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Albany, WA, AU JP54sp EIII 6.2 Pepeweed 26

Fun sail with Decrepit. On the water at 0745, planed well for 30 mins then wind died. Dogged for 30 minuste, should have chnged boards but I thought it would pick back up which it did.....

We proved today that at .3m tide there is a sailable area despite the weed, and that there is flat water. Wind not strong enough for great speeds but good to be on the water in the sun.

Ruler (in pink) is .66NM which is why my mile has a gybe in it. In higher tide NM straight is possible as you sail over the sand at the beginning of the run ( bottom of picture) then over flat weedy water at top.

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2nd time for me @ Evetsville, what fantastic fun!

Going for distance with Evets, managed to get on the water just after him at 0805!

Plugged the 5.8 into the 53 with the low aspect 45deg.

Very up and down and wind NE for the first 2 hrs, then it swung Easterly and slowly picked up a bit and became much more consistent.

Couldn't get into Lilacs, too shallow so weed too thick for the 45deg fin, (too much drag, be interesting to see how a 50deg fin performs in these conditions because it's just like glass). So sailed out from hardings road, conditions very similar to lilacs, seems as the tide gets lower everything just moves further S.E.

Like Evets I tried a NM, but it also had a gybe in it.

Also had a go at an hour, but breaking the rope in a harness line put paid to that. Fortunately Evets carries a spare downhaul rope with him, I wound that round the offending line for a quick fix, didn't look pretty but took the strain off my arms.

The other interesting thing happened on my 2nd last run, felt something prickly in my wetsuit leg, Evets and I had both stopped a couple of times to clear shell grit and sand out of our booties, so I thought nothing of sticking my fingers up the leg of my wetsuit to clear whatever it was out. To my surprise I got a needle like stab in my finger tip, instinct quickly withdrew them. Reason then said well whatever it is has to come out, so I had another go prepared for the pain, didn't take long to clear whatever it was, but as I sailed off it really started to sting. Thought I'd better go in just in case it got bad, (I've had a few cobbler bites and they build up in intensity over an hour or so). Fortunately this started to fade after an hour or so, but I'd lost my enthusiasm for going any further.

Distance here is a bit like Evets last 2sec conundrum. Because this will affect team score I thought I better check the GT31 and GT11 in gpsar (which only does trackpoint dist,)  and doppler dist with realspeed

here's what I got, so I'm going with the GT31 tackpoints like I usually do, it's about half way between the 2 extreemes.

GT31 TP 125.225  doppler 124.319

GT11 TP 124.512 doppler 126.536

Here's my tracks very similar to Steve's

 The NM attempt is the one that goes the furtherest North, almost to Lilacs, weed was right on the surface water like a mirror, but the board made a noise like tearing paper, and felt like there was quite a drag on the fin. Just looked at the speed graph, and maybe it's a bit of an illusion, I was still doing 30kts when I gybed, maybe should have hung in there. It also looks like I should have gone further East (upwind) before I started, but the google earth map is a bit out of date, at the moment the is much more sand in the bottom right corner, it may not have made that much difference.

Dot took some pics so will add them later.

OK here's 3 that show the place.

This is Evets at the end of his run, (Dot was taking gybe sequences)

This is me in the gybe.

Both taken at 300mm focus (max zoom) and fairly well cropped.

And here it is at 3pm Sunday from the Harding Rd car park.

Taken with 55mm focus, (very slight zoom)

18 to 22knots flat water and nobody out!

The stripes in the water aren't wind lines, they seem to be oily patches of glassy water and stay fairly constant. Don't know if it's something to do with the weed. When following behind Evets, I noticed that his wake disrupted the oiliness and where he'd been the water became ruffled. A laminar flow effect, or a mixing in of the oil?????