I'm back. After 2 1/2 months off the water to heal my shoulder, I had my first session today. By any reasonable standard, it was just south of marginal - very flukey, gusty winds; temps hovering just above freezing (it started sleeting at the end), another failed glove experiment resulting in painfully frozen fingers, and the the wind started picking up with a vengeance and going completely offshore - so I was way overpowered on my formula gear on the outside, then struggling to make it back in through the big hole near shore. And the whole time, I had a big fat *$&#-eating grin on my face...
There's something about the sensation of windsurfing, skimming across the water, fast and weightless and effortless. It's been a long road; it's taken a lot of discipline to heal, train around the damage, stabilize the shoulder, and not give in too early and re-injure things. My PT told me that I had healed better and faster than I had any right to expect; he then grinned and added that being a little compulsive can come in handy sometimes...
It's good to be back. And if someone has any killer tips on gloves/mittens that actually work w/o cramping up your forearms or making it impossible to get a good grip on the boom, let me know.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Fast...
Dave White, previous holder of the production speed record (he just lost that to Patrik Diethelm), is setting up a speed event in South England - Driven By Wind uses a sheltered stretch of water behind a sandbar. He'll set up timing equipment. This creates some nice competition for the Masters of Speed on the ditch in Southern France (which gave us Finian's current outright record of 48..7 knots), and Martin van Meurs has already demonstrated the potential of the place by breaking 50 knots on the GPS over 100 meters. Finian is getting a worthy adversary to play with, as Antoine Albeau has already shown he can be fast on the ditch even in suboptimal conditions by posting 46.55 knots on his first day there (see news item for November 21 as the Masters of Speed site).
Meanwhile, the kiters are getting closer and closer to 50 knots (hey, they can run in three inches of water - that sure makes for smooth conditions...), and the big-budget contingent is hard at work as well. Hydroptere already has the nautical mile record and had just been reconfigured to break 50 knots over the required 500m distance. Macquarie Innovation looks downright low-budget compared to that (until, of course, you remember that their budget is still probably an order of magnitude higher than even Finian's).
While Driven by Wind and Masters of Speed use WSSRC-certified video timing, there's a whole community of windsurfers using GPS to challenge themselves and their mates all over the world, posting their tracks and speeds on http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/. And on the Maui Sails forum, there's some interesting discussion on the democratizing effect GPS has on speed, as well as what a nice competitive outlet it is for sailors all over the world. It's not ready for "official" records yet - there are some remaining precisions issues, and the GPS community operates on the honor system, with some rudimentary QA done on the data by the site administrators. But it's just a matter of time until someone builds a device that enables cheat-proof, high-precision tracks good enough to satisfy those outside the community, and lead to ratification by the WSSRC.
This winter sure seems like a good bet for breaking 50 knots - whether it be a windsurfer (most likely in my book), a boat, or a kiter. Long term, windsurfers are running into diminishing returns on speed gains - we'll probably have to come up with some innovations to defend the record against kites and boats, which seem to be on a steeper part of the learning curve. Ultimately, it's all good, though. Bragging rights vis-as-vis the kiters and sit-down-sailors are fun, but as long as people are inspired to go out and push themselves a little bit, it's all good.
The advent of GPS speedsailing, coming along at a time when there was finally a real push for records again, is creating energy that simply wasn't possible the first time speed was big. Sure, I remember the early days of speed, when windsurfers became the fastest sailing craft. Check Barry Spanier's account of those days to go down memory lane (or to marvel at it all if you weren't around the sport back then). And when 40 knots was broken, it was huge. But it wasn't as if people were going out and lining up on speed strips - the timing equipment was expensive, and it was impossible to cost-effectively run speed trials for the masses (the closest anyone ever came were probably the Gorge guys around Ken Winner's timing equipment and the 100m speed run on the Klickitat - Bruce has some great pictures of those runs on the wall in theSailworks loft).
Today, people are going nuts over GPS - and it's not just the dedicated speedsters. Anyone can go out on their slalom or freeride stuff and see how fast they can go. It's natural to want to see, and for anyone who's a bit competitive, it's a fun thing to do when there's nobody else around to compete with.
