Thanks, Iain

It's Thanksgiving, and there are many people and things that I am thankful about. But I'll dedicate this to the man who made the picture above possible: Iain Smith, the inventor of the Ianovated wetsuit.

That's me in the picture above, getting ready to windsurf in Wellfleet Harbor earlier today. It was a lovely and sunny day, but air temperatures had dropped from mid-50s yesterday to 34ºF (1ºC) today. Wind meter readings were around 30 mph WNW - too good to not go windsurfing! Even last year, I probably would have stayed at home. Yes, I have sailed in similar temperatures before, but it's usually a gradual process - as it gets later in the year, we slowly get used to the lower temperatures.

Enter Iain. He is a dedicated British windsurfer who did not want to stop sailing in the winter, when the best winds come. Like many of us, Iain experimented with all kinds of gloves and mittens to keep his hands warm. He experienced the usual trade-offs: if gloves are warm enough to keep your hands comfortable, they will make your forearms very tired very quickly, cutting sessions short. But unlike most other cold-weather windsurfers, Iain has a "cold weather handicap" - Raynaud's disease. Wikipedia describes this as "excessively reduced blood flow in response to cold" - in other words, your hands get much colder, much faster.

But Iain did not give up. He experimented until he found a solution that works: a system to blow warm air onto your hands while you are windsurfing. In hindsight, it seems simple enough: blow into tubes through a snorkel mouthpiece; run the tubes through the inside of the suit to keep the air warm; and finally have the tubes emerge into mittens. After proving the concept, Iain then formed a company to manufacture and market the suit.

As many great inventions, the suit was met with a lot of skepticism and ridicule. On every windsurf forum where Iain posted about the suit, the vast majority of responses explained in lots of detail why such a system could never ever work (I have seen such posts on British, German, Polish, and US forums). But on each forum, there would also be a few windsurfers who tried it out, and reported back that the "tube suit" worked not just well, but amazingly well. I got one of the Ianovated suits last winter, and it kept amazing me  for many sessions in a row, even after I knew that it worked well. My lovely wife, who had no intentions of buying a new wetsuit, tried the Ianovated suit once, and bought it right away. We sailed through the winter using open-palm mitts, even when the water temperature was close to freezing (we did, however, only sailed on days where the air temperature was above, or at least close to, the freezing point).

Many of my windsurfing friends have told me that they stop sailing because their hands get too cold. So after trying and loving the Ianovated suit, I hoped that I might be able to get some of my friends to try it, and also enjoy some of the best windsurfing of the year - cold weather windsurfing. Yesterday, I was very happy to see two friends try their new Ianovated suits for the first time. Not surprisingly, they (a) were surprised how well the hand warming system works, and (b) loved the suit.  Today, my suit gave me the confidence to go out after a 22-degree temperature drop in 24 hours. As expected, it kept me nice and warm the entire time, and I had a blast windsurfing on a beautiful sunny, if chilly, day. So once again: thank you, Iain!

Below are a couple of pictures that my lovely wife took, and a short video from one of the runs today.

Plenty of wind

We got plenty of wind today - averages up to 42 mph, with gusts just below 50. We also got a lot of rain, but the wind was too good to not go windsurfing. After a few days with temperatures below freezing, today was outright warm, with air temperatures around 55ºF (13ºC).

With winds this strong, my first thought is to go for speed. The timing and wind direction were not quite right for Sandy Point, so I thought - why not try speedsurfing on Bass River, just behind West Dennis? Well, the GPS tracks show that this did not quite work out as planned:

The hoped-for speed track is the top right of the image. Dean, who started sailing just as we arrived, quickly reported that the wind there was way too gusty - "0 to 50 mph in a couple of seconds". That seemed hard to believe - we had checked out the spot the day before, and the obstructions (some small trees and shrubs) had seemed too far away to have a big effect. So I rigged my 5.0 m speed sail, grabbed my 90 l slalom board, and went to confirm Dean's findings. Bummer- he was right! Close to shore, were we had hoped to sail, the water was flat, but gusts were extreme. I never saw Dean fight for control so hard - and we are talking about a guy who'll sail a 6.2 m slalom sail in 30+ mph winds and big chop for hours. He's a much better slalom sailor than I am, so you can imagine how far away I was from any kind of control. Here's a picture that illustrates this:

Note that I was on perfectly flat water, simply trying to go straight - but the board is out of the water as if I was going for a new school freestyle trick. It was just a big gust hitting me...

