I'm sitting in the upstairs living room of a big rented house in Avon, North Carolina. We just had a humongous Thai dinner cooked by Sue from Buffalo, NY, and now a bunch of the fellas are sitting around the dinner table drinking beer, wine, and coffee and talking about religion, taxes, and politics. I reckon they got in this philosophical mood after our windsurfing celebrity guest, Josh Angulo, arrived yesterday. Josh gives a lot of credit to Jesus for helping him and his family through some rough patches in life, and when he was showing us the "Angulo" boards he brought for us to test he explained why they all have "Jesus Loves You" written on the bottom. Even though my own spiritual views are pretty different, I can identify with feeling a heart and soul connection between windsurfing and life.
Anyway, the windsurfing here has been great. I'm posting some footage of the first two days of our trip...
Day 1: 25-35 mph Northeast. Rode the Naish Nitrix 105, RRD fsw 101 (not in the test), JP All Ride 106, Starboard Carve 111, Quatro Freeride 110, F2 Vantage 126, Tabou Rocket 105, and Exocet Cross 114.
Day2: 10-20 mph Northeast. Rode the Starboard UltraSonic, Exocet Twixx 145, Goya FXR 144, and JP Slalom 76.
Chad Perkins took this sunset picture yesterday.
Great videos, Jim, thanks for posting! We can't wait to get down there for the second week of testing :)
ReplyDeleteMan, I'd love to sail that sound again someday.
ReplyDeleteAwesome stuff, James! Thanks for posting. What's the water depth where you're sailing?
ReplyDeleteBoardsurfr- You're gonna love it. I think you guys are going to have big SW wind, so it should be even better for you than us.
ReplyDeleteAaron- It's awesome. Let me know if you're headed for the East Coast.
Brian- The water depth varies a lot with the wind. The longest-finned boards in our test have 56 - 58 cm fins, and we have to walk a long way out with them, especially when the wind is from the East.
Nice work to get the vids out so fast. Sailing a 100 l+ board with a < 4m sail just sounds wrong! Hope you were allowed to put smaller fins on! Looks like you had the float to take some long wave-aided jibes though, that looked fun.
ReplyDeleteTHe speed of the big boards on flat water looks amazing, especially looking via a wide-angle lens - but do you get bored after a bit, or is there enough drag racing and using testers-as-jibe-marks to keep it interesting?
Its amuzing that some of the board manufacturers are naming their boards after their width instead of their volume ;-) Sounds so much more impressive if you can say you sailed your 76 instead of sailed your 145.