USWA Nationals - Day 1

Today saw the windiest slalom racing anyone here in the Gorge can remember in a very long time. I had a real struggle getting my big (and only) 71cm wide slalom board to stay on the water, despite running a 6.2 and a 34cm fin. Bruce was racing his (probably sub-80 liter) small slalom board and a 5.4 - and was LIT. We were racing in age groups, so he ran in the Grand Masters, and I ran in the Men/Masters fleet, with the juniors and women getting their own start (the Techno 293 fleet wisely sat this one out...).

In the Grand Masters, Bruce dominated the fleet, and in the Men/Masters, James Dinnis (of Carbon Art fame) did the honors. If we get a chance to have a final rounds to determine an overall slalom winner, it will be a treat to see those two battle it out. I'll probably get a chance to watch that, too; after three heats of pretty deep finishes (5, 14, 6), struggling with the ballistic conditions on my big board, I finally got a good start with James and Chris Prior in the 4th heat. I nailed my first three jibes, and while James was out of reach, Chris seemed within striking distance as I locked in for the reach to the offset mark and the subsequent tight reach to the start pin to go into the second round.

I'm not quite sure what happened next- I only know that I went over the handlebars in what people on shore called a pretty spectacular wipeout and somehow came down with my left foot coming down hard on the sail (and, probably, beneath it the board). It felt like having twisted my ankle, and in the water, it was pretty clear that something was wrong as I couldn't even kick to swim into waterstart position, much less tolerate the pain of getting that foot up on the deck of the board to get going. Instead, I body dragged to the beach, a bunch of helpful folks got my gear and helped me out of the water, and when 30 minutes of icing failed to numb the pain at all or keep the swelling at bay, it was clear that I should get this looked at. Now it's splinted, with two fractures in the fibular - so I'll be off my left foot for at least a few weeks.

Racing continues tomorrow - since I can't do much else right now, I'll be on shore watching. Pretty bummed at this point, but then again, it's a clean bone injury that required no setting or surgery, and there doesn't seem to be serious damage to the ligaments beyond a mild sprain. And if I had to get hurt windsurfing, it couldn't have happened in a more supportive environment; not only did folks take care of all the logistics for me (thanks, Shelley, Michel, MacRae, Amy), but within five minutes of the injury I was being taken care of by an RN, a PT, and a podiatrist (thanks, Amy, Jay, and John), and then given rides to and from the ER (thanks, Ellen).

The slideshow below shows a bit of action from the 4th heat, as well as the result of me not having much else to do other than take pictures of my bum ankle afterwards... Not sure if the pictures do the conditions justice - it was furry out there. Darren told me later that gusts at the boat reached to 40; apparently, for the last heat, it picked up even more.

5 weekends back to back...

This weekend marked the 2nd of five weekends of back to back racing for me - last week's Gorge Cup, this weekend it was the Harrison Blowout, next weekend it will be the Exocet Gorge Blowout (14 miles downwind/upriver from Stevenson to Hood River), the weekend after that (August 1-3) will be the Gorge Challenge, and to cap it all off there'll be Canadian Nationals in Squamish Aug 8-10. Not a bad run - hopefully conditions cooperate.

This weekends racing at Harrison Lake was really fun - Carey and Jackie Caronni have been putting on a weekend of racing every summer for a very long time now. Saturday's are scheduled for the Blowout (downwind race from the Harrison boat launch to the Bear Creek campground), with formula racing and some figure 8 fun slalom at the boat launch on Sunday. Harrison is only about 1 1/2 hours from Bellingham, so it's practically in my backyard. Still, this was the first time I've been able to go - for the past five years, there's always been some scheduling conflict for me.

Saturday's downwinder had to be canceled for the first time ever due to no wind (try that on for size - the event's been running since the late 80's, and they've finally got skunked on one of the days - who says lakes are flukey?). Sunday, however, offered up really nice conditions - super smooth water (hardly any fetch upwind), good breeze, and brilliant sunshine. The lake is amazingly clear (and nice and cool), and with the mountains all around, it's quite scenic.

We had three races on a pretty fun course - start slalom style off the boat launch, go deep downwind to a mark in the middle of the lake, round that and go way upwind to the upwind shore (where you had to figure out the tradeoff between the lift on shore vs. the slighly flukier wind), then beam reach to a mark below a few hundred yards below the start, and finish upwind. I was nicely powered on 10.8 in the first race, then switched to my 9.9 which was the right call for heats 2 and 3. I got three bullets (recovered from a really big crash right after the start on the third heat when I made a lucky call in favor of the near shore lift to lay the top mark with double tacking - sorry, Carey), Carey got three 2nds. Big shout out to Elliot, who came in third and race really well - maybe he should reconsider not taking his formula gear to the Bay Area.

After the racing, I got a chance to spend some time sailing with my kids (yep, both of them at one time - nothing like a 3-year-old whooping with glee and saying he wants to go faster...). Hope's getting quite good at handling the sail, and uphauling is no big deal for her anymore; she's looking forward to doing the Big Winds kids camp next week.

Huge thanks to Carey and Jackie - this was awesome, fun grassroots racing. They had the whole thing well organized, had gotten a huge box of very cool prizes and raffle items, and just spread the stoke all over the place. Great fun - I'll be back.

Next weekend is the Exocet Gorge Blowout (big shout out to Exocet for sponsoring this heritage event!). Check out Scotia's VMG Events site for details on that, as well as the following weekend's Gorge Challenge.