Windsurf Board Size Explained

Picking the right windsurf board size is tricky, especially if you're new to windsurfing.

Part of the reason it's tricky is because experienced windsurfers and the windsurfing media are a bad influence. We're always emphasizing progression to smaller boards, and dismissing big boards as just the "training wheels" of the sport. As a result, new windsurfers often end up with crazy misconceptions about what kind of gear to buy and what kind of path of progression to expect.

Here are some of the WORST pieces of advice that I typically hear:

Bad Advice #1- "I learned on XYZ terrible too-small board in the '80s, and now in PQR super-windy place where I live I never sail anything bigger than 85 liters, so if you're athletic and determined like me you should have no problem learning on this tiny shortboard that I want to sell you to use in your glassy calm 1-acre lake in Ohio."

Bad Advice #2- "Once you have a week or so of experience, you'll never again have use for a big longboard with a daggerboard, so you should just skip the longboard and buy this shortboard that doesn't work worth a crap unless the wind is blowing more than 15 knots."

Bad Advice #3- "If you want to learn to go fast and use the harness and footstraps and do jibes and waterstarts then you need to buy this tiny shortboard that will actually be impossible to sail unless you already know how to do all that stuff."

To counter some of that bad advice there is my Windsurfing Gear Calculator, which takes weight, wind strength, and skill level into account to figure out roughly what size and style of gear is appropriate. The calculator is a bit technical, though, so I've also tried to capture the essence of things in these two pictures:

This picture explains when you should use a big board, and when you should use a small board. Basically, small boards are only appropriate if you are a skilled windsurfer AND it's windy. When the wind is too light to plane, the best performing board will always be a big board with a daggerboard, and this is true regardless of the rider's skill.

This picture explains how board size is related to body size. What is a "big board" or a "small board" to you is relative to your body size, but the daggerboard also plays a role. I.e., a big person's small board would not be a good small person's big board, because it wouldn't have a daggerboard.

Good Florida Christmas Vibes, WindSUP Tweaks

As one might expect for a Northwest native living in South Florida, I sometimes miss the feeling of cool-weather Christmas. This is not to say that my hometown of Olympia, Washington had picture-perfect snow-white holidays- it was mostly deep green, wet, grey gloom- but something about the darkness outside emphasized the warmth and cheer inside.

This season in the subtropics, though, I'm feeling cheery in a different way. For one thing, the weather has been SUBLIME, ranging from pleasantly cool (AC off, windows open) to ideally summery (walk the dog wearing just your bathing suit, jump in the river to cool off midway through the walk). Also, our little municipality of Bonita Springs is making a good effort to bring a festive mood, with the palm trees in the park wrapped in lights, and lots of free concerts and stuff at the band shell. In the Latin neighborhood across the street, lighted yard displays make a night-time color show that compliments the daytime show provided by the brightly blooming bougainvillea and other exotic foliage.

Also, the windsurfing and paddleboarding have been pretty good. Not too many days of true shortboard conditions, but lots of formula windsurfing weather, and even a few good swells for SUP and WindSUP. I think one time I had to wear a shorty wetsuit, but otherwise it's still boardshorts warm.

Here's a track from a 16 mile long formula windsurfing session on Saturday. Winds were about 10 knot from the SW and I used an 11.0 Gaastra Nitro IV sail with a 70 cm F4 fin. Compared to my old fin, this F4 definitely gives me better upwind angles, making it less obvious which parts of my track were going upwind and which parts were going downwind. (In my old tracks you could tell that compressed zig zags were going upwind and stretched zig zags were going downwind.) There was a light wind zone within about 1/4 mile from shore, which is why you see my angle to the wind "pinched" after tacks near shore.

Another fun thing that I've been able to focus on more since the teaching semester ended has been some tweaks and modifications to my boards.

Tweak #1- Redoing the daggerboard gasket on the WindSUP.
The Exocet WindSUP 11'8" is a great board but it has a crappy "Allgaier" daggerboard system that includes poorly fitting, loose gaskets. I'd been meaning to rig up something better for a while, but didn't get around to it until one of the gaskets actually peeled off while I was sailing. After that I disassembled the gasket and cut a piece of flat PVC board to cover the opening. That was great as far as looks and hydrodynamics were concerned, but it made the daggerboard unusable. Phase two of the modification was cutting a slot in the PVC for the daggerboard to go through, and getting a piece of floor border vinyl to make a gasket over it. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Phase 1- Just the pvc board covering the slot