So strap on your GPS, point it deep, and send it - it's fun, and just like racing, it just might make your a better sailor in the process by giving you a reason to push yourself a bit. Plus whenever people see you come in from a session, they always ask the same question - "How fast can you go on that thing?" Showing them a GPS readout makes for a great conversation piece.
Meanwhile, the kiters are getting closer and closer to 50 knots (hey, they can run in three inches of water - that sure makes for smooth conditions...), and the big-budget contingent is hard at work as well. Hydroptere already has the nautical mile record and had just been reconfigured to break 50 knots over the required 500m distance. Macquarie Innovation looks downright low-budget compared to that (until, of course, you remember that their budget is still probably an order of magnitude higher than even Finian's).
While Driven by Wind and Masters of Speed use WSSRC-certified video timing, there's a whole community of windsurfers using GPS to challenge themselves and their mates all over the world, posting their tracks and speeds on http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/. And on the Maui Sails forum, there's some interesting discussion on the democratizing effect GPS has on speed, as well as what a nice competitive outlet it is for sailors all over the world. It's not ready for "official" records yet - there are some remaining precisions issues, and the GPS community operates on the honor system, with some rudimentary QA done on the data by the site administrators. But it's just a matter of time until someone builds a device that enables cheat-proof, high-precision tracks good enough to satisfy those outside the community, and lead to ratification by the WSSRC.
This winter sure seems like a good bet for breaking 50 knots - whether it be a windsurfer (most likely in my book), a boat, or a kiter. Long term, windsurfers are running into diminishing returns on speed gains - we'll probably have to come up with some innovations to defend the record against kites and boats, which seem to be on a steeper part of the learning curve. Ultimately, it's all good, though. Bragging rights vis-as-vis the kiters and sit-down-sailors are fun, but as long as people are inspired to go out and push themselves a little bit, it's all good.
The advent of GPS speedsailing, coming along at a time when there was finally a real push for records again, is creating energy that simply wasn't possible the first time speed was big. Sure, I remember the early days of speed, when windsurfers became the fastest sailing craft. Check Barry Spanier's account of those days to go down memory lane (or to marvel at it all if you weren't around the sport back then). And when 40 knots was broken, it was huge. But it wasn't as if people were going out and lining up on speed strips - the timing equipment was expensive, and it was impossible to cost-effectively run speed trials for the masses (the closest anyone ever came were probably the Gorge guys around Ken Winner's timing equipment and the 100m speed run on the Klickitat - Bruce has some great pictures of those runs on the wall in theSailworks loft).
Today, people are going nuts over GPS - and it's not just the dedicated speedsters. Anyone can go out on their slalom or freeride stuff and see how fast they can go. It's natural to want to see, and for anyone who's a bit competitive, it's a fun thing to do when there's nobody else around to compete with.
So strap on your GPS, point it deep, and send it - it's fun, and just like racing, it just might make your a better sailor in the process by giving you a reason to push yourself a bit. Plus whenever people see you come in from a session, they always ask the same question - "How fast can you go on that thing?" Showing them a GPS readout makes for a great conversation piece.
Monday, December 3, 2007
FW Worlds - lessons from Antoine's Domination
The FW Worlds just concluded in Brazil, and the results speak for themselves. I think it's fair to say that Antoine Albeau pretty much dominated the event. If you look through the reports linked from the Formula Windsurfing website, and you watch some of the videos available through those links, or read some of Dennis Littel's or Steve Bodner's commentary, you'll again and again find comments to the extent that Antoine was just flying - comments made even by people like Gonzalo and Wojtek.
So what happened here? I think the short version is that Antoine is just a force. I raced the 2003 Midwinters in Florida, where he was using a crappy board (an outdated AHD design) in super light air (I was barely powered most of the time on my 12.5, and he was probably at least 20 pounds heavier than me at the time). He won that event, in front of people like Kevin Pritchard and Wojtek B. (who, if I remember correctly, was the reigning world champ at the time). He's been doing great in formula racing even in light air events like the 2006 Europeans and 2006 Worlds - both events extremely sketchy windwise, putting a heavy sailor at a severe disadvantage.
So Brazil served up some conditions you'd consider to be more to his liking - but it wasn't San Francisco style survival FW sailing. If you read Steve Bodner's reports, he rarely got into powered up 9.9 territory. Antoine was still using the 12.5 for most of the regatta. And he just took off on the fleet. He threw out a third, and his next throwout would have been a second. If he hadn't raced at all the last day, he still would have won - yet he came out and competed fiercely that day.
