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I was out on the Equipe today. Second time on that board since I bought it used last year. Today was the first time I've ever been in the footstraps on a longboard.
I sailed the Equipe for two reasons, the most important being that I will be racing it a little this year and figured I'd better get out there and figure out how to make it go, especially upwind. I also knew I'd be sailing Grassy (the spring break traffic over the under-construction JFK Causeway is really bad, so I didn't want to sail at Bird). If I'm sailing Grassy in light wind, I'm not using my 17.5 inch fin on my Seatrend Allstar 70. I keep telling people that, but I'm sure I'll break down and use it soon. Be on the lookout for the log entry with "broke my nose on the mast today when I ran aground and was slammed..."
The board is surprisingly quick and planes like a shortboard, but sooner. It has a lot of interesting characteristics, and I had a lot of fun playing around, and racing myself around this set of channel markers I was told that some people use for impromptu races.
I recently bought a watch with stopwatch and I used it to time myself and I approached marks, to see how long it took to reach them. I'll say this, I wasn't going as fast as I thought I was! It would take me about 30 seconds to go what I thought would take 10 seconds. This kind of information is important as I get ready to do a little fun racing. I will be better able to judge start sequences.
Dick Ward joined me for awhile. First time I've seen Dick since before he went skiing in Wyoming for two months. He's a reverse snowbird. Richard Bradshaw was there, too, passing me planing on his 6.2 while I was just under a plane on my 7.8 and Equipe. Richard is lighter than I, but that doesn't explain why he passes nearly everyone. He's just one of those guys.
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