Phase 2- Making a vinyl gasket

Phase 3- Putting it all together

Tweak #2- Grafting a planing rocker onto my surf-rockered SUP.
I love my Angulo Surfa 10'4" as a SUP, but as a windsup it leaves something to be desired because it has too much tail rocker to plane. Since I first got the board I've been mentally picturing what it would be like if it had a step-tail, similar to the Exocet WindSUP. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and actually attempt to graft a flat section onto the tail. I agonized a lot about what type of outline shape the flat section should have, and I sketched lots of different possibilities on the bottom of the board. Eventually I decide to go for a "swallow tail" with moderate "winger" cut-outs, and I cut the tail outline into pink insulation foam slabs that I got from Home Depot. The height of the step in the step-tail was dictated by the thickness of those slabs (~1"), but it happens to be about right for making the last two feet of the board bottom flat. The hard part has been fairing the slabs to the right diagonal angle. I started by making a frame and using a saw, then after I expoxied the slabs to the board I used a rasp and a straight edge to take some more material off. I think I almost have it now, and I'm hoping to put the first layer of fiberglass on it today. I'll finish the modification, including dropping a US box fin box in each lobe of the swallow tail for a twin-fin, after I get back from family visits up North. Something to look forward to for the new year.

Waveboards- 83 liters versus 220 liters

About two weeks ago I had an funny wavesailing session at Wiggins Pass in Naples, Florida. Most of my wavesailing there has been in Northwest wind, but this time the wind was from the South. It was strong enough for me to use a 5.5 sail but it was a bit inconsistent- perhaps because of the direction. Anyway, I started out with my little waveboard, the 83 liter Starboard Evo, and had some good runs on that. After a while, though, I started having trouble staying planing and staying upwind against the longshore current. I considered switching to my larger shortboard, the 106 liter Exocet Cross, but then I said to myself, "Aww, heck. Why not switch all the way up to the 220 liter Exocet WindSUP? That way I'll still be able to catch waves even if the wind gets really light."

The huge board certainly had a different feel. On the way out a shortboard skitters and jumps over the waves, whereas the WindSUP whomps over the waves like a destroyer battleship in an open ocean storm. On the way in, either board is happy to ride a wave, but the two boards require drastically different kinds of input from the rider to make turns. The 83 liter board carves squirty little turns with subtle motions of my toes and ankles and moderate repositioning of my sail and body. The 220 liter WindSUP swerves from its momentous path only in proportion to how strongly and deliberately you stomp your weight around on it. But if you really exaggerate your commands it carves awesomely. As per typical, my video doesn't quite capture how fun it was out there, but here it is anyway. The song is "My Body" by Young the Giant.

Wiggins S Wind Shortboard and WindSUP from James Douglass on Vimeo.

Sarasota Winter Classic Regatta

I had a great time last weekend at a windsurfing regatta (pictures here) in Sarasota, which is about two hours North of where I live in Bonita Springs. The regatta had all the right ingredients for greatness, including:

1. A big grassy parking, rigging, and launching area.
2. An expansive flatwater sailing site exposed to good wind from all directions.
3. A cool yacht-club style event building provided by the Sarasota Sailing Squadron.
4. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and beer on tap included in the cheap registration.
5. Great organization with lots of helpful volunteers running the show.
6. Free camping and shower facilities right at the site.
7. A good number of both young and old participants in longboard, formula, and Olympic RSX classes.
8. Sunny, warm, windy weather.
9. The right blend of relaxed friendliness and competitive seriousness among the other racers.

The first day was quite breezy, averaging 15 knots or so. The race organizers set up two courses; a big windward-leeward course for the A Formula and RS:X classes, and smaller but more complicated trapezoid course for everyone else, including Kona One-Design, and Open Class. Below is a GPS track from one of my races on Saturday. You can see there were two laps around the trapezoid. The wind was from the South, so Buoy 1 was the upwind mark.

I sailed in the "Open Class" because:
1. I figured my 85 cm wide, 58 cm fin length, 135 liter volume formula board from 2001 would not be competitive with the 100 cm wide, 70 cm fin length, 160 liter volume formula boards from 2012 that everyone else would be riding.
2. I figured my 9.5 meters squared camless freeride sail would not be competitive with the >11.0 meters squared cambered race sails that everyone else would be using if the wind got light on the second day.
3. I wanted to be able to race my WindSUP 11'8" longboard if the winds got too light for formula, and the Open Class was the only one that would accomodate multiple boards.

It would have been a perfect choice except that only two other guys were in the Open Class fleet, and they were on very different gear, so I was mostly competing with myself. It still felt like a regatta, though, because our 5-minute starting countdown began right after the Kona fleet started, and because the two-lap course was long enough that we would start passing the Kona boards before the end. My best race was one where I passed ALL the Kona boards, including the famous all-around windsurf racer Nevin Sayre, who has lots of impressive racing records, like fastest time in the Gorge Blow-Out and fastest circumnavigation of Martha's Vineyard.

