First flight

Yesterday's forecast was for "mostly cloudy" weather with 17 mph winds. Forecasts this low often mean slim chances of planing, but when we heard that our friend Dani was on his way to West Dennis, we decided to join him. The day turned out much better than expected:

With ESE wind measured around 20 mph, and probably a couple of miles more once you got a bit away from the shore, it was a perfect day to take the Hawk out for the first time. We got to the beach around 1 pm, just as the wind picked up:

High tide was at 1:15 pm, so we had a little bit of chop to play in. This was also the first time I tried to rig my Gaastra Pilot 6.5 on a 100% skinny mast, but the sail is spec'd for a 30% SDM mast, so that did not quite work as planned. I downhauled so that the batten over the boom extended to the middle of the mast, which let me use the specified boom length - but the sail looked wrong, with too little leech twist. I took it out on the water for a few runs, but everything felt just wrong. It's easy to see on the GPS tracks that something was wrong:

The first set of runs were much slower than later runs. So I went back in and downhauled about 2 more inches. That pulled all battens clear away from the mast; required an additional 4 cm of outhaul (for about 1-2 cm of positive outhaul); and made the leech look quite a bit looser than I'm used to from my Matrix sails. But on the water, the sail now worked like a charm - I could basically just forget about it and concentrate on the new board.

Since I had sailed the 2011 Hawk 100 and loved it, my expectations were high. The first thing I noticed was a bit of side-to-side instability. That really was no surprise - the boards I sailed in the past month were 68-71 cm wide, so you'd expect some difference from a 58 cm wide board. I absolutely loved how the board handled the chop - it mostly seemed to disappear, and keeping the board on the water and at full speed was just easy. On my second set of runs, I planed through a jibe with a minimum speed of 10.7 knots, which I was very happy with, especially for first time on the board, and using a large weed fin. Going upwind was easy enough, too, so I went for a nice long downwind run, and clocked a 22.3 knot nautical mile. Not bad for 17-22 knot winds and chop!

One thing where the board behaved quite differently than the FreeWave 95 that I tried last year was when it came to playing with waves. The Hawk showed a clear preference for going straight - but then, I had mounted double footstraps, kept them tight, and used a long weed fin. The board is certainly no wave board, but with a single back strap and a smaller wave fin, there is some fun to be had playing with chop. I'll try that at some time in the future - but the more fun thing will be to test the speed potential on flat water on a really windy day (30 mph NE in Duxbury, please please!).

Back home, I looked at my earlier windsurf sessions in West Dennis. I had sailed there three times before in similar conditions, using my Skate 110. While the Skate can be quite fast, my top speed in the previous sessions was just 25-26 mph. This time, my top speed was almost 30 mph, 4 mph faster. I think the faster speed can be attributed to the board as much as to what I learned about sailing in chop this summer in Maui. There was just one time that I had sailed faster in West Dennis - 32 mph last December in a session with Dean. Back then, we had a nice low tide, which makes the water a lot flatter, and 30-36 mph winds. Just 2 mph faster in 10 mph more wind, despite using a speed sail then (KA Koncept 5.8) and a "low end" RAF sail (Pilot 6.5) now - it sure would be nice to see how fast the Hawk would fly under these conditions!

Hawk rescue

Yesterday, I saw something that nearly made me cry: a hawk, kept outside, standing on its tail, unprotected from the rain and the sun, and covered all over with rust stains (I hope you realize that I am talking about a Fanatic windsurf board and not a bird!). Compare to the fancy designs on newer boards like Scott's  TExtreme NewWave, Jim's RRD FireMove LTD, or even my Black Beauty (Exocet Warp 71), the Hawk always was a bit of a wallflower - but this was too much! The board needed to be rescued!

Ok, in an ideal world, I would have just spent $2K+ and gotten a brand-new iSonic or Falcon. I loved the Falcon 111 at the Windsurfing Magazine board test this spring, and loved Dani's new iSonic 90 even more when he let me try it a couple of weeks ago. But all the traveling that Nina and I did earlier this year has depleted the fun-funds severely. Even a used iSonic or Carbon Art board was more than I could afford, especially if you add a couple of hundred dollars for shipping. So when someone expressed interest in buying my old Bic Nova 120, and said he had a 95 l Hawk to sell for cheap, I was hooked. I had sailed 100 and 120 l Hawks from 2011 at WorldWinds in the spring, and loved the boards. The size I was looking for was 90-95 l (to fit in between my 82 and 110 l boards), so a Hawk 95 sounded just perfect.

The first thing to do, of course, was to look for test results. I found the 2006 test report from the German "surf" magazine, where the Hawk 95 got very high scores almost everywhere. More importantly, it scored very high in the speed, planing, and upwind categories, where it trailed only the fastest board in the test, a JP Super-X. Reading the report for the Super-X was even more fun. Here are a few descriptions from the Super-X writeup (with my approximate translations):

• "sauschnell" (wicked fast)
• "extrem hartes Fahrgefühl" (extremely hard ride)
• "Wie man dann einen Spock zelebrieren soll, ist dem Testteam ein Rätsel" (its a mystery to the testers how to do a Spock on this board)
• "Kontrolle ist keine Stärke" (control is not a strength of this board)
• "In der Halse muss das Wasser spiegelglatt sein" (for jibes, the water has to be as smooth as glass)

I found it very refreshing to read such "clear" language in a test - you'd never see that in a US magazine. It made it easy to see that the Hawk was a better board for mixed conditions that sometimes might include serious chop.

