Great Fun at the Nationals

We're at the US Nationals in Seaford, Virginia, and we're having a blast. How could you not at an event venue like this?

The venue .. before the crowds arrived

It's Dave Kashy's place, where we have raced several times before - the perfect place for a regatta. Even better is the organization, with race results posted online shortly after the races, and group dinners at great local restaurants. It's almost too easy to make new friends, and much more fun to race with friends than with strangers.

I'm in the Kona fleet, so I don't have the usual "bad gear" excuses for placing near the bottom of the fleet - it's all me. But I don't really care, it's lots of fun. It's great to see all these fantastic windsurfers on the water. 

Kona racing

For more great pictures, check  http://2018nationals.uswindsurfing.org/gallery and http://www.dailypress.com/news/york-county/dp-pictures-u-s-national-windsurfing-festival-20180427-photogallery.html, or the US Windsurfing Facebook page.

Foil racing in ~8 knots

Hatteras Report

Sorry about the long gap between posts - it's been way too windy the last two weeks. We spent that time in Hatteras, and it was windy every single day. Both Nina and I had to take a day off in the middle because we were to exhausted. But we also wanted to be (somewhat) fit for OBX Wind week, where we both participated in the long distance race. Nina also did the freestyle clinic with Phil Soltysiak; I was signed up for the slalom races, which turned out to be very interesting.. more about that later.

Seeing more than 200 windsurfers compete in the long distance race was amazing - check the picture below:

OBX Wind long distance race. Photo by Donald Ferguson

We did a total of three long distance races, one on Wednesday in wind around 15-20 mph, and two on Thursday in 25-35 mph wind. Each race was out to the reef and back twice, which was about 13 km (8 miles). Even though the wind dropped during or right before two of the races, leaving many competitors slogging, there were lots of happy faces and high-fives after the races. Almost everyone played nicely, but a few racers regarded their placing in the race as much more important than adhering to basic safety or right-of-way rules. Both women in our house who competed had incidents where a racer either forced them to get of the board to avoid a crash, or passed dangerously close (in the middle of the course, with plenty of space to spread out). It is quite unlikely that they will compete in future OBX Wind long distance races. 

Nina did quite well in the long distance race, placing second in the Women's Open division (which had 8 women competing), and leaving all 18 women in the freeride division, as well as more than 100 male windsurfers, behind. I accomplished my goal of finishing all races without breaking anything. On day two, that required switching to freeride gear (Tabou 3S 96 and North Ice 4.7), since there was no way I would have made it through the course with any semblance of control on a race sail and/or slalom board. Since I can actually go faster on this gear than I would have been on slalom gear in the conditions, I managed to squeeze into the top-25 overall, which I am quite happy with.

The slalom racing was quite interesting. From the very first day on, I had realized that the "chop" at the Corpus Christi and SPI spots had seriously spoiled me. The chop in Avon in 20 mph wind (according to the highest nearby wind meters) was much higher and more chaotic than the chop at Grassy Point in 30 mph wind. I (re-)discovered that I really don't like to sail slalom gear in these conditions. After a week of trying and adjusting things, I got somewhat more comfortable, managed to keep most of my jibes dry, and even plane through one occasionally ... but then, the slalom races started. In the second race, I managed to come in in the top third of the ~20 racers, but it quickly went downhill from there. With all the chop around the marks and the distractions from other sailors, I blew most of my jibes. Since I did not wand to be run over (and since my starts sucked, anyway), I decided to let most of the field go ahead before getting to speed. That turned out to not be a smart decision - I had the pleasure of sailing through everyones chop, and then had to avoid all the others who had fallen in their jibes. More dropped jibes, even less confidence ... not a good feedback loop! The final straw was the guy who absolutely had to improve his rank from third-last to second-last by first passing me upwind, with about a foot distance between our boards, and then again passed me fully planing about 2 inches from my head when I was down at the mark. Really? You're at the tail end of the field, but you're such a great sailor that passing someone this closely is safe? So that you can come in 13th instead of 14th? At that point, I decided that slalom racing was definitely not for me, and went in. I could have come to that conclusion earlier, considering that I usually sail way upwind, downwind, outside, or otherwise away from the crowds; but I had previously participated in one slalom series (and several longboard races) where the testosterone-level seemed a lot lower, and everyone sailed more considerate. It just gave me the wrong idea that that's typical.

