The Catapult Gives Thanks for his Stuff

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time to take stock in the intangible things that make your life good. The health of your family members, the happiness that the people in your life are bringing to you,the successes of your job. I'm not going to go into all that. I'm going to give thanks for my new windsurfing toy. A cargo van I bought last week. It's flippin' sweet!

The guy who had it before me was also a windsurfer and had spent a lot of time and money making it a near perfect windsurf-bum van. It has an elevated platform with enough room for a queen-sized inflatable mattress, a bunch of gear compartments below. It has special places to put sails, a well thought-out board rack, insulated walls, dark tinted windows, a boom rack. It has a bunch of nifty compartments above the driver's seat for various knick-knacks. This van is completely ready for me to some day slip off the map and spend a couple months someplace windy, just bumming around and sailing.



People who know me are aware that I'm not a very detail-oriented person. I don't particularly care to undertake large projects. I'm not terribly handy. Getting a windsurfing van where someone already thought through all the little details is HUGE. I probably would have bought a van, never installed racks and just shoved boards and gear in there forever.

So this Thanksgiving, I hope all of you get time with your families and eat a lot of food. I hope you take a moment to feel grateful for all the important things in life. But this year, maybe give thanks for all your cool toys too.

Fort Point Surfing Video

This is the first time I've ever filmed anything, so I apologize for any and all problems associated with motion sickness, or general nausea induced by a poorly edited video.

This is a break that works on a NW swell that's in a pretty amazing location right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. The views there are incredible, the surf is pretty nice, and the weather on this particular day was amazing. I've heard this spot is particularly "locals only" ish. Makes sense since there were like 30 surfers out there competing for not-that-many waves.>

Beautiful, but not windy weather here in the city this weekend. Hope everyone has a good one!

Last Sunday -- 5 days too late

Work has been hectic out here, which is good since the wind isn't great this time of year. So I can focus on making money when the wind is bad -- pretty ideal.

Last Sunday was like Christmas in November in the bay area. In the morning I got a nice hour sail in at Coyote Point with my 5.7 and 104L board. I was the only one on the water, and it was perfect ebbing conditions. I guess all the windsurfers out here are religious folk who were at church or alcoholics who couldn't recover from their hangovers fast enough. It was an awesome morning session that felt like a summer afternoon (albeit slightly colder).

I went home and took a short nap and woke up to find the wind meters up again! I drove down to 3rd avenue this time to find sweet 5.0/86L conditions on another nice ebb. Every time I've sailed here, I've been a little disappointed because normally the windline is a mile slog away, or I'm just not powered up enough. This was not the case on Sunday. I got a nice 2 hours sail in some chest-high swell with lots of backside chop rides and jumping ramps abound.

So a fun 2-session day in November (aka take-what-you-can-get-month). Where as multi-session days seem to be common on the east coast, they aren't as common in the bay area. Usually during windy season, you get one session a day in the afternoon. The exception to this rule is obviously the Sherman Island area that is about 1.5 hours away.

I hear mumbling about the cold, but I've been warm to hot in my 5/3 wetsuit with no gloves or booties.

Stay tuned... I think I'm buying a new toy to brag about here this weekend. :-)

Storm Sailing

Monday brought my first chance to sail a storm in the bay area. Actually, the Half Moon Bay Area to be exact. A southerly wind was coming, so this spot was the call. It's about 30 minutes south of San Francisco and the sailing area is protected by a jetty (the outside looked super super ugly, but I've heard people sail it). The wind was really gusty. One of those days when you know it's going to be good and bad, so you just rig your favorite sail. I went with my 4.4. It wasn't quite 3.8 weather, but a 4.0 or 4.2 would have been ideal.

I went from slightly-powered to butt-over-powered to oh-my-God-I-am-heartly-sorry-for-having-offended-thee-powered. It was a lot of fun, I got some good work in on practicing overpowered jibes. Also, the rain squalls were like needles on your face. Sailing with one eye is super difficult since you lose your depth perception, so I was forcing my front-hand-eye to open up every 3 seconds. It's a lot like sailing blind, you just have to trust your feel for the gusts rather than seeing them coming. The water was pretty choppy despite the jetty. Sometimes when the rain was really coming down, the water would flatten out because the rain would batter all the chop down. Really crazy.

The spot itself is kinda spooky to me. You sail through a mooring area full of sailboats that look like they're 50 years old and likely have crazy old fishermen living aboard. There's an old beat up dock with a building painted a color that could only be achieved through with the chemical properties of lead.

Oh and the drive between Half-Moon-Bay and Pacifica is probably the most beautiful I've ever been on... plus the rain had subsided and the sun was setting --a truly spectacular way to end the day.

I know, no pictures again. I suck.

Eff Crissy

There. I said it.

After once again driving to a few promising spots where the wind died, I end up at Crissy just to check things out. The meter was reading 18, but it can be much windier than the sensor reports. People were rigging pretty big, so I put together my big kit: a 5.7 and a 104L board. It started to look pretty windy on the outside, but it was hard to tell for sure, since there was a pretty healthy 4 knot ebb going.

