It Takes Balls to Sail Ocean Beach

This is a video taken by someone last month of some windsurfers getting after it at Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach is the main beach on the West Side of San Francisco. It's about 4 miles long and a couple hundred yards wide on low tide. It's fairly unusual to find good windsurfing conditions, or even conditions that are windsurf-able out there. The predominant winds are directly onshore and the water conditions, as you can see, are pretty friggin' gnarly.

Ocean Beach is considered an advanced surf spot. Usually, you'll have to paddle through 10-20 lines of white water to get to the break. When you get there, the waves are extremely peaky. It's hard to position yourself and you normally are paddling to different positions the whole time you are out. I've been crushed by a couple of waves out there, so I can attest to the power and speed of the wave there.

The long and short of it is that windsurfing this spot is NOT for the faint of heart. You had better have skills, courage, and a hunger to challenge yourself to go after it here. Props to the sailors in this video. Ryan from South Africa (silver naish) and Vincent from France (Yellow MS) are Crissy regulars who definitely have a reputation of being a couple of the braver guys in my neighborhood.

A Tribute to Paul Mann

For those of you who haven't heard, a windsurfer passed away in the Columbia River Gorge last weekend while Stand Up Paddling on a light wind day. The details of how it happened are unclear. He was missing for several days after his board was recovered and finally his body was found early yesterday morning.

This has definitely weighed heavily on me, I knew Paul. Paul was a Crissy Field regular and was the local rep for North Wave sails. He was very well known and well-liked among the crowd and he always had time to chat and joke around. Being the new guy at Crissy this year was a little intimidating at first for me, but Paul went out of his way to make me feel welcome. He remembered my name the first time we met and would always make a point to say hello and give me a hard time about my sail choice. (4.2? Are you nuts??)

Even in the short time I knew Paul, he had a positive effect on my life and on my windsurfing. At the end of the day, that's what life is all about right? Even in our imperfection, we should ask ourselves "Am I having a positive or negative effect on the people around me?" Paul unequivocally brought good times, a smiling face, and constant stoke to the windsurfers around him. His life may have been unfortunately cut short, but I know in my heart that he, like all windsurfers, truly lived.

The picture below is of a gathering that was held at Crissy for Paul. I know that he would feel so happy if he could have seen all the people who showed up in his honor. All of them were undoubtedly better off having known him.

A Floody Mess at Crissy

Monday I sailed Crissy Field on a pretty strong flood. Two and a half knots was the forecast, some people said it seemed more like 4 knots in some places. The flood can be problematic at Crissy because the wind and the current are going in the same direction, so getting upwind can be really difficult. To add to that issue, there aren't a lot of great places to swim in or land if the flood is cooking, especially if you have a gear breakdown. Once you hit the piers which are about a half a mile downwind, you're probably going to get sucked right along to the Bay Bridge. The wind reading was averaging 24 on the inside. Normally I would have sailed a 4.7, but I rigged my 5.3 just so I could be sure I could beat the current.

The water conditions were really messy on the inside, but pretty clean and flat on the outside. I felt overpowered at times in the 30kt gusts, but it wasn't a big problem because I really needed to point as much as possible. Overall, a pretty fun day. Also, there were some memorable jumps when the freighters went by. Normally these only leave a big moundy wake, but on Monday they left a wedgy wave that came directly towards a slight upwind reach... WEEEE...

Sailed Crissy again on Tuesday and it was similar, but less windy. The 5.3 was barely enough for me to keep ground. It wasn't a great day, but who am I to complain? Any day of sailing is, in fact, a great day of sailing.

Special Session Report: Anniversary Day

I've been a bit under the weather the last few weeks with very little sailing, but yesterday I was feeling good enough to get after it so I drove over to Coyote to check things out. When I arrived, Mo, protectress of Coyote, had already donned her wetsuit but was looking back at me with a not-so-positive expression. Her hair was dry, which gave me no indication of whether she had windsurfed, because she virtually never falls. She said she suited up and went out with small gear but the wind had completely died. Bummer. I REALLY wanted to windsurf. We sat around and guffawed for a while with another local sailor, and the conditions started to look "a little" better.

It really wasn't good. The wind was probably averaging 15, with gusts to 17... on the outside where the wind is "better". I decided to put together the biggest kit I have. A 5.7 that I rig six times a year, my 104L Freewave, and I even went as far as to pull out a honkin' 38cm fin. When I was finally suited up I slogged out a couple hundred yards and got on a light plane. I slipped only my front foot into the strap and lightly rested my back foot on the rail so I could hopefully make some upwind progress against the half-knot flood. I tacked a couple times and was making some favorable upwind progress, but I was definitely working for it.

Being marginally powered has become a frustrating premise for me lately. As I've adjusted to moderate to high wind conditions, I've become used-to and comfortable with pretty much planing for almost whole sessions at a time. This day I was probably only planing about 75% of the time, and I was working for it too. I had to pump through the holes and even make decisions to slog when I wasn't making good upwind progress on a plane.

I dropped a couple f-bombs. I begged and pleaded with the wind gods a bit. In my mind, I could hear the vocal whining of my inner-six-year old.

