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Okay, another Oleander day. Not bad, good wind, lots and lots of windsurfers -- I had to park on the street, the lot was completely full.
A couple of months ago I vowed I would at least attempt a forward loop by my 10th session this year. I said, "God, I'm scared, but I'm gonna do it." Today was #10, and I tried two. They didn't go well. In fact, unless I told you they were loop attempts you would have thought they were nothing more than crashes, and lame ones at that. But, I did attempt them and suffered the consequences. I'm happy about that, I just need to get better at jumping before I'm going to be able to actually do any.
Speaking of which, there is this weird thing that happens when you do something out of your ability range -- it makes you forget about all the other stuff. I was so worried about finding ramps and the whole loop thing, that normal stuff that worries me (currently: landing regular jumps) didn't even cross my mind. And, I'm no Dale Cook, but I did manage a few small jumps and landings. In fact, one was a pretty good-sized jump (can't objectively say big, but I personally think it was pretty high). I need to work on hang time and form, but it was nice to launch a few without the normal worries. The worries of looping took over.
I feel pretty stupid talking about looping because if you saw me sailing you'd probably advise me to work on my jibes a bit more, but I really need to challenge myself sometimes, and this was the challenge. Did I finish off the challenge? Yeah, I wanted to attempt at least one, and I did, and God can be proud that I had enough faith for at least that, even though it didn't really go well, I didn't even rotate, just landed on my gear twice, once fairly hard and once soft. So, they were attempts in the pure sense of the word, but not "I got all the way around and then waterstarted away" kind of attempts. I'm still happy, though, it was tough for me to cover the normal 'protect my body from a catapult' impulse.
One day soon I'll make one. I'm getting better at two things from here one out: duck jibes and jumps. I can do both passingly, but I want ripping duckers and huge jumps. Then, it's screaming fast tacks and loops.
I'll try some more again soon. I suddenly LOVE the F2 Wave. It is so TURNY and loose. It's fast enough, goes up wind fine when fully powered and seems very nimble. I ripped off a couple of really tight jibes, about half the turning radius I normally do and it's just awesome. Yesterday I almost went looking for a dumpster, now it's my second favorite board. It's still hard to slog, but I'm sure I'll get better at it.
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