Windsurfing Magazine

Andy McKinney
2010-03-17 14:05:39 | 1203 views | 12 Comments

Wow, it is going crazy out here on Hatteras Island. The first thing of note is the water temp in the sound — it warmed up really quickly at the end of last week. Don’t expect board shorts weather or anything, but there’s a big difference between today’s 53-degree water and last week’s 39-degree water. BIG difference!

It all started with the arrival of the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Windsurfing Club. They rolled in, the skies cleared, it warmed up to 60 degrees, and it cranked out of the southwest for the first time in AGES. Juiced 4.7 sunset session. It was rad. Grubbies, spocks, loops — it was all flowing and feeling good! That probably instilled a little too much confidence, because I got into a bit of a pickle the very next day.

Picture an incredibly beautiful, peaky, logo-to-mast-high occasional outside set, infrequent enough that you’d have to try to get tagged by one. Add in warm air, sunshine, off-side-off winds and spray blowing off the tops. It was just too darned appealing not to try! So I rigged up my 4.7 again, plugged it in to the Tabou Pocket 80, and dove right in up at Ramp 34. The shorebreak was ridiculously easy to deal with, considering how big the sets were, so getting off the beach was no problem at all There didn’t even seem to be too much current over the bar. The wind felt light, but it’s pretty easy to schlog out when it’s side off.

A medium size wave stands up on the horizon

I got denied on my first attempt through the impact zone, and the shock of hitting that cold water took the breath right out of me. I was all geared up in my winter suit but it didn’t seem to matter. As soon as I got dunked, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. My heart rate skyrocketed, my forearms cramped, I was stuck taking these shallow breaths of air. I just couldn’t relax. So I regathered my gear, flipped my sail over, caught a puff to water start and began to head back in.

The act of safely getting back home always instills confidence. It’s like you have a safety line that you keep stretching and testing further and further, seeing if you can snap it. Well, I schlogged right back to where I started from, no problem. So what the heck — all’s well — why not give it another try? After all, those outside bombs are just immaculate!

So out I went. This time, no problem. Caught a lull in the sets and a puff of wind just perfectly — I couldn’t have been luckier. Now that I’m on the outside, there’s still no wind. Well, that’s not true. It’s blowing 8-20 mph and shifting 15 degrees every 30 seconds. It was pretty much impossible to relax in the harness lines with such shifty winds, so my forearms were getting pounded by the combo of having to grip the booms and deal with the cold.

I schlogged around for a few minutes, with my eye on the horizon, and dropped in to a medium-sized wave. The wind coming up the face and the speed of the wave made it feel like it was blowing 35. My sail was a bucking bronco. I kicked out super-early just to get back to the relatively comfortable schlog and come up with a plan.

The wind was definitely getting lighter and shifting progressively more and more offshore. I’m positioned way outside, because I want to catch one of those beautiful bombs (and more importantly not get caught inside on one). I can tell that getting back to the beach is going to be, ahem, challenging. It’s so offshore that I’m basically schlogging back and forth, parallel to the beach. Swimming back in through the impact zone is a recipe for broken gear and a ice-cream headache disaster. The only way to get in is to schlog, position and catch a wave all the way in to the inside.

So I schlogged. And schlogged. And schlogged. And couldn’t freaking line up a wave to save my freaking life. Literally! The wind was super-light at this point, and I’m sunk up to my shins and teeter-tottering around out there, hoping to catch a wave, any wave, back in to the beach. Forearms are toast by this point, but I did get my heart rate to calm down, so I had that going for me. And then I saw my set: three waves, standing up on the horizon. There was a little spray starting to drift off the top of the second one, and they were positioned just perfectly down the beach from where I was drifting around.

I was able to pump into the shoulder of the first one and get some speed up, but I couldn’t get into the meat of the wave and had to kick out. The second wave of the set was looming behind me, so I steered back out a bit and was able to break the board back up on to a plane as I schlogged sideways and up the face of the wave. Down the face, there was so much speed and all of this apparent wind! It might as well have been blowing 40! Forearms are toast, I’m just trying to hang on at this point. I get a little distance down the line and the shoulder fizzles, leaving me deep inside for the third wave of the set, whose peak is looking menacing, to say the least.

Teeter-totter, DO NOT FALL, deal with the swirly wind on the backside of the second wave of the set, and try not to get crushed by the third wave, but you HAVE to catch it and take it all the way in. There is no other option. So I pumped and positioned and ignored my burning forearms. I snuck under the lip of the THIRD wave of the set and got the board to drop in. I rode the sucker straight upwind, straight in towards the beach, standing straight up over the board and hanging down through the mast base so hard that I thought the UJ would break right through the deck. The whitewater exploded and tried to envelope me but I stayed upright, somehow, through all of the bumps and moguls and headwind.

The last little chunk of current threw me off just as I reached the trough inside the impact zone. Wow, did that instant cold-water headache feel good! I had completed my goal of making it to the inside without getting crushed. Swimming the rest of the way in for the next five minutes, dealing with the shorebreak, and then walking the 1/4 mile back up the beach to my truck, well, it pretty much sucked, but I was stoked to be back on dry land! And to top it all off, I didn’t break a thing — not even a batten. So the session was somewhat of a success — I made it out, caught a few waves (in rapid succession), made it back in, and didn’t break anything. Sweet!

Two days later, my forearms and wrists still feel fried, my hamstrings are cramping, even my dang pecs are sore. Who gets sore pecs from windsurfing? What in the world? How does that happen?

Anyway, today’s 3.7 sunset session with the St Mary’s crew more than made up for the immense amount of effort with little return experienced two days prior. I’m claiming the sunset sesh as epic. Beautiful light, great wind, lots of stoked sailors. Yup, epic. One moment of note: Stuart was 20 feet upwind of me, and I threw a perfect loop. Then he threw a perfect loop an instant later, and I watched the spray blast forward off the nose of his board as he touched down, in this epic sunset light. The spray went straight forward, then the wind caught it and it came careening over the chops towards me, settling in a broad arc of white on the dark water. Yup. Good stuff.

The St Mary's crew- all geared up and ready to rock and roll!

Sorry, no action pics, no GoPro video, no nothing from any of these sessions, except my description. Take it or leave it, but it’d be better if you came to Cape Hatteras and wrote your own stories! This place has been firing — the windsurfing has been exceptional, the crowds are stoked, and SPRING IS HERE. Come get some.

Tags: cape hatteras, tabou pocket 80

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Andy McKinney, Features, Windsurfing Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.