Then as I was going out for another run a pretty piece of swelly chop arose near my imaginary jibing mark. As I looked really closely, I could see my name written right across the face of it, and my social security number... strangely enough. I initiated my jibe with a drastic oversheet right across the face of the swell and ripped me right through on a full plane I flipped the sail and accelerated downwind out of the turn. A sudden catharsis found me.

Today might have been one of the most tame, boring days I had all year. But after that jibe I suddenly remembered something very important. This might have been the best day I had all year in previous years living as a land-locked east-coast working shlub. A year and a few months ago I would have thought "5.7? Tiny! 104L? Tiny! 15mph average? SWEET!"

Almost every day of sailing in the bay area is pretty equivalent to the best day of the year along my previous six years of windsurfing on the east coast.

Don't get me wrong, I had some really nice days on the east coast... Mostly in the Outer Banks. But my yearly or semi-annual treks to the OBX came up windless many times. Windy days would frequently happen during the middle of the week, and I lived over an hour from any decent windsurfing, when you factored in rush-hour traffic.

Now I can have the best session of the year almost every day.

1 Year in the Bay

Well folks, June 1st is the day I can celebrate my anniversary of moving to San Francisco. Overall, it's been awesome for me in terms of windsurfing. I'm I think in the last 365 days, I've easily had as much time on the water as I did the 6 years previous COMBINED while living on the east coast.

Crazy, eh?

I've been under the weather and haven't sailed much in the last couple weeks. Hopefully I'll be all better soon and ready to go after the rest of my 2009 goals...

Hope everyone is getting some! (wind)

English People are Tougher

Last week, I visited some friends in the UK who live in a place called Tynemouth which is just outside Newcastle. Northeast England is not exactly known as a windsurfing destination per se, but everything we had heard is that April is a pretty good month there and there are tons of spots with varying conditions. I figure what the hell, it's an excuse to check out a country I hadn't been to and visit some really cool people who I had met in Maui last October.

So the trip was booked. I would join Dave from Epic Sessions on a trip to visit our friend Chris Peacock. We would indulge in local food and drink (or at least I would, ha!) and try our hand at windsurfing in the North Sea (I can't think of a colder sounding body of water).

Perhaps I should write a culture piece about my experiences with the local Jordy culture and the ominous food choices including pickled eggs and "BEASTY HAGGIS", but for now I'll stick to the windsurfing.

The North Sea is cold. True story. While I had some really nice beach weather it seems that most of the good windsurfing comes along with some pretty bitter weather. I might be off here, but I can't remember a photo shoot in the UK with really sunny weather. Can someone correct me?

The good news? The features of England's coastline create a HUGE variety of incredible windsurfing conditions. When you look at an aerial map, you can see that the coastline has limitless variation to it. It looks like a fractal diagram from advanced algebra. There are tons of tidal inlets/wave setups, and places where you can get in behind the chompy zones of beautifully breaking waves.

Did I mention the incredible scenery? You find yourself windsurfing in front of rolling bright green hills and beautiful castles. You almost feel like some modern day viking battling the cold seas with ancient architecture right before your eyes. I managed to neither rape nor pillage, as I'm sure my readers will be glad to hear.

I certainly could not claim that I caught extremely epic conditions, but we did get one day of powered 6.3 (easily could have been 5.5) on some tasty sets of crumbling windswell in a spot called Beadnell Bay. Since we were sharing gear, we also pulled out a Naish SUP board with a 4.5 and split time riding that as well. It was unbelievably fun. We didn't have harness lines on that kit, so that was definitely robbing me of hand energy.

So now for my editorial regarding the title. Maybe I'm soft (ok, I'm definitely soft), but given the toughness of the weather, I have to tip my hat to those folks that live in cold places and windsurf. Canadians, Englishmen, Norwegians, heck, even those clowns from New York and the Great Lakes. I'm originally from Florida and I gotta say I don't think I ever would have gotten into windsurfing if I had lived in one of these colder locations.

Now that I've caught the bug, it all makes more sense. That said, I can't imagine having spent time putting on a dry suit or 5mm wetsuit to uphaul a windsurfer unsuccessfully over and over. I always tell people that the most important quality for learning windsurfing is persistence. If someone from a place like Northeastern England wants to windsurf, it's gonna take even more persistence... and a pair of weatherproof brass balls.

I'll tip back a terrible American ale for that bloke tonight!





I'll try to post up a few pics this weekend... off to Vegas!

SF Windsurfing + Blogging + City Life = FAIL

When I moved to SF, I thought to myself "why are there not many blogs about windsurfing in the bay area?".

There is tons of wind out here. There are tons of windsurfers out here. There are lots of creative/internetty types out here.

Then after about 10 months, I figured out why. People here windsurf a lot. They also work a lot. Then they have lots of friends too. All of these adds up to not a lot of free time for things like blogging.

I've taken some pictures and video lately, but just haven't had time to sit down and post any of it up. There was an amazing day at Crissy a couple Tuesday's ago where I sailed on my 3.8 fully powered. Pictures can be found here (and HEY! I'm in a few of them). I was on an eight-of-ten day streak and the wind died last weekend. It's finally picking up again. I learned how to duck-jibe. They aren't pretty, but they are mostly dry.

So yeah. Sorry for the lack of content. When I get injured or have some time, I'll just upload a bunch of crap and put it on here...