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I wanted to get a change of pace from Oleander and see some friends who like to sail on the Laguna Madre a little more and I wanted to test the club's new speed gun.
The speed gun works, but you have to be really close to make it work. We will be using it this weekend for an event at Bird Island Basin. I hope to have a platform to put in the water so people can sail right by.
For today, it was pretty windy. I rigged the 6.6 to start because I wanted to do some speed check stuff. Even though it was blowing pretty hard, I never felt really, really fast. I never got close enough for a reading, either.
After about a half hour on the edge of control (and often falling off!), I went and rigged the 5.4. I also decided to switch my rear footstraps on my Carve 111 to the outer holes and back a little. I've had problems with this before, mainly in getting in them. Today was no different, but when I managed to do it (without catapulting), I felt really, really fast, and in much more control. It made a huge difference in how much I could push the fin and how much I could control it. Speed and upwind ability were much enhanced.
I had a bunch of good jibes, including about a dozen duck jibes and 6 of those fully planing, wham bam jibes. What a thrill! Duck jibing is such a rush. I'm going to keep working on them so I get my consistency down. For me, all my jibes where I enter well, end well, those where I come up too much when I unhook or don't bear off enough always end up slogging. So, that's what I'm working on now. If I enter properly, I can do the rest pretty well.
I did okay on some really small chop hops but had a bad wipeout on one. I started to rotate forward when I hit the water, and I started to go over the bars, but I laid back hard and prevented that for a moment. I wobbled around, but then lost the sail and it hit the water and I went with it, feet still in the straps. It wasn't too bad, but my toes hurt a little. I also had a weird wipeout entering a jibe reminiscent of when I blew out my eardrum. No damage this time (ear protection, helmet), but I made a big splash and scared the fishes.
All in all, a good day, though it backed off a bit and I sailed on my 5.4 a bit underpowered. Getting in the straps was such a problem that it knocked off a point on my fun meter, but mostly it was pretty good. I'm leaving the straps there for now, to see if I can get used to getting in them there. It was a lot better contorl-wise.
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