Windsurfing Magazine

jdouglass
2010-05-11 09:02:32 | 1165 views | 6 Comments

The Spring Fling race in Stuart, Florida, last weekend was a lot of fun. There was beach bumming and light-wind formula cruising on Saturday, then windy slalom racing on Sunday. The picture below, from the website of Miami windsurfer Alex Morales, shows me in the middle with a red sail about to get passed by everyone.

Muchas gracias to Rick Randall (aka Maui Malone) and the other folks who organized the event.

Performance-wise I was last place in almost every race on Sunday, which was a little disappointing compared to last year when I stayed in the middle of the pack on similar freestyle-wave gear. I brooded about it a little and came up with a few plausible excuses:

Excuse #1: The pack was smaller this year. It had the fast Miami racers but was missing the average Joes and Joans who could give me a chance by being late on the start and falling at the jibes and stuff. Let’s get more mediocre riders next time!

Excuse #2: The format last year was pure downwind slalom, so it didn’t matter much that my freestyle-wave gear couldn’t point upwind efficiently. This year it was mostly figure-8 slalom, and I got killed trying to plane and point on the close reaches. For the second round of racing, I put my 6.8 wave sail on a formula board, which solved the pointing problem but limited my straight-line speed and jibing ability. The helmet camera video below shows some of the different gear types I was messing with, and how I get passed like nothing by the fast guys.

Anyway, Rick is selling some used Exocet slalom boards (the cool black ones) out of his new operation at the Cowabunga Surf Shop in Jensen Beach, so I think I might pick up the 71-cm-wide version and see if I can’t boost my speed a few knots.