Andy Brandt Klinik

Last weekend I participated in my first ever ABK clinic and to be honest, I went in as a skeptic. I've learned how to waterstart/footstraps/plane with decent speed and even stay dry on some jibes without any formal instruction in my *cough* several years of sailing. In the past couple years I've stagnated at a sailor, but I would mainly attribute that to little time on the water and getting a bit too satisfied just tacking my way through life when I actually got out.

But I decided that this year was going to be different. I'm finished with my plateau and I'm going to get to that elusive "next level". I started a blog to document my trials and tribulations, opening myself to the sharp-tongued criticism of anonymous internet meanies. This year, I'm going to raise myself up to the level of mediocrity if it kills me. So I shelled out enough cash to buy a sail and took the class. We got really lucky with the wind (peaked at 20-25 every day) so I would have just paid for the wind if that's how it worked. So here's what I think about ABK:

Andy is really friggin' good at what he does. And he works his ass off. He's got the people thing down. He remembers names. He gives criticism without sounding like a jerk. The lectures were, surprisingly, not boring and sucky (and I've got serious ADD). Understanding the concepts behind the jibe actually made a big difference for me. Having someone on the water as you went through jibe attempts at first seemed like information overload, but it actually made a big difference in the end.

I actually planed out of a couple in the end, my carve and entry work a lot better now and I'm staying dry quite a bit. Overall, I think the camp was a huge success for me(granted we got really lucky with consistent wind... I might have killed someone if we had spent any more time doing lightwind freestyle). I would recommend ABK to anyone. I think it easily saved me a year in my jibing learning curve.

Also, on the last day I got to see Andy and Matt Case doing a freestyle session right next to the beach at the Hatteras Island Sail Shop. Loops, Spock 540s, willy skippers, and many more aerials I didn't recognize. It was pretty awesome to see and it definitely inspires me to suck less, which is always good.

This made me laugh...

The Office Windsurfer Blues

Today it's blowing 25 out of the NW, and it's sunny with blue skies and little puffy clouds here and there.

I've got 30 emails in my inbox that need replies, 10 quotes to complete, a stack of expense reports to do and a phone that is ringing every few minutes with another detail for me to attend to. Granted I work from home, so it could be a lot worse... and I live >30 minutes from a spot that's even a little sailable for this direction. Oh well... I'll be in the OBX Friday morning for a week. Hope I don't get skunked, or I'll be forced to burn down the building...

Brief "Wind"fest recap

I like to look at the windsurfing year as a predetermined number of sailable and unsailable that you could potentially windsurf. The wind gods have their annual meeting and Parcheesi tournament shortly after Christmas and they sit down with the list of everyone who is going to windsurf and assign a ratio to those people of the number of planing days they'll be awarded, in terms of a ratio. So they pull my file and determine that I'm going to get about a 2/7 chance of planing every time I could windsurf. Since the ratio is fixed before the year starts, I'm not too upset when I drive 6 hours down to Avon to watch my reflection on the sound. It just means I'm going to get some REAL wind on another day.

To the point: Windfest 2008 in Hatteras wasn't real windy this year. I had one good morning of 7.5 sailing, and other than that... it was a great weekend of beer-drinking and general good-weather revelry. Here are some unorganized bullet point observations:

1. Today is James Douglass' birthday. Everyone run over to his blog and wish him happy birthday. While everyone else was complaining about the lack of wind, James brought real live human females along and taught them how to windsurf. (!!!)

2. I met Mac, the Water Turtle, super nice guy... and coincidentally we work for the same company. I heard the Peconic Puffin was there at the same time, but his publicist didn't think hanging out with the other bloggers would be beneficial for his image. He'll be known as "Hollywood Puffin" from here on for the purposes of this blog...

3. The surf was 8-10 feet easily by the lighthouse. Pretty awesome out there. I brought my body board but chickened out of swimming out and enjoyed watching the local badasses show us how it's done.

4. Paul Richardson is a cool dude despite the fact that a 12 year-old girl can out-drink him.

5. WET is probably one of the coolest and most cohesive windsurfing clubs I've been around, and I've been around quite a few.

