Polls, Fins, Gebi, Clam Sandwich

FYI, I just posted two new polls in the sidebar. I'm testing the theory that most windsurfers are engineers named John, Dave, Scott, Chris, or Mike. If your name is a close variant, like "Jon", "David" or "Michael", that's good enough; don't get persnickety and mark "other".

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WARNING- Before you read any further in this post, be aware that it is mostly boring, technical windsurfing stuff. So if you are NOT an engineer named John, Dave, Scott, Chris, or Mike, you might want to think twice.
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Begin post-

Guess what? I got to windsurf around sunset today with Mike Gebhardt, the OLYMPIC CHAMPION. Actually, he was kiting, and kicking my ass in terms of jumps and speed. He did that thing where you ride up alongside, just downwind, and reach out to lean on the nose of the other guy's board. Pretty cool.

It didn't bug me that he could jump higher, because everyone knows kiters can jump higher, but I wanted to be faster. Some of the speed discrepancy may have been due to the fact that I'm not an Olympic Champion who spent the last six months in Namibia working to break the kiteboarding speed record. Nevertheless, I think I could eke out a few more knots if I tuned my gear differently. I.e. if I matched my sail and fin better. The weed-wave fin I was using today (left) has a large surface area and low aspect ratio, which give it good grip and maneuverability but make it a bit sluggish. The sluggishness is pronounced when the fin is used with smaller sails, like the 5.8 I was on today. I should have used the narrow, efficient fin on the right.

The reason I didn't was that the weed-wave fin was already in the board and I was in a hurry. Before grabbing that board I had been sailing my newly-salvaged "Clam Sandwich", but I wanted to do a cross-comparison with my main ride, which is actually called the "cross". Check out the differences in the tails and fins of the cross (top) and the clam (bottom).

The clam sandwich is a lot thinner, huh? That really helps it slice a turn. Also, the fins are the same length (25 cm), but because of the area difference, the one on top is good with a sail around 7 msq and the one on bottom with a sail around 5 msq, I think.

I'm pretty stoked about the clam, especially since I got it for free and did the refurbishing myself this weekend. It was in decent shape to begin with, except for a botched rhinoplasty and bad back footstraps. The first thing I did was to move the good, front footstraps to the back, and replace them with some ok extra straps that I had lying around. Then I sawed off the pointy part of the nose and filed it into sort-of a blunt, trapezoid shape. I fiberglassed two layers over the area, then filed and sanded the worst lumps out of my glass job. I made a jaggedy, sunburst-shaped stencil and spray painted gold over the exposed fiberglass for beautification and UV protection. To integrate the sunburst aesthetic with the rest of the board I added some gold stars with more stencils. The result is "unique", IMHO. Perhaps I should call the new board the "Glam Sandwich".

PS- I was going to sell the Clam Sandwich for $90, but now as the "Glam Sandwich", the price has gone up to $100. (The epoxy and stuff I got from @#$%! West Marine cost $100.)

Bugs and Birds

I meant to work these pictures into other blog posts but I never got around to it. Anyway, here's a very brief show-and-tell...

Picture 1- A funny float from the Christmas Parade at Edisto Beach, South Carolina. The man in the cockroach suit was throwing out candy to the kids, but most were too scared to approach.

Picture 2- A brown pelican (Pelicanus occidentalis) at the Fort Pierce South Jetty.

Picture 3- Some white ibises (Eudocimus albus) on the powerlines over my car. Yeah, they crapped on it, but they were too majestic for me to want to shoo away.

Picture 4- Close-up of the majestic ibises.

2008 Windsurfing Review

Last year I revealed myself as an obsessive compulsive record keeper when I posted a statistical analysis of my 2007 windsurfing sessions. Well, I've done more or less the same thing for my 2008 sessions, though I've experimented with some different ways of presenting the data.

Highlights and Trends-

1) 133 windsurfing sessions, not counting 5 times I just instructed. This is down from 154 sessions in 2007. I attribute the drop to dissertation writing, traveling, meteorological conditions, and a slight increase in wind-snobbery. Most of my sessions were shortboard sessions on 7.0 or smaller sails, but about a third were longboard sessions, which were also fun. On any given day, there was a 36% chance that I would windsurf at all, a 24% chance that I would ride a shortboard, and an 8% chance that I would ride a shortboard smaller than 100 liters. That works out to windsurfing once every 3 days, shortboarding once every 4 days, and high-wind shortboarding every 13 days, on average.

2) I started and ended the year with 3 boards and 6 sails, but there was some turnover. In the spring, I updated my highwind shortboard from a ProTech ATC (77 l) to an F2 Style 250 (87 l), and replaced my 6.9 and 8.5 Ezzy sails with 6.6 and 7.8 Aerotech sails. In the summer, I had a fling with a Fanatic Ultra Cat longboard, but sold it and kept my trusty Kona longboard. In the fall I sold my Fanatic Skate 63 (114 l) and got a brand new Exocet Cross (106 l). The boards currently in my quiver are in bold in the table below.

3) I sailed from 26 different beaches in 5 geographic regions.

