Nuclear.

April is considered one of the most consistently windy months for the Bay Area, but it hasn't completely delivered on its reputation, thus far. Mostly light/marginal winds in between huge storms. I think in the last 30 days I've used my 5.3 in marginal conditions more than I had all of last season. It seems like I'm seeing more and more large slalom gear being used around here than I ever have before.

It's almost like we're in an extension of winter, with just as many , if not more storms than we saw during the normal "storm season" of November through February. Storm sailing can be a mixed bag, but yesterday was full-on power in Half Moon Bay.

Sunday morning was a big, nuking session.

I'm always hesitant to rig a sub 4m sail, because it's a sure way to kill the conditions, but yesterday it just built after I rigged my tiny 3.7. Fully sheeted-out survival planing in the gusts with a iddy biddy sail. One doesn't need to go fast to get air time, just scoot along, throw your gear forward into a ramp and "voila", you will be floating through the air for a few seconds. Sure, it's fun. Just a different kind of fun.

I long for the steady 4.2/4.7 April days of last year, but I'm a windsurfer. I'll take what I can get.

Thanks George for the video and graph capture!

Hey Beach Telegraph, Da News, Windsurfing Mag, etc etc

Link to this for heaven's sake!

http://videojibe.com/videos/the-grind/

My buddy Sofy (RRD) doing some freestyle on a lightwind day. He usually sails away from these Spocks, Vulcans, Flakas and Grubbies more consistently if he's powered.

NWS has an Attitude Problem

STRONG NORTHERLY WINDS WILL INCREASE TODAY THROUGH TONIGHT AS A STRONG PRESSURE GRADIENT DEVELOPS NEAR CAPE MENDOCINO. GALE WARNINGS HAVE BEEN POSTED FOR MOST OF THE NORTHERN AND CENTRAL CALIFORNIA WATERS. THE WINDS WILL SLOWLY SUBSIDE NEAR SHORE ON FRIDAY BUT STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE OUTER WATERS. WINDS WILL TURN SOUTHERLY ON SATURDAY AHEAD OF THE NEXT STORM WITH ANOTHER ROUND OF RAIN...STRONG WINDS AND BUILDING SEAS ON SUNDAY AS THE FRONT PASSES OVER THE REGION.





WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SCREAMING AT ME!!!??? JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH WIND THERE WILL BE!!!

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

I had to say goodbye to an old friend last week, my Fanatic Freewave 104. This was such an awesome board to progress on in the bay. Plenty of volume to slog to the wind lines, easy to handle in the chattery chop, a dream to jibe. I've moved on to using a dedicated freestyle board as my large board, but am happy to have found a good home for this old boy. I sold it to my friend Heidi, who is a member of the Cal Sailing Club. She and her son are going to share time on this vessel. I'm certain they are going to be able to progress the same way I did over the last two years.

I have mixed feelings about selling gear. On one hand, I always feel weird about attaching a monetary value to an object that has brought me great joy. On the other hand, I can't buy new toys until I have money and space. And finally, it seems selfish to hang on to gear that I no longer use when someone else in the world could be enjoying it.

Every end is a new beginning. My new big board is a Fanatic Skate 97. I'll share with you the details sometime soon, dear reader.

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.