The racing was even more interesting on Sunday, because they lumped the Olympic RS:X boards in with the Open Class and ran us both on the trapezoid course. Since I was riding the WindSUP longboard Sunday I was more closely matched with another Open Class competitor, Dieter, who rode an F2 380 racing longboard with a 7.5 Severne Glide sail. My downwind and reaching speed was similar to Dieter's, and I planed a bit earlier, but he had better upwind speed and angle so he beat me in most of the races Sunday. Both Dieter and I were in the middle of the pack of the RS:X boards, though they would get past us if a puff of a wind came through the course that allowed them to plane upwind.

This video is of one of the higher wind races on Saturday. The song is by King Crimson.

Sarasota Schizoid Man 2013 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

There's another big regatta in Florida this weekend, the Calema Midwinters, near Cape Canaveral. Lots of the Sarasota folks were going, and I really wanted to go, but I just have too much work to catch up on. Oh, well. I'll still sneak out of the house for a bit to sail some waves at Wiggins Pass this afternoon.

It's the Little Things: Tuning New Boards

"Tuning;" making small adjustments in the settings and setup of one's equipment, is an aspect of windsurfing that is both frustrating and compelling.

The right tuning can take you to a higher plane of ecstasy; a feeling of effortless oneness with the ocean elements. Equally, the wrong tuning can make you feel like you're trying to carry five bags of groceries while balancing on a log floating through river rapids.

I'll admit to experiencing a bit of the latter feeling when riding the Exocet WindSUP 11'8" in waves for the first couple times. Though I'd found the board to be very comfortable and well balanced for flatwater sailing, my first forays into the small, steep, closely-spaced, uneven waves of the Gulf of Mexico were somewhat disappointing. The only tuning I did for the first round was to replace the 44 cm upright stock fin with a 25 cm swept weed-wave fin. Clearly that wasn't enough tuning, or wasn't the right tuning. Part of the problem was me. My instincts for catching a wave with a longboard were developed with the Angulo Surfa 10'4" SUP in the ideal conditions of Nahant- weight forward to catch a wave, weight in the middle to ride a wave, weight back only fleetingly during a steep drop or sharp turn. With the WindSUP, weight forward didn't help- it just made me pearl the nose. And on a wave I couldn't get the thing to turn. Where I had the most success was on a fairly windy day, where I could get the board planing on the wave well before the wave was about to break, and then I could turn the board with an overdone caricature of the moves I would use to turn a shortboard windsurf in the waves. I was starting to think the board either wasn't all it was cracked up to be for waveriding, or was just too dang big for me to manage.

I told Exocet guru John Ingebritsen (see him in a rad youtube video here) about the trouble I was having, and he told me these three tuning tips for the WindSUP 11'8"-

1. Go small with the fin, but not too small because you need some fin length to get planing. A traditionally-rockered SUP like the Angulo Surfa sort of melts into the wave and turns with the whole body of the board, using the fins only for traction. In contrast, the WindSUP uses the wave to accelerate to planing or partially-planing mode, and then turns more from the tail like a shortboard windsurf. Lift from the fin is more critical for this type of waveriding.

32 cm MUFin

2. Move the mast track all the way back and keep your weight back to "unstick" the nose.
3. Put the footstraps in the inboard positions and make them as loose as possible.

Track back, straps inboard

The other day I implemented those suggestions and they made a huge difference, both for wave-riding and for pleasant easy-planing in the stronger winds outside the break. For the mast track position, I put it as far back as the two-bolt baseplate would allow. For the fin I chose a 32 cm Maui Ultra Fins "No Spin." Ingebritsen says that's good and that it's actually on the smaller side of the fins he usually uses in the waves- he'll often wavesail with a 38 cm freeride fin. With the centered footstraps and the 32 cm fin, the WindSUP was very non-technical to get planing, and I think it would be the perfect setup for someone trying to learn footstraps and planing for the first time. Very gentle feel with lots of room for error.

The other recent bit of tuning I did was with the Starboard Formula 135. I traded the 65 cm Curtis fin that was sold with it for a 58 cm Finworks fin that is more naturally suited to the board's 85 cm width. It felt great on my first time out with it in good winds around 15 knots, but in slightly less wind the second time out it felt a bit "sticky," i.e. it was bogging down in the chop a bit and sometimes sending water splashing in my face. Today I moved the mast base back as far as it would go on that. It was only a change of two inches or so, but it made a big difference as far as making the board feel more free, fast, and efficient. With perfect formula conditions of about 13 knots of sideshore wind, I rode it way upwind and way downwind, really jamming and enjoying the Florida sunshine.

