My first first-person windsurfing footage

I got a chance to try the GoPro camera on the water today. I was pretty pleased with the results. YouTube degrades the quality a bit, but they still look ok in full screen mode.



I haven't figured out how to cut and splice clips, or how to add soundtracks and credits, so for now I've just posted these as separate videos. In the ones where I'm talking to the camera you have to turn your computer volume up to hear it. Just remember to turn it down before the part where I jump in the water in the last video, because that's loud.



The wind was 10-12 knots from the SE when I first went out, but then it abruptly shut off and shifted around to the W, after trying a few other directions. While I was becalmed I took the camera underwater, but since I could only see a blur with my eyes I was hesitant to swim down all the way to the reef. Another time I'll bring a mask and go deeper.

GoPro Helmet Camera Test - Idiotic Stoke

My new camera works. I can't wait to try it on the water.



For those of you who have experience using these things, I have a couple questions:

1) Where's the cheapest place to get the Lithium or NiMH rechargeable batteries recommended for the camera?
2) Which kind of batteries are better / more economical?
3) What's some cheap / free, user-friendly video editing software that I could use? Bonus if it runs on a crappy old computer with Windows 2000.
4) Can I get in trouble for setting videos to copyrighted music?

The Week in Death and Destruction

It's been a slow week for watersports blogging. Things should pick up after this weekend because my new blog-accessory arrived. It's a waterproof helmet-mounted camera from GoPro that can take wide-angle, first-person perspective movies. All I need now are some AAA batteries and some wind.

In the meantime, here's some recent highlights of Florida life.

1. There were some ants dragging a dead lizard through the hallway at the Smithsonian Marine Laboratory.

2. Monday I tried to get to my seagrass research site, but it was closed off because of the scheduled shuttle launch. When the launch was rescheduled for Wednesday I knew Tuesday was my only chance to get the seagrass sampled. So my intern and I rallied and did it all in one long day. Another guy I know who works in the area once caught his truck engine on fire on a grassy dike road like this. The fire wouldn't go out until the entire truck had been disintegrated down to the hubcaps. This provided endless fodder for heckling by co-workers. I drive very slowly and only go a short distance down the road so I won't burn up the Smithsonian's F150.

3. This morning I saw a guilty looking construction crew standing stupidly around an exploded water main. The fountain of water was drenching a nearby realty place.

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.

Rocket Science vs. Marine Biology

This is a picture from my seagrass predator-exclusion experiment in the upper Banana River Lagoon. It's pretty low-tech research compared to what's going on in the background!

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out if large predatory fish, which are very abundant in Kennedy Space Center because nobody is allowed to fish there, affect the smaller animals and plants in the lagoon's shallow seagrass beds. I'm hoping that by fencing out the big fish from my experimental plots, the inside of the plots will undergo the same ecosystem changes that would occur from overfishing. Those "ecosystem changes" would be a ripple effect down the food chain- an increase in the abundance of small fish, a decrease in the abundance of algae-eating shrimp, and an increase in the slimy algae that is harmful to seagrass. That type of ripple-effect is called a "trophic cascade".

I should know in another month or so if it's happening.

Boom Blues

**UPDATE - 8 July 09 - Got a replacement; a secondhand Fiberspar all-carbon boom**

**Begin original post**

My second honeymoon with formula windsurfing hit a speed bump yesterday when one of my aluminum boom arms broke.

I think it happened when I pumped the sail hard coming out of a jibe to pop the cams. Thankfully the boom didn't separate on the water - it just started to feel wobbly and "spongy" and I wasn't able to pump onto a plane. At first I thought maybe the tail piece was slipping, which has happened before when I didn't lock it in tight, but that wasn't the case. Back in my driveway when I got a chance to look at the broken spot I was surprised how thin the aluminum was there. You'd think they would reinforce that spot more, since there's so much stress where the boom arms meet the boom head.

I've had the boom for about two years so I think it's out of warranty. It's a shame that the whole rest of the boom will have to be tossed just because of that one break. Unless anyone has repair ideas?

Pink Sail

I bought a used 9.8 msq sail yesterday from Sandy Point Progressive Sports in Daytona Beach. SPPS posts their inventory online, so I was able to pick out the sail, a 2004 Aerotech VMG, before I went up there. It was exactly what I was looking for in terms of size, construction, vintage, and price. It wasn't until I got to the shop, though, that I realized the sail was PINK and yellow. When I mumbled some doubts about the girly colors, the salesclerk said, "Don't worry, it's not really pink, it's fuschia". That didn't make me feel much better. But then I remembered that my windsurfing hero, Robby Naish, uses pink sails, and he's cool...



So anyway, I went ahead and bought the sail, and I'm pretty stoked about it. Took it for a little morning sesh in 5-12 knots and appreciated its lightness, power, and smooth feel. My planing threshold is now around 10 knots.

I also really like the construction. As far as I know, Aerotech is the only sail company that doesn't use fragile "monofilm" plastic for the body of their race sails. Instead they use grid type materials that are less prone to cracking and tearing when they wrinkle. Also, the company is based right out of Daytona and the sail designer is the SPPS shop owner, which is cool.

PS- If anyone wants the beater 8.7 sail that the new one is replacing, they can have it for eight dollars and seventy cents.