My First Downwind Slalom Race!

Wow, two weekends in a row of windsurf racing! Last weekend was the Central Florida Windfest at Kelly Park, with formula class and kona class course racing in 10-15 knots. Yesterday was the Stuart Spring Fling at the Stuart Causeway, with downwind slalom racing in 15-20 knots.

I had never raced in a downwind slalom format before, but I loved it! The start was way upwind, barely visible from the beach, and there were two jibe marks positioned so that you sailed in a long zig-zag on the way to the finish by the beach. (One less jibe mark than in my diagram of a downwind slalom course that I made for a previous post.)



You could really go full speed because you never had to go upwind. My full speed wasn't that impressive since I was riding wave-oriented gear (a 6.6 Aerotech Charge with a skinny mast and 106 liter Exocet Cross with the stock fin), and because I'm not especially fast to begin with. Nevertheless, I managed to avoid finishing "DFL" in any of the four races by starting on time, staying planing, and making jibes. If racing becomes a regular event here I may invest in a faster board.

The leader in this picture is Don Wagner. He makes his own boards. I'm the guy with the very blue sail near the right.


Kudos to Rick Randall, aka Maui Malone, for organizing this race, and to Safina England, Sarah Taylor, and the others who helped out with score-keeping, etc.

There are reports, pictures and results of both races at Alex Morales' website, Miami Windsurfing and a good write-up of the Spring Fling at Dave Taylor's blog: Treasure Coast Windsurfers.

To get "in the know" about upcoming local races and stuff, you should join the East Central Florida Windsurfing yahoo group and check the box to sign up to receive emails.

Nahant Slalom Session, Intertidal Rock Stars

Well, after a month or so living in Massachusetts I finally got around to documenting a cold-water windsurfing session with my GoPro helmet camera. It was a propitious date, 10-10-10, with beautiful, blue sky, mild fall temperatures, and a puffy west wind averaging 15 mph. I figured a slalom session was in order since the breeze was offshore and there was no swell at my favored launch, the east side of the Nahant causeway. My slalom board was on the rack in my living room so I got to practice a new technique for loading and unloading gear; out the back window into the parking lot to avoid the hallways, doors, and stairs of my usual exit path. It worked pretty well.

At the beach I couldn't decide between rigging a 6.8 or an 8.0, but I went for 6.8 and it was fine. A nice windsurfer dude named Eric stopped by while I was setting up and I encouraged him to rig even though he had only brought a 5.7 and a freestyle wave board. He went for it and managed to plane a good chunk of the time, so that was cool.

Since it was a weekend day there were a lot of people out strolling the beach, flying kites, etc. At one point during the session I noticed a runaway, long-tailed rainbow kite with the spool skipping along behind it in the water. I happened to be on a good heading to intercept it so I bore off the wind and crossed the line just in front of the spool to snag it with my fin. It was windy enough that the drag from the kite didn't stop me from planing all the way back to the beach with the kite in tow. There I transferred it to some folks walking on the beach, who transferred it to the dude who lost it, who was a really friendly guy who thanked me after the session and told me the story about how the kite was a treasured gift from his sister in Hawaii and he was mortified to have lost it / delighted to have it recovered. Woo hoo!

Here's the video from the session, set to "I Feel Free" by Cream.

Nahant Windsurfing 10-10-10 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

In other news, I've been spending a lot of time doing marine biology fieldwork up in Maine. It's generally wet, chilly, and blustery up there with big waves smashing into the seaweed-covered rocks where my colleagues and I are scrambling frantically to take our samples before the tide returns. Part of what makes it fun, though, is that I get to use cool gear, like a metal detector to find the bolts in the rock marking our experimental plots, and heavy duty rubber rainclothes like the Alaskan crab fishermen wear in "The Deadliest Catch". This studly picture of me was taken Friday evening at Quoddy Head State Park, after we had finally surveyed the last plot at the site. Yeah!

The pictures in the slideshow below are borrowed from PhD candidate Genevieve Bernatchez who was there as a TA for a group of undergraduate and master's students doing the "Three Seas Program"; a year of challenging marine biology courses and real research projects in Massachussets, Washington State, and Panama. The three seas program is offered through Northeastern University but is open to any student who has the grades and motivation to get in and whose parents are willing and able to spend a buttload of money to pay for it.

