Sunday, May 29, 2011

DOUBLE SECRET COASTAL SPOT

This guy, he got an aerial, then tweaked it.

At the end of last month a few of my "flatwater sailing" buddies and I headed to a spot whose name I dare not reveal. I will tell you it rhymes with "Schmavenport Glandings". It was a month ago, so I don't remember very much about it. The pictures tell me that the waves were occasionally head high, it was sunny and a bunch of my friends made it out. I'm pretty sure this was the day I buckled my freewave 86.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Tubamania


One of the sort of legendary windsurfing spots in the bay area is called Tubamancha. It's a legend for a couple reasons:

1. It's difficult to get there.

2. The wind is more offshore and the wave rides are longer than anywhere else around here.

On Sunday, about 20 people made the 2 mile trek (or upwind sail) to the spot to sail the Point Reyes river mouth. Sail sizes were 3.7 to 4.7, with the people on the smaller sizes wavesailing more happily and the people on the larger sizes making the upwind journey much more happily. The waves were between waist and head high mostly, the wind was extremely offshore. The most difficult thing was staying on the wave you caught and not getting blown off the top (wind on the wave face felt like 40).

My sailing was underwhelming, but I still had fun. I was getting cramps from the long walk on my first time out so I had to take a long break. Fortunately I brought a 3.7 too (with much difficulty, since I don't own one of those sweet backpacks), which was nicer to sail. My amazing girlfriend took the hike with me and brought her nice camera into 30 knot sandblasting conditions. The beach there is no fun to hang out on when the wind is blowing that hard, but she hung like a champ!

Below are some of the photos she took, more are here.

Top photo caption: Derek Lueck wins best wipe out. We were all watching and it was a beautiful aerial until the wind ripped the sail out of his hands.

some of the crew
Crissy regular Peter draws a pretty line.

Jeff getting a little under the lip. I really like the way this photo looks

Kevin aerial.

Lee getting sandblasted.

Ants carrying pretzels.

Elliot skies one. Plenty of chances to jump if you had the stones.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The Punta San Carlos Video

These have been done many times with many awesome angles. Hope you enjoy mine.


We took like 50 gigs of video and this is what I came up with. Lots of awesome stuff from each rider didn't make the 6 minute version. If I had all the time in the world I would make each individual a yearbook of the waves they caught.

Hope you all enjoy watching it a hundredth the amount I enjoyed making it.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Windsurfing is Front Page News



If you're on this blog, you're probably pretty well-connected to windsurfing web content (because this is virtually the end-of -the-internet). So, it's probably not news to you that the American Windsurfing Tour has kicked off this weekend at a spot close to my home, Waddell Creek. I just got home from spectating on Friday and Saturday night and I've just been blown away by the level of sailing, the stoke in the air, and the efficiency the contest has been run with. Heat after heat, nearly all the single and double elimination has been completed on two consistently windy days save the Expert Men's Double.

This event has been great for the exposure of windsurfing. As you can see, Russ Faurot got the front page of the local paper with a beautiful backloop shot. The coastal highway that passes by Waddell gives thousands of people a front seat view of what high-level windsurfing is all about. As a person whose inspiration to learn windsurfing came from seeing a pro freestyle contest (Calema Midwinters 2001), I love to see a huge crowd of inspired people watching badass windsurfing.