Nina's choice of doing the freestyle camp was a much smarter one. She learned a lot, and made progress on several moves she worked on. Compared to many racers who displayed the attitude "get out of my way or else", the freestylers were a much friendlier crowd - several high-level freestylers stopped by and gave her tips when they saw the moves she was working on, or demonstrated the moves for her. The freestyle competition was also absolutely awesome, with great moves by top PWA pros Youp Smit and Phil Soltysiak, East Coast freestylers like Mike Burns, Chachi, Max Robinson, and others.

Youp Smit freestyling

We left Hatteras to go to Seaford, VA, where the US Nationals will take place in a few days. I'll be in the Kona category, where I have sailed in before and loved it. We got lucky and scored a really nice AirBnB close to the event - here's a picture from today's sunrise, taken from our apartment:

For Pi Players

A couple of people have expressed interest in also playing around with Raspberry Pi-based GPS loggers, so I have posted some very brief instructions and a ZIP file with the code I use at http://www.ecwindfest.org/GPS/. If you want to play along, you'll have to figure out all the Pi things on your own - Google is your friend! I'll entertain any suggestions for improvement, but can't make any promises - I hope to windsurf a lot in the next few weeks, and spend the rest of the time talking about windsurfing, drinking beer, and sitting in the hot tub :-).

The Pi Logger

Since it's too cold to windsurf, and cheap OTG phones are not available in most of the world, I've been looking into using a Raspberry Pi for logging GPS data. For those who don't know Raspberry: they are tiny little Linux computers that cost between $5 and $30, depending which model you want. Here's an image showing two of them:

The clear case contains a Raspberry 3 (~ $30); the white case a Raspberry Zero W ($10). The black thing at the bottom is a USB battery; the blue & black thing at the left is a GT-31 GPS. Here's a view from the side:

There's a USB GPS dongle plugged into the Raspberry 3 - the same dongle I had used with Android phones before. I tested the Pi 3 - dongle setup on a bur ride into Boston today, and it worked! Here's are some speed tracks from the dongle and a GW-60 watch:

The blue lines are from the GW-60 (the "gold standard GPS), the red lines are from the dongle + pi. The watch had problems when the bus went under bridges, and dropped a bunch of points (the lines to the bottom). Zoomed in, the data from the dongle look less noisy than the watch data:

This is reflected in lower error estimates for the dongle data (the numbers on the right side):

No big surprises here, the dongle had done better than the watch in previous driving tests (when using an Android phone). The next thing will be to get some tests with the smaller Raspberry Pi Zero W in a few days (I'm waiting for a cable I need).

So far, the setup is just a logger: plug the battery cable into the Pi, wait a couple of minutes for it to boot, plug the dongle in, and record. When done, take the dongle out, and the Pi will shutdown a little later. Back home, grab the data over WiFi, and through them into your favorite GPS software, or upload to ka72.com. To get this to run, it needs a custom Java program, a couple of libraries for the USB/serial communication, a couple of scripts, and an entry in the /etc/rc.local to start things up automatically - not too bad.

The hardware cost for Pi Zero W + GPS dongle + battery + case cables is around $50 US. Adding a small display would add another $40 or so, almost doubling the cost, so that's not very high on my list of priorities.

Things I'll probably try first are:

• Use a smaller battery pack
• Pack things neatly for use when windsurfing
• Configure the Pi Zero as a USB drive for easier downloading onto a computer
• Use Bluetooth to announce speed
• Use Bluetooth and an Android phone to display speeds 
• Automatically transfer files after a session to a phone or PC (over Bluetooth or WiFi)

The entire setup should consist of a few things that are easy and cheap to buy, and a few cables, with no or very little assembly required. Geeks can swap the USB dongle against a ublox 8 chip with a larger antenna, and hook it up using either a serial-to-USB cable, or using the GPIO pins on the Pi (which would also require software changes).