So I've entered the umi pictures video editing competition and the entries are now live on the umi pictures Vimeo channel. Please play mine. The number of plays counts towards the grand prize, a windsurfing trip to Bonaire!
Check it out....page 4 of the channel. Follow the link below. In the unlikely event I win, you never know, I might invite you to come too. ;-)
So I've entered the umi pictures video editing competition and the entries are now live on the umi pictures Vimeo channel. Please play mine. The number of plays counts towards the grand prize, a windsurfing trip to Bonaire!
Check it out....page 4 of the channel. Follow the link below. In the unlikely event I win, you never know, I might invite you to come too. ;-)
So I finally landed one and sailed out of it. Not the best and fairly wet, but the feet stayed in the straps and the sail stayed dry, and I didn't crash. So I think it counts..just :-/
In my quest to learn to Vulcan, the most heinous of windsurfing moves to get to grips with, I've decided to share some tips I've picked up along the way.
1) Get your weight forward. No I mean really forwards. If you think you're forward enough you're probably not. This is by far the most critical aspect....all of it should be on the front foot before you pop the board. Forward towards the mast and right over the centre line. If you do it right there won't be that much height in the jump. If you're too far back, you get a lot of height making the whole move more difficult. Look down and below your head should be the front footstraps. One other thing to note: you'll notice if you're too far back that either rail or fin catches and throws you off when you land or the fin engages really early when the board starts sliding and over-rotates with the inevitable crash.
2) Get the mast upright. If you're forward enough it should be. When you land your weight will be on the front foot, the board will slide easily and the fin will be clear of the water. The actually rotation only needs to be approx 110 degrees for the board to slide round the full 180 degree rotation.
3) Slide the hand to the front of the boom clamp....no really.. all the way so that your hand is touching the clamp or on the clamp itself and right next to the mast. Two things this does....gets you forward over the board and makes the rig flip part much easier.
4) Throw the mast back the way you came. My top tip for this is to try to smack your shoulder with you front hand. Start it as soon as you pop. Stop and think about it and it'll be too late. On the plus side if you've got the weight forward and the mast upright on take off you'll probably still get the board to slide even if the rig flip is a bit slow. You then have two options, grab the mast with the other hand or cross your hand over the old front hand and go for the boom. Grabbing the mast is fair easier to begin with.
5) Once the board lands do not delay in getting the old front hand onto the boom. Then transfer the mast hand onto the boom also (unless you've gone for the boom to boom technique). You need to wait for the board to slow down before starting to sheet it, but do it soon otherwise you'll find the board starts to sink.
6) Use a small fin. This helps by forcing you to get over the board to pop. If your too outboard when you try to initiate the pop the fin will spin out. There's also less fin to catch and throw you off when you're learning. On >5m sails I use a 19cm or smaller. Once it's windy enough for the small sails switch down to to something smaller. I use a 5.3 and 5.7 with a 19cm fin and for <5m a 16cm fin.
First trip to the beach with the new van for Simon in Enid, a T4 long wheel base, lowered and with a bit of bling....
Simon with Enid
Not the greatest of sessions, the big kit had to come out, but we had a good couple of hours blasting. The autumn is drawing in and now the clocks have gone back evening sessions are out of the question.
With Harty scheduled for a knee op on Tuesday and a pre op check on Monday, Sunday was the decided upon as the best option for part 2 of our looping clinic. A solid forecast of 20-30 knots SSE and the promise of mid to low tide was enough to persuade the team to accept and the location was decide upon - Hayling. SE would mean port tack jumping, often the weaker tack for South coast windsurfers (owing to the prevailing SW winds), but surprisingly the better jumping tack for two of the participants. I was very hopeful.
A change of team
Unfortunately, Rich somewhat embarrassingly managed to bust his thumb taking his wetsuit off after Monday's looping session so had to sit this one out. In his place another loop virgin, Guy took part for an hour or so and put in a really good effort.
Steve rotates
Hayling action
On arrival at Hayling Island the conditions looked pretty good with some nice waves breaking onto the shore. I went with the 5.3 / 82ltr combo and the others opted a little bigger with 5.6s and the 90 somethings. Steve once again demonstrated it could be done.
Despite the forecast the strong winds didn't quite materialized and for a lot of the time I was under-powered particularly close to the shore where the best ramps were breaking. Added to this the onshore winds weren't ideal
for looping, you had to really bear off almost pointing towards Portsmouth. I had roughly three good jumps and sailed furiously looking for ramps to attempt a loop off. For me they seemed few and far between. The ones I did go for I knew I needed to sheet in a lot harder and they ended in an inevitable crash.
Me gybing (left). Rob blasting towards the bar (right)
The last wave of the day had other ideas
Sunsets
With the sun setting on another day I was desperate to give it one last good go and started searching for a suitable ramp. Towards the inside of Hayling sand bar I spotted a fairly step wave topped with white water which looked as good as any. However, the wave had other ideas and just before I reached the top it broke sending my kit flying...I had a big swim to retrieve it. I was then miles downwind and with the wind dropping I decided to call it a day.
What next?
I couldn't help but feel mildly disappointed with my efforts on Sunday, but it's important to remain positive and I'm sure progress will be made. I'm more than certain that had the conditions been just that little bit more side shore it would have been a different story. More opportunities would have presented themselves and thus we have had more chances to have attempts. However the weather is fickle and the forecasts never quite accurate enough....that's windsurfing! On the plus side I've gain confidence and in the coming months plan to seek out side/cross-on shore conditions. Hopefully I'll have more to report soon.
Peter Hart put together another video of the action which I've posted below...
