Three Fins in the Sunset

Gilgo Beach, the usual parking spot for sail riggers. No sail required.

Fabulous, at least 66 F gorgeous sunny day, with light, gusty WNW winds and just enough leftover surf to get a few quality rides. No complaints.

Plan A was to get up at 6:45 and head to West Meadow and windsurf. But weak numbers in the forecast for 10 a.m. told me it would blow itself out quickly as the sun heated up the land. Not worth the $15 in gas and the 2.5 hours driving time for me, unless you got up at 5:30 and were ready for sunrise. Save it for a better day.

Plan B — definitely get a bike ride in — I forgot the last time I rode ... could it really have been the Sept. 30 16-miler before the New Orleans trip? If that was the case, then I definitely needed to get some miles in. And today I was feeling a lot better.

During last weeks white-knuckle windsurfing I was definitely "sucking wind," and, if nothing else, some sustained exercise was due.

So I took a gentle 45 minute mile ride, with an ascent of Longview to provide some challenge factor, shot some video, but really, just set out to simply enjoy the ride, not get caught up in speed or performance.  Magic recipe. Beautiful riding day.

PLAN-C WAVES, PADDLE, WIND
Marg was recuperating a cold, and visiting her mom, so she passed on the beach trip, but Robby needed to get some school reading done, and Gilgo in October is a nice quiet place to do just that.

As we arrived, Jeannie was just finishing her session — we gotta stop running into each other like this, people will talk ;). A better than average waist high swell was picking up momentum with the incoming tide. Note to those who don't know, an incoming tide around 1.5 hours after low will always boost the existing surf by about a foot. I got that from mike da baker, and it has never failed me yet. I don't know where the south swell came from — can only imagine it's remnants from some storm that had passed us last week. A SW wind swell was messing things up on the inside, but not too squirrely to make it unsurfable.

Robby said it was a tad chilly afterward (always take 3 layers worth of clothing), but you couldn't tell from the water which was pretty warm for this time of year. although I had on a 5/3, I was hoodless, and did not notice anything cold about it on the head. But that could have been because paddling out through  the whitewater got the blood flowing immediately. Just as cardio as was remounting after multiple times being knocked off by cross swell, waves and chop.

I figured on SUP sailing, but there was not quite enough wind to my mind to warrant rigging a sail. A couple of knots more / more consistent and I'd have put up a 5.5 for some basic non-planing propulsion — a sail makes it much easier to keep balance, thanks to its pull. The cross-wave conditions (like cross-chop but diagonally conflicting waves) were challenging to say the least.

Pretty soon I shed the paddle, and switched to simply prone surfing the SUP. The big lifty tail made short work of catching waves, but definitely needed a careful touch to avoid pearling.

Got in some nice long rides DTL, almost a "stretch five" at one point. Alright, I give extra points for the nose-riding possibilities on this beast. The board also has tons of stability and makes it easy to get to your feet when taking off—a good learn-to surf board in small waves perhaps? The three 5.5-inch fins are great for not snagging the sandbars at low tide states. It will rail a turn, to a point, but when the waves get small, the parallel rails in the middle and flatter rocker it will straighten out if you are not going DTL. I'm thinking about a slightly deeper center fin for a little more thrust, lift and hold.

After a good brace of rides to near exhaustion, I decided to paddle out a few more times and see if my timing was any better for Standup. I got a good rinsing again, but not much more.

Surprise moment of the day — a chest-high sneaker set caught me out of position knee paddling the SUP out, and blasted the board away from under me. Never had that happen before.

Note: I would not be experimenting thusly if I had other surfers nearby ... but today there were but three of us on the entire beach...plenty of room for fun all 'round.

Did I say I was amazed at the quality of the leftover waves. My 9-foot regular surfboard would have worked just as well, I think, but the SUP was that little bit more suited to the task.