Life is good when you're in tune. 

Big Boards That Do it All

Like a lot of windsurfers I was baffled when the stand-up paddleboard (SUP) craze hit. My thinking was, “How is that even fun? It looks so slow and awkward.” Only after I tried it a few times did I start to see the appeal. SUP may not be the fastest way to navigate the water, but it’s pleasurable in its simplicity, and there’s something about standing on the surface that’s more fun than sitting in a kayak or sprawling on a surfboard. So I get it. SUP is legit.

What baffles me now is the unexploited potential in the design and marketing of multiple use windsurfer – SUP boards. Yes, there are SUPs with mast tracks that can be windsurfed, and yes, some windsurfing longboards can be paddled. But with few exceptions, the existing multiple-use boards are strongly biased towards either SUP or windsurfing, with limited capabilities for the other sport. I think that’s a shame, for two reasons:

1. There are a lot of things that a big board can potentially do well. Depending on its design, it can be a stable platform for beginner windsurfers, it can sail efficiently in light winds with the daggerboard down, it can carry a large sail for early planing, it can be paddled as a SUP in flat water or waves, or it can be used as a light-wind windsurfing waveboard.

2. Big boards cost a lot of money and take up a lot of space. So, it’s hard for most people to own a separate big board for every possible big-board use. Hence, the desirability of multiple-use big boards.

I’m not exactly sure why board manufacturers have been so half-assed about adding multi-usability to their big rides, but I have some theories that I won't get into here. For now, let’s review what types of big boards are out there, and what kind of multi-use potential they each have. As I’m prone to do, I made a chart for that, and I’ll say a little bit more about the categories in the chart:

The columns are grouped by three basic types of big boards.

On the left you’ve got typical big windsurfing boards, which are designed for flatwater sailing. They optimize non-planing glide, early planing ability, or some combination of the two. They are not designed to be paddled or wavesailed, but some work OK as flatwater SUPs. The picture below shows me riding a big beginner windsurfing board in planing conditions.

In the middle are windsurfable SUP boards. They are windsurfable because they have mast tracks, and occasionally a daggerboard or removable center fin, but they are otherwise shaped for uncompromised SUP performance. If they are intended for wave riding then they have soft rails and lots of rocker at the tail- features that facilitate catching waves with paddle power and longboard-style surfing but “stick” the board to the water and prevent it from reaching planing speed under normal sail power. See the figure below:

Given obscene amounts of sail power a surf-rockered SUP may be coaxed to plane, and in fact there is a video circulating around that shows a 12’6” SUP planing on flat water, but that’s with an expert speedsailor using a 6.6 sail in 30 knots of wind. With that much power even a bathtub would plane.

SUP boards intended for flatwater cruising are rarely equipped with mast tracks (with some exceptions). That's too bad because a flatwater cruising SUP could really cut through the water fast in light winds. It also seems like it might be easier to design a “planeable” flatwater cruiser SUP than a planeable surfing SUP, because the former could have a flat rocker and hard rails. Still waiting to see someone make that board.

An unusual type of windsurfable SUP board is wide but very compact, often with a “fish” style tail and multiple fins. Some of these boards are able to plane, but awkwardly and with no footstraps. They also don’t paddle in a straight line or catch gentle waves very well, making them most useful for specialist light-wind wavesailors who have sideshore wind and good waves and favor a certain shortboard surfing feel. The most famous example of that type of board is the much-hyped AHD SeaLion.

Image of the AHD SeaLion from Bill's OBX Beach Life.

On the far end of the table are step-tail windsurf / SUP boards, the original and most popular of which is the Kona ONE, which was introduced by Exocet in 2005 then became it’s own brand with an associated one-design racing class. The Kona does a bit of everything, but it’s too heavy and boxy to windsurf great in the waves, and it’s too narrow with too abrupt a step-tail to SUP well in the waves- I’ve tried.

Exocet later made some other Kona boards (now called the Curve 11’5”, 10’5”, etc.) with less volume and no daggerboards. The Curves have unequaled light-wind wavesailing performance  but are less appropriate as all-around windsurfing boards because they have no daggerboards and their “US Box” fin slots can’t support large fins. Some people SUP them, but they’re too narrow for most and the abrupt step-tail impedes their wave catching ability. Below, Florida's John Ingebritsen shreds a wave on a Curve 11'5".

The most recent step-tail offering from Exocet is the WindSUP 11’8”, which looks like a Kona ONE with a wider, thinner shape and a more refined step-tail design, as seen in the picture from Chuck's blog.

Supposedly it has improved light wind planing ability and SUP ability compared to the Kona ONE. It’s considerably larger than I would ideally want, but I’m encouraged by the mere fact that it exists, proving that it IS possible to have a fully-planing windsurfing board that SUPs well in waves. I really need to test one for myself, I mean, uh, for my fiancé.