Van loan Recently I've been lucky enough to have been loaned a van whilst her owner takes a year off from work to travel the world. She's a Mercedes Vito, the old style ones pre 2003, super wide with acres of space. I don't know if she originally had a name, but it seems appropriate to give her one...Rusty.
Rusty on her first outing to Bigbury pre modifications
Bonnet repair - as good as new
Gangrene Given the less than immaculate paint work I set about taking the old paint back to the base metal,re-painting with two coats of rust resistant primer and a couple of top coats of Hammerite. The bonnet was a real mess and could do with replacing. On top of that some of the rust goes fairly deep so I'm not sure how long the repairs will keep the rot at bay. At least it's done before the winter sets in properly.
Fully loaded
Upgrades As she's a camper conversion she came with a bed, table, storage, cooker and even a fridge. All fine except there was little space for my windsurfing kit, so I've installed a few upgrades. There's now room for 6 sails, 3 masts, 3 boards and a couple of booms. I'll be topping her off with a roof rack for the larger boards and a SUP. She's going to be a real treat for a windsurfer who has largely made do with cars in the past and I'm looking forward to trips in the coming year.
With looping fever a group of us hired the services of Peter Hart, master coach, to guide us through our first loop attempts.
Did I do it?
In a word no. You can make all sorts of excuse when it comes to this sort of thing and if I'm brutally honest we simple weren't good enough. On the other hand I think the conditions were definitely against us and for most of the day I, and I think the others would agree, were sailing at the limit of their ability. Not exactly ideal for trying something new. On the plus side we learnt plenty.
We rocked up at Peter Hart's about 10ish and had a pre-looping chat about all the mechanics of the move over a coffee. Peter showed us some videos on his laptop, gave us his wisdom, words of encouragement and generally made it sound straight forward. It basically boiled down to getting planing early (with a running beach start), hitting the first ramp, extending the front arm, looking back and sheeting in ....easy. I was "well up for it" and couldn't wait to get to the beach.
The leaves had started to rustle outside so we promptly relocated to Bracklesham (just along the coast from East Witterings for those that haven't been).
When we arrived there we were greeted to about 12-15knots bolt onshore SSW, mid tide. Not great. However, the forecast had it coming good and Peter was confident that the wind would switch SW (making it cross on) and build about 12-1pm.
So we waited. In the meantime we did an on the land looping drill...the one were you take a rig over your head, sheet in and basically rotate the sail through exactly the same motion you would do on the water. We all did that well, no injuries and Peter commented that Rob's efforts were good enough for a planing forward. All good. Add a board and water and it was a different story.
The others talked through some tacking and heli-tack drills with Peter, keen to get something out of the day while we waited for it to build. We had an early lunch.
It eventually picked up, I rigged 5.3 whilst the other went with 5.6. It was however still very on shore and about 20-23knots. The shore dump was starting to look intimidating...not to mention the groynes being right in the way for getting out.
Time to get wet
Getting out was a case of timing your run to avoid the bigger waves, wobbling upwind enough to clear the groyne, before bearing off to get going. I made it on the first few attempts. With the wind so onshore the waves were coming broadside to the board, so finding a ramp was difficult. I had a few good jumps, and one were I fully intended to pull the trigger, but the surge in power made me panic and I bailed. I'm now kicking myself I didn't go for it then. Anyhow, there was plenty of swimming and some heavy beatings in the shore dump. This sapped our energy, so much so that that there was little left for any solid attempts once you actually got out. All you could do was cruise whilst the heart rate dropped back down and Rob promptly blasted to the horizon. We came in and Steve and Peter did some rather nice demonstrations, which were very impressive, whilst we took a breather. Worryingly there were no other windsurfers out despite it being windy; always a bad sign in my book (they turned up later when the tide had gone out).
The carnage ensued...more swimming, more beatings in the shore dump. If you got the launch wrong you were finished, and all you could do was drag the kit out of sea by whatever means and then collapse on the beach. Even Peter and Steve got caught out. Amazingly there was only one bit of kit damage, unfortunately for Rob. With his kit being tossed around in the waves the fin managed to slice through the sail....it's definitely patch-able, but on the plus side a good excuse for an upgrade. I had a few near misses with the groynes sailing right over one with about an inch of water to spare. Thankfully the fin cleared it.
It was now high tide and still onshore. I was keen to save some energy and changed down to 5m. By about 5pm the tide had backed off a lot and started to clear the end on the groynes and you could stand comfortably in the water. The wind picked up more and I downsized to 4.5m. The condition were pretty good, very flat in between the waves, ideal for getting up for speed to hit a ramp (it was still a little too onshore, but much better than earlier in the day). This was the last chance for a good attempt. The wind, however, backed off for my last few efforts and I was having trouble just getting going. To be honest by the point we were all knackered. Just sailing along in a straight line was a mission, let along thinking about looping. I had a few waves hit me broadside, throwing me off the kit and sweeping it in towards the shore; resulting in a big swim. After that I was finished, utterly exhausted and with bad cramp setting in. Five hours on water in some gnarly conditions was more than enough windsurfing for one day.
We packed up with the sun going down. Peter had to leave early to look after his kids and we hit the pub to talk through the day with a couple of beers.
So where's that leave us?
A little disappointed and not much closer to a loop unfortunately, but I think we got something out of the day none the less and I'm definitely more confident with the whole thing. Given the conditions were far from ideal, Peter has also kindly offered us a second half day/couple of hours session sometime soon. He commented that if it had just been a case of not "manning up" then there would have been no such offer and that the conditions had been some of the toughest he'd had for a looping clinic.
Peter put together a video of the days action, which I've posted below:-
