Two interesting days

A SW storm brought warm temperatures and nice wind for yesterday and today, so I got treated with two more windsurfing days in January. Yesterday was a "dense fog" session with Hardie at West Dennis. Visibility was less than 300 feet (100 meters), so we had to sail really close to shore to have any idea where we were. That worked at first when the wind was straight south, but later, when it had turned a bit, you'd loose sight of shore quickly, and things got scary. The wind played a few up and down games, too - too little for my 96 l board, then too much for the 110 l board, then just right for the 96 l, but only long enough to get me half a mile away from the launch before dropping. The session ended with a long carry back to the car, but it was still great to be out.

The forecast for today looked not too different, except for even warmer temps, WSW winds, and "partly cloudy" skies with visibility "between 1 and 3 nm". My goal was to go to the Kennedy Slicks, the stone pier in Hyannis Port Harbor that creates nice flat water for speed. Nikita had send an email that he was going out for speed, too, so we had a good chance to improve our standing on the GPS Team Challenge, where we were on the last spot in the monthly rankings. Jerry also called and said he'd come down for a short session, since he had work in the area, anyway.

When we got there, it looked really windy, with white caps forming just a few meters past the stone wall. Readings were still at 35-37 mph averages, so I thought it was a great day to see what real speedsurfers feel like when going out with a 5.8 in these conditions. Nina wanted to try her new 3.4, which would have been big enough for these readings, and Jerry rigged 4.2, after laughing about my size choice. He hit the water first, while Nina had to drive back home to get her Ianovated suit, which we had left there due to some miscommunication.

As I hit the water, the 5.8 was the right choice for easy sailing, since the wind soon dropped down to 26 mph. I did not realize this at first, and was a bit surprised that I did not get speeds near 30 knots. Jerry soon changed to a 5.2, and I switched to a bigger fin as soon as Nina came back. I told her to rig big, which she did - and that was enough for the wind machine to turn back on, with averages in the low 30s. But since Nina wanted to sail instead of just rigging the whole day, she took out the 4.5, and was nicely overpowered for the next couple of hours. 

Jerry had to leave when Nina finally made it onto the water. I was pacing myself a bit, since I wanted to sail with both of them, and so I played around a bit with trimming my gear. After a few adjustments, I finally felt that I had decent control in the 40 mph gusts. Towards the end of the session, I had the bright idea to finally test my Black Project Fins Weed Speed "28" (which actually has a depth of just 23.5 cm). The fin felt just perfect for the conditions, with plenty of grip and absolutely no desire to slip or spin out, even with significant pressure and small chop. With it, I finally saw 31 knots on the GPS twice. The session ended up being my third-fastest ever - not bad for a January session! I also improved my alpha 500 personal best by more than a knot. Nikita had, once again, a faster top speed than I did, so we were able to jump up a few spots in the GPS rankings. What a great day! Did I mention it was warm? Yesterday in the fog in West Dennis, my hands quickly got really cold when I had to swim after my gear; but the storm had warmed up the water by a few degrees overnight, and today I was able to sail with my fingers out of the open-palm mittens most of the time, and also took my hood off a lot. I still liked that I had my Ianovated wetsuit on, and used the tubes to warm my hands at the beginning and in breaks.

Here's a little GoPro video from the last run of the day:

Based on Jerry's suggestion, I used the dive housing today, which sheds the water drops a lot better than the original housing. Can't wait to take it snorkeling (and, of course, windsurfing) in Bonaire!

  

Windsurf like a 10-year old!

Some of the windsurfers I admire most don't restrict themselves to just one style, but rather do it all: speed, waves, freestyle, bump & jump. Here's a 10-year old Australian showing how it's done:

I can't stop smiling after seeing this video :-)

Two in a row

Another great day in Kalmus today. Unlike yesterday, the wind was up & down for a couple of hours. When it finally settled in around 30 mph at 2 pm, I found myself a bit overpowered on a 5.5. But the Tabou 3S handled the moderate chop gracefully, making it easy to rack up more than 70 km in a 4 1/2 hour session today. That would be a good session on a summer day - great to get it in January! It was nice to see a crowd on the water - Jeff, Martin, and Ron showed up, and maybe 5 other sailors that I don't know.

That's my lovely wife going for a duck jibe. She figured it was warm enough to sail without a hood and without the tubes in the Ianovated wetsuit, so she took the tubes out and put plugs into the tube holes. But she still preferred the suit over her Boost baggy drysuit and her Ion semi-dry suit, since it is very warm and comfortable. A bit later, Martin joined her doing freestyle on the water, and kept going at it for a few hours. Nina took pictures for a few minutes from the beach after her session:

She did not catch me doing anything interesting, since I just did the same old back-and-forth and called it speedsurfing. There are at least 3 things wrong with the jibe entry in the picture above.

The other guy in this picture, Martin, did something interesting all the time. I saw him completing a few beautiful carve 360s, jump head-high, and more. Nina caught a jump landing and a few duck jibes on camera:

We love seeing Martin sail, it's never boring. But we need to get him into an Ianovated wetsuit - today was pretty close to his temperature cutoff, since his old suit has developed quite a few leaks over the years.

Tonight, a big arctic chill will come down to visit us, and stay around from a while, so you probably won't see any blog posts from me for a while.

We love winter windsurfing

Had a very lovely winter session in Kalmus today. Wind around 30 mph, pretty steady, air around 44 F (7 C), sunny. Our Ianovated wetsuits kept us plenty warm.

I used the tubes pretty much every time I fell to warm up my gloves, but Nina did not need them today.

Both of us worked a bit on freestyle moves without being afraid of falling. Well, low tide helped, we could stand everywhere during our 2 hour session.

Nina worked on Carve 360s and a bit on Shove Its. She also set a personal best for Alpha 500 (a 500 m run with a jibe in the middle, and the ends of the run within 50 m) - congrats!
I did a couple of Flaka prep moves and a bunch of jump jibes, where I am guaranteed to get wet. That was just fine with me, I was sweating most of the time, so a bit of cooling down in the water was often welcome. I'm still amazed that I'd be playing around with freestyle moves in the winter! Amazing what a great wetsuit with a fantastic hand warming system can do.

The water was nice and flat, but with enough little waves to make it interesting. I shied away from trying loops or committed Flaka attempts, and instead just worked on a bit of board control in the air. I thought I did ok, but the GoPro showed that I should pull my back leg a lot higher.

We had the water to ourselves for a while until a kiter showed up. No other windsurfers showed. There was lots of fun to be had today at Kalmus, and it was perfectly safe in the shallow waters. Tomorrow's forecast is very similar to todays, except that it will get even warmer! The best time at Kalmus will be between 11 am and 2 or 3 pm. The wind is expected to turn from SW to W sometime tomorrow afternoon; depending on when and how quickly this happens, we may see howling WSW winds later in the afternoon, or a quick drop near shore when the wind turns west. Whatever happens - I hope to see a few sails on the water tomorrow around noon!