TOW

Yesterday we again had light winds out of the North. I saw a kite up at 12 O'clock from the back balcony down at Pirate's Cove. The rider, who I couldn't see, wasn't dipping it much, but I figured there wouldn't be be a lot of wind that afternoon. However, after hemming and hawing for a while, I decided that if it was good enough for some bottom feeding kiter, I'll try windsurfing up at the causeway. There was a funny kind of older guy from New York there when I arrived. He was wearing rubber combat boots, standing on the coral and had a windmeter up that was reading rather low figures i.e. averages around 13 with gusts to 18 m.p.h. He related how he didn't like the new fangled loose leech sails and had worn through all his older ones bigger than 5.5 so he couldn't sail. I took out the old 6.0 World Sail I had, knowing it would be too small but perhaps some fun. This is the one I found at the Falmouth dump's Pick of the Litter shack. It hadn't been used much. Mice had eaten through the sail bag, but they had only chewed a small hole in the edge of the roach which I had repaired. It has two camber inducers which give it a rather large luff pocket and of course you can't loosen the leech at all. The fellow (dressed in fatigue pants and ranting a bit about how the Mexicans were going to start a shooting war over the economy) paused and admired it. :rolleyes: I said I wasn't worried about getting shot as I'll be windsurfing or kiting. That set him off on a tangent to his tangent. Kiters, he said, had to be watched closely in that they were Psycho!!!! That made me think of this forum.
Once rigged and out on the water, I was surprised that I was able to get into the reaching straps soon after sailing up wind. I took this old, narrow 130 liter poly board with me. (I can stand on it with no wind and handle some chop as well. However, it's as antiquated as the sails I took.) However, the initial thrill didn't last long as serious holes developed in the breeze. Nevertheless, I was able to work on my jibing with this camber induced sail. My starboard tack, the easier side for me, was in calm water so I could pull off a number of them. It's trickier with these old longer boards than with the new wide ones. ;) I did miss quite a few by a hair. (I hope all you kite freaks are enjoying this technical ramble in windsurfing terminology.) The weather was sunny, too. I've only used a full wetsuit once while my new 3/2 over the knee Promotion shortie has worked well. This session wasn't as exciting as the last one when I was sailing in a group of Porpoises, but although I was slogging quite a bit, it kept me in good fatguy shape.
so I decided to make it three days of TOW in one week . I did get in the straps a bit, but the real success of the day was my gybing. Well, in fact I missed more than I made, but I did feel satisfied having completed a few with the camber induced World 6.0, a difficult sail to gybe. It was a work-out I needed. Since arriving here in November I have put in a dozen sessions windsurfing.