My MUFin: Says What it Does, Does What it Says

A while back I made a post about Maui Ultra Fins, aka "MUFins", a newish brand of windsurfing fins. Well, I finally bought one, a 32 cm "No Spin" fin, which I tried for the first time last week. Before going into detail, let me just say it worked as advertised, i.e., it worked fantastic.

I was riding my 106 liter Exocet Cross with a 6.8 msq Aerotech Phantom sail, a combination that I love but hadn't found quite the right fin to accompany. The fins I had tried on it previously were either too small and wimpy, too slow and draggy, or too long and ungainly. The "No Spin", however, seemed to have tons of power to get planing and point upwind while maintaining a quick and maneuverable feel. Also, as the name implies, it was very resistant to "spin out", at least when it was free of weeds. My only frustations with it were that it didn't come with a fin cover, that the well for the fin screw was a bit too shallow, and that the base was a little loose in the fin box until I shimmed it with a piece of tape. Of course, that last bit could have been an issue with the fin box on my board rather than the fin itself.

Anyway, I'm pretty stoked on the MUFins brand now, and I reckon they're a safe bet for folks in the market for a new fin.

My Velouria! And Epiphytized Seagrass

Frank Black, from the late '80s band "The Pixies", is so the man. I figured it would be appropriate to have his singing in this video where I'm riding my black windsurfing board, the Exocet Warp SL 71. The sail I'm using is an Aerotech Phantom 6.8, which I like a lot because it's equally comfortable on this slalom board and on my Freestyle-Wave board. The launch site is Old Fort Park on the Indian River Lagoon in Fort Pierce, Florida and the wind is out of the southeast in the low to mid teens.

If you don't blink, you can occasionally spot another windsurfer in the video. That's my buddy Brandon, riding his Kona ONE longboard with a 9.65 msq Sailworks NX race sail that he was able to rig for the first time that day since he just got a formula boom. The mast he used was an aluminum 460 jacked up on two extensions. I couldn't believe it worked, but it totally did! Way to go, dude.

IRL Slalom Sesh 9 Aug 2010 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

The underwater part at the end of the video shows the seagrass ecosystem that I've been studying here in Florida. You can see that the blades of seagrass are covered by tufts of brownish algal fuzz. Those are "epiphytes" (plants that grow on top of other plants). When there is an excess of nutrients in the water (like from fertilizer or sewage in runoff), and there aren't enough grazing invertebrates to remove the epiphytes, they can smother the seagrass. Most of the seagrass beds in the Indian River Lagoon are holding up OK, but they are definitely under a lot of stress from the murky conditions and overgrown epiphytes, so their future is a bit uncertain. I wrote a more detailed post on seagrass a while ago. You can read it here.

Too Sassy for my Blog?

My friend Emily Westermeier is a talented pop singer / songwriter / keyboardist with a lot of range in her voice and musical style. She and her buddy Steve Fogel are a home-brewed recording group called "Biscuits and Gravy", based out of Vero Beach, Florida. At the moment they're completely unsigned and unknown, but that could change quickly because their music is good and Emily is hot. I'm doing my part to help out by posting their first video "Bounce Me" here on my blog. As you might guess by the title, it is a sassy number, bouncing along the fine line between PG13 and NC17.



The other Biscuits and Gravy songs all sound different, but share the common theme of sassiness. You can listen to them on the band's website, here.

If you're a big-time recording executive and you want to sign B&G for a multi-million-dollar contract, you can contact Emily through the website. Or if you just want to get them to play at your local coffee shop, bar, or bar mitzvah.

"Aqua Kids" TV Show Taping at my Work

There's a nationally-syndicated kids' tv show about marine and aquatic science called "Aqua Kids". It seems to be a pretty good one that features some real scientists, aquarists, and conservationists. On Friday the hosts and crew were in Fort Pierce to film an episode at the Smithsonian Marine Station where I work, and the Smithsonian Marine Ecosystems Exhibit (a small aquarium and education center) across the street.

Earlier in the week my coworker Laura had told me they were coming and that I ought to look sharp and wear my Smithsonian-Logo shirt in case they wanted to film me working in the lab. I didn't take her warning as seriously as I should have, and I showed up at work unshaven and wearing my favorite "Alice in Chains" t-shirt. Whoops.

It was clear that they were really going to film me, though, so I scrambled to set up a fake seagrass-sorting workspace in the lab across the hall, which has more room and better lighting than the cluttered office where I actually work. Pretty soon I was mic'd-up in front of a tray of seagrass with all kinds of lights and cameras everywhere, and young, professional tv actors running around.

Molly, the main adult host of the show, and Jen, one of the kid hosts of the show, asked me a couple questions for the camera that I tried to answer in a brief, entertaining, kids-show kind of way. I was kind of nervous, partly because Molly was SUPER HOT with HYPNOTIZING EYES, but I think I faked pretty well that I was cool and collected.

After the interview the hosts left but the cameramen stayed for a while to get some close-up shots of the seagrass and stuff as I was picking through it. I don't know if any of the material in my segment was tv-worthy, or if my dumb-ass Alice in Chains t-shirt spoiled it all, but I guess we'll see in a while if it makes the cut.

Something Big and Amazing, in Windsurfing

I think there's something big and amazing going on with the sport of windsurfing now. It has to do with good competitions and events being organized at all levels around the world, and the collective stoke of the windsurfers involved being creatively channeled and magnified through a maturing "new media" network of photographers and filmmakers, bloggers, websites, etc. What it amounts to is that the wonders of windsurfing, which had languished for a decade or two in isolated pockets of knowledge and stoke, are rising again into the light.

There are lots of ways you can tap-in to the flow of what's going on in the sport, but here I'm just going to recommend two main ones: "DaNews" and the Professional Windsurfing Association Website.