Recent Windsurfing "Best Ofs"

The other day while I was taking a little coffee break or something, I thought about how I've been slacking off from my usual obsessive pace of windsurfing and blogging. I could attribute it to a combination of summer fieldwork, scheduled weekend activities, exciting new romance, and lack of wind. But I'd rather not substitute excuses for action, so I'll try to get back on my game, following the James' Blog philosophy of "100% Science, 100% Windsurfing, 100% What-have-you." To begin with, I'll do a little review of some of the "bests" of the Summer 2011 windsurfing season.

Best Jibe = Josh Angulo's high-wind slalom jibe at the recent PWA contest at Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, captured in this photo by John Carter. Look at how aggressively he's laying down the sail and digging in the rail. It's like a hardcore wave bottom-turn applied on the slalom course. Badass. You can see a bunch more photos and videos like this on the PWA website, which seems to get better every year.

Best New Competition = The American Windsurfing Tour. This year kicked off the "AWT", which is a series of expert-to-amateur-level wave windsurfing events in North America, the likes of which has not been seen since windsurfing's heyday in the '80s and early '90s. They've already had successful events in Santa Cruz, California, Pistol River, Oregon, and San Carlos, Baja, Mexico. The next one coming up is in September in Hatteras, North Carolina, and the final is in November in Maui, Hawaii. The competitors in these events are an interesting mix of up-and-coming youths, wave-savvy women, semi-retired professional legends, and local wind gurus taking it to the next level by competing. All in all I think it's a good indication that hard-core windsurfing is still alive in this country. (Photo is from Pistol River, Oregon. I'm not sure who the photographer was...)

Most Utopian Windsurfing Racing Class = The "Kona" one-design class. The Kona ONE longboard has been around for a few years now. It's a nice board to sail, and it has become the basis of a very successful racing class in some parts of the world, especially Scandinavia. It's successful because it's easy to use, it's pretty fast in both light and strong winds, and because the class rules allocate different size sails to different sailor weight classes to insure fair competition from spry and petite girls all the way up to hulking burly men.


Most Lust-Worthy New Board = The Starboard UltraSonic 147. It's a high-performance, 93 cm wide shortboard that achieves a fine blend of slalom-board speed and formula-board planing power. It has an ultra-light, ultra-stiff, ultra-expensive construction, with fancy shaping features like a deep concave in the top deck and a complex arrangement of cut-away sections in the tail to reduce drag and improve top speed and jibing. I tried it at the Windsurfing Magazine board tests in Cape Hatteras this spring, and I can confirm that it works as advertised. So if you're a successful orthodontist or hedge-fund financier and you've paid off your mortage and your kids' college tuitions, you should get one. And buy me one while you're at it. (The video is a short clip of one of my rides on the board at the board test.)


Best Sign of the New Generation in Windsurfing = The Techno 293 Worlds in San Francisco. The Bic Techno 293 is a board used in a growing one-design racing class for kids and teenagers, which is intended to be a feeder class for Olympic type windsurfing. Though the biggest Techno 293 fleets are in Europe, they had their world championship this year in San Francisco, California, and it was awesome, apparently.


Best Windsurfing Session for ME = August 4th in Lubec, Maine. I sailed around Quoddy Narrows in a nice East Wind from the Bay of Fundy. I was riding a Mistral Equipe XR longboard with an 8.0 camless "Freespeed" sail from Aerotech. I started out going way upwind with the daggerboard down, eventually approaching the shore of Canada's Campobello Island, where I might have sneaked ashore on a small islet and might have stolen a rock as a souvenir. The wind picked up as I went back downwind, and I got some screaming reaches, interrupted only by occasionally snagging a piece of Laminaria kelp on the skeg! When I was in about the middle of the bay I decided to make a beat against the current towards the narrows and the bridge at downtown Lubec. Though there was plenty of wind power, it was amazing how the current turned the water slick flat and slowed my forward progress to almost nothing as I got near the bridge. I barely made it under, but was rewarded when I did with the sight of a bunch of playfully leaping seals in the tidal rapids. As soon as I tacked I was rushed back out under the bridge, and took a series of broad reaches back to my launch site. Ahhh.

View Larger Map

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.

Nasty Slalom Crash

This picture is from a PWA slalom windsurfing race currently taking place in Ulsan, Korea. The rider on the left is Britain's Ross Williams. On the right is Argentinian Gonzalo Costa Hoevel. Smashed in the middle is American / Cabo Verdian Josh Angulo.

Unlike in other sailing associations, there are no right-of-way rules in PWA slalom. So it's like a game of chicken. When no one backs down is when this happens, I guess. There's lots of daily event coverage and pictures on the PWA website.

