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.

Inlet to Inlet Race Report

**Note: Since I originally posted this, Ron has put a great summary of the race up on his website, including official results, stories, and a photo album- http://www.i-to-i.org/**

Woo hoo! I finished Ron Kern's annual "Inlet to Inlet" windsurfing race in Fort Lauderdale.

Ron explains the race to some of the windsurfing and kiteboarding competitors.

This is my GPS track. It was a 24.5 mile round trip. The second picture is a close-up of the southern part of the course. 

The wind was 15-20 knots side-onshore from the East-Northeast, which made for rough water and intimidating shorebreak. (See what happened when a catamaran tried to launch.) Fortunately, all the windsurfers who showed up made it out successfully.

I rode my Starboard Formula 135 with a 58 cm fin, and I played it safe with the sail choice, rigging a "small" 8.0 sail- an Aerotech Freespeed. The previous day I had tried my 9.5 Ezzy Cheetah in similar conditions at the race site and found it doable, but more tiring. Since my goal was to finish the race without crashing or running out of stamina, 8.0 was the right choice. The only thing awkward about it was that my boom was too long, leaving some bare line between the clew grommet and the clew. Oh, well.

My setup-

Compared to 2008 I improved one notch in the standings, getting 3rd place. My 1:35 time was a lot better than my previous 2:43, thanks to a favorable wind direction requiring just one tack, and thanks to riding a Formula board instead of the Kona ONE. (There were four Kona ONE competitors in the race this year, and I think they all finished. Their course was a little shorter than ours. The Port Everglades Buoy was the downwind mark for everyone, but the Kona boards had an upwind mark a few miles closer than the Hillsborough Inlet Buoy.)

Though I was satisfied with my own time, I was way behind Ron Kern and kite racer Zack, who finished in 1:10 and 1:13, respectively. Ron was on his 9.5 Neil Pryde sail and Mike's Lab formula board with a 64 cm Ifju fin. Zack was riding a custom 70 cm wide tri-fin directional kite-race board with 42 cm side fins and 38 cm back fin. Initially I thought Zack had won the race, because he was leading on the way to the Port Everglades Buoy. But Zack said Ron passed him on the upwind leg and was untouchable after that. Both the leaders were real gentlemen who were good sports about the competition.

My video for the event didn't turn out as great as I was hoping because the !@#$ camera fogged up. If you want to see the schools of soaring flying fishes, the deep blue water, and the giant sea turtles that I saw out there you'll just have to do the race yourself next year.

Inlet to Inlet Windsurf Race, 2012 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

After the race, Ron and Sue Kern hosted a nice "debriefing"  at their beautiful house. There were tons of prizes and beverages donated by the race sponsors:

Adventure Sports / Neil Pryde / JP

Liquid Surf and Sail

Sandy Point Progressive Sports / Aerotech / Exocet

iWindsurf

I left with a purple ladies waist harness for Rhonda, plus a downhaul tool, uphaul, and rashguard for myself. Thanks! :)

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

Bladder Blues

Sunday we had 8-14 knots from the SSE, which is great wind for summer in Florida. Since my formula windsurfing boom is out of commission, and the wind strength and direction were ideal for my 12 m kite, I decided to go kiteboarding for the first time since early May.

I was nervous after the hiatus, but everything came back ok...

...for the most part.

I got comfortable on the water and even tried some crappy jumps, but I still need to learn how to turn properly. At one point my buddy Scott was semi-planing on my Kona longboard with a 6.6 sail and we were going about the same speed. He probably coulda passed me if he'd known how to use the harness and his "third leg".

My neighbor Bill brought his jetski, which was entertaining for our cute German visiting scientists, who also went windsurfing some more.

The lower wind threshold for good riding on the 12 m kite and big twintip board seems to be within 1 knot of the threshold for the 9.8 windsurfing sail on my formula board. The difference is that below the threshold on the formula board I can still stay upwind, whereas below the threshold on the kite I can't stay upwind and have to get back to the beach by figure-8 flying the kite.

The only bummer was that one of my wingtip strut bladders leaked. It didn't make a noticeable difference in how the kite flew, but it made that wingtip flutter a bit and I think I should get it fixed before I go out again. There definitely seems to be a price to pay for upkeep of light wind planing gear, whether it's a windsurf or a kite.

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.

A Good Saturday

Saturday, May 3, 2008 was as close to perfect as windsports in Tidewater, Virginia can get. It was warm and sunny with SW winds in the 10-20 knot range. Yes, it was gusty (you can see me caught in a lull in the slideshow), but relatively speaking it wasn't bad. What really made it special was the good group of windsurfers and kiters who all brought their stoke to the York River Seafood launch.

On the windsurf front there was local dude and photographer Chris Coyne (thanks for the pictures), W&M undergrad Greg Cooper, and VIMS Grad Students Heather Wiseman and me. On the kite front there were local dudes Paul and Eric, and VIMS Sail and Paddle Club President Sam Lake. Sam and Eric both brought their beautiful girlfriends out to spectate, which made all of us guys on the water step up the show-off factor. Eric really impressed everyone when he hit the bottom while braking near the shore and got yanked across the beach into the bulkhead. Ouch!

