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Fantastic day, loved it. I gave the gusts a '40' because I was out there once and just got hammered. Big Dave was powered on his 5.4, and he's much taller, stronger and somewhat heavier than me.
Great story... I was in and out in a hurry because it was 1st Wednesday at my church (rock and roll worship night) and so I needed to be on the road. I got off the water, derigged, loaded and started going down Ocean Drive before deciding to check out my GPS for top speed and distance. I looked down and saw 40.7!!! YYEEEEHAAAWWW! And on the Bay, too! WWOOOOHHHHOOOOOO!. I ROCK!
Then I looked at the speedometer. I was going 41.
DUH! But in my defense, those three seconds were believable because I really hit a few smooth rolling waves out there, where you'd drop down into them and go blazing off until you couldn't control it anymore (where the smoothness ends, random chop between larger random chop begins). Now, I know I wasn't doing 40, but I probably hit 33 again, maybe even a little more. It was easy going fast off the wind. That's my defense. It's strange that the bigger the chop/waves the easer it is to get bursts of speed. Downhill with a 100 foot long smooth patch can really get you moving.
A couple of other things that made this a ten. I was following Thomas out and was about 100 feet behind him, going into the wind. At one point we were both in a trough, seperate troughs, and I couldn't see him anymore, just the upper part of his sail. That was pretty cool. I don't sail the open ocean much, but I imagine some of the windsurfers that do get to see that regularly.
Another time I wiped out on a jump. This happens a lot (I am becoming a lot better jumper, almost ready to start telling people I can jump but not quite there yet). On this particular jump, I was thinking about work, and how I wasn't there. My boss doesn't really mind that I leave work, as long as I make it up in the evening, or on the weekend, etc. I know this, but somehow got into my mind that I was ditching work against his will and just got done thinking, "take this job and shove it" where "shove it" was about the time I launched the jump. I tried to do that thing where you tuck your rear leg up under your butt, sheet in and float off the wind a bit. I'm not good at that yet. Instead, I did something where the nose pointed down, the wind caught the top of the board and basically God just slapped me down, as if saying "I gave you a good job; you are out here and you'll still be able to afford to feed your family when you get home." Usually no matter how badly you jump, you float a little bit. In this case I went up, and got slapped hard right back into the water. It was pretty cool. And, uh, message taken. Work is good.
Anyway, that was right about the point when Tamay was heading my way and she swung in close to make sure I was okay, which was good because I think I bounced and it was feasible that I wasn't okay. As I waterstarted and did a quick jibe, I watched her going back toward the launch, surfing the waves going back. All you could see was her shoulders & head and from her boom up on her rig. It was neat to see her weaving it back and forth. If you've ever seen one of those videos that they take where they film the windsurfer from behind the wave instead of in front (wave going away, not coming near), then you know what I mean. She was having fun (noticed she gave the day a solid 9 of 10).
Hopefully we're gonna get another good day today.
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