Most SUPs and windsurfs on the market are good for their own sport but have very limited utility for the other sport. Fortunately, recent designs like Exocet’s WindSUP show that it's not impossible to have a board that SUPs well in waves AND planes well as a windsurf. Hopefully continued evolution will refine and diversify those designs, and maybe come up with some as-yet-unseen designs like a flatwater racing SUP that’s also an efficient planing and displacement windsurfer.

PS- Late breaking news- Exocet just introduced a 10’0” WindSUP for 2013! They must have read my mind.

Weekend of Windsurfing and Kiteboarding

It's blowing about 10 knots and your formula windsurfing boom is broken. 48 hours of weekend yawns before you, and you have important work to procrastinate on. You:

a) Rig the biggest sail you can on your smaller boom, and ride a longboard
b) Put that sail on a shortboard and try bobbing for waves
c) Kiteboard
d) All of the above

If you answered "d", then you and I have very similar approaches to weekend management. This weekend's activities are documented in the two videos below, both shot with my gopro helmet hero wide camera and edited with windows movie maker. I finally learned how to add music... so you might take this moment to make sure you know where your "mute" button is.

Longboard


Shortboard and Kiteboard

FL Windfest Day 1 Report

There were way more people than I expected at the Florida Windfest today. I would estimate about a dozen in the Kona class, at least that many in the Formula class, and a bunch of non-racers sailing around and trying out the gear from Aerotech and Exocet.

The Konas sailed a triangle course and the Formulas sailed that course plus an extra upwind / downwind around a fourth mark.

I sailed inconsistently. Out of five races I had two horrible ones where I was stupidly late for the start, two ok ones where I finished mid-fleet, and one good one where I tacked into clean air at the start and finished second. All the Kona races were won by a fast kid whose name I forget. There was a whole gaggle of juniors in the Kona fleet, who were usually among the top finishers. The big Kona men >85 kg (187 lbs) used red 9.0 meter-squared Aerotech Zenith sails and everyone lighter than that used blue 7.4 msq Zeniths. People below 65 kg (143 lbs) are supposed to use 5.8s but none were available for charter, so smaller boys on 7.4s had a noticeable early-planing advantage. No one complained, though - the fleet was still closely spaced.

The Zenith sail was weird, but I kinda liked it. When you rig it, you have to use very little downhaul tension, relatively little outhaul tension, and lots of batten tension. The battens overlap the mast a lot when there's no wind in the sail, as you can see in this picture of Mike Rayl's well-worn Kona and 9.0 Zenith...

The way the foot of the Zenith is cut lets you put the mast base all the way at the front of the track and still be in a good position when planing in the footstraps. The wind was up and down between like 7 and 15 knots today, but the rig setup felt good. The only thing I didn't like was how much the belly of the sail overlapped the boom. Maybe a wider-tailed boom could avoid that.

The formula class races were dominated by #3-ranked French formula racer, Loic Legallois. It wasn't all smooth sailing for him, though, since the fin he was borrowing for the first two races was repossessed by the lender once proven effective. Then while Loic was testing another fin he hit a manatee, busted his board all to shit, and was lucky not to be seriously injured. No word on the fate of the manatee. :( Hopefully its blubber protected it. Anyway, Loic finagled an Exocet formula board to replace his busted Starboard formula board, but that made him late for a start and he only came in 6th that race. The final two he won, though.

Tomorrow I'm gonna try to do better by starting on time. I think the only race is going to be a long-distance race, though, so it might not matter, anyway.

Here's some more pictures I took after the races today...

This is "Mr. Demo" John Ingebritsen stoked about the Kona 10'5" board and Aerotech AirX sail. The 10'5" is different from the Kona we race because it's smaller, has no daggerboard, and is intended more for catching and riding waves.

Here's some of the other stuff that was being demoed. In the background is the Calema Windsurfing storage building, where Tinho Dornellas keeps his rental fleet.

The fella in the red hat is a PhD physicist, but not even his brains and the brawn of those he enlisted to help him could un-stick his 3-piece mast.

The black boards in this picture and in the picture at the top of the post are the Exocet Warp Slalom boards. They're black because there's no paint on the top of the carbon fiber to add extra weight. I tried the 66 cm wide one and the 78 cm wide one, and they were both super light and fast.

Some other people took action pictures of the racing. I'll try to post some of those or link to them later.

Inlet to Inlet Race Report

Last weekend's "Inlet to Inlet" long-distance windsurfing race, organized by Ron and Sue Kern of Fort Lauderdale, was the first race I ever did in Florida. Not only was it a great challenge, but it was a great introduction to the groovy community of sailors in South Florida.

