Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ocean Sailing with Workin' Dave

"Working" Dave Zaijcek is a stoked windsurfer from Stuart, Florida, who maintains a windsurfing blog called "Treasure Coast Windsurfers" and a local windsurfing forum called "Treasure Coast Windsurfing". Dave usually sails the flat water of the Indian River Lagoon, launching with a good group of mellow, mostly older windsurfers at the Stuart Causeway. But Saturday he got motivated to try the ocean, and braved some challenging conditions with me at the Fort Pierce South Jetty. We experimented with swapping different fins, sails, and boards and figured out that Dave's new Mistral Syncro 92 l board didn't work well with his 6.0 cambered race sail, but worked great with my 5.5 and 6.6 wave sails. So I think Dave is going to get a 5.8 wave sail and come to sail with me more often. Woo hoo! It's always cool to have other windsurfers on the water instead of being the only one among the kiters.

Unbeknownst to me, Dave took some cool pictures when I was sailing in the outflow of Fort Pierce inlet, where nice waves and swells form. I'm reposting some here. The full set is on Dave's blog.









Also, I've been trying something new on the water...

2 comments:

PeconicPuffin said...

I like the look of that wave. The back loop attempt too! My back loop attemps are always unplanned...I'm up there, I'm leaning "too far back" so I say What The Hell...and head for hell.

Andy said...

Glad to see you pushing it a bit!

One tip-

Look for the steepest section of wave you can find- you want to go up, and then come back down. It's a very vertical jump. You don't want to keep blazing straight ahead in the air with a forward trajectory, unless you're going to go for more of a push loop.

Now GO DO IT :)