Dani stopped by for a visit later. It was really nice to have a bunch of windsurfing friends over to talk about windsurfing and drink beer the whole evening :-)

Quick update

Just a quick update - there are some readers who complain if I don't write for too long...

Things are still quite busy here - lots of boxes to unpack, gadgets to hook up, cable company phone calls to do, and so on. I still have not found the time to prepare the jacuzzi for use! Well, the wind is partially at fault - I did get three sessions since the last blog entry 6 days ago. Nina was with me for the first session - Kalmus in light rain, but fantastic winds (4.5 & 5.5 m sails). But two days ago, she had to fly to Germany on a family issue, so I had to sail alone on Saturday and today. Saturday was nice, sunny, full power on 5.5 (which still feels small after sailing 8.5 all summer long), with a Sea Street Beach start. 90 minutes of fun; lots of other Fogland Speedsurfers where out, too, and set several new personal bests.

Today's wind forecast looked questionable, with just 20-21 mph N-NW predicted. NW can often be funky here, coming in lower than expected - but not today. I had to do a bit of work and run some errands in the morning, but then drove 35 minutes to Skaket, where Ron had promised to show up. When I arrived, the wind had dropped to 14, gusting to 19, so I rigged my 6.5 and took my Skate 110 with a big fin. Well, the wind picked up again before I made it out onto the water, and I was planing from the first moment on. Ron soon joined me, both of us sailing in long wetsuits, since the north wind felt chilly after all those hot summer days. Lots of fun - Skaket is just a great B&J place. In today's wind direction, long runs parallel to shore were possible. I kept mine at 2 km or less, but 5 km runs would have been no problem. A great spot for distance surfing!

I somehow had not rigged properly, and my sail felt too big as the wind picked up into the low 20s, gusting to 30. I switched down to a smaller board (Hawk 95) which helped a bit, but the chop also got higher and more chaotic, so I called it a day after less than 2 hours. Back home and some more work...

No wind in the forecast for the next couple of days, which I like, since there is soo much to do. Thursday may be ok if the wind comes in above forecast, as it has done a lot recently. There is some hope for the ABK clinic weekend along the same lines, but it's still a few days out, so things can still change. However, it looks like we'll have three days of sun and decent temperatures :-)