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Today was my 100th day sailing since I've been here. My first day sailing was Aug 26, 2001, so I'm 11 days away from that anniversary. I've made a lot of progress since I've been here and it's been a lot of fun.
Today I went to Grassy Point but the water was high. I checked out a different launch but went back to GP and parked outside the gate, not wanting to drive through the salt water. I hoofed it the 150 yards to the rigging area and launch will all of my gear. That's a bit tough to do with a 25-30 mph headwind!
I rigged the 5.4 really tight and when I first went out I was powered fine but the sail was really twitchy. At first I felt out of control and I attributed it to too much wind for the sail, but then I thought... hey it's not really overpowered, just twitchy. So, I stopped and let out about four centimeters of outhaul, to put a little pocket in and it was great right away. I guess I didn't realize the effect of too much outhaul/downhaul. Made a huge difference.
I still didn't have a banner day. I give the day an eight because I pulled off a couple of good jibes and a good duck jibe toward the end, after I realized it was starting to die and that I wouldn't sleep well knowing that I pussy footed around. When I went for it and did all the steps in my jibes, I was good. When I just flung into one, I wasn't. Windsurfing lends itself to daydreaming and relaxing, but that's not helping my jibes!
My duck jibes are really close. I do some of them pretty well, but I only planed out of one (with a lot of people watching! :>). The big thing is you have to decide really early if you are going to duck or regular jibe, because you have to duck the sail so soon in the process. If you don't, you won't make it around and you'll stall out. A few times I went into the jibe not really decided if I was going to duck or not and I really sucked. When I decided ahead of time what I was going to do, it was good, because I'd duck the sail at the right time. Ducking is the easy part, I just need to remember to keep carving. Combining all of it is the next challenge, but once I do, my success rate should be somewhere around 90%. They really are a lot easier than you think.
All in all, a pretty decent day. Sunny, warm, WINDY, with a bunch of guys to hang out with. Forecase looks like more of the same for the next few days!
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