2 categories

It has been a while since my last sail, great to be on the water. Bombas with Bos and Ant.Started on the OD7 and Patrik 115L then switched to the KAR 5.5 and CA59 with a leading edge 28 fin.

6 categories

JP FSW 92, NP Alpha 5.8m, JP weed 26cm.

Some times itsa good, sometimes itsa shit!

And sometimes just just put in that little bit of extra effort into the equation just to make things more memorable.

First front for the year, decided to give Avalon bay a go with the Terry fella. Avi bay looked quite breezy and a little lumpy at the Southern end so went with Mr T's option of wave gear, unfortunately I only had my small board.

First bit of muppetism was I couldn't get my boom attached, so got some help from Waveslaves beloved Maxine to assist (you know things aren't going well when kiters can rig your gear better tan you can).

Eventually got my shit together and headed for the water.

Second bit of muppetism, I forgot about the current running of the point and spent a considerable time trying to get the board pointing in a direction ~140º from which it wanted to point.

Once I got this resolved and managed to waterstart I quickly foung that it wasn't anywhere near as windy as what it looked and there was quite a bit more Nth than expected, so I chugged up to the northern carpark, whilst chugging my harness line case split (rope stayed intact) where I beached with the plan of walking up to the northern point to launch .

Third bit of muppetism, Being a inland water sailor I'd slightly underestimated the effects of an onshore breeze, a knee to waist high shore break and an uncoordinated muppet in charge of the gear.

Upon exiting the water, I misjudged the sail position which pinned that sail to the shoreline, which then lead to the shorebreak burrying the gear under 1/2 a cubic metre of beach sand, the second and third waves didn't do much to help apart from shifting the sand to totaly cover the sail.

Eventually Huey relented and I was able to extricate my gear from the shoreline and trudge up to the point.

At the point much to my amazement I was able to launch plane get in the footstraps and get planing. Unfortunately the footstraps were set up for clown shoes and as I sail with my feet au naural now there was a wee bit of freespace and movement available. The run iself was quite nice.

Of course I gumbied the gybe, whist getting ready to waterstart I noticed a bit of boom head in a place where it wasn't supposed to be, closer inspection found another bit hanging at a unexpected angle.

So flipped the sail again and headed back to shore. that was me done.

Mr T on the other hand, accepting the futility of a 4.7m sail had quickly rigged a larger sail.

This time he went much better, planing most of the time and making more gybes than not.

So a set of harness lines and a boom head, can't realy complain as the gear is over 20 years old.

Still nice to get out, I may have to practise a wee bit more with wave gear so I don't have to rely on kiters to help rig up.

Good times.