Steady Wind Defined

We windsurfers dream of steady wind. Today, steady wind came to Duxbury:

Averages of 20. Lulls of 18 ("lulls", ha!). "Gusts" of 22. For 3 hours straight. Then, variation crept in, with gusts of 24 and lulls of 14. I'd be happy about that every day.

I missed it. It was not in the forecast. I was tired after three days of windsurfing. I had to work. I did not believe the wind would stick around. I never sailed Duxbury in a SE. I have many, many excuses. But I really wish I'd been there.

Three New Tricks

Being part of a windsurfing couple has many advantages. One is that you can claim more new tricks! We sailed Duxbury yesterday, north of Powder Point Bridge. Here's a view from Dani's drone:

Nothing exciting wind-wise - mostly below 20. Still fun with 7.6-8.5 for me, 6.6 for Dani, and 5.3 for Nina. After missing a cold and rainy day with 30 mph winds earlier this week, Dean also showed up and rigged a 7.6, was was mostly underpowered on his tiny itsy-bitsy fins. Sabah showed up later after work, when the wind was going down already.

I took the presence of several other Fogland Speedsurfers as a valid excuse to revert to my old lawn-moving ways. Plenty of fun on the flat water, with top speeds near 26 knots in 18 knot wind, gusting to 20. Sailed about 120 km before the wind died.

Nina used the perfectly flat water behind the grass islands for freestyle. She completed two new tricks - her first Reverse Duck Jibe (also called Early-Throw Switch Duck Jibe), and her first Carve 360. Nice! The Reverse Duck Jibe was a result of working on the Duck Tack for many days. This time, when the sail came up too much towards the nose of the board, she decided to make it a jibe. The girl rocks.

Today was longboard racing practice in Duxbury in 8-14 mph wind. Dani proved unbeatable today. He used a 7.3 m freerace sail instead of his 7.5 m KA race/speed sail, which was a much better match to his Phantom 320. He also found a mast track position that worked much better for him, and started railing the board more. With all those adjustments, he finished every race in first place, usually with a large margin. Nice!

One of the things I worked on in all racing was railing the board on the upwind legs. So when we stopped racing because the water levels dropped, I just had to grab the Kona Mahalo and try some rail rides. That move already existed when I learned windsurfing more than 3 decades ago. I always wanted to do it, and even tried on various occasions without success. But today, having plenty of power in the 7.5 helped, and I actually got both feet on the rail for the first time! It was not nearly as tippy as I had imagined, and I actually sailed on the rail for a few seconds. The board, however, found this boring, rounded up, and belly-flopped, throwing me into the water. Who cares? I came up with a big smile - I know believe that I will get rail rides (with a dry exit) soon!

After two days with lots of windsurfing, I could use a break. If you believe the iWindsurf forecaster, I'll get one tomorrow. But computer models predict SW wind up to 14 mph, and it will be sunny and warm. Chances are good that we'll get a sea breeze around 20. Sunny, warm, windy - what are the chances that we'll stay home?

Happy to be fooled

The wind fooled me today. But I'm happy. See, usually the wind drops as soon as I start sailing (or perhaps 30 minutes later, or after sailing upwind a mile to the slicks, or...). But today, it increased steadily. Here's what it did:

We left home when wind averages were around 20 mph. The forecast predicted a slight increase to 23. We arrived at the beach when readings were 21. So we rigged for freestyle - Nina her 5.3, I my magical 6.5. But when we hit the water, averages had already gone up to 24, and kept increasing. Nina quickly decided to rig down to a 4.7 North Ice, but I was stubborn. Or maybe just lazy. Or I had too much fine sailing in the light rain and chilly (48ºF, 9ºC) air.

Nina soon was happily working on Duck Tacks on her 4.7. I worked on adding outhaul and moving the boom down. Then I switched the 110 l freestyle board against a 90 l slalom board. Much better! Except that I still was using my freestyle / "entry level" sail. That's a wonderful sail in 17 mph. We had gusts twice that high. Should I be surprised the sail backwinded a bit in the gusts? You tell me.

I said "overpowered is much better than underpowered", and stuck to the flat water near the windward sand bar. Flat like in 3 inch chop - chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter. I love this sound! The wind angle allowed for runs at a 110 degree angle to the wind. Going deeper meant quickly increasing chop, so I went for long runs instead. I ended up with my 3rd-fastest nautical mile ever - not bad for a freestyle sail! even better, my average for the mile was less than 2 knots below my top speed for the day. Nice! Maybe I should have rigged a speed sail, but I was having too much fun.

