If anybody out there is wondering how to get young people interested in windsurfing, let me suggest this simple tactic: teach an allosaurus to windsurf. All it takes is a special windsurfer modified for saurians, like so. These can be found at many windsurf shops dedicated to recycling:
Place (carefully) your allosaurus onto the windsurfer. Beachstarting is recommended:
Allow the allosaurus to sheet in:
And away we go!
For those interested in getting your children interested in surfing, let me suggest this other tactic: teach your stegosaurus to surf!
A special dinosaur-resistant surfboard. Note: this model is constructed from special carbon-neutral components.
This trip will be the trip that tests Kirsten and me. This is the trip we go with all three kids, a five year-old son and twin fourteen month-old girls, without any help. Would we be able to have any fun? Would we lose our minds trying to have fun? Would the girls be charming little angels? Would I be able to get in the water at all, let alone windsurf? Will I be able to get any pictures of myself windsurf? (In a word: no.)
Sunday, July 26
I get our beach sticker at the insane hour of 8 AM on a Sunday morning, then I spin around to the beach. It’s foggy and the wind is low. I had a dream of early morning sails, kind of like jogging before everybody else gets up. Yeah, sure. Not going to happen. If I got more then 150 yards out, I’d be invisible.
Before lunch, Kirsten made a run to Provincetown (P-Town) So we went to the beach right after lunch. The wind is blowing quite nicely, but we leave the beach too late to consider any serious activities besides standup paddling.
Speaking of standup paddling, it’s a lot of fun in the chop. Kirsten’s Amundson is about 78 cm wide, wider than my Kona, but also a lot thinner. It’s a really stable board and fun. Kirsten mocked me for “falling” off the board when she didn’t, but I didn’t want to push the idea that I had actually been trying out some new maneuvers, like a quick turn, when all she had been doing was paddle. I didn’t fall either when I was paddling. Okay, maybe I did fall, a little.
Kirsten is a good athlete. She’s definitely a better athlete than I am. She got serious coaching in swimming and cross-country skiing growing up, at the same time I was desperately putting the pieces of my life together after my family fell apart during my later teens. (Jealous? No, not me. Nooooo.) I’m not saying my wife can kick my butt or anything, but she does pick up sports a lot quicker than I did. I finally nailed my twentieth beach start try, while she nailed her first. I could complain that I had been in twenty-five mph winds with a board equipped with a huge daggerboard and her beach start was in a foot of water off gentle Dennis beach, but I won’t, ‘cause I’m not that kind of guy either. Really.
Back to the SUPing, I did get to surf the board a little. Kirsten tried to but got self conscious of falling. “In front of all these people on the beach?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“These people you’re never going to see again?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the fact that I fell off my windsurfer in Peekskill about a thousand times over the last five years. This was in front of strangers, neighbors, and friends, and who’d wait around and talk to me when I landed about all the times that I fell?”
I’ve never been too worried about falling when I do sports, probably because I do it a lot. I blame the thing I mentioned earlier, plus my blindness (and the fact that I’m basically a klutz).
Kirsten's like a mermaid in the water. (I think I've mentioned this before.)
First dip.
Swimming in the sunset.
Lovely Corn Hill Beach. Looks just like an Edward Hopper painting.
Monday, July 27
We had a nice morning at the beach with the brood. The tide was about at the midway point and getting higher. Winds were pushing fifteen. Corn Hill Beach slopes pretty dramatically between the low and high tide mark, so whatever wave action hits the shore happens within about ten feet of the breakers. I took Mr. Shmoo into the water with his prized boogie board and started to show him how to ride waves. He was having a little trouble at first just holding himself correctly on the board, but Gabriel got the hang of that after a while. Then we went into slightly deeper water and waited for the waves. When one would come I’d push him into the wave for a short ride. He loved it.
Kirsten and I also dipped the girls into the water. Miranda seemed to really enjoy getting wet while Guinevere was pretty frightened of the ocean.
Later I returned to the beach alone with my Kona board and sails. I rigged the new Aquaglide 6.5. I was surprised at how much monofilm the sail actually used; it’s not a great sail for any real wave action. Even at high tide the shore break was so close to the water’s edge that any beach start was an act of gymnastics. It was easier to push out of the breakers, about fifteen feet, and uphaul.
This session was one of the most fun times on my board. Winds were just short of planable, but the swells were loads of fun to bounce around in. I experimented in the swells with the daggerboard up and down. With it down the board was very stable but there was far too much pressure coming from just below the mast. The board was a lot more fun with the daggerboard up. Yeah, duh, you’re probably saying, but I wanted to know the difference. The Kona bounced over the swells, sometimes popping over them. Wow. That was really fun. A lot more fun than a wideboard.
