Sunset at Cape Poge
Team Dancing Turtle Setup
Day 2 of the North American Speed Sailing Championships was a long and weird day out at Cape Poge, albeit beautiful. The forecast was for a WNW Wind back to the WSW as the low in the Canadian Maritimes fueled the gusty gradient of 15-20 Knots. In theory this was all good but when you have cool air from up north mixing down it always wreaks havoc on consistency. So needless to say we saw a lot of big shifts in velocity and direction.
The Race Director attempted to set a starboard tack course right in the elbow but by the time it was set the wind had backed from 300 degrees to 270 degrees making the race course exceptionally square. So then we waited, then we waited some more and finally we ran a long port tack just to the north of the windmill house. Now if the winds were already weird and shifty lets add a 15' sand dune with the occasional cutout for vehicles and see what things look like. The course was very deep at probably 140-160 True Wind angle depending on the puff but the water texture was very good.
Having struggled to dial in the first two heats of the event on my small symmetric board aka TEAM DT Bullet I was looking to make some changes in my setup. I had modified my slightly larger symmetric board with a slightly lower aspect fin setup and moved the straps and found that I was significantly more steady in my line down the run. The wider board combined with the 22 cm Tectonics Fins allowed me the ability to extend my body a bit more and push the board harder. Unfortunately I am still working on this technique compared to the likes of Damo and Brian Kender but I finally felt little snippets of what I was looking for. Mind you I did say snippets because that is all I would get before a series of heinous crashes. For the first 15 minutes of the heat I crashed more times then I completed runs. It was actually pretty humorous but also very encouraging because for the first time since I finished these boards I felt the ability to push them hard, sometimes too hard. But I increased my top speed on the boards and had a few runs where my Vmax was just shy of 40 Knots. This is a 4 knot increase from the other day. Unfortunately the guys I am racing against are freakin awesome and some are averaging 44 knots, and that is in less than 20 knots of wind. Very impressive, especially when you see them ripping down the line fully extended, fully committed. I feel lucky to be involved with this group of sailors.
I am making some further alterations to the boards today so hopefully I can find a few more knots. I am currently sitting in 9th place so I am definitely moving in the right direction...just maybe not as quickly as I would like. HA!
Huge thanks to my amazing wife Sheylah for keeping me well fed and hydrated. Also want to thank Tim and Jenny Klein for coming out to watch and help out and of course I have my very supportive list of partners:
Dancing Turtle Coffee Shop
Jamestown Distributors
BEST Kiteboarding
Gorilla Rigging
Atlantis Weathergear
Velocitek
Click here for Results
The Race Director attempted to set a starboard tack course right in the elbow but by the time it was set the wind had backed from 300 degrees to 270 degrees making the race course exceptionally square. So then we waited, then we waited some more and finally we ran a long port tack just to the north of the windmill house. Now if the winds were already weird and shifty lets add a 15' sand dune with the occasional cutout for vehicles and see what things look like. The course was very deep at probably 140-160 True Wind angle depending on the puff but the water texture was very good.
Having struggled to dial in the first two heats of the event on my small symmetric board aka TEAM DT Bullet I was looking to make some changes in my setup. I had modified my slightly larger symmetric board with a slightly lower aspect fin setup and moved the straps and found that I was significantly more steady in my line down the run. The wider board combined with the 22 cm Tectonics Fins allowed me the ability to extend my body a bit more and push the board harder. Unfortunately I am still working on this technique compared to the likes of Damo and Brian Kender but I finally felt little snippets of what I was looking for. Mind you I did say snippets because that is all I would get before a series of heinous crashes. For the first 15 minutes of the heat I crashed more times then I completed runs. It was actually pretty humorous but also very encouraging because for the first time since I finished these boards I felt the ability to push them hard, sometimes too hard. But I increased my top speed on the boards and had a few runs where my Vmax was just shy of 40 Knots. This is a 4 knot increase from the other day. Unfortunately the guys I am racing against are freakin awesome and some are averaging 44 knots, and that is in less than 20 knots of wind. Very impressive, especially when you see them ripping down the line fully extended, fully committed. I feel lucky to be involved with this group of sailors.
I am making some further alterations to the boards today so hopefully I can find a few more knots. I am currently sitting in 9th place so I am definitely moving in the right direction...just maybe not as quickly as I would like. HA!
Huge thanks to my amazing wife Sheylah for keeping me well fed and hydrated. Also want to thank Tim and Jenny Klein for coming out to watch and help out and of course I have my very supportive list of partners:
Dancing Turtle Coffee Shop
Jamestown Distributors
BEST Kiteboarding
Gorilla Rigging
Atlantis Weathergear
Velocitek
Click here for Results
Race Committee's very technical anemometer
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