|
This was really more like an 11. Just one of the funnest days ever, despite that I sailed alone.
Okay, I realize that I'm really not that great of a windsurfer, I probably look pretty awkward out there, but I felt like Robbie Naish today. I've really, really liked North Beach since I first sailed there last month, but today the wind was perfectly in my wheelhouse. I'm not a very good finesse sailor. I like little board (relatively, at least) and lots of sail. I like lots of power. I'm not very good at milking the most out of a small sail. Wish I was. I'm not. Probably won't be. So, I was on the 6.6 with the Carve 99 and the 10" fin. This is my favorite combo. I can really really rip and the wind, at about 20mph, is just where I like it.
Mostly at NB the wind is just a few degrees off straight on shore. You go out on starboard, pinch like crazy for 20 seconds, then bear off when you have enough room to get planing. The water is waist deep right by shore, but the first sandbar is shallow. You gotta be planing. Today, though, the wind was darn near straight on. If I didn't have the power I had, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere. But it was cool. So, I get out, congratulate myself for being smart enough to wear the shortie I cut down to a farmer/shortie to help keep the jellies and my Boys from meeting, if you catch my meaning. There were lots of jellies, mostly the inane cabbage heads (a good reason to use a weed-shedding fin out there!), but a few of the painful jellies, too. I rip back and forth a couple of times, plenty powered, and then head-off for a close-up of the Lexington Aircraft Carrier/Floating Museum. It was awesome. I was about 200 feet windward of shore and if I had more experience and guts, I would have been getting HUGE jumps off the beautiful ramps. If the wind is more than 20ish, the chop is insane at NB (just heard today some guy who has windsurfed all over the world said NB has some of the most challenging conditions... he sailed yesterday when most where out on 4.0's. It can be tough!). Today, at 20ish, the place was relatively smooth and I was getting some good speed out there.
Anyway, I went toward the Lex, with good speed and doing what I could to not to have a yardsale while the chop was lining up some pretty nice troughs. I was fully powered. But you get over by those condos and the wind seems to stack up a bit. I get turned around and I'm not nearly as powered. But I'm far enough windward that I can grab a trough and get up to speed. It was awesome. I shoot down one face (maybe... boom high?) and just got some insane speed and came shooting out over the shoulder of this trough and spun out bad, for about 100 feet. A long time. I got it going again and still had the plane but I wasn't very powered up. If I'm wound, going up and down those faces would have been more than I could take, probably, and I would have definitely scattered gear and body parts. But, I wasn't very powered so I could just drop into a trough, get some great speed, then slice it back up the face (backside) and do it again. These aren't waves, it's just big chop lining up at the right time so after one, maybe two turns there would be a shoulder and I'd hit it. Again, I know I probably looked really awkward and probably barely left the water, but I felt like I'd just sliced a great cutback and hit the lip perfectly to catch an aerial. In fact, I don't care what I probably looked like, it felt AWESOME.
I went through my inventory of windsurfing days and there are probably a few that compete with it... the nearly glassy day at Lake Elmo in Billings, MT when I was 160 pounds and on a 7.0 (a Huge sail in 1989) and a O'Brien Pro-Am Slalom (very floaty). I was just ripping in these random gusts on a hot day with probably 100 hot 14-17 year old girls in the swimming area. Hardly a ripple because the gusts were short. But it was an awesome feeling. Then there was the time at Dailey Lake south of Livingston when the wind came not down through the canyon one way or the other, but across the canyon, down from the hill (?!?). Think of windsurfing the Gorge up and down the river, instead of shore to shore. It was like that. But it was wind, and the water was smooth and though I was out on my 7.0 and longboard, when the wind hit, my great father rigged the 6.2 and slapped it on the Pro-Am for me. Made my first planing jibes that day. Then there were the days in the Gorge, on that first trip in 1988. We had wind for something like 12 of the 14 days. Every one of the 12 makes it in my top ten. So, add today to it, too. That makes 15 windsurfing days in my top-10 best days ever. It does not suck being me.
|