I went out and had a few reaches perfectly powered up. Didn't miss a jibe or a tack. I was really feeling it.  At one moment I remember thinking "Best. Crissy. Day. Ever!!!" On one of my reaches heading toward the beach, I felt myself cross the wind line so I jibed to head back out to find wind. This was my first mistake. About 200 yards ahead I saw a couple guys slogging in the spot that had the most wind. It took me a few minutes, but I realized that we weren't in a lull. The wind was done. kaput. sayonara. hasta la vista. I tacked and started slogging back toward shore.

When I started my long slog home, I was probably half way across the bridge. The wind was about 8. The swelly stuff was challenging, but I was doing fine because there was some power in the sail to counterbalance. Then the wind dropped down to 0-4 knots. The bumps all the sudden became a lot more challenging. A big tour boat cruised right past a few of us struggling, full of tourists, excited to see us get completely beat up by it's wake. We went down like 1 - 2 - 3  as the boat passed, it must have been pretty comical.

The next 45 minutes or so, I was in uphaul hell. It really was a throwback to those first 10 windsurfing sessions.  Every time I was able to get the sail up, I had no power to move forward or even balance. The ebb was bringing me toward the Golden Gate Bridge with pretty good speed. I started feeling pretty unconfident about getting home, and jumping in to swim didn't seem like a great idea since I didn't think I was going to be able to beat the current. So I continued to slog/fall/uphaul. I was getting pretty tired, and I had forgotten to bring my thick wetsuit, so I was getting a little worried since it was a chilly day. After a few moments on the verge of panic I rested, turned around and saw the bay littered with kites. Ok, if I have to get rescued, a bunch of others will as well.

So I made it in eventually, about 200 yards upwind of where I launched. The guys who got picked up by the coast guard got to the parking lot at the same time, but I was happy to get home mostly under sail power.  The scariest thing that happened was a couple of huge sea lions popping up 10 feet from my board when I was teetering along. I don't know much about these creatures, but I found out that they have pretty big teeth right then. Toward the end my calf muscles started to cramp up and I was falling in all over the place. One of these days I'm going to get on a stretching routine before I sail. It really would have helped out today. I swam the last 100 yards or so, when I got to the no-wind-zone behind the bridge.

And so there you have it. Another shitty day at Crissy. Why do people love this place again?

Lesson #2934 -- Don't sail Haskins on a Low Tide

This time of year, you take what you can get with the wind. You chase it, you scrape for it, you slog much more than you would typically be willing to slog. Yesterday the wind came up for the first time in a week. First I checked out Crissy -- the wind was light and there was a huge Laser regatta right next to the beach. I then looked at the local wind meters -- TI looked good, but you can never be sure if people are going to show up this late in the season and it's a sketchy launch, especially for solo sailing. Candlestick looked good so I drove down that way. As I drove by, the conditions looked ideal for the Stick, but unfortunately I couldn't park because the 49'ers were playing a home game.

So I drove down to Haskins. It was full of whitecaps, which is an excellent sign there. The tide was going out, but it looked like there was enough water to launch. Another windsurfer showed up and we rigged up. I was on a 4.4 and my big board -- probably should have gone with the 5.0. When we got ready to launch, there was even less water, I walked about 50 feet into the knee deep mud and decided that this was probably a bad idea. The other guy coaxed me into giving it a shot. We ended up hiking about 50 yards to get to deep enough water through the thick mud. The wind was actually pretty nice. I could plane the whole time, but not very much upwind. I hit a couple of my best jibes ever, but ended up way downwind.

We started to realize that even way out we were running out of water, so I turned back to go in. After getting upwind, I ended up walking through about 300 yards of knee to waste deep mud. A couple of times I had to belly crawl out of holes that my feet were stuck in. It took a lot of effort, and my heart was pounding. There was one moment when I doubted my ability to get through the goop. If I stopped to rest, I would just sink deeper and deeper into the sludge. Eventually I made it back, and thanked my lucky stars.

Was it worth it? Almost getting swallowed up by the bay just for a couple hours of windsurfing? You're damn right it was.

A Not-Windy Week

Those bastards on the east coast are stealing our wind!!!!

hah -- but seriously I had about 10 minutes of planing on Monday on a 4.4 and 97 liter board on the superflat water at Haskins (my spellchecker doesn't know crap either because everyone knows superflat is a real word). It was actually mildly fun. It was really nice beach weather though... in the 70s and 80s. 

I need to buck up and buy a surf board already -- I work 15 minutes from an excellent spot to learn. The problem now is that I will only be able to travel with 1 surfboard and 1 windsurf board. Do I choose to bring the 86 or the 104? I really want to avoid getting a cargo van -- I really do, but life just keeps pushing me in that direction...

Glad to see my summer-windstarved buddies feasting these days! Keep the content up -- I'm getting set up to deliver more multi-media next season!