2 categories

Point Grey Peel Inlet, WA, AU, Lots of smooth water. Most enjoyable sail in a while. Lots of happy windsurfers. TR9 6.3m, Mistral Speed 55/95, Pepewed 20/48

Coodanup, WA, AU

Started by rigging my new 6.6 koncept.Took  forever . By the time I had it rigged I decided it was too big. Derigged. Rigged Tushy 5.3. Took for bloody ever. By the time it was rigged the wind had almost dropped out. Bugger. Went out in hope . Just as I had decided that windsurfing was seriously stupid and that I was going to take up lawn bowls ,or shock horror, golf, Huey took mercy on me and I was saved from a fate worse than death. The wind kicked in and while I was too comfortable with the 5.3 for any speed I had a Great time plowing through the weed at Fangyland.

Coodanup, WA, AU, Patrick 92, warp 7.0, Kestral 22,

Planned on taking it easy but the conditions were so good i couldnt pass up an hour. Fangy seemed really pleased to see me out on the water waving with both hands to greet me.

2 categories

Peel Inlet, WA, AU   Pat sl100, Kar 6.3. JP weed 27 @50

 Nice session at liptons, was hoping to improve on my hour a bit but after the first few runs the wind dropped a bit and it was never going to happen. so sailed arround a bit trying a few speed runs and alphas and watched the masters at work do their thing. Which is much faster than my thing.

Good to catch up with Strop, Joe and the recently out of hybernation Sammy.

Liptons with few of us, small crew, geat time. I used smaller that what I wld used normally and I had a ball, just enough for the gear, easy cruisy session 

Happy days

RSR5.4, Iso85, 21/45 custom

Roll the Gilligan's Island Theme tune. The plan was a quick late session in the weed to stretch out the aches from yesterday. Thanks to Pepe who stopped me from finishing studying too soon. Things were looking good just prior to lunch but then Pepe launched and the breeze dropped and swung back to a SSE. But just as Pepe got out things started to look promising so I went for the Koncept 6.6 and the old bump 'n jump F2 Waterlog. The plan being to knock out a few alphas as the F2 is not happy with too much speed, but turns in nice arcs and is good for alphas. I dropped in a FangyFin 20(cutdown 24) and the wind lasted just long enough for me to get way down the far end.

I grovelled forever to get back to base and quickly changed boards, and broke out the Barge. With the breeze being too light for my 6.6 I thought I would experiment with the FangyFin 28 cutdown. I was wondering whether the overdone lift might be enough to counter the undersize sail.

 Being in a rush I went for the first bolt I could find, which was one of my short ones. The fin has been tapped to 80mm so normally I put long bolts in. I had a great Nauti mile run down to Boundary Island, clobbered a fish on the way and gybed in the shallows of the island to join Basil. Except things went awfully strange. I spun out my gybe viciously and stood there for a minute or two trying to figure out why that happened. Basil started on the journey back and so I went to join him, except my board wouldn’t manoeuvre into position. Eventually I flipped it over to find no sign of a fin. Oh. Bugger.

Over tightened the short bolt, a heavy tap on a fish, some decent burg smashing may have all combined to cause a complete loss of shiny bits on the bottom of my board. 

Basil was too far away to call, but I thought, 

‘No problem, I will get him to run down another fin for me when he returns.’

So I spent the next half hour looking for the fin in the mud and weed. The visibility was almost zero as the tide was starting to run through the gap between the Island and Creery but I persisted because I had nothing much else to do until Basil got back. At about 5 ish I realised Basil wasn’t coming back.

 At this point I realise I have a couple of km’s to get home, and by the time I get home the depth of trouble I will be in is way above chin height. Off comes the Camelbak and I fastened it to the rear foot straps. Of course the wind has now picked up nicely, excellent for sailing but bloody difficult to do so with a Camelbak as a fin. I sailed along in bursts of  hundred metres or so, trying to balance everything and go slow enough that the Camelbak didn’t break the surface and lose grip. I tried to head for the heavy weed because the extra drag made things easier to control. But the process was seriously hard yakka. 

And then out of the East my saviour arrived. Well ,sort of. I waved the double handed distress signal to Jonski who then powered on past and into the distance. Blind git. I waited for him to gybe and come back past. He didn’t. Instead he headed up wind and well away from me in my own little moat of misery weed. So back to self rescue. Another hundred meters or so and I stop. Jonski is coming back on a bit of a downwinder, and this time he realises, ‘not waving, drowning’ type of situation. 

A quick confab and Jonski charges back to grab a fin and bolt out of my board on the beach. John’s Uber Fin Taxi service was back faster than your average pizza guy, and bingo I was back in business. 

 THANK YOU JOHN, who had started on his hour attempt when I stuffed it up for him. I was so relieved to see he smashed out a brilliant hour despite my folly, but saddened that mine was so much better.

I made it back to base and thought, 

‘If I was Elmo, I would probably realise that Huey had won and it was time to call it quits'

 especially since I was already late. But sometimes even a sodden ball of red fur out-thinks me, so I swapped back onto the F2 Waterlog and went back out to join John. It was only a quick session, but it was immense fun. I could not get the board to sit happily at speed as it rocked back and forth on its banana bottom, but with the wind appearing to be a strong SSE the weed banks were just Goldilocks for long runs and bear-aways. It certainly felt like the fastest I have been on that board and I was pretty sure the NM was going to be in the low 30’s.

I called it a day as the sun was getting low. The level of strife I am in from the War Office probably now requires a Bobcat to dig me out, but that last little session made up for all the muppetising that had occurred earlier. One the all time best sails of all time I have had at Fangys. 

I quickly packed up and went to turn off my GPS. I have GW 52, wrapped in two sandwich bags and then mounted inside an Otter waterproof hard case that I wear on my shoulder. Or more correctly, I have a GW-52 that was floating in its on little aquarium. 

Apparently using the case as a sea anchor when I had no fin had been enough to break the seal. Double bagging paid off and the unit was dry inside the second bag, but unfortunately did not record much data of use whilst submerged in its aquarium. Damn! 

On top of that, I failed to turn it off for the drive home…

So after digging myself out of the rather large hole I found myself in when I got home, I then had to spend some time fixing the files. In the end, only the data up to the sea anchor incident was useable. It was a pity cos I am pretty sure I broke 40 knots, for both speed and my hour and probably my alpha too.

Highs and lows like a rollercoaster today, but still a Top Ten Fangy Day. 

CONGRATS JOHN, that is an epic hour