6. Stand-Up-Paddle boarding is actually really cool. A super nice guy let me take his out when the wind was calm and the water was super clear. It was a great workout, and overall a great experience. I've been looking at it skeptically from the outside for about a year, and now that I've tried it I "get it".

7. Despite my efforts, I didn't get to demo a single board. I found that pretty disappointing.

Formula Sailing is Hard

Yesterday I went to an informal windsurfing event thrown by BABA known as "the Burnt Weenie Boogie" or some such. It was such an awesome day... actually in the 60s and sunny in the afternoon. Definitely a nice change of pace. I put together a 10.9m^2 formula sail and took the formula board out for a tuning session. It was an asskicking... so much so that I skipped today (windier than yesterday) out of sheer wimpiness and exhaustion. James and Farrah gave me some really great tuning tips, and the going definitely got easier as the day went on and I figured out where the harness lines belong...

Here are the lessons I learned:

1. BABA throws a good party. Nice folks with great senses of humor. It's a like a family reunion without the awkwardness of anyone being related to you.
2. James is a super-nice dude. He's just as funny in person and the windsurfing community is lucky to have him. If he decided to start kiting, it would likely break the sailboard industry's back and cause widespread bankruptcy. If he decided to start riding jetskis, an asteroid would hit the earth and we'd all be toast.
3. Farrah Hall is fast. Really fast.
4. My harness lines need to be shortened and I really need to set up an adjustable outhaul.
5. A smoker's lung looks like a coffee filter.
6. I'm out of shape.
7. Windsurfing is a fun. Windsurfing with friends is beyond fun.

Busy Busy - Recap of March...

March kinda flew by and I didn't really have time to post anything. I was traveling for work and pleasure a whole bunch.

Some of the things I did:

1. Rode the cog train up to the top of Pike's Peak:

2. Snowboarded at Arapahoe Basin:



3. Went Skeet Shooting in Georgia (no pictures, but honest, it happened).

4. Went Windsurfing in the San Francisco Bay at Coyote Point. (also no pictures, but the chop was "wow!")

5. Sailed Formula Gear at Sandy Point near Annapolis. (I really oughta buy new batteries for my camera).

So it's been an intense, crazy month, but definitely a really fun one... Looking forward to spring getting started strong here in the mid-atlantic... and of course, Windfest.

I actually windsurf!

As evidenced by the picture below, I don't just blog about windsurfing... I actually DO windsurf on occasion, when I have free time to get away from my blog.
It was one of those days when I had a commitment, so of course it was a really windy morning. I didn't get out to Mason Neck until 2:30 in the afternoon and the wind was pretty dead. The occasional gusts were getting up to 20 so I decided to give my new wetsuit a try and rig my 5.2 just to get a feel for the cold water. The air temp was around 50 so I felt pretty safe even though there were no other windsurfers around. They probably caught it when the wind was good and took off.

As you can see, there was a lot of slogging and A LOT of glare. It was the kind of glare that's just excruciating. When everything lines up just perfectly and burns a hole in your optic nerve when you're on a particular tack. That was ok. Even though I missed most of the breeze, I was able to make a pretty chill day productive by testing out my wetsuit, boots and mittens. They all worked great, I was warm warm warm.


I even put my life vest on. Not really sure why, I thought the wind could be higher on the outside. I hate wearing a life jacket while windsurfing, it feels like it gets in the way of getting hooked in. I don't think it actually does, but I guess subconsciously I have a hard time getting hooked in when I can't see my hook (even if I'm not looking down).

Overall it was a good to get out. The last time I windsurfed was in Bonaire in the beginning of January. I completely goose-egged a very windy February while I was getting the pieces of my cold-weather gear together. I did manage to snowboard a couple times, so I guess I can't complain. I've now joined the ranks of "coldish" weather sailors, and I think I've expanded my season by another 4 months! The icing on the cake was seeing a bald eagle while I was de-rigging. She was probably looking to eat a puffin for lunch.


edit: my totally awesome and gorgeous girlfriend, Shauna, was responsible for the photographs contained in this blog. That's right, the one who I spent all morning helping to move.