Another year - right on!

This coming year will mark 30 years of windsurfing for me (yep, I started when I was a pup). It's been a great ride, and over the decades (whoa, sounds odd to put it that way) the sport has given me so much to be grateful for. Lots of exciting experiences, lots of personal growth, lots of physical and mental challenge, and just tons of all-out fun. It's not one of those things that provide instant gratification - I assume every windsurfer would heartily agree with that (even those who live in places where warm waters and reliable winds prevail; not that I'm jealous or anything given the uncharacteristically cold and snowy December we had...).

May the New Year bring you lots of breeze, great sailing, and lots of opportunity to enjoy what to me, after all these years, is still the most amazing and thrilling sport I can imagine - Happy New Year, everyone!

Epic high speed freestyle

http://www.sailrocket.com/live/?q=node/78

Sailrocket is an ambitions project to make an experimental sailboat (I cringe at the term, given that this craft bears about as much resemblance to what I generally think of as a sailboat as a Lamborghini does to a Yugo) go world record speeds. For a long time, there's been an interesting dual development on the speed circuit. 

On the one hand, you've had attempts like Yellow Pages and MI and (significantly larger and more open-ocean oriented) Hydroptere using pretty sophisticated technology and rather intricate and complex designs to balance the physics in an efficiency game - meaning they have tried to  push the boundaries of lift/drag ratios on all foils and played with ways to leverage their righting moment to produce high speeds in reasonably low wind speeds (Sailrocket just produced 52 knot peak speeds in roughly 25 knots of breeze).

On the other hand, you've had the windsurfers and, recently (and with spectacular success) kiters, play a completely different game of simplicity and brute force. Yes, the wipeouts for them have been spectacular, too, but they don't involve a 20 foot craft looping - just a good old fashioned endo or teabagging at very high speeds (and no doubt a lot of pain). Kiters have learned to harness an advantage of their platform, which is that kites generate vertical lift - that allows them to use boards so tiny, they make windsurfers' speed boards (at 45 cm or less width) look monstrous. Pair that with their tiny fins, and they could not only reduce drag, but they could also find smoother water w/o fear of things getting too shallow. Pair that with the geometry of the whole setup giving them more favorable leverage, and it's hard to see windsurfers catching up.

So far, the simple brute force approach has the edge, with Yellow Pages in 93 the only efficiency play in the long list of first windsurfers, then again windsurfers (Maynard and Albeau, really, as they were in a class by themselves), and now kiters that have held the outright record.

What's becoming obvious, though, is that there's a middle ground. The kites are taking a page from the "boats" in that they optimize low drag by employing vertical lift to reduce wetted surface (only, they do it by simply having their kites drag them up while accelerating, as opposed to using hydrofoils to get a hull out of the water). They're also employing leverage for their righting moment - only they do it by decoupling the airfoil from the sailor/craft package via long kite strings as opposed to utilizing outriggers. So they're doing the same things, but radically more simply (and thus, one might argue, more elegantly). Which allows them faster and cheaper development cycles (tuning kites is a matter of a simple recut and some tweaks to line geometry; shaping a new kite board or producing a new fin takes a matter of days and investment in the hundreds of dollars, not tens or hundreds of thousands). 

The kiters have thus managed to push the solution space boundaries by one-upping windsufers on simplicity while at the same time gaining on the efficiency front (note that they're making record runs in lower wind speeds - which means they've got a feedback loop going that gives them more chances at records).  To get another crack at the outright record, windsurfing will have to figure out how to play the efficiency game - but still retain its simplicity (or else it will be cost-prohibitive and run into the issue of slow development cycles that seems to be keeping the boats from keeping up with the kites). That means truly exotic hydrofoils and outriggers and such are probably out. Perhaps launching from a moving boat (to allow for smaller boards) might work (hey, it's what they do with speed record aircraft so they don't have to have big draggy wings); that seems to make the need for super high and consistent winds only worse, however, and will further cut down on eligible venues.  Aircraft carrier-style catapults probably add a bit too much complexity (but might produce some spectacular YouTube moments...).