After reading the test, I just had to drive out to swap my old Nova against the old Hawk at the next opportunity. Seeing the board in such poor cosmetic shape almost made me drive back without it - but the seller quickly drove to the next hardware store, got some rust remover, and slapped the pink acid stuff onto the board. It removed all the rust stains from the pads right away, and made decent progress on the rest of the board. After a second application and some brushing (don't ask about the brush!), the board started to look better, and I decided to take it home. The one advantage of all the stains was that I had to pay only $60 (plus the Nova). 

I spend a considerable part of Saturday afternoon cleaning the board up some more. On the bottom of the board, wet sanding with 1000 sand paper did the trick; on the top, I used some more rust remover. The ding stick also came out to fix a small harness-mark near the mast, and some wear on the nose - but now, the board is as good as any 5-year old board that has seen a bit of use. When I put it on the trailer, I discovered that the width of the board under the foot straps is rather narrow - narrower even than for the JP Super-X 82 which used to have its place on the trailer. I can't wait for the winds to pick up so that I can try it!
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Disclaimer: It's been 7 days since I windsurfed the last time, 11 days since I was able to use something smaller than an 8.5 m sail, and 46 days since I planed on small gear, so withdrawal symptoms are setting in. I know that the situation has been even worse for some of my friends who had to spend the summer in New England, and hope that this post helps them forget their wind frustrations for a few minutes. Well, maybe I should not have added this disclaimer to remind them of their misery...

Going for distance

Yesterday was a great day for windsurfing in Duxbury Bay. I have rarely seen more windsurfers in Duxbury before - we had speed surfers (Dani, Sabah, Fred, and I), ABK alumni and trick surfers (Nina, Martin, Graham, Jeff, Jonathen, and Jeynaba), and quite a few folks that I did not know, including beginners, folks working on getting into the straps, and several advanced windsurfers. Nice showing!

The one thing that did not show quite as I had hoped for was the wind:

Averages remained between 16 and 18 mph for most of the day, and gusts remained below 22 mph. A bit low for the trick surfers, who often had to schlog or pump - but enough for the speed surfers on big boards and big sails.

Here are Sabah's GPS tracks from yesterday:

Sabah started out a 7.5 m sail and a 122 l board, and was a bit underpowered. He also had problems with  seaweed and seagrass, which slowed him down a bit from time to time. Even so, he got a top speed that was about 30% higher than the wind speed, and sailed a total of 74.2 km (46 miles). Sabah set 3 personal bests for 1 hour (11.35 kn), nautical mile (19.38 kn), and total distance. On almost any other day, that would have scored on the GPS Team Challenge - but not yesterday.

Fred also went out on a 7.5, and was underpowered a bit- but that did not keep him from setting personal bests for the nautical mile (20.28 kn) and total distance (44 km). He "only" sailed 2 1/2 hours, while the other speed surfers sailed for 5 to 6 1/2 hours.

Dani was on fire yesterday, planing all the time. His low weight was a huge advantage in the light winds, and his fast board and (relative to his weight) big sails certainly did not hurt. Here are Dani's tracks:

Despite some problems with seaweeds, Dani set personal bests for 1 hour (12.37 kn), nautical mile (20.48 kn), and distance (96.73 km). Every single time I saw Dani on the water, there was a huge smile on his face. Gotta love the attitude!

Nina refuses to even think about speed while the water is still warm, and worked a bit on vulcans and other tricks. The wind was a bit low for her 5.3, but at least she had other trick surfers to keep her company, including Martin and Graham. Last fall, Nina and I often were the only windsurfers in Duxbury.

I was on a mission yesterday, so when I saw that the wind was a bit lower than I had promised, I rigged my 8.5 m V8 sail onto my new Aeron V-grip boom and hit the water at noon. The wind direction was perfect for crossing the entire bay length-wise - that's about 5 km (3 miles) each way. On my first run, I snagged up some seagrass, so I went back in to switch to the my Select Weed Eliminator L fin. That turned out to be a mistake - the fin was just to small for the marginal conditions, and I had a really hard time going upwind without falling off the plane. It took me an hour and many tacks just to get back were I had started.

While switching back to the 44 cm slalom fin, I chatted a bit with some of the new arrivals, but soon was back on the water. I had a good idea now where the seagrass was in the water - it was mostly limited to one stretch in the middle of the bay. Finally being able to kick the fin again felt so good! After another hour on the water, I finally needed to eat something. When I checked the trip meter on shore, I saw that I had sailed 93 km already - and it was only 3:35 pm, with the wind just picking up a bit! So I went back out for another 90 minute sessions, which was enough time for 4 complete and 2 partial bay crossings. By now, it was 5:30 pm, and I was starting to get just a bit tired. My hands also started to hurt a bit, mostly because this was my first time sailing the V-grip boom, and different parts of my fingers made contact than on my other boom. But back at shore, I saw that I was only about 10 or 15 miles away from sailing 100 miles - so back onto the water it was!