Windsurfing Kicked Out of the Olympics, Kiteboarding Kicked In

Windsurf racing has been in the Olympics every quadrennial since 1984. As the sport has evolved, however, the Olympic boards and sails have periodically changed, always amid controversy and debate. The general trend has been a move from boards optimized for sub-planing performance to boards designed for faster planing performance. The trend has stopped short of planing-only boards, however, because the Olympic sailing committee has wanted gear that can be used in ANY wind, and the best planing-only boards still require a steady 8 knots or so for good racing. Planing-only windsurfing also tends to require multiple set of sails and fins for different wind strengths, which is incompatible with Olympic sailing's "one-design" philosophy, i.e., all competitors have to use the exact same gear all the time.

The current Olympic one-design gear is the Neil Pryde RS:X. It was used in China in 2008 and it will be used again in England in 2012. Nobody really LOVES the RS:X, which is a lot bigger and clumsier than what most windsurfers ride for fun, but it fulfills its mission of being able to navigate the race course both in planing mode and in light wind "displacement" mode. As with previous Olympic windsurfing classes, RS:X competition in light to moderate winds is characterized by the competitors constantly rowing the air with their sails; "pumping" to go faster. That means Olympic class windsurfers have to be ultra athletic, but it kind of misses the point of sailing, which is moving with wind power as opposed to muscle power. It also looks really un-fun compared to other forms of windsurf racing like slalom and formula where the nature of the gear limits the need to pump, or the Kona one-design class where a rule prohibits pumping. Therefore only a small minority of windsurfers (the most competitively-driven and masochistic) aspire to compete in the RS:X class. Nevertheless, it's a source of pride for windsurfers to have their sport represented in the Olympics, and to marvel at the levels of athleticism and sailing skill reached at such an ultimate tier of competition. I for one am super proud of America's Farrah Hall and Bob Willis, who busted their asses to reach the top ranks in the US and to qualify our country to compete in England this summer.

This video shows an RS:X race in light to moderate wind, where there is a mix of pumping and planing performance.


As for kiteboarding, there have been people lobbying for several years to make it an Olympic sailing class. But most windsurfers assumed that the same factors preventing planing-only windsurfing gear from getting into the Olympics (the one-design constraint and the need to be raceable in any wind condition) would be insurmountable obstacles for kiteboarding. After all, kiteboarding has no existing one-design classes and it is a planing-only sport that requires steady wind to keep kites aloft. So the windsurfing world was shocked when it was recently announced that the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil would add kiteboarding and eliminate windsurfing! How did this happen?

Well, kiteboard racing has undergone an impressive evolution in gear performance and organizational professionalism since its haphazard beginnings. Refined, windsurf-like kite-race boards are now among the fastest and earliest-planing wind-powered watercraft of any kind, and there are big, competitive fleets in the International Kiteboarding Association's world championship tour.

This is an interview with the current kiteboard racing world champion, Johnny Heineken, and it shows some footage of kite course racing.


With large kites on long lines that can loop and "sine" through the air to generate power, kite-race boards can get going in surprisingly light winds. Just how low the wind requirement is tends to be exaggerated, and the problems of what happens if there is a lull that allows the kite to drop in the water are overlooked. Nevertheless the wind threshold for practical kite racing seems to be at least on par with that of formula windsurfing. Of course, kites can't compete in ALL conditions, as evidenced by their skunking at a 2011 Miami Olympic sailing classes event last year where RS:X windsurfers raced successfully. 

Anyway, what seems to have happened is that lobbyists for Olympic kiteboarding miraculously convinced sailing's governing bodies to overlook their usual one-design constraints and wind minimums to consider the current form of kiteboard racing for an Olympic slot. Then, when compared against the RS:X windsurfing class, which is still crippled by the one-design rules and the air-rowing dynamic in light winds, kiteboarding looked a lot more spectacular and had the leg up for Olympic selection. Of course, some questions remain-

1. Why couldn't they bump one of the other sailing classes to have windsurfing AND kiteboarding? After all, windsurfing and kiteboarding are very different from each other, as I discussed in a previous blog post, but they are each among the most popular and accessible forms of sailing. Actually, the Olympic committee DID bump two big-boat classes out of the Olympics, but they kept four types of monohull dinghy: laser, finn, 470, and 49'er, which I think is about twice as many dinghy types as needed. (On a positive note the committee added catamarans back in, which I think is good since cats are fast and popular among recreational sailors.)

2. Why couldn't they give windsurfing a chance to compete as a production board class (e.g., formula or slalom) like they did for kiteboarding? It seems like the selection committee has been considering "boards" as something distinct from the other sailing classes, based on their forcing a choice of kite- OR sailboards. So if they're willing to suspend the one-design constraint and raise the wind minimums for kiteboards they should be willing to give the same special treatment to sailboards.

