Wild and Wooly Longboard Sailing

Whoo-wee, what a day. Got to Kanaha about 11:00 am and rigged up the 6.3 superfreak sail and grabbed the big Ding King standup paddleboard with the mast track. The wind was light inside, with whitecaps on the reef. Nobody else out on longboards, it was all folks with footstraps. Does that make me an iconoclast or a knucklehead who doesn’t know what gear to use?

I plodded ahead stubbornly and made my way out. About halfway to the breaking waves the wind got serious and my longboard started planeing. First it hiked up the nose a little but soon three quarters of the board was out of the water–it looked like a park bench worth of board sticking out. But it was SO MUCH FUN!!

I spent an hour playing in the waves, catching nice shoulders and then powering across the faces. Laughing like an idiot. The wind kept getting stronger and more windsurfers came out to play. I came in to switch to my windsurfer, but on the way in thought “why am I doing this, I’m having a blast?” So I got a drink of water and went back out on the longboard. I didn’t even change down the sail when the wind started really howling. I found that I could just shift further back on the board and hike out more. I rarely sheeted out, just pushed harder on the board in the gusts. Never got slammed. Never lost my footing on the nice pad that tops my board.

I stopped by to talk to Alan Cadiz who was there teaching what looked like a couple of hundred local kids how to windsurf. Alan looked at my board and said “Geez, you should put rod holders on that boat”. Of course Alan weighs about a hunded pounds soaking wet and was born on a windsurfer.

This is definitely the way to go for fat geezers like me. The wind had a lot of holes and some real nasty gusts. The Superfreak sail kept the gusts from yanking my arms out, and the board cruised through the holes. I quit about 4:00 after windsurfing all day and skipping lunch (drank some energy goop I keep in my trunk). tired, but not very sore.

I’ve got to get a way to take pictures from the board. I sent back the ATC 2000 helment cam for repairs today. I hope it works out–it would be ideal. I think pictures of this stuff would be a hoot. You’d swear I really know how to surf even though most of the waves I’m riding would scare the bejessus out of me on a surfboard without a sail.

If you haven’t tried longboard surf/sailing then you’ve got a treat coming. I think it’s particularly good for returning busted up old time windsurfers like me. You can do all kinds of neat stuff right away, and if you can waterstart, or uphaul really well, you’re in. I still haven’t sucessfully tacked this thing, and I’m hitting about one jibe out of fifty. But I’m having a ball and my sailing chops are coming back.