Prior to the Worlds, Windsurf Journal had an article that mentioned they witnessed Antoine testing a stack of something like 30 Deboichet formula fins in preparation for the event (not archived, it seems, so I can't provide a direct link). Is that's what's going on? Did the guy just out-fin everyone? Doubtful - for sure, he probably was the most tuned up, and he probably had some very fast fins that no one else had (that's the perk when you do fin development with the maker). But the top 10 were all on Deboichet or Kashy custom fins, most of which are truly custom and would be hard to come by for any of us (consistency and reproducibility of wet lay up-molded fins is a whole other topic, and one of the reasons I'm so stoked about working with Dave Lassila of Finworks...).
And sure, as the lead racer guy for NP, his NP's were probably more tweaked than anyone else's - but again, none of the top guys would have a hard time getting support from their sailmakers to get their sails to be exactly what they want them to be. That's certainly true of Steve Allen (a former world champ himself, and leading the pack charging after Antoine in this championship).
So some long-distance analysis can't really get stuck on gear - that's part of it, but it's a tuning thing more than the availability of magic silver bullets. And it can't get stuck on his size - as it wasn't THAT windy (Wilhelm Schurman, winner of the lightweight division, can be seen in some pics and videos using an 11.8 on one of the days - a day when Antoine got three bullets). And then you look at the fact that the guy fully dominated PWA slalom racing this year. And you have to take note that, on his first day ever on the Masters' of Speed canal in Southern France, he went over 46 knots in suboptimal conditions - and then goes on to say in the interview that he likes the speed 'racing' format better b/c it's more intense - I think we're starting to understand what's happening here.
Antoine has a lot of stuff going for him (or is making a lot of stuff happening for himself, more likely...). He's clearly incredibly talented. He's physically strong. He's well prepared and tuned. He's got a ton of experience. And, as can be seen from that comment about intensity after the speed thing (as if going 46+ knots wasn't intense in and of itself...), he's very much a competitor at heart (hey, the guy didn't sit out heats or events he didn't need to sail to keep his overall wins - why risk injury or equipment damage unless you're in it to compete, rather than "just" to win?).
But there's something else here - most competitors play to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Few seem to be able to convert weaknesses to strengths. There's nothing more logical than for a big sailor like Antoine to always sail larger gear than his opponents - reduce your weakness (that whole light air/heavy sailor physics handicap), and maximize your strength (take advantage of your ability to control big stuff when the breeze picks up). And most of them do it. But it seems like he's managed to do it to an extent that's truly astonishing - check out the gear registration for the event. This place is known to be windy. Like Albeau, Wojtek registered a 12.5. Unlike Albeau, he then went to 10.7 and 9.0 from there. Albeau went to 11.8 and registered 10.7 as his smallest sail.
That was more pronounced in the 2007 PWA slalom events (unfortunately, they don't seem to archive the gear registration pages for those events, so I'm going from memory here) - throughout the season, Albeau would register bigger sails and boards than both Dunkerbeck and Micah Buzianis in pretty much each and every event. Both of those guys are first rate slalom contenders, and the same size as Antoine. Yet they consistently chose smaller gear - probably to "insure" against epic conditions that would enable them to get on smaller gear when things picked up, and then use their size and leverage for out-of-this-world straight line speed. That used to clearly be Dunkerbeck's game plan (and if memory serves, he dominated the World Cup that way for a long time). Antoine has found a way to tweak control over his big gear when it gets gnarly to where he doesn't have a speed disadvantage, while also having ample power in the holes - and he dominates with it.
What's all that got to do with the average sailor, you ask? Nothing really - after all, these are racers, and we all know that racers are a different breed, right? Except, how many people do you see in your spot who always seem to be rigged for their strengths? If you look at big sailors vs. small sailors, you often find that the smaller guys are on relatively big gear, while the big guys are on relatively small gear - meaning the gear-size-gap between people of different size isn't nearly as big as you'd expect (and is it would need to be to equalize planing and control thresholds).
