Wednesday, August 19, 2009

finally

Finally
I was finally able to get a decent windsurfing session in. Don’t get me wrong…I’ve been to the beach a lot. And surfed more in the last month, than the last 5 years. But sailing the ocean on a 7.0, or surfing, is just not windsurfing.

Last weekend I made a sacrifice to the Heckscher wind god. I cut a 17 inch weed fin down to 11 inches. I did this because the wind has been really light this summer. And when you have to rig a 7.0 in order to plane, you need a big fin. But in the weeds you find at Heckscher, a deep weed fin is useless. You might as well tie a sea drogue to your rear foot strap. I have an 11 inch weed fin; but there is not enough surface area to power up a 7.0 sail. Now the cord length on the 17” is about 30% greater than you would find on a normal 11”. So by cutting down the 17 inch fin you end up with a short fin with greater surface area. In theory anyway; I haven’t been able to test my new creation. And I really don’t care to. I am happy to have more days like yesterday. We started off with 5.0 to 6.0’s, and ended with 4.7’s to 5.5’s, on boards in the 100 ltr range.

So that’s what it is supposed to feel like…

I missed being able to sail Gilgo with Dommer. But Heckscher delivered the goods.

2 comments:

PeconicPuffin said...

Good for you, Frank! I hope we all get some in the coming days. I may even try to get to Heckscher on Thursday.

drysuit2 said...

Thursday might be good. It would be good to see you there