I sailed a 6.6 Aerotech Charge and 114 liter Fanatic Skate, which was just about right for the conditions. In the flat water near shore and in the lee of Allen's Island I was actually able to plane out of some jibes, more or less. Woo hoo!

I'm embedding Chris' pictures as a slide show, which I've never tried before. Hopefully it works out alright. I think you can click the slideshow to see the bigger pictures in my "windows live" album.


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Windfest Report + Longboard Review

Windfest Report

Woo hoo! I just got back from Frisco Woods Windfest 2008, which was awesome.

The wind was light and offshore, only briefly getting into the 12-15 knot range, but that was no big deal because the weather was beautiful and warm enough to sail in swim trunks. Paul Richardson took some good pictures of sunsets and stuff.

The social schmoozing was also top-notch.

Me (left), John Gelinne (middle), and Catapulting Aaron (right)

I went down with a nice group from the VIMS Sail and Paddle Club, met up with homies from Virginia's W.E.T. club, and united with some cool, never-met-before-in-real-life folks from the blogosphere.

Elia from the VIMS club won the "board toss" event. At the tap in the background is Peter Bogkucki, New England Windsurfing Journal editor and windfest organizer.

Paul Richardson from VIMS jury-rigged his daggerboard gasket with Gorilla Tape.

There was a good turnout among windsurfers / campers, but there weren't as many equipment vendors doing demo's as there usually are at windfest. Nevertheless, I was able to try some interesting new gear, both from the vendors and from friends who brought their newish stuff. A big trend this year was a renaissance of longboards and stand-up-paddling. SUP seemed to be especially popular among the kids who were there.

Longboard Review

The first of the new longboards that I rode was Chad Perkis' Kona 11.5. It's the same shape as my Kona ONE, but it's thinner (170 liters vs. 220 liters), lighter, and doesn't have a daggerboard or a fully foam-covered deck. I rode it with the stock fin, which is a 30 cm US-box wave fin. The board was plenty stable for me, although you could tell it wasn't quite as floaty as the Kona ONE. I only sailed the 11.5 in light winds, but I assume it planes pretty well because of the light weight. It went upwind ok when you dug in the windward rail, but it definitely had a greater tendency to sideslip and couldn't get anywhere near the same upwind angle and speed as something with a daggerboard. Another minor thing; the slick nose of the 11.5 made it hard for me to sail fin-first, which I was trying to do so that I could sail, rather than walk, through the extensive shallow area at Frisco.

When it was a little windier I rode the RRD longrider. My first impression was that it looked cool.

The red hull was awesome, and the pattern on top was slightly more testosterone-friendly than the hibiscus flowers of the Kona ONE. There were a variety of footstrap insert position; very inboard and forward for beginners, moderately outboard, and fully out on the rails. The vendor had the footstraps set in the most extreme out and back positions, which I felt was inappropriate for the relatively small, 34 cm MFC freeride fin that was on the board (but which would probably be great for a 50 cm fin and a 9.0 sail). On shore the RRD seemed marginally lighter, thinner, and "less long" than the Kona ONE, but these differences were more apparent on the water. The RRD planed earlier and sustained planing with less sail force than the Kona ONE, and felt more like a shortboard in terms of riding light and free. However, the upwind ability and "tracking" feel was less than on the Kona ONE, probably because of the RRD's thinner rails and smaller daggerboard. A more significant problem with the RRD daggerboard was that lots of water gushed up through the slot when going fast, regardless of whether the daggerboard was up or down. Other people who rode it also griped about the water-fountain daggerboard.

Conclusions:

Kona 11.5- Pretty cool, and probably the best of the 3 boards for SUP or serious wave riding, but not as good for flatwater and light wind as the ONE or the Longrider.

RRD Longrider- Most stylish looking and earliest planing of the bunch, with the best features for light to moderate weight beginners. For back-and-forth sailing in flat waters it would be a great alternative to widestyle shortboards like the GO, if only the daggerboard didn't do that annoying fountain thing.

Kona ONE- The best "true longboard" performance because of the big daggerboard and thick rails. It may make up for its more sluggish planing relative to the RRD with better control in high wind and rough water. However, without sailing the RRD in rough conditions I can't say for sure how they compare. Also, irrespective of performance, the fact that the Kona ONE is the only board of the three with a one-design racing class is a big plus for folks who might want to sail in a regatta sometime.

The END

PS- We didn't sail on the last day of windfest (Sunday), but on the way back we stopped at Buckroe beach in Hampton, Virginia for a well powered session on small sails and kites. Sam tried out his exotic new 9 m "Sigma" kite from Naish, I rode a 5.2 m Ezzy sail and 87 liter board, and Paul Richardson destroyed an old 4.5 sail in about 5 minutes.