Fun stuff!

Liquid Lunch Checklist

• Lots of wind - check (beginnings of liquid smoke, and not too off-shore, so the slog/swim to the windline was only about 5 minutes or so)
• Reasonable temps - check (air and water both right around 50F)
• Appropriate gear - check (5.0 and 80 liter board; a bit overpowered but good)
• A reasonably well-timed hall-pass - check (rare, as lately wind has either happened at night or when work interfered in all sorts of nasty ways)

==> Nothing standing in the way of a great session, right?

Except after about 20 minutes of hunting all over the bay for a patch of water that wasn't too infested with driftwood, I bagged it for safety's sake and made my way back to shore. The flooding we've had here in NW Washington lately has left a lot of dead wood in the water, and with up to chest-high swell and lots of confused chop (not too mention the spray flying everywhere), it was exceedingly hard to spot those obstacles. Bummer!

Hopefully, this stuff will settle down on the beaches soon.

For Sale

Exocet Warp Slalom 67

My 2008 slalom board - 105 liters, 67cm wide, and about the most nicely balanced slalom board I've ever sailed. Sweet spot is around 6.5-7.5, but it extends well down to 5.8 and crazy water with a slighly smaller fin (like a 34 or even 32 G-10 fin). It also works well with an 8.2 and a larger fin (like a 42cm carbon Finworks). I won the slalom in the Canadian championships on this board because of its range, speed in the flat stuff, and control on the outside (where the eddy line was pushing up the voodoo chop). The guys I was racing either had the speed, or the glide and angle, but never both - so I had more degrees of freedom.

If you're looking for a slalom board to race competitively, at a killer price, this is it. If you're looking for a fast board to freeride, its ease of use makes this one uniquely accessible (and ensures you don't ever have to worry about your buddy passing you because he has a faster board). This is also one of the nicest-jibing boards I've ever sailed.

The board's in great condition (one repair on the deck, but that never sucked water since it happened at the beach - that's where the Sailworks sticker is visible in the photo) and comes with super-comfy DaKine straps. I can arrange shipping at cost; we can figure out local arrangements anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, and maybe even the Bay Area (have a trip coming up in April) --->  $1,095.

Also: late 80's/early 90's F2 Lightning racing longboard, complete with all parts (yes, the mast track works and has been adapted for M8 bolts, so you don't have to worry about the proprietary F2 steel pins). This is the World Cup edition with the carbon center board. I picked this up from someone who had it in his garage unused for over 15 years, so it's in unbelievably great shape (no soft spots anywhere). I thought I'd come down for City League races in Seattle, but found that the drive was just prohibitive.  ---> $300.

Update: here are some pictures of the Lightning (yep, it's the big one; yep, it's in great shape; yep, the track is fully functional; yep, it's the carbon centerboard, and the gaskets are in great shape; yep, it the newer version with the PowerBox fin; ...)

Send me an email through this contact form to find out more: http://g-42.com/contact

50.57

Damn, those kiters really have hit their stride now. At theLüderitz Speed Challenge , Sebastien Cattelan  of France broke the 50 knot barrier. Rumor has it that this means the canal won't open for the next round of Masters of Speed - I could see how that might be true, as it would be harder to get sponsorship together and get people to commit that much time and money if there's no more chance at being the first to break 50.

Congratulations to the kiters at Luderitz - those are some pretty awesome performances. Given how quickly they were able to push their speeds up to those levels from where they were just a few years ago, there's been a lot of very rapid development in that sport. Good on them!

I wonder if this will spell the end of the speed rush windsurfing has gone through in the last few years, with several well-organized record attempts and a bunch of grass roots GPS-based informal competition. I also wonder what it will take for windsurfing to reclaim the outright record - it took Maynard and Albeau a lot of time, money, and R&D to get to 49.09; kiters just blew right by them, and physics seem to be on their side at this point. Seems like the current gear and technique combo needs to be tweaked a bit to get back in the game. The sailors have been trying to do the same thing vis-a-vis windsurfing (check http://www.sailrocket.com/ or http://www.hydroptere.com/ to see some of those attempts - none of them successful so far) Perhaps we'll end up seeing some crazy foiling windsurfers with funky outriggers to get on top of the physics here - but given the state of the industry, I'm not sure where the funding for such extensive R&D would come from. Incremental improvements to the current design paradigm seem to have run into the law of diminishing returns.

