Sailing Action Heats Up in the Cold

Roving wind photog Iggy 'Mon' captures George Pav
boosting some ferocious air. Doesn't look like the
incoming ramp the left him much alternative.  

The 51F reading and the strong noontime sun had me completely fooled. It seemed warm enough for gloveless sailing.

But the first borked jibe, followed quickly by the first gusher of icy Long Island Sound water into the gap between my wetsuit and hood, left absolutely no doubt: this was barely any better than winter sailing.

But I was overdue. And ready to pay dues. So I loaded the van for the first session of the year (following an extended physiotherapy for herniated neck discs). Above the SUP (insurance against light wind), I slotted three more boards, the Frank "Crash" Messina's old "crashed" JP FSW 109; Frank's old F2 Style 99 (not very crashed); and Chuck's old — but almost still good as new — 90L AHD 260 Power Wave, which can hang in to around 4.2.

It just didn't look strong enough for the nuke board (Open Ocean), so I left that one out. On top of the sails and booms, there was room for one passenger, and that was Robby, who brought his books to read during a peaceful, if not windblown, day at the beach.

Pete R., mid-jibe, photo by Steve Domjan.
Tobay Beach, hopefully not
too close to the wreck.

Rounding the corner at Bayville, whitecaps spread across the Sound. Dima was already on the spot pumping up an inflatable SUP, and MooStang was due to arrive in a few minutes. Upwind Mike was not far behind.

It didn't feel like 40-something degrees F out there, but after a good dunking in the still extremely frigid waters of the Sound, anything that was wet and exposed felt like it was wrapped in ice.

Somewhere in the van, under several hundred pounds of equipment, was my titanium hooded vest (which keeps *most* of the water out of the steamer suit) and a workable pair of neoprene gloves.

I wished I'd dug around harder for them, but the wind was calling, and sailing without those devices of medieval torture is usually preferable.  The first crash jibe revealed the gloveless idea to be a very flawed one. I went back and dug deeper for the buried medieval neoprene.

The jog back to the van had warmed me up, and the wrestling match to get the dakine mitts on completed the heat therapy. Back in business.

Pete ... goes to work by foot when he can.

Upwind mike was wishing he had rigged a 5.8, but hung on to an Ezzy 6.9 with all his considerable might and height, looking not unlike a racer at a PWA event. I just prayed his mast and boom would hold up to the extra torque. I've seen and heard carbon masts "explode" under extreme overload, and it ain't pretty.

The west/norwester alternately built and backed off ... and built again.

As I rigged, MooStang pulled into the lot, and the wind began to look like it was going to fade completely. Mustang knew not to take it personally, but TBH the wind was really messing with him. I switched out the stock fin in the SUP for a 10" Surfgrass. It required a rubber mallet to get that thing to shift budge and the mallet again to get the new fin in the box. [Memo to self: Order Prussian blue highspot finder & sand down the fin box a little. ]

Physio ended in February but it was still a month and a half until I was ready to do anything involving weights and the left arm. The arm was weaker due to nerve damage: my grip strength was pathetically weak and the too-tight gloves were making things a lot worse. ... but just good enough to get wet and sail a few yards out and back.

"There's thing's you can do for it," said Upwind Mike, "but just sailing a lot is the best thing."

I remembered when I used to do all kinds of wrist curls with weights wearing thick Glacier Gloves. That did help, but with the dodgy neck neck now, I have to be careful not to overdo it.

5.7 and the JP 109 ended up being just the ticket, but I was barely hanging on, all grip strength temporarily gone. At one point, resorted to the elbow-over-the-boom maneuver, just to sheet enough to hook in. Lot of catching up to do strength-wise.

SOUND SUP SAIL
I was also hoping to see how the SUP sailed, if the wind backed off at all.

I was almost praying for a lull ... one came, I took it, and was pleased to find the Fanatic Allwave has a delightfully smooth glide and jibe when under sail. Who knew?! Looking forward to trying that with some small waves. Really wish this thing had footstraps; it seems to want to plane off under power, but it's probably not built for that amount of torque.

* The NOAA Marine Forecast called for building afternoon winds. West winds are almost always transitional here, occupying an often brief and flukey window between SW and NW. But somedays, they crank all day.