Owner:
justal
Member
Member#: 7315 Location: Registered: 22-01-2008 Diary Entries: 61
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22nd October 2010
Windsurfing: Ynyslas Wind Direction: SW Wind Stength: 20-30 knots Surf / Sea State: 2-3 foot surf Air Temperature: 12ºC Sea Temperature: 14ºC Weather: Cloudy Max Speed: Distance Covered:
I've just got back from an excellent windsurf session here at Ynyslas.
I wandered over to the beach and it didn't lok great, grey, not that windy
and not much in the way of waves either. I rigged my bigger sail, a 5.6m
Gun Nexus and decided to give it a go with my Naish Hybrid Freewave board
and a big 32cm fin. I've never used this fin and board together as I
usually use a 23cm wave fin with it so I was surprised by how much easier
it was to get planing. It's obvious really as it is quite a bit bigger but
the difference was surprising. I was up and blasting along and well-powered
when normally I wouldn't have even been able to get going at all.
After a while I noticed that my rear foot-strap had come a little loose so
I came in to tighten it up. The screws needed tightening so I had to walk
up the beach get a screwdriver, walk back down the beach with it, tighten
the screws and walk back up the beach. As I did one of the kite-surfers
came in saying the wind had picked up, which it obviously had and he was
changing down to a smaller kite. I decided it might be a good idea for me
to change down as well so I carried my kit back to the pebbles and rigged
my 5m sail and put my smaller fin on.
Back on the water and once again I was perfectly powered and everything
felt spot on. The smaller kit is so much nicer, lighter, faster, more
responsive and so much more fun. I had a few runs like that, some nice big
jumps, some perfect gybes on the now increasing swell and some nice little
backside wave-rides too.
The I had one run where I gybed on the inside just upwind of a kitesurfer,
overtook him on the way out through the white-water and then as we got to
the proper waves a nice steep ramp reared up in front of me so knowing the
kitesurfer was right behind me I threw myself into a fully committed
back-loop. I didn't make it but it was pretty close, as I entered the water
my feet came out of my footstraps but I'd made it all the way around and
was able to waterstart as the kitesurfer went past me saying something
along the lines of 'YEEEEHAAAA'. I then overtook him again and on the next
wave which was nowhere near as steep, jumped off it and pulled the trigger
for a fully committed forward loop, again, right in front of him. Once
again I didn't sail away from it but it was close and I managed to
waterstart away from it with the kitesurfer shouting something along the
lines of 'the first was was mor spectacular!' Pah, what does he know, the
forward felt much better!
That was it, a precedent had been set and whenever the opportunity
presented itself I was throwing myself into back-loops and forward loops.
One back-loop in particular was pretty high and I'm not really sure what I
did but I could feel myself hanging there for a while upside down with the
tip of the mast just touching the water and I spun around out of control
before crashing to the water.
A little later a prefect wave for a forward loop attempt came at me, this
time I had plenty of time to prepare, I jammed my feet into the straps,
moved my hand down the boom and reminded myself to look as far as possible
over my shoulder and also to tuck up into a ball to make the rotation
faster. I took off, pulled the trigger and then as usual hung there for a
split second - that feels like forever - as very little happened, then the
wind got me and accelerated me around, I could see the world spinning at
top speed and then smack, I'd hit the water and, 'oompf', I was on my feet
and sailing away.
It wasn't super clean as the final part of the rotation was carried out on
and partially under the water but I'd made it around and landed a forward
loop - I haven't done one for ages, so I was pretty stoked at that.
What a session.
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