Barton (5511km):
2710 days ago Langlois, OR, US - Floras Lake
Naish Chopper S, JP Freestyle Wave 77, Black Project 26. Wind: 19G33 knots
Today was a combination of 'payback time' and learning experience. My legs decided today was a good day to repay me for yesterday and they cramped almost immediately when I hit the water.
Learning experience had a couple of bullet points. First, my naive assumption that the water would be relatively flat for speed runs was WRONG, at least for what I was thinking qualifies as flat. I was surprised that it doesn't take much of a reach distance before the chop becomes 12" washboard stuff. But today, I didn't need to worry about that anyway. Second, I have hardly sailed the Naish Chopper sails in the past couple of years and the same applies to the JP Freestyle Wave 77. Given what other sailors were saying about what they were sailing on, I elected to rig the Chopper S (somewhere between a 3.7 and 4.2 in power - thanks Naish for your obtuse sizing - Edit: found the specs for the Choppers. S = 3.8 [no wonder I was underpowered]). This turned out to be too small and felt really funny - maybe I've been sailing race and freerace sails too long. Probably would have been OK on the Chopper M (4.3) cranked down with the downhaul Roo recommmended last year. As a result I practiced the hula across the lake with my legs cramping. I messed around in the shallow area practicing waterstarts and trying to work out the cramps. I got one 'sort of' run back to the launch area where I got a taste of how twitchy the FSW 77 is compared to the Bolt 115 (duh). I took a break, ate some bananas, etc and came back a couple hours later when the gusts were hitting 35 knots. Made one sort of run across while my leg muscles were trying to knock me off the board. Realized trying to sail back to the launch was risky if I dumped it part way across as I could end up a mile 'down lake' with my legs cramping. Elected to walk the board back along the perimeter of the lake (maybe the walk wiill help the legs for tomorrow...)
On the plus side, I met a really nice guy named Rolph that is interested in GPS sailing and is a significantly better sailor than I am. He was cranking today (and had a camore GPS which registered a run of 40 mph), even doing a few forward loops to mix it up  . Will be talking with him more to get him signed up on the team.
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