I quickly decided that this was not a speed day for me, and walked back to rig a smaller sail and get my "comfort" board, the 3S 96. That took a while, but I eventually made it out and sailed in front of the parking lot, where Jerry was having a blast, throwing plenty duck jibes and speed loops. He inspired Nina to also go for duck jibes in the 40 mph winds - and she got at least one after just a few tries.

I had rigged down to a 4.5 m wave sail, which turned out to be a bit too big for my taste. Funny, though - Jerry, who weight about 40 pounds less than I do, was perfectly fine on a 4.2 the entire time! I added some downhaul, which made life a bit easier, but the real fun started when Nina called it a day, and I got to use the 3.7 she had rigged. Full power on 3.7 - that's something I see maybe twice a year!

Our friend Jonathen had picked today as his first day of cold weather windsurfing. While the air felt warm to us, it probably was 10 degrees warmer when he sailed the last time, several weeks ago. The water had definitely cooled off; the Nantucket sound buoy still gave readings around 45ºF, but it felt a few degrees colder than that. But Jon did not want to miss a 40 mph day, and he had his new Ianovated suit to try! So out he went, in what probably was the strongest wind, and definitely the coldest water temperature, he has ever windsurfed on. When he tried the tubes to warm his hands, a look of amazement came onto his face - "It really works". Nevertheless, the first few falls into the cold water came a bit as a shock to him. His session ended up being on the short side - but he stayed perfectly warm the entire time. He even sat around for quite a while in his suit to chat with Nina at the end of his session.

Just as everyone was getting ready to call it a day, Gary pulled into the parking lot. I decided to keep him company on the water for a while, and switched harness lines while he rigged. That involved de-rigging my 4.5 m sail, and taking two booms apart, so it kept me busy for a while. By the time we both were ready, the wind had dropped, and the 3.7s ended up a bit too small, so I called it a day after a few runs. Unlike Jonathen, Gary had sailed in cold weather a number of times before; but just like Jonathen, this was the first time he used an Ianovated suit. And just like Jon, he was amazed to discover how well the tubes work for warming your hands. It is pretty amusing to see these expressions of amazement. Even if have heard great things about the tube suit, and your mind believes that it will work, it is still astonishing when you feel it the first time. For me, this astonishment lasted for an entire winter season... but I am a slow learner :-)

In the end, it was a great day to be windsurfing, even though my hopes for a new speed strip did not pan out. It was nice to see a sizable group of windsurfers on the water on a rainy day at the end of November. I love sailing with windsurfers that sail better than I do, and today, there were two guys and one gal out there in this category. I also love that in our group of 6 windsurfers, a full two-thirds showed up in Ianovated suits. There's a lot more fun cold weather windsurfing ahead of us!

Failure to stay straight

My life used to be easy. When I windsurfed, I mowed the lawn: back and forth, back and forth, in nice straight lines. Turns were added only out of necessity - the beer is waiting where I started, so we must turn to get back. Many year later, Andy Brandt showed me that turns can be a lot of fun, but that really did not change much. My favorite thing to do is still to go in straight lines for miles. Adding a GPS and calling myself a "speedsurfer" is merely obfuscation, and anyone who looked at my top speeds will discover.

Here's what I am talking about:



Somewhere in the movie, you may notice Nina. She fully supports my lawn mowing habit. ABK's Brendon has explained to me why we make a great team: lawns need to be mowed and watered. Nina likes to try new freestyle tricks, which takes care of the watering, so that I can concentrate on the mowing.

But recently, I have often been confused on the water. I expect water to either be perfectly flat, so that I can mow faster, or full of irregular spaced bumps (often called "chop" or "voodoo chop"). Chop slows you down, but it sailing in chop for 2 hours is a great cure for constipation, so chop is good. When I can't sail a straight line through it anymore, I simply jump a bit. But I am German, and there have to be rules. Rule number 1 in jumping is that I only jump starboard, when my right had is closer to the mast. I really tried to stick to this rule when we went sailing in Cape Cod Bay last Saturday, but I failed:



That was just the beginning. At my home spot, Kalmus Beach in Hyannis, I have to turn around after sailing 500 meters, or face the dreaded ferry line. Even when crossing the ferry line, runs are rarely longer than a kilometer (or half a mile for my metrically challenged readers), mostly because the water ends and my boards are not suited for sailing on the beach. But where we launched in Brewster, you can sail for miles and miles without having to turn around. It's perfectly safe, too, since you're always within half a mile or so from shore. So I went in nice straight lines for a mile or two, until I remembered that I should turn around and check on Nina.