I almost didn't make it down from Fort Pierce because of car troubles. As it was, I limped into the Fort Lauderdale Beach parking lot with the battery light flashing and a weird humming coming from the dash. I scrubbed the battery terminals and tried to put car-anxiety out of mind to make room for race anxiety.

There were 19 other competitors at the beach, mostly formula racers, but with Mike Rayl on a Kona longboard (like me), and Beth Powell on a mistral one-design longboard. The winds were light from the NNW at first, but at noon they clocked around to NE and surged to a generous 20 mph. The chop and waves also swelled to formidable size. Amidst the pre-race excitement I realized I'd forgotton my harness back in the shower at home. Damn! Luckily, Alex Morales, who is famous for escaping from Cuba on a windsurf, lent me one, and Peter Ifju, a famous University of Florida professor and high-tech fin maker, lent me a harness hook.

I set up my Kona with the 46 cm stock fin, and rigged a 7.8 Aerotech Air-X, which is currently my largest sail. I left the footstraps in the inboard position where I keep them for freeriding / waveriding, but tightened them a lot to put my heels further out on the rail. I screwed two u-joints into the mast track in case one broke and so I could switch the position forward or backwards depending on conditions.

Getting out through the breaking waves was tough, especially for the formula riders with their long fins that would snag on the sandbar. About 50% of the attrition occured during that stage, before the race even started. Poor Farrah Hall had a brand new 9.0 KA formula sail rigged but broke her mast in two places and was really bummed that she didn't get to race. I think something similar happened to her Olympian rival, Nancy Rios, who had rigged her RS:X Olympic board and sail. I got off the beach ok, but immediately had control problems with my sail because one of the boom cuffs was slipping. I jumped off in the water and fixed it, but was still jittery and uncomfortable using my big gear in the heavy conditions.

Once away from the chaos of the starting line I got a better feel for the conditions and my gear, and got dialed in to the routine of taking long tacks upwind towards the barely-visible Hillsboro lighthouse. The surviving formula sailors were way ahead, but I was close with the other longboard riders, whose presence motivated me to keep pushing. I'd never before raced a Kona in conditions where sailing without the daggerboard was the most efficient way upwind, but it seemed to work pretty well in the strong breeze. I started to get ahead of Mike, but Beth was blazing a high-line with the daggerboard down on her raceboard, and she pulled away from both of us.

Getting to the upwind mark was actually kind of fun, working past row after row of cartoonish hotels and condos, and watching flying fish scatter away from the crashing bow of the Kona board. Finally, I rounded the Hillsboro Inlet marker, jumped off to move my mast base all the way back, then went barreling downwind. The waves were really getting huge, and when you were sliding obliquely down a swell the acceleration from both wind and water power was crazy. I saw Beth Powell struggling not far south of the Hillsboro marker and gleefully zipped past. Mike Rayl caught up with me, and we traded places a few times as each of us fought fear and fatigue to stay speedy. Eventually, I opted for a slower, deeper downwind line with my back foot in the leeward strap, and watched Mike dissappear ahead of me and further out to sea. That helped me rest my legs and stay in control, but I still had a couple of oh-shit moments coping with the lumps and bumps out there. I found the Port Everglades Marker right where it was supposed to be, 11.5 miles South of the Hillsboro Inlet marker and about 2 miles from shore. I rounded with relief, and made the final beeline for the beach. A bunch of guys jumped into the water to help save my gear from destruction in the break, thank goodness. Onshore I learned I was the fourth finisher, having somehow made it past Mike on the downwind. Mike arrived a few minutes later, but said he had been really smacked-down by the conditions far offshore and had opted to come straight in instead of rounding the Port Everglades buoy. That meant I was 4th overall and the only longboard rider who finished the whole course. YES! The good vibes continued though the prize-giving ceremony, the miraculous temporary recovery of my car battery, and the sweet pizza party at Ron and Sue's house. Woo hoo!

I'll definitely be back.

Full Race Results and Times: http://www.ronkern.com/2008_Results.htm
...

Florida is Pretty Cool

A week ago today I pulled out of my driveway in Gloucester Point and left Virginia behind. I was in an uneasy state of mind, melancholy about leaving a good community of friends at VIMS and around Tidewater, nursing a considerable hangover, and paranoid about crashing the 16' Penske van with my car towed behind it.

Fortunately, I avoided serious mechanical, physical, or psychological breakdown, and made it safely to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Charleston, SC that night. We saw my dear, 90-something year old Grandmama in Summerville the next morning, then I left on the second leg of the journey. By that point my spirits were lifting with good vibes from the family and increasing excitement about the trip into the unknown.