DaNews is run by a Floridian guy named Clyde who is really good at collecting and collating all the freshest internet-published news and videos about windsurfing stuff happening everywhere. Like me, his blog also has a sidebar of links to other blogs with interesting windsurfing content, so DaNews is kind of like one-stop-shopping for your windsurfing information buzz.

The PWA world tour website is less broad in scope, but it covers all the elite level competitions that take place around the world, and features really good photography, nice play-by-play journalism, and classy action videos. I am particularly digging their coverage of the "slalom" racing discipline. It's kind of like the heavyweight boxing of windsurfing, with big tough veteran windsurfer dudes like Bjorn Dunkerbeck, Antoine Albeau, and Finian Maynard duking it out for glory. There's a series of videos from the current competition in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands that captures the action better than any other slalom videos I have seen so far. I've reposted them here for your viewing pleasure.

Dumb Stuff Good Kiters Do + Weekend Videos

Windsurfing has a slow learning curve in which bravery and athletic talent alone are not enough to get you beyond the kooky beginner phase. To progress in windsurfing you must also mentally tune in to the nuances of wind and water conditions and learn the technical aspects of gear and rigging. Therefore, by the time you make it to an intermediate level in the sport of windsurfing, you are probably well rounded in terms of understanding, ability, and common sense. If that's you, give yourself a pat on the back.

Kiteboarding is a little different because it has a quicker learning curve in which either bravery/athleticism OR tuning/technique can get you going. So there are two kinds of intermediate level kiters; the ones who rely predominantly on their bravery and athleticism, whom we'll call the Brats, and the ones who take a more cautious and deliberate approach to gear tuning and technique, whom we'll call the Tutes. Generally, younger kiters and those with a surfing or wakeboarding background are more likely to be Brats, and older kiters and those with a sailing or windsurfing background are more likely to be Tutes. The best kiters have the good qualities of both Brats and Tutes.

As you might guess, I'm more of a Tute. As such, I feel it is my duty to share some unsolicited advice with all the talented Brats out there by pointing out the dumb things they do and how they could fix them to become much better kiters that I'll ever be.

Dumb Things That Good Kiters Do
by James Douglass, a bad kiter

1. Struggle with inappropriate sized kites for their weight and the wind conditions.
A Brat will usually go to the beach, see what size kites the other guys are using, and rig about that, regardless of whether he is 125 lbs or 250 lbs. Dumb. Kite size for a given wind strength is directly proportional to body weight, so a 125 lb person should use a kite half the size that the 250 lb person is using. For more specific kite size advice, check the chart I made here.

2. Ride too small a twintip or a surfboard with too much rocker.
Brats usually do well in powered or overpowered conditions that freak out Tutes, but they often have trouble in the light winds where Tutes flourish. This happens for several reasons including Brats' tendency to try to ride the same, small board all the time, or to dumbly consider a sinky little surfboard with tons of tail rocker to be a good light wind board. It doesn't matter how skilled a rider is; a small twintip (anything < 150 cm) just doesn't work very well in light wind, even when paired with a big kite. And a dinky, rockered-out surfboard will not get going and stay upwind nearly as well as a big flat twintip.

3. Oversheet (choking the kite) and over-edge (forcing the kite to the edge of the wind window).
This is another reason why Brats suffer in light wind. They aggressively sheet and sine their kites for power, while burying the rail of their board as hard as they can in the water. This often stalls or partially stalls the kite, slows them down, and prevents them from going upwind. Then they walk back up the beach and pack up, complaining that it's not windy enough and dammit when are we going to get some REAL wind. It would work better if they flattened out and finessed their boards to create less drag, more speed, and more apparent wind in the kite so they wouldn't have to sine it for power. And then they could sheet out and edge just a bit to have the kite pull them effectively upwind.

4. Don't put upwind "in the bank" on the way out or at the beginning of a session.
Just like what goes up must come down, what goes downwind must somehow come back upwind. Brats often gleefully zoom off downwind without realizing it, maybe because they didn't pay attention to the wind or current direction, and then have to struggle to make it back upwind to where they started from. It's better to go upwind as much as a possible when you first start out, to make sure you can maintain ground, and to build up some buffer space downwind in case the wind dies.

5. Launch in a ridiculous way.
Some Brats feel that to be a good kiter they need to do one of those lame, show-off starts where you slide your board down the sand of the beach, pop off an embankment, or hop into the footstraps when your board is floating in ankle deep water. It beats up your gear when you do it right, and it beats up your body AND your gear when you do it wrong, and it's tacky. Just wade or body drag out away from shore and launch like a normal person.

6. Jump too close to the beach or over super shallow water.
Just because you can usually jump, land, and turn around in about 100 feet doesn't mean the 100 feet remaining between you and the shoreline is a good place to try to jump, land and turn around. And just because you usually land softly doesn't mean you will land softly when you do a big air over 6 inches of water. Even if you do everything super skillfully, shit can happen with the wind that makes you go a little further, higher or faster than you expected, and then you crash and hurt yourself or some other people.

OK, that's it. Now here's my videos from the weekend, both shot Sunday. I started out kiteboarding, then when it got windier I went windsurfing, so that's the order the videos are in.

Kiteboard Jumping Session 7-25-10 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

Midsummer Windsurf 7-25-10 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

Bonnie Slideshow

After work Friday I went down to the beach and took some pictures of my buddies kiting the lingering winds from Tropical Storm Bonnie. It was high tide and the wind had shifted from NE to SE since my windsurfing session in the morning, so the conditions were kind of ugly with lots of closely-spaced windswell and shorebreak. The ugliness was compounded by the fact that the jetty had collected tons of drifting seaweed into a swirling stew along the shore. But wind is wind, I guess. Here's the pics: