USA 4 Windsurfing Campaign - Keeping pace with the jones

by USA 4 Windsurfing Campaign on 9 Jun 2015 SF Bay Challenge - take the biggest windward leeward course you can fit on the San Francisco Bay and the two fastest board sailing classes, add lots of wind and tide and what you get is no less than a spectacular weekend of racing from the city front down to the Berkeley pier and back.

The foil board kite surfers we're going to dominate. No question. That is if they could keep themselves out of trouble. As for getting down to Berkeley and back on a foil board. Simply not possible at this point. I'm lucky to make the leeward mark on the foil Kite board.

I rigged avanti 10 and ml89 + 64 Kashy fin for the breeze and flood tide. Good start with speed 1/2 way down the line. I tacked and rounded closely in third behind Xavier on Nine and Tom in 9.3. The bigger sail was beginning to pay dividends at the top of the course. I even extended the lead past Alcatraz and got going very deep and fast. Ml 89 cm mini formula board has a great range but 10 was becoming all too much in the middle of the course in the steep chop and gust approaching 30k. At the leeward mark, Soheil, Eric and Jean had all made their move as I was in survival mode.

Back up wind I was taking a beating. Port tack was straight into three - four' breaking sets on the Berkeley shoals. Meanwhile, Johnny Heinekin took himself out from the lead by wrapping his kite in the mast head of an approaching j105 fleet of angel island. He managed to climb the mast and dislodge his kite from the rigging but was out of the race.

I stuck to the city front which was the wrong side as there was no relief from the flood. It took three long tacks to get through the city front gap at Alcatraz. On top of that the SW gust were spastic and unreliable.

Eric who split tacks and stuck to the north side of Alcatraz challenged Tom and Xavier who battled to the city front. At the end it was the foil kites who dominated in just under an hour and the windsurfers in at 1:25 as Stefaans took the line honors with Erika just behind.

Sunday saw the return of the breeze. I was spent - both figuratively and literally. After two course races in the city front the 10.0 was still too much with the gusts approaching 25k+. The top three fleet leaders all had 9.3 or 9.0s. Even Jean on the 7.7 and fw board was keeping pace. The first race I extended a big lead at the leeward mark but gave it all up upwind as the only the only real way to keep pace with a fw board upwind is by playing the uphaul with your front hand even in the gusts. Easier said than done.

I had to watch the remaining two races from shore as I was cashed out. Totally spent.

In hindsight I'm thinking a 9.3 may be the better high wind formula rig and light air slalom sail that makes the perfect 1 sail quiver for the 89cm board.

This year it was all about keeping up with the kite foil fleet but I managed to pretty much forget out the windsurfing fleet. Most upgraded to the gaastra sail which has great range and speed + the JP or *167 is standard fare. There's four or five guys who can win a race in our fleet out of seven. No room for error or lack of keeping up with the jones.

After three races, Johnny reappeared at the top of the foil fleet-Interesting enough with the new mikes lab foil with the kick back cant proving once again the jones are always evolving at a faster pace than the non jones.