Sailed at Auckland, Bucklands Beach
Rated a 7 of 10

Wind from the SW (knots)

lulls: 13

average: 19

gusts: 23

Board: Starboard Carve 99 2004 Wood
Sail: NP Saber 6.2 2005
Fin: Drake Freeride 280
Suit: XCel 4/3 infinity x-zip.
Air Temperature: 17 C

Went to Bucklands Beachs, a bit more North than I usually sail. Scary to cross the big ship lane with my small board. Still not sure about my capabilities to keep standing. I windsurfed slowly the 50 meters to get past the ships anchored before the beach and then I dropped my sail and waited before two big ferries had passed. Then I waterstarted, which luckily went ok in one go, and tryed to get accross the lane as safe as possible, just holding on to the sail, no footstraps, no planing, just to avoid a mistake. Big ferry coming, but everything went fine. When I'm more comfortable I'm sure this feeling will past. All the other 16 windsurfers or so didn't seem to have any problem here, but they're also way beyond my level.

Problem with the boom, I have to extend it 16 cm, but I couldn't push down the lever on one side after extending it. As it was at 16cm, I left it at that, but later I saw it had moved to 14cm. The other side was still 16cm. That probably made my sail a bit more unstable, but not drastically I believe.

It was great that the water wasn't deep enough. As my carving jibes are still work in progress that makes it far less tiring to get back on the board.

My harness lines are probably not ok either. It doesn't always feel right, sometimes it does, it wasn't bad, but it just felt it could be improved. Perhaps I need to go down from 26" to 24"? Or move the boom up slightly?

Up and down went ok, sail very controllable even in big gusts. Sometimes I had a spinout, I'm pressing too hard on the back of the board. Either I need to a bigger fin (would that help here?) or I need to move the footstraps. Can move them forward 3cm or so. And I hit a stone with my fin, so that caused some minor fin damage.

Tried to jump once, but that caused me to fall over. Need a bit more control of my board. Just practice I assume. Everyone else was just ripping just fine.

Hard to say how I to rate this session. Good practice and I almost came out of two carving jibes, only fell down after the sail flip, and at that point the board had lost its speed. Strange how one forgets all the carefully thought over movements when out on the water, only hanging it counts.