I stayed the next night with my older generation cousins in Daytona Beach. Cousin Tom is a newly retired highschool marine biology teacher. I'm hoping to do some Florida fishing and scuba diving with him sometime soon. Tom is also supportive of my windsurfing addiction; he took me to see the local shop, Sandy Point Progressive Sports, which was really nice and had gear for every water and land-based board sport imaginable, plus a bunch of kayaks and stuff. I had my eye on the ultra-wide Exocet "Cruiser" boards for my dad's re-entry into the sport.

It wasn't a bad drive from Daytona to Fort Pierce, and I soon found myself at my new doorstep, admist exotic plants and stylish stucco walls crawling with Cuban Anolis lizards.

I paid some local teenagers a couple bucks to help unload the truck, then I unhitched my car and went windsurfing / swimming in the Fort Pierce Inlet. (Zoom in on the map to check out the inlet.)


View Larger Map

The outgoing tide was against the East wind, so it was easy to zig-zag my way all the way out between the jetties and into the exciting waves of the Atlantic. There wasn't enough wind to plane except when riding a wave, but it was still fun on the Kona.

The first night at home was pretty miserable, because I was sweaty, hot and salty with no utilities hooked up yet to bathe or air condition myself. Fortunately, they had showers at the Smithsonian Marine Station (SMSFP) so I got one at work the next day. Compared to VIMS, SMSFP is very small, but the folks there are a nice, close-knit group who have welcomed me with open arms. There has been some kind of group social event every single night since I've been here!

It has been a bit chaotic around SMSFP this week, because everyone is watching the storms, wondering if we'll need to put up shutters and evacuate etc. Fortunately, all we got from Hanna was good windsurfing on Thursday in 15-20 knots from the NE. I launched from the ocean for the first time, and was suprised how easy the launch was from the lee of the jetty at Jetty Park.

These pictures were taken the next day when it wasn't windy, but it really wasn't much rougher than this even during the big wind, at least not until you got out past the end.

I rode my 114 liter freestyle / wave board with a 6.6 sail, and was the only windsurfer amongst about 10 kiters. I reckon it's cool to be different, and I don't have any immediate plans to switch sports.

Anyway, that's what's up with me lately. As usual, I'll keep posting rants, nerdly musings, and windsurfing stories as they come to me. Hurricane Ike looks like it could provide some nice sailing, as long as it stays at a safe distance.

Types of Windsurf Racing

Warning- This is a windsurfing nerd post with nothing to offer to non-windsurfers.

There are many kinds of windsurfing equipment and many ways to race with it, so windsurfers love to obsess about what type of racing is "best". Aside from the pure joy of obsessing, there is a practical purpose to the discussion. It is to insure fun, fair, and affordable competition for the target demographic of racers in the available wind conditions. Following is a review of the basic board types and classes of racing, starting with a rough evolutionary history.

In the beginning, the earliest windsurfing longboards gave rise to round-bottomed longboards that did great in light winds, and to all-around longboards, which had better planing performance. From planing longboards evolved shortboards intended for slalom racing in strong winds. As shortboards got more efficient, people realized that they could also be used for upwind-downwind course racing. The evolution of course-racing shortboards was towards shorter, wider shapes with long fins; today's "formula" boards. In the late 1990s, formula and longboard designs were combined to make "hybrid" boards. Another recent addition to board design, from the complete other end of the spectrum, was the introduction of the pure light-wind "Serenity" board.

Here's a little more info and some pictures of each type of board:

The most popular early windsurf board, and maybe the most popular ever, was the "original windsurfer", a big, heavy longboard with wooden booms and a daggerboard that you had to slide out of a slot and sling over your shoulder when you weren't using it. There was a one-design racing class for the original windsurfer, which gradually allowed aluminum booms and a slightly more sophisticated sail and daggerboard. The 1984 Olympics were raced on a board similar to the original windsurfer. Original windsurfers are still semi-popular in Australia, but have pretty much been abandoned everywhere else.

Another class of windsurfing that has pretty much been abandoned is "Division II" sailing on round-bottomed longboards. With their sailboat-shaped hulls, D2 boards did great in light wind course racing but were awkward to sail in serious wind. Serious wind is what they had in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, where D2 boards were sailed. It was extremely rough on the competitors trying to maintain control.

More refined longboards that did well in both light and strong winds were popular from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. They went through a lull in popularity when shortboards took over (and the overall sport of windsurfing declined), but all-around longboards are becoming popular again now. The 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympics were raced on a good board for its time called the Mistral One-Design.