Well, that was the plan, at least. But when I sailed past the end of the long shallow region, the chop suddenly started to organize, slowly turning into swell and then into something that looked like waves to my untrained eye. This upset me - I am a lawn mower sailor, not a wave sailor! Turning around early would have cut the runs short, but simply sailing in straight lines might have led to more against-the-rules port jumps. Since speed is your friend (or at least mine), I tried to accelerate by going down the bigger waves - but after a couple of seconds, I'd end up going up the back of the wave in front of me, slowing down again. So I turned back - only to see the next wave forming behind me! I went down again, and repeated this game a few times until I finally reached sections where order disintegrated into unruly chop. Familiar territory again! But very quickly, weird thoughts crept into my mind, like "that was fun not going straight all the time!". Here is a short movie from this period:



Having been raised as a proper lawn-mowing catholic boy, I had my doubts about not going straight all the time, but it was kind off fun - especially when I went up one wave and turned just a bit too late at the top, getting a little bit of air while turning:

If you stop the movie just after I landed, you will notice a look of great confusion on my face - what just happened? A second or two later, you can hear what I thought about it if you have the sound turned on..

This was almost too much fun. Sure, we had gotten up before 7 am on a Saturday to be at the beach early, so that we would get the strongest winds and the best water levels. Sure it was sunny, and the water was nice and clear. But air temperatures were in the low 40s, and water temperatures not much higher - sure we were not supposed to have this much fun? I went to check with Nina. She had stayed out of the deep water the entire time, being perfectly happy that she was able to stand every single time when she fell. She had initially been overpowered on her 4.5 m sail, but the wind dropped just a little to make the sail a perfect choice, so she was having a blast. We had been on the water for almost 2 hours by then. But the wind seemed to be dropping a bit, and I really wanted to get home to see my daughter, who was coming for a rare visit, so we decided to stop soon.

I have to apologize to my regular readers, who are probably very disappointed by all these not-so-straight videos without any of the expected freestyle or speed action - but I just have to show one more video. As I was sailing in, I was able to sail much closer to shore than before, since the water level had risen 2 or 3 feet while we were sailing. Check out the GPS tracks:

The last two runs were the runs towards the lower right. This was in the shallow area after a deeper shipping lane. With the wind coming from NW (top right), this created a water surface that was just about perfect: lots of knee-to hip-high waves to play with that ramped up nicely, but did not really break; and perfectly flat water in between. See for yourself:

As much fun as this was, I ended up worrying: have I been infected with the wave virus? Will I follow the path of so many windsurfers before me who decided that flat water is boring, and only sail in waves? Maybe I should not worry too much, because a full-speed jibe on perfectly flat water is still something I dream about all the time. Maybe we will know more in a couple of days, if we indeed get winds in the high 30s, and our plans to explore a new speed venue pan out...

Flat pictures

Yesterday: NW winds near 30 mph. Checked out Skaket, sand blowing, almost high tide, did not look inviting. First Encounter looked easy enough, but had chop instead of the little waves that you might see at low tide. So we went to Indian Neck in Wellfleet for some flat water. Flat water we got, but the wind was very much up and down. Some pictures:

Nina planing in the background

Flat and sunny :-)

Nina saw about a dozen seals; one of them jumped out of the water all the way. On the way back, we stopped at Skaket and Corporation. The wind seemed steadier at Skaket, with 22-27 knots. The wind was about 5 knots lower at  Corporation, but the waves looked nice:

The entire day, we only saw one kiter on the water. Air temperatures were just above 40ºF (5ºC).

The day before had been much warmer, with temperatures close to 60ºF (15ºC). Lots of wind early in the morning, but it came with rain. Drew talked me into sailing after the sun came out. We were at Kalmus around noon; Martin also showed up, but the wind did not look that great, and was predicted to go down. With high tide and strong winds earlier, there was lots of chop, so we drove over to Kennedy Slicks. Indian Neck was pretty flat, but Kennedy Slicks was really flat. Unfortunately, the wind died after a few runs; Drew never got planing. Martin stayed out and practiced light wind freestyle - it was a beautiful warm day, and he'd probably been way too hot if he had not fallen often :-). Here are a few pictures:

Martin on the left, Drew close to shore

That's flat!

Drew almost got going..

Marty water starting in10-12 mph winds

You-know-who going for a duck tack

Even though I am German, I can't really complain about two nice days of windsurfing in a row. So what if the wind was not perfect? We were out playing in the sun! I was perfectly warm both days in my Ianovated suit (the new double-nylon one with a "relief zipper"). The only difference was that I needed a hood on the colder day, wore a neoprene shirt under the suit, and used my open-palm mitts and the heating tubes. With that, I was as warm and comfortable as any day in the summer.