It's almost as if the big guys are so ecstatic when things go ballistic and they're the only ones able to hang on, they live for those moments and generally discount the misery that comes from too-small gear during the rest of their sessions. Conversely, you've got all those light sailors who are always the first to plane, and who seem to be using relatively large gear - as though they're so hooked to planing by a bunch of people slogging that they couldn't care less about getting blown off the water when it picks up.
In many ways, that kind of behavior is pretty natural - we all have our identity, and whatever confirms us in that seems to be accepted. If you're a big guy and you get blown off the water because you rig big, maybe it's not that conducive to your self image. Maybe a little guy can't stand the thought of some heavy sailor planing just as early. So you go out and play to your strength, and just completely write off the other side of the spectrum - after all, a negative outcome on that end is easily explained and involves no loss of self-esteem ("sure, I was bobbing while everyone else was planing, but hey, they're all pencil-necks...").
I've succumbed to this, as well. Check out this race report I did after the US Nationals long-distance day. You'll note that I seem to just accept the fact that I was under-powered, anticipating big breeze at the bottom of the course. Well, the other guys (especially the lighter ones) clearly were more appropriately rigged. But for a big guy, saying "I was under-powered" is pretty painless (hey, it's the wind after all). Admitting that I chickened out on rigging big (a risk a bunch of lighter competitors who were on the same size gear as me were willing to take) apparently didn't come to mind.
If that all seems like a bunch of psycho-babble, think again. Game theory has confirmed people's tendency to err towards things that confirm their bias, even if "objectively" they are creating suboptimal outcomes for themselves. Antoine seems to have broken through that - he's apparently confident that he won't get blown off the water even with bigger gear unless the whole fleet suffers the same fate. And in return, he's denying the lighter guys their light-air advantage.
So put that on the to-do list for maximizing your racing outcomes (or just having more fun on the water) - along with skill, determination, training, tuning, ....
So what happened here? I think the short version is that Antoine is just a force. I raced the 2003 Midwinters in Florida, where he was using a crappy board (an outdated AHD design) in super light air (I was barely powered most of the time on my 12.5, and he was probably at least 20 pounds heavier than me at the time). He won that event, in front of people like Kevin Pritchard and Wojtek B. (who, if I remember correctly, was the reigning world champ at the time). He's been doing great in formula racing even in light air events like the 2006 Europeans and 2006 Worlds - both events extremely sketchy windwise, putting a heavy sailor at a severe disadvantage.
So Brazil served up some conditions you'd consider to be more to his liking - but it wasn't San Francisco style survival FW sailing. If you read Steve Bodner's reports, he rarely got into powered up 9.9 territory. Antoine was still using the 12.5 for most of the regatta. And he just took off on the fleet. He threw out a third, and his next throwout would have been a second. If he hadn't raced at all the last day, he still would have won - yet he came out and competed fiercely that day.
Prior to the Worlds, Windsurf Journal had an article that mentioned they witnessed Antoine testing a stack of something like 30 Deboichet formula fins in preparation for the event (not archived, it seems, so I can't provide a direct link). Is that's what's going on? Did the guy just out-fin everyone? Doubtful - for sure, he probably was the most tuned up, and he probably had some very fast fins that no one else had (that's the perk when you do fin development with the maker). But the top 10 were all on Deboichet or Kashy custom fins, most of which are truly custom and would be hard to come by for any of us (consistency and reproducibility of wet lay up-molded fins is a whole other topic, and one of the reasons I'm so stoked about working with Dave Lassila of Finworks...).
And sure, as the lead racer guy for NP, his NP's were probably more tweaked than anyone else's - but again, none of the top guys would have a hard time getting support from their sailmakers to get their sails to be exactly what they want them to be. That's certainly true of Steve Allen (a former world champ himself, and leading the pack charging after Antoine in this championship).
So some long-distance analysis can't really get stuck on gear - that's part of it, but it's a tuning thing more than the availability of magic silver bullets. And it can't get stuck on his size - as it wasn't THAT windy (Wilhelm Schurman, winner of the lightweight division, can be seen in some pics and videos using an 11.8 on one of the days - a day when Antoine got three bullets). And then you look at the fact that the guy fully dominated PWA slalom racing this year. And you have to take note that, on his first day ever on the Masters' of Speed canal in Southern France, he went over 46 knots in suboptimal conditions - and then goes on to say in the interview that he likes the speed 'racing' format better b/c it's more intense - I think we're starting to understand what's happening here.
Antoine has a lot of stuff going for him (or is making a lot of stuff happening for himself, more likely...). He's clearly incredibly talented. He's physically strong. He's well prepared and tuned. He's got a ton of experience. And, as can be seen from that comment about intensity after the speed thing (as if going 46+ knots wasn't intense in and of itself...), he's very much a competitor at heart (hey, the guy didn't sit out heats or events he didn't need to sail to keep his overall wins - why risk injury or equipment damage unless you're in it to compete, rather than "just" to win?).
But there's something else here - most competitors play to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Few seem to be able to convert weaknesses to strengths. There's nothing more logical than for a big sailor like Antoine to always sail larger gear than his opponents - reduce your weakness (that whole light air/heavy sailor physics handicap), and maximize your strength (take advantage of your ability to control big stuff when the breeze picks up). And most of them do it. But it seems like he's managed to do it to an extent that's truly astonishing - check out the gear registration for the event. This place is known to be windy. Like Albeau, Wojtek registered a 12.5. Unlike Albeau, he then went to 10.7 and 9.0 from there. Albeau went to 11.8 and registered 10.7 as his smallest sail.
That was more pronounced in the 2007 PWA slalom events (unfortunately, they don't seem to archive the gear registration pages for those events, so I'm going from memory here) - throughout the season, Albeau would register bigger sails and boards than both Dunkerbeck and Micah Buzianis in pretty much each and every event. Both of those guys are first rate slalom contenders, and the same size as Antoine. Yet they consistently chose smaller gear - probably to "insure" against epic conditions that would enable them to get on smaller gear when things picked up, and then use their size and leverage for out-of-this-world straight line speed. That used to clearly be Dunkerbeck's game plan (and if memory serves, he dominated the World Cup that way for a long time). Antoine has found a way to tweak control over his big gear when it gets gnarly to where he doesn't have a speed disadvantage, while also having ample power in the holes - and he dominates with it.
What's all that got to do with the average sailor, you ask? Nothing really - after all, these are racers, and we all know that racers are a different breed, right? Except, how many people do you see in your spot who always seem to be rigged for their strengths? If you look at big sailors vs. small sailors, you often find that the smaller guys are on relatively big gear, while the big guys are on relatively small gear - meaning the gear-size-gap between people of different size isn't nearly as big as you'd expect (and is it would need to be to equalize planing and control thresholds).
It's almost as if the big guys are so ecstatic when things go ballistic and they're the only ones able to hang on, they live for those moments and generally discount the misery that comes from too-small gear during the rest of their sessions. Conversely, you've got all those light sailors who are always the first to plane, and who seem to be using relatively large gear - as though they're so hooked to planing by a bunch of people slogging that they couldn't care less about getting blown off the water when it picks up.
In many ways, that kind of behavior is pretty natural - we all have our identity, and whatever confirms us in that seems to be accepted. If you're a big guy and you get blown off the water because you rig big, maybe it's not that conducive to your self image. Maybe a little guy can't stand the thought of some heavy sailor planing just as early. So you go out and play to your strength, and just completely write off the other side of the spectrum - after all, a negative outcome on that end is easily explained and involves no loss of self-esteem ("sure, I was bobbing while everyone else was planing, but hey, they're all pencil-necks...").
I've succumbed to this, as well. Check out this race report I did after the US Nationals long-distance day. You'll note that I seem to just accept the fact that I was under-powered, anticipating big breeze at the bottom of the course. Well, the other guys (especially the lighter ones) clearly were more appropriately rigged. But for a big guy, saying "I was under-powered" is pretty painless (hey, it's the wind after all). Admitting that I chickened out on rigging big (a risk a bunch of lighter competitors who were on the same size gear as me were willing to take) apparently didn't come to mind.
If that all seems like a bunch of psycho-babble, think again. Game theory has confirmed people's tendency to err towards things that confirm their bias, even if "objectively" they are creating suboptimal outcomes for themselves. Antoine seems to have broken through that - he's apparently confident that he won't get blown off the water even with bigger gear unless the whole fleet suffers the same fate. And in return, he's denying the lighter guys their light-air advantage.
So put that on the to-do list for maximizing your racing outcomes (or just having more fun on the water) - along with skill, determination, training, tuning, ....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