I just did 2 1/2 more crossings, and then stopped so that I could use the remaining daylight to derig and load the trailer. Here are my tracks for the day:

Overall, I spend 5 hours and 20 minutes on the water, with an additional hour of breaks in between. My average speed was mostly around 20 mph, with just a few minutes of schlogging, and a few faster downwind runs for fun. I set new personal bests for 1 hour (17.92 kn) and total distance (163.51 km). That's more than 100 miles, and 52 km more than my previous best. Together with Dani's 1 hour and distance, we pushed the Fogland Speed Surfers up a few ranks in the GPS Team Challenge rankings, and got into the top 10 for the distance ranking (albeit only for a day - we're down to #11 today).

It was great to see so many friends in Duxbury yesterday. Everyone I talked to who sailed there for the first or second time loved it, despite the somewhat light wind. I really appreciate the efforts of the team mates on the water yesterday - seeing Dani, Jeff, and Graham sailing late really helped to push through the last few crossings. This was great fun, and we should do this again soon - maybe with a bit more wind! Maybe we get lucky and get real northeast wind next time, like mid-20s gusting to low 30s. The water would still be wicked flat, and we could work on short distance, nautical mile, and alpha.

One day later, I'm very happy with yesterday's effort. I pushed myself further than I had before, and had a blast doing so. Ok, walking up the stairs yesterday evening was a bit slow, but with all the Maui training, my body has learned to recover quickly, and I could definitely go for a repeat tomorrow if the wind played along (and there was not this thing called work which keeps me from windsurfing every now and then). It's been a big ego booster when the friendly folks at the GPS Team Challenge site pointed out that I now hold the US record for distance traveled on the site. So ok, there are only 13 windsurfers from the US registered, but that includes a few wicked fast guys: Roo, who's hit 40 knots in the Gorge and helped develop the GT-31; Dean, who's hit 36 knots in Hatteras, after sailing out to the reef for a couple of miles; and Boro, who holds the top spots for 1 hour, alpha, and the nautical mile (with 30.72 knots - I have yet to hit that speed for 2 seconds!).  The international rankings illustrate that the US is not exactly a hot-spot for speed surfing (yet): there, my 163.51 km put me on the 95th spot. Not that I am unhappy with that ranking - but I got 5 more disciplines where I need to climb up the ladder :)

Duxbury in northeast winds

The fall winds are finally arriving - here is the wind forecast for Duxbury for Sunday September 18, 2011:

Perhaps the numbers do not look very exciting - unless you consider this:

• The predicted wind direction is northeast.
• In northeast winds, the last obstruction that the wind saw was in Nova Scotia, Canada - that's a clean fetch of 250 miles!
• Computer models usually underestimate NE winds in Duxbury - winds are often at least 5 mph stronger than forecast.
• With the long clear fetch, NE winds in Duxbury tend to be very steady.
• Duxbury bay is separated from the ocean by a small strip of sand that barely obstructs the wind, which creates very flat water.
• Duxbury bay is 3 miles long, and the entire length is protected by the sand strip - making it the perfect place for long distance speedsurfing.

Here are GPS tracks from a similar setup last year (9/26/2010):

I set my personal best for 1 hour that day (17.4 knots), even though the wind averages were only 20-22 mph:

My top speed for the day was not great, but I was on a freeride board (Mistral Screamer 116) and a non-cambered sail (Matrix 7.0) that was a bit small for top speed. Gonzalo, who was on a Ray 115 and a 7.5 m race sail, passed me all the time at will, and was probably going 20% faster than I was.

So, flatwater lovers and Fogland Speed Surfers: come to Duxbury tomorrow, Sunday 9/18! Lets set some personal records for long distance and alphas! The other US speedsurfing team, the Speedsters, have just passed us in the monthly ranking. We need only small improvements in the 1 hour averages and alphas to pull even! In the international ranking, we are ranked 46 of 50 teams for the month - it should be pretty easy to move up a few spots! For once, the tides in Duxbury are good, with a low tide of 1.6 ft at 10 am - meaning we can sail all day! I am hoping to get some serious distance tomorrow! Ok, maybe I am fighting a cold right now, but I am sure it will be mostly gone tomorrow, and I should be able to get at least 3 or 4 hours of sailing in. Last year, I sailed 86 km in 3 hours. With better gear (and better jibes) this year, I'll be shooting to break my personal best for distance (111.8 km). I sure hope another Fogland Speed Surfer will back me up so that it counts!

Below is a map that shows the public parking lot just before the Powder Point Bridge where we will launch. Hope to see you tomorrow!

View Duxbury public parking lot in a larger map. If you need directions, use "400 Powder Point Ave, Duxbury, MA" as the target.