49.84

American kite- and windsurfer Rob Douglas (from Boston, I believe?) just broke A2's outright record. 49.84 knots over 500 meters in a shallow bay in Namibia. Check out the video - that's pretty damn fast. 50 knots is awfully close. Remember Albeaus's run, at 49.09, and how even the tiny chop on the canal caused so much chatter on the board, and you can see why the kiters might have an advantage here, now that their kites have come such a long way in efficiency. The upward force from the kite allows them to use tiny boards (whereas windsurfers need them to be at least big enough to where they can waterstart). Perhaps if we can figure out a way to jettison part of the board, or get some sort of running start off a boat or something...

Congratulations to Rob (and his coach Mike Gebhardt). Alway cool to see someone push the limits like this!

29 years

It was in September of 1979 that I first learned how to windsurf. I was all of 9 years old, the gear was heavy and kludgey and monstrously awkward and slow by today's standards. I learned on a tiny little pond that I could have swum across in all of fifteen minutes. Even now, 29 years later, I remember the incredible rush I felt when, after repeated uphauling and flailing and stalling, the stars aligned: I sheeted in, and a little puff got me going. I had sailed Optis for 3 years at this point, so I knew about the feeling about being driven by the wind - but the immediacy of the experience was different.

From that moment on, I was hooked. The thrill of catching the wind and feeling its power come through your body, transformed into motion, is something that has never let me go to this day, and probably never will. To me, this sport is release, zen practice, plain fun, competitive outlet, and so much more.

This summer, as we were out on the water in the Gorge, my daughter Hope (now 8) and I were on a raging plane on the Start together; as we were coming into the Event Site, after almost hollering herself hoarse, she looked up at me and said: "Dad, I really get it now!" That week, she'd been doing the Big Winds kids' camp, had felt the wind in her hands, and now she had experienced the adrenaline rush of skipping over the water on a full plane. I don't know if she'll ever be hooked the way I have been; at that moment, though, windsurfing, often seen as a lone individual's pursuit, was a bridge for connection - a shared experience between father and daughter, her window into a part of my soul, and mine into hers.

Squamish pictures

Update:

Gwen l'Hirondelle made some nice shots available as well - they're now part of the updated slideshow embedded below (click on it to get it to display in bigger size). She spent a lot of time during the weekend hanging out on the spit in clearly suboptimal weather, producing a lot of nice pictures - and she has graciously agreed for them to get published in support of promoting a great grass-roots event put on by the Squamish Windsports Society. That's just one example of all the great SWS volunteers who contributed to making this event happen. Thanks, Gwen - and thanks to all the volunteers for a great weekend!

David shot some pics of the slalom on Friday off the end of the spit and has graciously agreed to let me post them. I especially like the fact that in all the shots where I do appear, I'm leading ;)

The original gallery is posted at Elliot's site - thanks David for taking the time to take pictures when you could have been out on the water, and thanks Elliot for creating a neat community resource for the Pacific Northwest boardheads!

Canadian Nationals - Day 3 (final)

Phew - good exercise. The clearing weather didn't quite make it up Howe Sound, so the temperature gradient was actually reversed (w/ Vancouver warmer than Squamish, and Squamish warmer than Whistler). At least it didn't rain anymore after 8 am. Winds were pretty light, and really flukey. We ended up doing three heats of formula late in the afternoon, but more so we'd have something to do rather than because we thought it would be good racing (I guess we didn't want to sit on shore like the kiters, who in their frustration were resorting to building a gigantic floating rail for sliding tricks).