For all my GPS-addicted speed friends, here are my GPS tracks for the day:

Racing Cats and Phantoms

We just had two great days of windsurfing, on days where the wind averages never exceeded 16 mph. On Saturday, we went to Chapin for some SUP sailing in knee- to hip-high little waves. Tons of fun for both of us - Nina caught "SOO many waves". She played around with upwind wave 360s, which mostly ended up as heli tacks, but still made her smile big time. While we sailed, water levels dropped more than expected, but it was definitely worth carrying the gear half a mile back to the car.

Yesterday was just as much fun in similar wind, but on flat water with different gear:

That's Nina in the foreground on her (formally my) Fanatic Ultra Cat. She's on a full plane, with the first 9 of the 12 feet of the board out of the water, despite being "not fully powered" on a 6.5 freeride sail. The picture is from Dani's quadcopter movie (check it our on the Fogland Windsurfers Facebook page).

We practiced some longboard racing for the upcoming East Coast Windsurfing Festival in Long Island. Nina used the Fanatic Ultra Cat, I used my Kona Mahalo, Sabah a Mistral Equipe, and Dani his new Starboard Phantom 320. In the first few races, the Kona was able to keep up with the other boards, but I think that was mostly because the wind level was just right, and everyone else was not yet dialed in. In later races, when the wind had picked up, Nina left everyone far behind, with Dani coming in second.

I got a chance to try all four boards. The Equipe badly needed Redeck, and was too slippery to rail. It had all 9 or 10 footstraps mounted, which left almost no space for my big feet. It picked up speed nicely when gusts hit, but had the narrowest tail of all 4 boards, which made downwind sailing a bit harder.

The Fanatic Cat was my favorite of the four boards. With fresh Monster Paint Traction, just 3 straps, a huge carbon dagger board, and it's slightly wider tail, it was pure fun to sail. Being almost 50% heavier than Nina, I did not get it to plane fully, but it's just amazing how the board converts every little bit of wind into speed; how easily it rails up on upwind courses (which is FUN); and how nicely it glides through the water in light breezes.

The Starboard Phantom 320 surprised me. I tried it during the windiest half hour of the day, and had now problems to get it planing. One on a plane, if felt as quiet and stable as a true longboard, but faster. My top speed from just a few runs was close to 20 knots, in wind that never gusted above 16 knots. Dani, who took out his Carbon Art Slalom gear and KA speed sails for a while, got up to 22 knots, not a whole lot faster. We both were on 7.5 m sails, but I outweigh him by 50%, so the Phantom's top speed is rather decent. I have no doubts that the board could have gone a lot faster in more wind.

The Phantom 320 has very thick, boxy rails, similar to the F2 Lightning from the early 1990s. The adjustable mast track was very easy to use, and the huge daggerboard was the easiest to adjust of all 4 boards. With the dagger board down, the Phantom railed up very nicely, seeming faster than I would have though possible for such a short longboard. But when I tried to tack the Phantom with the mast track forward, but the daggerboard up, I was in for a surprise: it was impossible to turn the board through the wind. Even backwinded with the sail raked all the way back onto the board, the board tracked perfectly straight, rather than going into the wind. This is not really an issue, though - with the mast track back or the dagger board down, tacking is no problem at all. Even with the track all the way forward, the board had plenty of volume in the nose to make tacking easy for my 200 pounds. While being reasonably easy to sail, realizing the Phantom's full speed is not trivial - I think the board is a bit more technical to sail than the others. For example, Nina had a hard time to get the Phantom to plane, even when she had no problems to plane on the Cat. But for a light sailor who has the Phantom fully dialed in, the board should be rather competitive to old school longboards.

The Mahalo was the easiest of the four boards to sail. It can be sailed as a tandem, and all the extra volume makes tacking, jibing, and sailing downwind very easy. Like the Phantom, it has a fat nose, so the glide at low speed does not feel as nice as on the Cat or the Equipe. With more rounded rails and a smaller daggerboard than the Cat and the Phantom, the Mahalo's upwind angle is a bit more limited, though. It also does not pick up speed quite as well when the wind picks up to 15 mph or more, and requires more power to get planing. Here, it is probably limited by both its weight (roughly the same as the weight of the Cat and the Phantom combined) and the lack of an adjustable mast track. On the plus side, the soft top provided plenty of grip, making it easy to rail the board at exactly the desired angle. Considering that the Mahalo was not designed as a race board, I think it did extremely well.

Two days of windsurfing - different water conditions, different gear, but lots of fun both times. Add another day of light wind fun from earlier last week, when we practiced light wind freestyle in East Bay - and hopefully some short board planing later today, and we are talking about a lot of different ways to have fun windsurfing!

Fogland from above