ECWF Race Video

This post is part two of my account of last weekend's East Coast Windsurfing Festival. A more complete description with pictures and a list of winners is on The Peconic Puffin. The racing winners were riding round-bottomed "Division II" boards, but standard flat-bottomed raceboards were close behind. I had a chance to try Pete Roesch' D2 board on Saturday and found it fast but very tricky to tack and jibe. My own board, a 10'4" Angulo paddleboard with the addition of a small center fin, was better around the course than the paddleboards without daggerboards, but couldn't hold its ground against the real windsurfing longboards. Below is some video I edited up of two races on Sunday.

East Coast Windsurfing Fest 2012 - 2 Races from James Douglass on Vimeo.

A nice windsurfer / sculptor named Mike brought this Buddah creation to the beach in the back of his pickup truck. I think it helped bring a ZEN vibe to the event.

New Windsurfing Video + ECWF

I'm at the Holiday Inn in Ronkonkoma, NY, lying on the bed in my salty swimsuit and wondering if the sun I got today is going to turn to tan or burn. It was Day 1 of the East Coast Windsurfing Festival at Hecksher State Park. Despite paltry winds and some sprinkles, we had a ton of fun and held multiple rounds of windsurf racing and freestyle, plus SUP racing and a board toss. I used my Angulo 10'4" Surfa SUP for everything (except the board toss- everyone used New England Windsurfing Journal editor Peter's old Tiga for that). For the windsurfing parts I used an 8.0 sail and put a center fin on the SUP in the extra finbox that Josh Angulo helped me install this spring. I also removed the SUP's thruster fins to reduce drag. It seemed to work OK, because I was able to keep up with the real racing longboards on the downwind parts, and at at least keep up with the slower beginner boards upwind and reaching.

It was the first windsurf race ever for my travel buddy, Cambridge windsurfer Jonas Shoor. He did alright for his first time, and said he learned a lot. This is Jonas by my van on the Connecticut - Long Island ferry this morning.


The forecast for tomorrow is for more light winds, but we're holding out hope for at least enough to plane a little on our big gear. If conditions are good I'll take some GoPro helmet camera video. In the meantime, here's a video I shot last week of some wavesailing in Nahant. It's not my best work ever, but I think it fits well with the Pixes song I chose.


June 2012 Windsurfing in Nahant from James Douglass on Vimeo.