Trading Runs with the Squid

revised 10-15-12

Arty tends to our good friend Leonardo, who, now
unable to walk with his back legs, takes
in the sea breeze at his favorite place, Joe's Beach.

We call 'em runs. A run out — which needs to be followed by a run back in* — or the whole things goes pear-shaped.

And that we did, quite a lot. Runs, that is, not pear-shaped thingies.

The first 5 runs were all about getting the harness lines adjusted, lurching, skittering off on a plane and bogging down again, all without getting tossed over the handlebars.

The squid changed and watched from the beach. Getting the lines finessed is often a challenge, and ditto that as far as the right depth of pocket in the sail is concerned. [Memo to self: get out that tape measure in the back compartment, a Rite-in-the-Rain pen and pad, and write the measurements down.]

P.S. Was it me or was it gustola out there? That cross-chop was coming from all angles, especially if you were looking anywhere else than where the wind and chop was coming from.

The adjustments continued, followed by more tweaking, including some extra downhaul when the wind picked up later.

RUDOLPH THE ROCKERED REINDEER
The 99 liter F2 Style 255, it seems, has a bunch of rocker for a freestyle board — who knew? I thought they were supposed to be flatter underneath. Under a 205# weight like mine (it's a little less than neutral volume if you include rig, wet-wetsuit and lunch), it did not exactly want to release in the heavy chop, but it was still fun. I'll get it figured out. One thing's for sure, 5.7 sq. m. is its sweet spot.

For some reason — one I was not glomming onto quick enough; angle of the wind shop/harness line position again? — to get planing on port tack required pointing it even deeper off the wind — always feeling within a centimeter of catapulting during the initial acceleration/chop stops.

Dr Phil DDM, Lenny the Squid, perched on the hood
of the squidburban, as Tomas and John chat while
another windsurfer (quad-stretching), looks on.  

The good part was that the board was so damn loose the 14.5 inch blade weed fin felt like a 10 inch in the turns. Normally, I'd never normally use more than a 12.5 in that 5.7 wind, especially on a smaller board like this, but the 14 kept it tracking like "Upwind Mike" in the gusts. Even Lenny liked it. Amazingly it was not too aggro for such an obscenely large piece of G-10.

DIG-A-PULT
Once coaxed out of the gooey surface tension of Heck-soup, out of semi-planing mode, the board freed up remarkably well and lifted nicely out of the water. With its seemingly moon-shaped keel it wanted to bound and bounce in the morass of camel humps out there, but all-in-all relatively good control pretty much most of the time.The hairy part was catching rails. Either from overcooking or undercooking an S-turn.

Not keeping the eyes peeled for cross-chop in the turbulent, mogul-field conditions could mean paying a price. Had a few of those, some minor, and one a bit of an adventure.

The most notable came from catching a rail during a bottom turn. Bottom turn? you ask.

Yep, there were some wave-like objects forming out there, and with a bit of vigilance you could spot the eminently surfable ones. So that was what I was doing. I'm not getting air like I used to 10 years ago, so cresting "swellets" are the next best thing.  And that was going great until I suddenly found myself cutting just a wee bit too deep and too fast in front of an oncoming sailor.  I cut back upwind, dug the inside rail and ... oooohhhh that sickening sensation that you just lost it ... slow-motion ...  cat...a...pult... splat.

Bonus points for spotting the cheeky beagle on the left.
(click to make larger)

Was that the fall where I ended up under the sail? Yep. Thankfully not hooked in.

Not a fan of hooked in under the sail catapults, much less the twisted, hooked in variety.

I had a bad one once during a race under a bloody 8.5 Sq. m. tent-sail that came real close to end of breath before breathing water fish-style.

This time, I got out and directed myself without hesitation forward of the mast in a hurry.

Need to work on the breath hold, especially the caught-by-surprise variety. And that's one reason why I'm NOT doing the ocean right now. It's still nowhere near where it used to be 10 years ago, and neither is the swimming.

RIDE-SHARE
With the ride-share/board-share/time share thing with Len working out well, timing-wise,  I took the opportunity to respond to a call for assistance from Jimmy who needed some help with his Ezzy 5.0 Wave Panther. I was glad to. It reminded me of a time when I was a Heckscher newb and a red-bearded old salt with leathery hands kindly downhauled my old aluminum mast and Mistral sail with bare hands. Where did he go, never saw him again. But anyway, I have Jill's/Frank's old 6.0, Ezzy Wave so the Ezzy thing is not such a mystery as it could be to the uninitiated — just how much that thing is outhaul sensitive is crazy.

The enforced rest time between runs helped me avoid the tuckered-out syndrome, and it made for a gift of a day's sailing.

SPECIAL GUESTS
Great to chat with Moo and Lella, Shane and Grace who had been in the local pumpkin fields when the wind picked up.

The windsurfing crowd is the best I know almost bar none at sharing the fun in the sporting world (if you've ever been part of a military unit or a rugby team you'd know they have a similar thing going on) and there were plenty on hand, and plenty of wind to go around: Zev, George, Thandi, Arty, Marty, Leonardo, Tomas, Titus, Lenny, Mustang Steve, Jimmy, Jeannie, Al, Dr. Phil DDM, James, John, and a number of faces I am not yet familiar with — Jeff, Christine ... and quite a few more — all generally ripping up the place and making a foaming royal chop shop out of the water.

Double bonus points for spotting the curious westie in the
parking lot. (click to make larger)

Well, would we have it any other way? In a perfect world ...

And there were a few of our canine friends. Leonardo, now paralysed getting his sea breeze therapy on the beach, Heidi, another young shep, a beagle and a westie.

It only seems like a year ago that Leonardo was able to play ball on the beach and get around, now the poor pooch is sad, but he gets plenty of love from Arty and friends.

Definitely a day not to miss if you had the chance to be there — or anywhere windsurfers were gathered together.

* Not to be confused with the infamous Ely Spivaks coined term, "OOBI" — Out Once and Back In — a.k.a. not such a great day. This fortunately was not the case on 10/14.