Since it was so light, we couldn't even lure out most of the racers, so it was just Chris Pior, Carey Caronni, and me. Interestingly, we were all on roughly the same sail sizes (10.7's for them, 10.8 for me); I'm about 25 pounds heavier than Chris, and Carey is quite a bit lighter than that again. The first heat then was finished in order of weight, with Carey managing to squeeze out Chris (who then took the next two). It was an interesting experiment, as the physics of the whole thing became apparent - anytime we pumped up on a plane after transitions, I'd need a few more pumps and lost more ground upwind to get going. It didn't help that my light air fin had fallen victim to a submerged piece of wood while checking out the course - to get any kind of pressure and rail the board, I had to resort to hanging off my uphaul.

Good exercise, for sure - we might have been a bit chilly when we left the beach, but we were dripping with sweat when we got back (Rob had at this time commandeered the PA system; when we were slogging in on the last puff of breeze, I distinctly heard him say something like "better you than me"...).

Results are thus firmed up - I won the slalom before Rob and Chris; Chris won formula with Carey getting second and me third. Phil won freestyle.

It's unfortunate we got such atypical weather on Saturday and Sunday; nevertheless, it was a fun event. The slalom on Friday was about as good as it gets (we got nine heats of slalom bliss) - just for that it was worth coming up. And even though for us spoiled West Coasters the conditions on Saturday were light (and Sunday even lighter), the Europeans would have just put on their 12's and called it great racing. For me, it was that one race a year where I wished I had a bigger rig (which is a cost-benefit analysis that doesn't really justify the investment).

There's talk of some more grass-roots racing at Squamish, as Rob and Chris were recounting the glory years of slalom racing there; the place certainly has that potential. For anyone who likes to race slalom, if the overall weather pattern is right, it would very much be worth the drive even from Seattle or even the Gorge.

I'm hoping to get some pictures to post in the next day or so, as there was a very friendly couple shooting with rather nice equipment and promising to make something available that would showcase the racing we had.

Canadian Nationals - Day 2

Lots of sitting in the rain and waiting this morning, with a front pushing through and making things feel more like March than August here in Squamish. Winds picked up a bit in the afternoon, and we got ready to race Formula. First heat got delayed as the breeze shifted quite a bit and we had to change the course to avoid turning this into a reaching match. Then, as we were about to get the second heat off, we had to pull the committee boat off station, as a big freighter was coming in and the boat was anchored right in its path to its berth. I was kind of glad that one didn't go off, as the wind had just dropped quite a bit while we were already in the sequence.

After a bit of rigging frenzy we all had our biggest sails up and were ready to go. We got three races off in light and shifty breeze. Current from the river added to the mayhem. The way the current played, there wasn't much latitude for tactics, as you had to get to the right side of the course to ride the current upwind, and the left side of the course to get downwind faster by not having to fight the current. Chris Prior took three bullets; I took three seconds. He's 25 pounds lighter than me, and he skillfully took advantage of that by getting good angle upwind and planing right through the holes up and down the course. Since I couldn't match his angle off the line, and since the wind was getting flukey on the right side of the course in the third heat, I tried a starboard start and actually led him through the first lap of the course; the lead I had built up at the windward mark had pretty much shrunk to nothing at the bottom though, and in the further dropping breeze, he got me on the second lap.

After we were all derigged and had eaten, the wind all of a sudden picked up; with the ramps created by the ebb, it would have been a good bump and jump session. After all the pumping, though, none of us were much in the mood. Tomorrow's forecast is for less rain and fewer clouds; hopefully that means a thermal push with a bit more sailable wind than today.

Slalom results so far actually do have us very close. After nine heats, I'm in first with 14 points; Chris and Rob are right there with 15 and 16, respectively. Yesterday's freestyle was won by Phil Soltysiak; he was really head and shoulders above the other competitors, landing quite a few pretty sophisticated moves despite the rather challenging conditions (river chop, gusty/shifty winds). He also did very nicely in the slalom, using his board handling skills to stay right in the game despite, as he put it, not being a slalom sailor.