Melville Beach, WA, AU

Pelican Point, WA, AU

Second time trying out my new Rocket 125 - love it, great in the chop and for gybing.

A bit overpowered on Turbo 7.5 but felt good because the board is so comfortable. 37 NP weedy

Coodanup, WA, AU

Plenty of Pinnas ready to feel the groove of smooth... but it wasnt super smooth for long. A building breeze with a high tide chopped things up a little but still bloody good. That smooth glassy stuff certainly puts a smile on your face, and the crabs biting your feet....well they temporarily take the smile away, evil little buggers.

Thanks for sharing your playground again Mandurah

RRD xfire 103, Mistral 91, Severne ReflexII 7.0, delta 21

Melville - IS101, CR7.0, Vector Volt 36.  One of the most uncoordinated sailing I've done lately.  Reckon the wine at working lunch is to blame.

Coodanup, Started with a FR 6.6, grovveled about, changed up to an old 3 cam KA 7.5, more bettera Its an old sail, did the job until it poped a panel so came in to patch it (one more of many) should have gone back to the 6.6 soon as then, as it was too hard to hold soon after

So back in and up with the 6.6 for the rest of session, but buggered by then with handling the 7.5

1 categories

Coodanup, WA, AU

Mistral Explosion 103 litre, NP V8 6.5m2 Maui Weed wave fin 22cm

A great afternoon sailing in flat water.  Great to see a good turnout from Pinnaroos (nice to finally meet Lunny),Jeff, Mike, Anita and Leon and a bunch of Mandurah /CST team including Fangy and Decrepit. 

1 categories

Fangies playground, donated blood this morning and had promised I wouldnt do anything strenuous. Feel a bit worn out now.

Mistral 112, 24 weedy, 7.2 KA Koncept.

Weedy far too small but figured I just needed to concentrate a bit harder. Getting upwind was the hard bit but the runs in the smoot were great. Was watching the board trying to see if it was "sticking" but couldnt see it. Gybing is just such a joy, dont know if its the board or the smooth but its just so nice to carve around at 45deg. Should actually try and work on what I do after that I suppose. Few fish jumping out and birds. They dont seem to mind the smooth either. Just need to get a delta for this board so can actually plane through the weeds. Though I think I need to try it at some more spots.

Great to say high to a few others, too numerous to mention. I think Mineral is trying to bring the kiting activity of rescuing things from trees to windsurfing. Thanks Fin for spotting that one

The person who has the most fun wins.

2 categories

Pinnaroo Point, WA, AU Plenty of power with 7.5 easy. Started with 125 Rocket 36 jp weed, wind kept on increasing and during second half I used 105 Rocket. That gave me display speed of 30.5 kts. Good fun with a local crowd. It was a little less choppy towards Hillarys. But my best speed was on my last leg home.  

3 categories

Safety Bay, WA

Late run to SB - the wind didn't play ball (18 to 22 knots), too late in the season I guess.

Always fun to get on the speed board though.

Dodging kites is not testing enough, to spice things up today I had to keep tabs on a guy snorkling back and forth across the boat channel in the middle of the run

Mistral 47, Koncept 6.2 (under-done), DWS 21

After a disappointing session at a Northern spot the day before this session was Rock n roll!

Nicely powered on the 5.4 with the 100 it felt like I was cranking some awesome corners both tacks and gybes! No video evidence so I can dream!

Even a few lumps to work on the clew first hits.

The Purelip is so much easier to throw in to the turn than my previous sails. It pulls you in to the turn but doesn't spit you off. Not sure whether this is the lower aspect to the sail but I had a ball.

Loft Purelip 5.4, Rider 100 quad, Big smile!

Coodanup, WA, AU M91, 5.7K 20 Delta slalom Lots of nice wind! 20-22?

What a difference a fin makes! After last week's session of struggling to get upwind with the 17 Delta, Fangy assured me a bigger fin would make all the difference. Leon didn't want to surrender my 23 pepeweed so Fangy lent me a delta from his personal collection to use. Many thanks to Fangy's Fabulous Fin Exchange (a fount of fine foils).

Got on the water a bit late after waiting for Leon to return from a previous engagement, then getting stuck in the frustratingly frozen Friday afternoon traffic on the freeway.

Coodanup wasn't it's usual glassy self (I think now that a lot of the weed has died off it may not be glassy until next season if a decent wind is blowing) but still a lot flatter than most places we sail. There were fish jumping and birds fishing everywhere. At one stage I had to change course to avoid hitting a watterlogged Shag as it was taking off. It is hard to imagine there are any crabs left after the hoardes of crabbers that have been out this summer but I still managed to step right into the jaws of one.

The Mistral flew upwind today and the 20 Delta didn't slide out once. My mission was to improve my gybing, so once again I didn't do any downwind runs until the nm run back to base to finish. What a blast that was! Fully powered up and going over the back of small chop, a little bit scary but in control. Nearly got to 31 on that run with a 30 5X in there but took a while to get up to speed so the nm was only 26. Still a top 3 nm for me.

The gybes - I really didn't gybe well today, even though the board is a dream to gybe and almost gybes itself. I just couldn't make myself get my weight right forward. Although I felt I improved as the session went on, my first gybes were my best alphas. The latter ones were all too wide. Frustrating. Anyway I managed a 17 knot alpha again, which I would have been thrilled with last week, but I was hoping for more.

Leon had a good time and is improving fast, He is using the harness and both footstraps now. He is keen to improve so if any of you want to stop and impart some of your wisdom if you can see ways to improve then I am sure he would welcome it.