This post is getting long, so let me try to wrap it up with a summary of my thoughts. I actually don't think this decision is the end of the world for windsurfing. In fact it may not even be the final decision- there's a petition gaining a lot of momentum now to keep windsurfing and have both sports in the games.

  http://www.change.org/petitions/isaf-keep-windsurfing-as-olympic-discipline

If the petition works, great. If it doesn't work, I think our next move should be to lobby for production class windsurfing (slalom and / or formula) to be in the Olympics. This could be our chance to finally get away from the whole air-rowing one-design thing and show our sport for what it really is to most people- a fast, free, thrill ride across the water.

Beautiful Board for Sale

**UPDATE 12/29 - SOLD IT If you came here looking for used windsurfing gear in the US or Canada, try the free classifieds section of iwindsurf.com **

I'm selling a 1995 Mistral Edge slalom board for $95. It's ultra fast and it's in good condition, but it's sort-of redundant with my other boards and I don't have room to keep it.

It's 268 x 54.5 cm and has 92 liters volume. It should work with sails from about 4.0 - 6.6 and wave, freeride, or slalom fins from 22 - 32 cm. I'm including a 28 cm freeride fin (powerbox). The footstraps are nice, adjustable DaKine straps.

It comes with a mast base and extension for the adjustable mast track, but also fits standard mast bases.

The bottom is flat with a low rocker and just a slight vee in the tail for the ultimate speed and efficiency. The narrow shape and tail help it crank tight jibes.

Contact me if you want it. I'll update this post when it's sold.

PWA Photography

I'm not really the type who follows professional sports. It seems like a waste of time, generally. But I make an exception for the best sport in the world: windsurfing.

Josh Angulo holding off Finian Maynard at the PWA Slalom Event in Alacati, Turkey

It's tough to be a fan of windsurfing compared to a fan of other sports because: 1) there are no televised competitions, and 2) there are usually no professional-level competitions in the United States. Magazines report event results, but there's always a big time lag there, and there aren't enough pictures, interviews, or play-by-plays to really get a sense of what happened. The internet is the only place where you can get daily coverage with results-as-they-occur, pictures, video, interviews, etc.

Back in, like, 2003 or so when I first got obsessed enough to start paying attention to the professional windsurfing association events, the online coverage was mediocre. But it has improved a little every year, and lately it has been fantastic. Like they've finally learned to maximize the impact of the internet format. The daily event write-ups are dramatic and juicy; not just glorified results listings. The videos are generally good, although they vary a lot in style. Some are splashy with quick editing cuts, some have more narrative, and others are complete action sequences, like a slalom heat in epic winds. I kinda like the latter kind; draws me into the competition more.

The best thing of all is the photography, though. Whoever does the shooting has really been unleashing his or her artistic creativity at the scene, going well beyond just documenting the windsurfing. **UPDATE - I think it's a dude named John Carter. He rules.**

The pictures really capture the beauty...

...the action...

...and the drama of the sport.

They're also good about getting unique portraits of the competitors, like Israeli racer Arnon Dagan...

They're really worth checking out, even if you're not that into windsurfing. The website is http://www.pwaworldtour.com.

Slalom Slideshow

**UPDATE** Posted the video on my windsurfing magazine blog.

Got some good Northeast wind this evening for riding my new slalom windsurf board. Lit to overpowered on an 8.4 sail.

I'll post the video later on my windsurfing magazine blog.

MORE Windsurfing + Board for Sale

UPDATE, March 10 - I SOLD THE BOARD!

So if you are looking for used windsurfing gear in the US or Canada, try the free classifieds section of iwindsurf.com

Yeeeee haaaaw! This February must be setting a record for the best winter windsurfing ever in Virginia.

The launch at York River Seafood was perfect this afternoon, with 15 rising to 25 knots from the South and a great variety of swells and ramps.

I was there with Sam Lake and Heather Wiseman from VIMS. Sam kited with a 13m, getting big airs, until he got overpowered and retired. Heather did great windsurfing, planing with a 3.5 on my Kona, and Sam also rode the Kona / 3.5 combo for a while. I used a maxed-out 5.2 on the F2 Style 250 I just got from Karl Quist.

