2010 Blowout

An interesting one. Good breeze at Stevenson, so I rigged my Exo 71 and 8.2 NXsl. Bruce was going slalom as well, as were MacRae and Jay Salzman. Jay Watermeyer was going slalom with an 8.5 Retro, and Sean Williams and Aaron Cardwell went formula. As we watched the conditions fill in some more, MacRae and I commented about how either we or the juniors were making a mistake here, as it seemed they were rigging awfully big...

Blasting around to warm up/tune up, the gear felt great; maybe the 40 fin was a touch small to track off the breeze. Then, after a jibe, I hit a plastic bag, went over the bars, and ended up putting a hole through my sail. Luckily, Bruce was able to help me out with a loaner 8.2, so I still got on the water in plenty of time for the start. Phew.

Start didn't go off until 11.15, which was worrisome - but the breeze held at Stevenson, and it was a really nice ride all the way to the narrows. Bruce was leading; MacRae and I were fighting it out for 2nd position at this point. Fun ride.

Coming up to the Narrows, it got light, but we were still planing. And all of a sudden, there was Jay Watermeyer, showing good speed and, through the lulls, passing both MacRae and me and catching up with Bruce. Looked like he made the right call at this point - but surely, once we got to Viento, things would become interesting. Except, they didn't - there was some slogging through the Narrows, then a bit of breeze coming into Viento, and then the wind just died. At this point, Bruce and Jay were up front catching the occasional remainder puff, MacRae and I were slogging and falling further behind them, and Aaron and Sean were catching up on their formula stuff. The next 40 minutes or so were character-building, as there was hardly any breeze, interspersed with the occasional lucky puff that would shuffle the standings a bit. At times, MacRae and I were less then 200' from each other, with one of us able to pump onto a plane and the other just dead in the water. Aaron and Sean slowly passed at this point, and as the little puffs allowed them to plane up sooner and milk it longer on their big gear, they soon dropped us.

Finally, we make it to the corridor, and the breeze fills in from downriver (as I see Bill C. approach from behind, with a whole host of sailors at his tail). I'm lucky to catch it before MacRae, who's a little further to the OR side at this point, and get to ride it from there. At this point, one of the aluminum clamps on my front boom end shears off as I pump out of a jibe; the boom gets a bit wobbly but seems to hold - so from now on the mantra is to sail smoothly.

The conditions cooperate with that - it's breezy enough to maintain a plane, but things are really tame, so no undue stress is put on my boom. I ride the rather weakish breeze down the corridor to the Event Site, reeling in Sean but not Aaron, and breathe a sigh of relief to make it down there without the boom giving in (phew again), finishing fourth overall, 2nd Master, in 1.52.24. Almost 50 minutes slower than last year - yep, that was about the amount of time spent slogging and doing the hula, pumping like made for every little puff. At the start, I was joking with some of the SUP racers (who did the course from Viento) that they should look into putting sails on those boards, since it made the whole thing a lot easier. In the end, given all the pumping, there were times when SUP'ing would have seemed like the easier way to go ;)

Results at the VMG web site - I'll post a link to pictures as they become available. Overall, I'm pretty stoked with this year's race. Kudos to our juniors - three of them finishing in the top 5. Jay, Aaron and Sean all made smart gear picks (and didn't let the choices made by Bruce, me, or MacRae influence their decisions). Then they proceeded to sail really well, definitely earning their top finishes. Way to go, guys - time to drop the junior classification and sail in the men's fleet!

Speaking of juniors - the younger Juniors starting at Viento sure had a rough time of it. It was windy there until just before Bruce came through to lead off their rabbit start - and then it died on them with a vengeance. They had all rigged for the expected windy conditions in the corridor, so they certainly had their work cut out for them. Way to stick it out - they all showed a lot of perseverance that day.