I don’t think I’ll use that sail again in the swells. It just felt too light and fragile for the beating it was getting. I brought a 5.3 wave sail, which is a little small for the prevailing conditions, but it’ll survive the beating much better. The wavesail will also give me an excuse to use my new 430 mast.
Speaking of rigging, my 460 got stuck together with sand. I brought it back to the beach house and tried a radical method of getting it unstuck which I read about in Windsport. You wrap line around each end so you create a huge amount of friction, then tie one end to a tow hitch on your car and the other end to an immovable object. I’d tried using two cars to separate a stuck boom and it worked really well, but a mast, because of its shape, is a different story. I ended up wrapping a length of strap on each end of the mast, making sure that there was a lot of friction and each straps wrapped over itself. I attached one end to a convenient tree and the other to my CRV’s tow hitch.
It worked like a charm. The mast made a very satisfactory phut! sound as it separated. I have two other stuck masts a t home I want to try this with. I also, surprise, got some sand in that same boom and it’s not moving. I know how to fix this now.
First time in the ocean
The kid is learning the boogie board: the first step to windsurfing.
Wellfleet, right outside Mac's Seafood, the best fried seafood around.
We watched the kiters while we ate. The wind was about 20 mph. Gabriel was enthralled by them.
Tuesday, July 28
Kirsten’s doing a really good job getting Gabriel onto her SUP board. The boy is hesitant to get on the board with me, but he loves going on with Kirsten. She got him to stand on the board while she held it steady. He also would lay on the nose while she paddled. The little dude will be a surfer one day, or something.
Gabriel getting on the SUP board.
Wednesday, July 29
Winds were blowing about 15 during the morning but by the time I got to the beach, they were down to about 10. Blahh.
I wanted to rig the 5.3 for the waves and did so, even though I knew I’d be underpowered. I used my new 430 mast and a large extension to get that 457 cm of luff that the sail suggested. In retrospect, I think I gave the sail a little too much downhaul; a little less would have given me a little more power. Mistake number two was thinking I could sail perfectly well barefoot, but more on that later. One good thing I did was rig by the edge of the Corn Hill Beach parking lot to avoid any sand issues, like the ones I had the last time I was out here.
I hauled the board and sail together onto the beach. It was fairly empty when I got there. The day hadn’t been so nice and there were some ominous clouds creeping up. This was good for me: I didn’t have to do any fancy maneuvers around sunbathing families.
Looking around I spotted another windsurfer! After I launched I sailed over to him and chatted. His name was John and he was a British man named John living in New Jersey. He was sailing a blue Bic 283 with an 8.0 sail. He told me he was able to get up on a plane once on his rig, but the winds the next two days were supposed to be mid teens to twenty. (I was blissfully unaware of this having been without an internet connection this last week. All I knew about were the tides, which I was getting from a Truro tourist booklet.) We promised to look out for each other the next couple of days.
I sailed by myself for the next hour or so. The winds, as usual, were from the south and a little east. I had to fight the tendency to get pushed northward, usually with the daggerboard down. This was a drag because the Kona was much more fun to sail without the daggerboard. What I ended up doing was sailing upwind with the daggerboard down, sailing without the daggerboard while getting pushed downwind, then repeating. I even did a little surfing on the larger swells. I’m not a surfer but I’m a competent body surfer and boogie boarder, so I know the feel of catching a wave. The Kona is such a big board that I had to move around a lot to get the right balance point to surf. It was a lot of fun, though. I want some bigger surf!
Tides will be low tomorrow right during the mid-afternoon. The tides get very low at Corn Hill Beach, so low that you can’t launch a board for a couple of hundred yards at least. It would be nice to sail when the tide is nearly low so I can practice my beachstarts, but I’ll be happy to get out at least one more time this vacation, no matter what the conditions.
Lessons on catching waves.
Friday, July 31
On my last day I went to the beach at about 8AM. Winds were light so I rigged a 7.0, the biggest sail I brought. The tide was lower than before and the chop was minimal (darn). I like sailing in the waves. After practicing some beach starts I got underway. I had a nice sail, although at one point the winds died down to almost nothing. Then they started picking up. By the time I had to leave I was almost fully powered and was almost on a plane. Later in the day the winds were at about 20, but I had family obligations. I saw John again and chatted. He was overpowered on a 7.0 and was packing it in.
Shmoo and the Squirmshiens (good name for a rock band).
I'm a windsurfer who sails right on the Hudson RIver. I teach middle school English and love to write. If I'm not windsurfing, I'll either be with my family, grading papers or hunkered down, writing.
