3 categories

Albany, WA, AU

Recon Mission to see if Big Sunday at Albanwesterlie would work, sure does Great company with Mark as partner in crime for the recon mission, Steve and Shane joined us for the fun, lucky as well due to another one of my booms going to the trash heap. Probably about 400 of the carpark area just as I fininished a 39knot run the boom broke just as I stopped the board. Bit of a walk to the shore and Steve graciously loaned me one of his carbon boom. Well that made a differance to the Ali 40.4 on the dial happy days.

Westerlies do work at Lilacs just need a lot of wind and play 100-200m off the shore line, yes choppy but today the bottom end towards Albany was out of play, shortage of water, don't believe the storm surge data it was saying .6 to .7 more like .2 today.

Massive bullets coming through could have and should have made more of the conditions, but was buggered from the walk after the boom failure and only did a couple of runs till i called it quits. Did not want to damage another boom or myself, wind solid 25 in the middle some lulls but the bullets 30-40 as Mark would tell you with the mast hitting his head when a squall came through, lucky he wears a helmet.

Started with the 6.3 and Delta, the delta lasted half a run changed to the trusty 22 45 Vector WS solid, sail too big for the squalls only pulling 36 in the runs, changed down to 5.5 and straight of the bat 38, improved for there the rest is history.

Would I do a westerlie at Lilacs again HELL YES  Strop you'll love it, you would be in your element, needed a bit more water on the bottom end potential is there for some high numbers, today I just didn't make the most off it but was a nice taste.

Manta 54 KAR 6.3 KAR 5.5 Vector 22 WS

6 categories

Albany, WA, AU

Curiosity satisfied. Ever since sailing at Lilacs in the normal SE I wondered what it would be like on a Westerly. Well, it's a place of potential if the elements come together but only for the pentential of speed, nothing else in my opinion. There are no Naughtys, Alphas, Distance as you would expect in the SE wind. I opted to sail from the kiters end reasonalby close to the carpart and sail as shallow as possible back towards the normal windsurfing rigging carpark. However, the tide was so low that even the Delta fin was prohibited to work as normal. In addition, the gusts where huge 40+ but then 10knots or less all within 100m. Trying to sail again in the same spot requires at lease a tide of .6+. This would allow to sail close to the bank without weed drag and continue past the rigging carpark hopefully with a second or third gust to get max speed. The tide was approx .2 Boz and I thought. The storm surge data wasn't at all accurate which idicated .7. Boz and Evets had the right idea sailing closer to the middle out of the real flat but where there were more than single gusts. Cudos to them for having the smarts today.  Anyway tried the Manta 61 and Vapor 6.4 CL Delta 18 first and decided to try the 59 with the 5.6 Vapor. Not much difference in speeds between the two setups as the main influence was the single short gusts in close.

So either sail with a delta fin close to the bank with higher water to allow the North end of to be sailed which today was virtually unsailable or sail in the middle with a 21+ wp fin. Check what fin Boz used today. The naughty past the carpark was in thick weed with a nice walk back. Worth mentioning, helmets are worth their weight in strong gusty conditions as I got smashed repeatedly on the head by the mast whilst standing waiitng for a gust. It came from a slightly different direction at 40+knots so glad I was wearing a helmet which was swapped from the normal hat earlier. Overal, lilacs on a W is worth experiencing but has nothing on a decent SE. As usual, great company at Lilacs with the locals Shane and Evets and a top trip with Boz who excelled today.

This is how low the tide was at Lilacs. Boz with his pb too.