I liked the F2 ... which means I'm (reluctantly, because I'd keep it if I had room) going to sell my beloved yellow "banana board", a Pro-Tech ATC 253. I know there are already some waveboards for sale locally, but mine beats them all and is a steal at $250 with one fin or $300 with 4 fins. For those interested, I put more info about the board below-

Model: Pro-Tech ATC 253
Production Year: 2001
Design Intent: Wave, bump & jump, blasting
Size: 253 cm long by about 55 cm wide
Volume: Reportedly 77 liters, but floats and planes like 85 liters, IMHO
Fin Box: US Box (still standard for wave boards)
Special Features: ATC stands for "All terrain cut-away-tail", meaning that the tail has small cut-outs on the side that recess to a wave-board rocker for sharp turns, while the central part of the tail retains a flatter rocker for speed and early planing. The cut-outs must work because the board planes significantly earlier than a conventional waveboard. The tail design also makes it easy to change the behavior of the board to more wave-like with a wave fin or more slalom-like with an upright fin.
Condition: Very good. I've kept it bagged, so with the exception of a couple small chips in the paint, it looks new.
Fins: I have collected a bunch of fins with the board-
-10.25" Finworks Wave Blade; Fast slalom / wave fin best for 4.5 - 5.5 sails
-9.5" Angulo; Very powerful but turny wave fin best for 5.0 - 6.0 sails
-23 cm Twister Carbon K; Very turny, controllable fin for smallest sails up to 5.2
-23 cm Orca Weed-Wave; Easy-riding, spinout resistant weed fin for all sail sizes
Windsurfing Magazine Review: link
Blog posts in which the board and fins appear: boardology, finology, second-wind, sunday-windy-sunday, super-tuesday

UPDATE, March 10 - SOLD THE BOARD!

For Sale: (sniff sniff) My Slalom Board

*UPDATE- SOLD*

I owe the Federal government big bucks this year and it's gonna be tight so I need to sell some stuff. My most valuable possession is probably my all-carbon, badass-black 2009 Exocet Warp SL 71 windsurfing board. It has 118 liters volume, handles 5 - 9 meter sails, and sells new for $1700. Mine is in practically new condition with no dings or anything. You can have it for $775 without a fin, or $850 with a 44 cm Tectonics Maui 44 cm slalom fin. You'll have to pick it up or pay the full cost of shipping which could be a lot.



The other stuff I'm selling is listed in the sidebar: a 4.2 Naish wavesail, a 30 cm carbon MFC freewave fin, and a semi-dry wetsuit for scuba diving.

Slalom Windsurfing - Last Place but Had Fun

The Stuart Spring Fling windsurfing regatta was last weekend. I wrote a report and made a video and stuff. It's on my windsurfing magazine blog at: http://windsurfingmag.com/features/2010/05/11/james-blog-slalom-racing-last-place-but-had-fun/

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.

Formula Board Test Run Video

Last week I got a new, used, "formula" windsurfing board- a Starboard Formula 135, model year 2001. I had been in the market for an early planing shortboard to match my new 9.5 sail, and this one was a steal at Ace Performer.



Ironically, this new toy is the oldest of the four formula boards I've owned during my windsurfing career, due to multiple cycles of quitting and restarting formula windsurfing. It's also the smallest, at just 85 cm wide and 135 liters volume. It probably wouldn't be competitive on the racecourse with a modern, 100 cm wide formula board, but I'm not competitive on the racecourse, anyway, and 85 cm is enough width to get quite good early planing. The dimensions and volume of the F135 actually match closely with modern light-wind slalom boards, which max at 85 cm wide and are similarly thin in cross section. So I've been thinking of the board as a poor man's light-wind slalom board.

The standard fin length for a 100 cm wide formula board is 70 cm, but that would be overkill for an 85 cm wide board. The F135 was originally marketed with a 58 cm fin, but the secondhand board I got came with a 65 cm fin, which I worried would be too long. I tried it for the first time (well, the first time in decent wind) on Sunday. The 65 cm fin wasn't unmanageable, but I think the board will be faster with a 58. I'm trading the 65 for another windsurfer's 58, which I think will be perfect. Anyway, here's a video of my test session at Wiggins Pass in Naples, FL. The sail is my 9.5 Ezzy Cheetah. The wind is side-offshore around 9-13 knots. The songs are by Tomas Walker and by the Ramones.

11-18-12 F135 Test Run from James Douglass on Vimeo.

One thing I notice looking at the video is how much the bottom of the sail flexes, twists and flaps. I think part of that is the product of it being a camless sail with durable rod battens instead of stiff tube battens. Another part may be the way I'm using a pulley hook through the clew grommet for my adjustable outhaul. I've ordered another kind of pulley system that's integrated with the grommet, and I think that may help stabilize the back end of the sail. Stay tuned.