Honorable mention for the most impressive finish to Pieter and Chris, who went on a Gemini tandem. As they were planing through the finish line, they entertained the beach (fully packed - it was Windfest) with a well-choreographed dismount. Nice crash, guys - I haven't sailed a tandem since the 80's, but seeing the front sailor taken out by the rear rig like that sure brought back some memories.

Winner of the day, however, was Dale Cook, whose baby daughter was born that morning - congrats Sonya and Dale, and welcome Bella!

Blowout - results are up

Results are up at the VMG Site. Note Tyson Poor in 5th and Casey Hauser in 7th. Note also Mark Dix in 6th - on a ten year old sail and a probably 15 year old board. So, what's your excuse, since "I'm not a racer, I do freestyle" and "I only have old gear" obviously won't fly anymore ;)

Thanks to Arnaud Lepert for the picture - this one's actually from the Blowout. I think that's at Viento, mid-jibe (that's the only required mark rounding between Stevenson and the Event Site - so the whole "I don't do courses" doesn't count either...). Dear sponsors, please note the prominent display of the distinctive black Exocet board, as well as the Sailworks, Finworks, and 2ndWind logos ;).

2009 Gorge Blowout

What a fun race - normally, the Blowout is known as an epic downwinder from Stevenson to the Event Site. That's roughly 17 miles upriver, and since there often is pretty light breeze in Stevenson, and there often are big holes in the wind around the Narrows (just west of Viento), you usually end up massively overpowered once you hit the corridor east of Viento on whatever gear you had to choose to make it through those light places.

This year, conditions were more even - or maybe it only seemed that way, given the incredible range of the gear I was using. Last year, I had serious gear envy; Dale and I had both been running formula gear (Dale on 9.1, I on 9.9), and Bruce, rigging away from the crowd, surprised us on the start line with his big slalom board and 8.2, then proceeded to sneak through the light spots, leave me behind like I was standing still in the windy corridor and almost got Dale. This year, with my Warp Slalom 71 and 8.2 NXsl, with a 42cm Finworks slalom pro, I was properly equipped to overcome that gear envy - and I was amazed at how well this setup was doing compared to the formula gear near the start (where I had to milk it a bit and pump some to battle for clean lanes) - but once it filled in a bit, it was one long, fun ride down to the Event Site.

The committee-boat-as-rabbit start in Stevenson came off pretty cleanly - big holes on the Washington Shore, so it paid off to foresake some of the usual advantage of starting down the line and stay in the breeze in the channel. Within a few minutes, Dale was ahead, Bruce in second, with me and MacRae following. The formula guys (Stephane, Jay, Britt) stayed with us for a while, until things picked up a bit a few miles upriver. Until Viento, and even afterwards, there were a couple times that I actually crossed in front of Bruce, and I had speed and angle with him, but most of the time he was clearly ahead. Home Valley was really windy, and things were patchy and squirrely around Dog Mountain, with Bruce doing a better job of taking advantage of the opportunities in those conditions, slowly but surely putting a bit of distance between us. Meanwhile, MacRae was an ever-looming presence behind me, charging hard and sailing ever consistently with good speed and clean jibes.

Jibing around the mark at Viento (where the first sailor, Dale, served as the rabbit for the start of the Junior Blowout), I got a big kick out of seeing the juniors take off - Allyson, Ben, and Fiona were leading that pack and looking really strong. The big surprise came in the corridor; approaching Swell City, instead of the expected spray fest, the wind was actually pretty light again. The rec sailors were mostly slogging on their 4-ish sails as we came through, and it wasn't until past the Hatchery, towards the bottom of Wells Island, that the breeze picked back up.

Bruce got pretty close to Dale there for a while, but got a little too aggressive about the Oregon Shore at the bottom of the course I think - looked like he got briefly parked in lulls a couple times. In the end, Dale won in 59.07 (pretty close to the course record, I think), Bruce was just behind him (I think the gap was less than 20 seconds!), and I came in 3rd at 1:01:10. MacRae wasn't far behind either in fourth. Full results and some pictures should be up on the VMG Events site soon (I'll post a link when they're up). Full disclosure on the picture above - that wasn't actually from the Blowout, but was taken a couple days earlier by my wife on the same spot on the Event Site jetty where she was helping finish competitors during the race. Since I was on the same setup, it seemed appropriate to use it...

There were 56 competitors in this year's edition. Some standouts:

• Marion Lepert (13!) ran the full course and won the women's division well in front of Farrah Hall. She ran an Exocet Formula board with, I believe, a 7.2 Sailworks NXsl. Oh yes, she also kicked quite a bit of grown-up male rear-end in the process. To the credit of all those men she beat in the race, they all were genuinely stoked for her.
• Ben and Allyson, who won the boys and girls divisions, respectively, of the Junior Blowout - and looked really strong in the process. Allyson, by the way, was out sailing some more shortly after finishing, taking advantage of the beautiful conditions.
• Fiona, who completed her first junior Blowout - on a Starsurfer. She was hanging with Allyson until around Swell City, where she got tripped up by a gnarly barge wake and really wrenched herself a bit. She persevered, however, and finished the race, displaying some serious grit.
• Jay Watermeyer won the junior division on the full course from Stevenson in a pretty convincing manner.
• The juniors in general; I'll have to check the results when they come on-line, but I suspect that almost 1/3 of the fleet was under 18.
• The freestyle guys - Tyson Poor and Casey Hauer, sailing unfamiliar slalom gear and doing very well, thank you very much. Tyson was later seen sailing at the Event Site some more - again on his slalom setup. Perhaps we'll see more of these guys on the course soon?
• Pieter Botha, who gets the McGyver award for the day. He sailed a really nice, solid race all the way down to just before the Event Site, then broke his mast. He then disconnected his base, stood on the board, and held the rig, aiming for the finish. It was slow going, but he made good steady progress; then, 50 meters or so before crossing the line, a kiter dragged his stuff right into him and Pieter got entangled in the lines - so he ended up swimming for a while to get his gear liberated, then had to swim around the kiter, and by now was downwind from the finish line so he had to swim/paddle back up and around the mark. I'm sure he expended more energy on that finish than he did on the whole rest of the race, but he sure showed some serious determination.
• Pepi, who managed a top 10 finish - on a Prodigy!

A note on gear choices; a few years ago, the front of the fleet switched from slalom gear to formula gear for this race. This was before my first entry, but I'd speculate that with the slalom gear of the time, the formula stuff just had way better range, allowing you to survive the big breeze in the corridor and just trucking away from the small gear in the light spots. Last year, Bruce in 2nd and MacRae in 4th demonstrated that modern slalom gear with its big range can equalize that gap in the light stuff, and is still way faster when it's windy (last year, I was in front of Bruce until we got into the corridor; from then on, it was simply no contest).

My experience this year was a bit of a revelation. Yes, it's a bit of work in the light stuff - but given that they had to run sails smaller than 10m to ensure survival in the windy spots, the formula guys didn't have much angle (and certainly no speed) on us in the light stuff near the start. Turn out, a big slalom board with a big sail has tremendous glide. And once you get into the breeze and swell, the shorter outlines and curvier rockers of today's slalom boards do a lot better than formula boards - and tons better than those long, flat, narrow slalom boards of years gone by. And while deep downwind runs through large swell with big gusts can be a bit hair-raising even on modern slalom gear, there's a lot less resistance than when you punch a formula setup through those kinds of conditions. Sure made for an enjoyable ride.

Next up are Nationals Thursday through Sunday. The forecast looks great. Before then, I get to help out at Bruce's Junior Race Camp Monday/Tuesday - the kids are already displaying an enormous amount of stoke, so I can't wait.

2006 Gorge Blowout - 7/9/06

This was my first Blowout ever - for some reason, I've never been able to make it down for one before. This year, however, it fit perfectly with the opportunity to take some family vacation in the Gorge, bracketed by the Blowout weekend at the beginning and the FW Northamericans at the end, with lots of sailing and playing in between.

On the drive form Hood River to Stevenson, it looked very filled in all the way to Viento, and still pretty windy between there and Stevenson/Cascade Locks. And things seemed to be picking up, plus the forecast looked really solid for the whole stretch. It just didn't seem enough for risking slalom gear, though. So I followed Dale's and Bruce's lead and went with my Roberts Formula board and my 9.9 Sailworks NXfw. The only difference was that they had 66cm fins, whereas my smallest was a 68.

Things picked up a bit out on the river, and at the start, I was nicely powered going off the breeze. I was following Dale and Bruce, and duking it out with Kieran, Jac, MacRae, Stefan, and the slalom contingent of Anil and Carey. As we approached the narrows, all of us with the apparent exception of Dale seemed to find our personal holes and swirlies - the slalom guys struggled with that more than those of use on large gear, of course, but it's still kind of frustrating to be slogging, looking frantically for wind, then riding a puff down the river until finding yourself unable to avoid the next hole. Dale was putting a lot of distance on the pack at this point, and the rest of us were trying to stick with Bruce. There were lots of changes in the positions at this point, and things were surprisingly tactical.

At Viento, the Junior Blowout started as Dale came through as the leader, playing rabbit to the eager crowd of junior sailors raring to go. The rest of us were quite a bit behind, struggling with the flukey conditions. As we got closer to Viento, I tried to stay as close to the Washington side as I could, trying to avoid the holes on the Oregon side - there were big patches of glass there. Jac got pretty close to Bruce, and the two of them roared into Viento in tight formation on a nice puff. Bruce went incredibly close into shore and pulled that off without either losing the breeze or running into the rocks there - quite an achievement. Jac stayed a bit further out. I was able to ride a strong puff down the middle of the river, then round up to get to the mark at Viento, then use my momentum to jibe and get back out into the breeze. I passed Jac in the process and came neck and neck with Bruce - that was, however, the last I saw of him, as he steadily pulled away with the breeze filling in more and more.

From now on, it got to be really fun - the wind was fully filled in and increased quite a bit until, when passing through Swell and the Hatchery, it got downright entertaining. I pulled away from Jac now that I was finally fully powered and his bigger sail and uncanny eye for shifts were less advantageous.

The finish order was Dale Cook, Bruce Peterson, Andreas Macke, Jac LeRoux, and MacRae Wylde. Anil Rajani came in 6th - quite the achievement given he was on slalom gear. Results (http://vmgevents.com/gc/results_files/06_blowout.htm) and pictures (http://vmgevents.com/gc/album/album2/index.htm) at the vmg site - here's one of me finishing: http://vmgevents.com/gc/album/album2/pages/aIMG_3705_jpg.htm

I'd say the one-design fleet in the top 3 (Roberts/Sailworks) again demonstrates that the gear just works, btw. The boards are friendly and fast, the sails are rangey and fast, and the package just feels very nice indeed.

So, about those juniors. I finally caught up with Todd Selby, the first place junior, just above the Hatchery. I think he's about 16. He was on an 8.5, sailing his FE board with the stock 70cm fin (which is a pretty lifty and draggy beast). He didn't just sail through the (by now pretty substantial) swell - he charged. There was no hesitation, no survival sailing - the kid totally committed and went for it. Good on him - he'll be someone to watch.

That, by the way, is pretty much true of the whole US Windsurfing Junior Team - these kids absolutely rock. They're positive, committed, and support their team mates. There's no whining, there are no excuses. Great group of kids, all of whom are doing their part to get the full benefit from the terrific coaching they're getting from Charles Ivey. These kids are the future of the sport, and a credit to it as well. Right on!

Meanwhile, I can't wait for next year's blowout - it's a fun race, ably organized by Scotia Bauer of VMG Events, ably run by Race Director Darren Rogers, and gleefully raced by a very diverse group of sailors. Come join next year - it's too fun to miss.