More windsurfing adventures
To my dismay I still don’t have a decent picture of me, or the windsurfing board. Sunday turned out to be an interesting windsurfing day. The wind was blowing and partly gusty. The lake was also churned up with 1 – 2′ waves. Getting up wasn’t a problem but I found it hard to move. I think most of the momentum was being snatched away by the waves.
I loosened the rope holding the sail to the boom. It made more of a pocket for the wind to blow over. This helped a lot but made it harder to snap the sail when I wanted to reverse course.
The strong wind also gave me some practice going down wind. Unfortunately the waves made it very VERY hard to steady the board, even with the dagger fin down.
This outing taught me that a consistent wind is better than a gusty wind and that waves over 2′ aren’t any fun.
Walk around..
Tried to get out again today to windsurf but the wind died down before we could get the board in the water. A storm front was moving through and we were experiencing the calm before the storm.
With the board rigged and no where to go I had some time to fiddle with walking the sail around the board. After doing this a couple times I think my problem yesterday trying to sail with the wind was my feet were too far apart from the mast. I’ll have to wait until another time to try it out though. :(
Wind surfing part two…
Part one was never written. In a nutshell the situation is this. Over the 4th of July weekend I was introduced to windsurfing by some friends. The experience was exhilarating considering the limited wind and training.
This weekend I made it out again only the weather was better. The lake was fairly flat and the breeze was coming from the west. It gusted occasionally and there were a couple times where I was really moving along. Up hauling and steading myself don’t seem to be a problem anymore. I had some good runs tacking into the wind in either direction. The real problem I faced was sailing away from the wind back to my starting point. I tried until the point of frustration trying to get the sail position and the balance down. I’m not sure yet what the missing part is.
Sorry, no pictures worth showing. But if you want, check out these YouTube clips.
Sorry, one more just to push the limits.