Windsurfing Magazine

Andy McKinney
2010-03-15 11:46:28 | 487 views | 0 Comments

Wow, yet another insane storm just pounded this poor little sandbar. Hatteras Island had yet another flood on Wednesday, pushing about two feet of water into my driveway and covering almost all of Hwy. 12 in Avon with water. It’s not really that big of a deal, because everything is built for high water down here. All of the homes are either up on a hill or perched on top of 8-foot pilings, so damage is really pretty minimal. But, I must admit, it is a total pain in the butt to have to wade through two feet of 38-degree water to get home.

So in this last storm the highway closed. I’m sure a few cars were lost to the rising tide. Some of the lower-built homes received some water damage. The parking lot at the Canadian Hole was destroyed, school was closed for a day and half, and a woman had to give birth to her child in an ambulance, because she couldn’t get up to the hospital. And here’s the real kicker: I think that, maybe, well … it was all my fault.

In my last post, I talked about how it was “too windy” over the weekend. It had been blowing a little more than 30 mph. Well, I thought that I was being respectful in my wording, but apparently not. I must have angered Mother Nature, somehow, somewhere. I can see her fuming: “You thought it was too windy on Saturday?! Well, I’ll show you what too windy REALLY is!!” with smoke coming from her ears.

Stuart and I did battle with the elements, rigging the smallest pieces of kit we could find. I was on my 3.7 and 80-liter Pocket wave, and Stuart was on similar kit but chose to ride his 90-liter freestyle board. We sailed deep into The Venus Flytrap, seeking some shelter. We didn’t really find the sanctuary we were looking for, so we explored even further into the slick, to a spot whose name shall remain under wraps, as this blog is rated PG, not R. At this point, we were sailing directly over what’s normally an island of brush, bushes and duck hunter’s blinds.  It was definitely an epic survival sesh; one of those days where it was full concentration, at all times, or else.

Looking back at the meters, it blew 35 mph gusting to 45 all day long, and there were even a few gusts that hit 50 mph. Combine those numbers with a 38-degree air temp, and you get some seriously punchy, dense, shifty wind. It was not easy sailing weather, to say the least, but it was truly an epic experience, where the biggest claim of my day was simply a dry jibe!

Andy McKinney Rides:
Read more of Andy’s blogs at lostinhatteras.blogspot.com.