The idea behind hybrid boards was to make a board that would have a daggerboard and be long enough to get around a course well in light winds, but which would be wide enough and have a powerful enough fin to sail both upwind and downwind without the daggerboard once the wind reached the planing threshold. (Regular longboards didn't get a very good upwind angle when planing, so they had to use the daggerboard on the way upwind even in strong winds, which people thought was lame.) Hybrid boards became popular with the introduction of the Mistral Prodigy in the late 1990s. Prodigies were wide and easy to sail, so they had an appeal for beginners as well as aspiring racers. Another hybrid board, the Neil Pryde RS:X, was selected for the 2008 Olympics. The RS:X never caught on among recreational sailors, however, who were turning back towards more traditional longboards. Perhaps the most popular hybrid board class now is the Techno 293 OD class for youth racers. The board isn't very efficient in either light or strong winds, but it's cheap, fun, and easy to sail, and good training for kids who want to get into either longboard or formula racing later.

Female RS:X rider is Farrah Hall and the picture was taken by watersports photographer Shawn Davis.

The first type of shortboard racing that was popular was downwind slalom, which is analogous to downhill skiing around flags. Boards for slalom are fast in strong winds and can turn pretty well, but are not designed to sail at steep upwind angles..

When people figured out how to make shortboards that went upwind well, there was a rapid evolution in shortboard design towards wide shapes with long fins. One class, called the "Formula" class, now dominates modern shortboard course racing. The rules of formula are that you can only have one board and three sails, and the max width of the board is 100 cm.

That last board design that I'm going to talk about is the "Serenity" a long, skinny, displacement hull made for extreme efficiency in light winds. It can go really fast when other boards would just be bogging along, but in stronger winds it reaches a speed limit of about 12 knots and can't go any faster than that because it can't get planing. Not much racing is currently done on Serenity's, but it is being talked about.

The next chart summarizes the optimal wind speeds for the different kinds of boards. Yellow means it's ok for racing, orange means it's good for racing, and red means it's AWESOME for racing. White doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible to sail a certain type of board in that wind; it just means that it's difficult or unfun, in my estimation.

Some classes of racing are open to boards and sails from any manufacturer, as long as the gear fits within certain rules about size, shape, number etc. These are called "Box Rules", and they help insure reasonably fair competition despite diverse equipment. Below are some open racing classes that are popular or have been popular.

One problem with open classes, though, is that the box rules can allow an "arms race" mentality to take over. The competition then ends up being more about who can afford the best custom equipment than about who is the best windsurfer. The common solution for that is "one design" racing, where everyone has to use the same equipment. The main problems with one designs are: 1) They get out-of-date and become "low performance" compared to what recreational windsurfers are using, 2) It can be hard to find others with the same one-design to race against, i.e. you need a critical mass, and 3) One-designs tend to favor a certain body weight, limiting the number of people who can be competitive at the highest levels to people of that weight.

The one-design class that I think is coolest is the Kona ONE. The rules of the class allow different sail sizes for different body weights, so the competitive weight range is not so limited. Also, the Kona is a really fun and easy board to sail in both light and strong winds. Plus, the Kona class is one of the only windsurfing classes that prohibits pumping the sail, aka "air rowing". That means you don't have to have marathon-runner fitness to be good.

Windsurfing on Eld Inlet

Well, I'm back at my folks' house in Olympia, Washington, enjoying cool but beautiful weather and satisfying my strong nostalgia for the lush nature and liberal culture here. Thursday I went windsurfing on Eld Inlet, a small finger of Puget Sound accessible from our neighborhood, with my dad and his friend Rob from work.

The wind was 5 - 15 knots and very gusty, as it always is here on account of all the hills and the tall Douglas Fir trees. But my dad's vintage Mistral longboards handled the conditions pretty well. Dad and Rob mostly rode a Mistral Superlight with a 5.0 sail.

And I mostly rode a Mistral Pandera with a 7.0, many-cambered, deep-drafted race sail.

This was the first time I have ever used the Pandera like it's supposed to be used- i.e. it's the first time I've ever gotten in the footstraps and made use the adjustable mast track and proper "railing" technique with the daggerboard. Wow! I was really impressed with how fast the board could zip with the daggerboard down and mast track forward. It felt almost as fast as a formula board on a plane. I think Rob might have gotten some video, so I'll see if I can post a youtube thing later. Anyway, it was a great way to start a vacation.

On Friday I couldn't get dad to sail with me, but it was quite windy by Olympia standards (10-20 knots) so I went on as long a cruise as I've ever made from our beach, all the way up past Cooper Point and into Budd Inlet. From there I could look south down Budd Inlet and see the Capitol Dome of downtown Olympia, which was cool.

Next stop, the Columbia River Gorge! I'll be there Tuesday through Thursday.