Blast from the not-so-distant Past

Sergey of VideoJibe.com is one of those creative/technical types. He is both into the aesthetics of a shot and the science behind it. Usually when I make a video, I try to make sure I have batteries in the camera, try not to hold the dang thing too wobbly, and spend 90% of my editing time choosing my favorite soundtrack. Sergey innovates on how the camera is held or mounted, changes the camera every few weeks depending on his latest experiment, then meticulously edits the video before trying a myriad of video compression methods to best suit his taste.

This particular video has sections filmed with his custom mast-mount camera, seen below. The video was from last October.


Kevin Kan is riding in these shots. Kevin is just starting to get back on the water after elbow surgery.

This is a photo from his arthroscopic surgery. That drill bit was spinning around and removing windsurf-inhibiting pieces of bone from his right elbow. Kinda gross, but amazing at the same time what modern medicine can do.

I Pity the April Fool

I pity the fool who didn't sail yesterday in the San Francisco Bay. The sun was out. The wind was 4.7 to 5.5. The tide was ebbing. The tour boats were touring. Big rolling swell steamed across the bay, begging to be sliced and diced. The set up was as ideal as it gets, to me.
The above sailor, Fares, is a pretty amazing hardcore waterman. He sails Crissy any time there is a slight breath of wind, and he's happy to be the wind dummy basically all the time. Always the first one on the water. Here he is taking his new twin fin out for the first time.

The multi-fin boards were out in force. I'm really interested to see how they do on the bay. I'm fortunate to have ridden several multi-fin boards, but my jury is still out.

March Wrap Up: A Charmed Life.

I'm stealing a page from some of the other windsurfing bloggers abroad and trying to get a little better about gathering season/session data. My dream has always been to sail 100 days a year, and I'm not sure if I've ever done it. Last season, I found myself trying to find balance between work, life and windsurf. This year, I've got a bit of a renewed spark for windsurfing. I'm looking for that perfect imbalance of windsurfing, then everything else I have to deal with. It's not that I'm unhappy with the other parts of my life. Everything is going pretty dang well. I'm just at a stage where I can see a next level and a path to it, I just need to focus on it to get there.

Anyway, here is how my month of March went:

13 windsurfing sessions in which I achieved planing in the footstraps.
-2 sessions where I planed on 3 or less reaches.
5 days LOB Surfing (Lay On Belly).
3 days of snowboarding in Utah.

So all in all, I was doing some kind of boardsport on 21 of 31 days. Not too shabby.

A few sessions of significance were:

Sunday, March 8th: 5.3/97L, overpowered. Felt like the real season opener at Candlestick Park, and more than 20 sailors were on the water. The excitement was palpable and no one seemed to want to go home when it was over. I feel so fortunate to have so many windsurfing buddies to whoop and holler at, and share in post-windsurfing brag sessions.

Tuesday, March 9th: 4.2/86L. Coyote Point (the wind hath cometh day). A very chilly (by bay standards) day where the wind and water conditions were so good. Ramp after ramp stretched out across the bay as far as one could see. Sofy and Juan from the east bay showed up to freeze with us. Sergey took some video and caught this cool still frame of me getting a little chop hop.

If you go to his site and watch the video you'll see just how minor a jump it actually was. The other awesome thing about this session is that I got this year's loop monkey off my back. I went for about 10, but couldn't get a clean landing. There is still a lot of work to be done between "did loop" and "am a looper".

Saturday, March 13th: Brighton Ski Resort, Utah. I'm not huge into Snowboarding, but this was by far my best day ever. Snowed 1.5 feet throughout the day, and I rode from 9am until 8pm since they had slopes open for night skiing. It was the perfect kind of day to make some progress with riding powder, since it just got deeper and deeper as the day went on. The crowd seemed extremely light compared to my normal Tahoe fare.

Monday, March 22nd: 5.7/5.3 and 97L. 3 hour session of freestyle practice at Candlestick. Not frequently do I get a session this long. The hunger to make a Vulcan grew more and more this day.

Saturday, March 27th: Pacifica, CA Probably my best day ever of LOB surfing. The coast of Northern California often isn't beginner friendly, but this was the perfect kind of day. I probably caught more than 10 waves and my paddling rhythm and endurance really started feeling like it was coming together.

So there's my March wrap up. Lately it's really been setting in that I am an extremely lucky individual. Just a couple years ago this was me. March 2nd, 2008. The only thing that is the same is the wetsuit. This season I hope to harness that very same gung-ho attitude in my sailing and blogging.

Is hard the Vulcan?

Someone is ahead of me on this thing.

Vulcan't

(skip ahead to about 40 seconds in)


For better or for worse, I've decided to pursue the path of freestyle windsurfing. I'm using a dedicated freestyle board now, using words like "pop", and my ankles always have some level of pain or discomfort. The true entry level trick of New School freestyle is the Vulcan. The maneuver is an aerial 180 degree turn that, if performed properly, involves sliding backwards to a stop and continuing on in the opposite direction from whence you started.

It doesn't look all that hard or even particularly radical, but it's probably one of the most difficult things to learn in windsurfing. It's as humbling as anything I've ever tried. When you're practicing vulcans, you look like you're the worst rider on the water. You crash awkwardly over and over. The casual observer will firmly believe you are obviously the worst windsurfer they've ever seen (frequently true, in my case).

Still, it's an important step to get pretty much anywhere with "new school" freestyle as we know it today. The basis for a few more tricks involve initiating a vulcan, and the other "spinny" tricks involve some sort of twisting jump that ultimately ends in a slide. There's really no way to avoid it. Learning freestyle must begin with a trial-by-fire. A grueling period of many attempts and many failures. The mindset has to stay positive. "I will get there." "All this is temporary, the reward will be great."

On to the data. It is said that it takes 800-1000 attempts to land a windsurfing vulcan. Scary? Yes. If I do 25 per day, 4 times a week (a real possibility living in SF during windy season), then it will take me 8-10 weeks to potentially land a one of the suckers. That sounds less scary. I've put up with 7 years of being humiliated windsurfing, I'm sure I can stand 8-10 more weeks. The other huge thing working to my advantage is that I have many friends who can do a vulcan, are getting close to making a vulcan, or are in the same exact boat as me in pursuing this accomplishment. The freestyle scene here in the bay is thriving.

Here's my chart. I'll try to update it every couple of weeks, so you can track my progress. Wish me luck!

The Wind Hath Starteth

And Natureth hath returneth to orderth.

REJOICETH WITH MEETH!

Spring is Here?!

If yesterday didn't feel like a spring day, then I'm a pro windsurfer.

It was awesome. Well sorta. It was flooding pretty much everywhere so I ended up at Candlestick on a 4.7/97L combo. Lots of friends showed up to play in the warm air and cool water. I have been working on some new tricks, the kind that take a very, very long time to learn. I'll get into more detail on that one of these days. I've sailed 3 days in the last two weeks, which is pretty darn good, all things considered. This winter I think I've gotten about 5 planing windsurfing sessions, 15 LOS surfing sessions (Lay On Stomach), and 6 snowboarding sessions in Tahoe (snowy this year).

There is a lot of chatter about what "el niño" will mean to the West coast wind scene. Lots and lots of nay-sayers claiming it's going to be an awful wind season, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Who knows, maybe it will be even better and longer?