Each region had its own character in terms of weather. The most extreme and variable winds and temperatures were in the winter and springtime in the Chesapeake Bay and Outer Banks.

The temperature chart shows some cold days in August, corresponding with windsurfing in chilly Puget Sound during my post-PhD trip home to Olympia, WA. A pair of windy sessions around the same time reflect my trip to The Columbia River Gorge.

4) Every session was a blessing in its own way, but there were five that really stood out for having especially thrilling, satisfying, and/or spiritual qualities.

Feb 10th - A nuclear W wind solo session on 3.5 at Carmines Island, VA.
Jun 13th - Perfect summertime SE wind and swells at York River Seafood, in the good company of my friends Sam and Heather.
Aug 8th - A brisk SW wind from the Pacific let me go on a long longboard journey through the Eld Inlet fjord and around to Budd Inlet, where I could see the WA State Capitol building and snow-capped Mount Rainier.
Aug 12th - It was 20-30 knots at Doug's Beach in the Gorge. There was the smell of desert dust and sage, and the invigorating majesty of the rock cliffs and roaring swell-trains.
Sep 24th - The biggest, smoothest waves I've ever sailed, in 25 knots of warm NE wind at the Fort Pierce Jetty.

All in all, 2008 was a fantastic year of freedom and adventures, both on and off the water. I count myself a dang lucky guy. :D

Crabs - Dying from Pollution and Overharvest

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation just released a report today describing the dire situation for blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) in the Bay. The problem is two-fold:

1) Pollution from the land has damaged the Bay, so it produces fewer crabs. The picture below shows crabs forced to crawl out of the water to flee an oxygen-depleted "dead zone".

2) Large numbers of crabs are still being harvested; more than the damaged ecosystem can replenish.

Some of the "executive summary" of the report is pasted below. If you have adobe acrobat you can read the full version here. There's a picture of my postdoc advisor, Dr. Anson Hines, on page 7.

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Bad Water and the Decline of Blue Crabs in the Chesapeake Bay

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Blue crabs are not only the most economically important fishery in the Chesapeake Bay. They are also a powerful icon of the whole mid-Atlantic region— a symbol of our cultural roots in the Chesapeake. And they are an essential strand in the web of life that forms the nation’s largest estuary. For all these reasons, it is a matter of grave concern that the blue crab population has fallen to near record lows. Scientists say there are two causes of the problem: pollution and overfishing, especially of female blue crabs. (Overfishing means catching crabs faster than they can reproduce.) Here are some key facts:

° Less Crab Food- Low-oxygen “dead zones” on the bottom kill the food that crabs eat, wiping out or preventing the growth of 75,000 metric tons of clams and worms a year. That is enough food to support about half the commercial crab harvest, more than 60 million blue crabs annually.
° Less Crab Habitat- Sediment from runoff and algal blooms caused by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution are darkening the Bay’s waters, killing the underwater grasses that young crabs need as shelter from predators. More than half of the Bay’s eelgrass has died since the early 1970s.
° Overfishing- Because a diminished Bay can support fewer crabs, overfishing has become an even more urgent problem. Watermen have caught an average of 62 percent of the Bay’s blue crabs each year over the last decade—well more than the 46 percent that scientists say is sustainable.
° Regulation- If the Bay were cleaner and crabs more plentiful, watermen could continue to catch the same number of crabs they are harvesting today without exceeding the 46 percent threshold. Then, additional government regulation of watermen—and relief for them—might not be necessary.

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Windsurfing, Baby

Windsurfing:


Baby:

Notes:
The windsurfing is being done in nice, 15-20 mph NE winds in front of my folks' beach house at Edisto Island, South Carolina. The air and water are in the mid 50s (Fahrenheit) - not too bad with a wetsuit and booties. The baby is my niece, Ayla Ojanen. It's interesting comparing the Ojanen family photo from this year with that from last year.

Out of the Horse Latitudes?

Yesterday I drove up to South Carolina for a family Christmas at Edisto Island. I awoke this morning to 20 knots of SW wind, and ended up getting a good session on my smallest board (87 liters).

That really scratched an itch for me, since I hadn't sailed the little board, at least not for a full-on session, since early fall. There just weren't many, if any, 20+ knot wind days in East Central Florida. At least not many that occurred while I was there, healthy, and able to "adjust" my work schedule, which was most of the time.

I think it's because where I live in Florida is in the so-called "Horse Latitudes"; a region of crappy wind between the Westerlies of the temperate zone and the Easterly trade winds of the tropics. The region is also called the subtropical high, as shown on the global wind patterns map below. Wikipedia explains it better than I could.

I haven't seen this written, but I think that where the Horse Latitudes are located varies with season and with shorter term weather patterns. I.e. in the summer, Central Florida might usually be below the HL, and thus get more Easterly trade winds. And in the dead of winter, it will (hopefully) be enough above the HL to get more Westerlies and frontal systems. We'll see.

BTW- Does anyone know where I could find wind statistics for Central Florida? I know the (excellent) New England Windsurfing Journal publishes average wind stats for various locations from Cape Hatteras - Cape Cod, but I don't know of anything similar for Florida.

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
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