5 categories

Albany JP54 REREII 7.0 Pepespeedweeed 26 @38 deg.

Watched Hardie and Robin for a while and got ready to leave a note saying there was not enough wind. Then I saw trees continued to wobble and rigged. So glad I did as it was loads of fun. Trying for alphas for a while and had three over 23.5  At least I have the proximity sorted.

Water was so flat but as tide fairly low the sailing area was restricted. Great gybing practice.... just need a couple more knots of wind..... Watch this space

2 categories

Albany, lowish tide, started 14 to 16kts ended 16 to 18 kts.  For me this place at low tide with this strength of wind duznt suit.  My most powerful big weed fin thats not too deep is a 26cm at 45degree which is not very powerful, and on my 66cm wide JP slalom with wide tail just kept spinning out all the time.  Runs were short, full of spin outs and lots of weed slowing down the starts.  Ankle still way to sore to gybe, so have to stop and water start after each run, and when they are short runs, not a lot of fun.   I will look for other places to sail tomo if tide is low again.  At this tide, and wind 18kts or under, the Lilacs run is way too short and way too weedy.  Weed is either at surface level or only about 10cm under water surface.  A learning experience.  If you looked at Binny (50degree weed fin)  and Steve, they had a lot of fun.  If I could gybe, and had a better fin i would have enjoyed it more.

What have I learnt re weed fins for this place re lowish tide and 18kt or less winds: This place is weedy, its the weed so close to the surface that keeps it so flat.  If you are a larger gentleman, and ride big gear in winds less than 18kts, then this place is probably not suited to you.  If you wanted to sail this place on those conditions then a weed fin with rake of 48 to 50 degrees is recommended  maximum depth about 26cm I'd recon.  Amamzing to see what Decrepit was able to achive with a 50 degree 17cm fin but he;s small guy and light.  Its not worth the trip when its like this.  But Albany has a massive expanse of water, and its about finding the right spot on this tide.

4 categories

Tabou Thunder 80cm, NP RSR Eiii 7.8m, JP SS 45cm

After my 2 hour session yesterday I wanted to see how far I could push my fitness today.

4 Hours sailing non stop apart from, 2 mast foot adjustmenst, 2 droped gybes and one muppet moment where I just fell over getting going.

Went with the 7.8 as the wind came in early and was supposed to pick up, realistically should have been on the 8.6 for the amount of holes out there, struggled with Mast foot positioning giving me some brain damage.

Spotted 3 sharks today hit 2 fish, one large one which I thought had damaged my fin, got quite adept at chop hopping weed of the fin. quite a few knobs out there in boats, must have been a 50% off sale on crab nets as the feckers were everywhere.

Bit of an ache going on now also got to patch the hole in the arch of my foot.

Sorry Tom for not playing when you wanted to race

Well happy with the results

1 categories

Great fun sail with Fangy at fangyville, wind was very light but dead flat water made up for it. Even found some mirror water, not quite as much as Lilacs, but still lots of very flat stuff. Tide was very low, loked more like a blo-kart venue than a windurfing place.

Wanted to try the newly modified 28cm 45deg weedy with the 6.6, but with this tide I plugged the 17 X 350cm 50deg into the 53cm board.

Good advice fangy, I'm sure the 28 would have hit bottom several times, and would have been more draggy in the weed, especially my last run home.

I should have done more through there, got my best speed and logest stretch of mirror water. I understand now why your 5X10 is so close to your 2s.

The GPS readout on that run is 27.25, my 2s is 27.22 only a .03 realspeed reduction, that doesn't happen often! and my 10s that run was 27.02.

Another 4 runs through there would have given me a nice 5X average.

Had some fun trying low wind alphas, but my method of sighting over your shoulder at the horizon, on the way in, and aiming for it on the way out didn't quite work, had a 19.42 at 50.7m but as soom as I set the slider to 50m gpsarpro discards this run and goes to the next best, 18.38.

So reluctantly I've booted into windoze, and have now posted Realspeeds results, after all a knot is a knot! Realspeed moves the gate back to where it's 50m, in this case it's a total distance of 488.54m. It's very surprising that GPSarPro doesn't also do this, after all it's only 12m short.

Maybe I should get the latest version.

 Here's my tracks.

Well Ross I was close to the bank, but far enough away for comfort.

Coodanup foreshore with the Old Man of the Sea. QEII and Koncept6.6 and Decrepitslightlylesssupermassivedelta. Very marginal conditions for me but siunce I had company there was no option. I decided to impress Decepit with my profound local knowledge. The tide was too low for Fangy or Chutney runs, but I thought I would cruise up the inside and see how shallow it really was. I scraped a few cm off the fin before i decided that I was over the bar and time to power up. I did this very very briefly. Around the front and smacked the nose big time when for some reason the board stopped dead. Turns out that you cant just ignore a no water situation. Who knew? So picked myself up, board nicely cracked and fin pretty well munted. Decrepit still on the beach getting readings off his sundial or something. Too easy - no loss of face here, ego still intact even if nothing else is. So I just pretended to casually walk off the sand bar, chatted to a few crabs and jumped on the QEII and hopefully there is enough fin to do something with the rest of the day. Luckily enough I managed to work up out of the hole and then had a really enjoyable session, even if being that badly under powered meant I did more pumping than Lleyton Hewitt. I realised that it was time to go when the staff from the nursing home came down to demand Decrepit back. I then watched him do a Fangy's run through barely enough water. Apparently he was pretty relaxed about it, but I watched the whole time with a true sphincter moment expecting him to come to a serious halt. He didnt. He just sat back, ordered room service turned on the TV and cruised down the run. I had to quickly pack up but I think when I left he was getting the staff to put up a hammock under some cocktail umbrellas....

l