They sent me to China and I scored 3 days layover in San Francisco. Guess where I went?
Full screen? Click here:
www.windsurfillinois.com/index.php/video...-sf-fanatic-freerace

Saturday June 16 - a couple of runs in lightwind with the Falcon and the 9.4 V8. Waited for SE wind to strengthen but instead everything turned NE at 13-14kn for about 20 minutes and the water was like butter!

Fathers’ Day - Sunday June 17 - 1pm SE 15-17 then 2:30pm SE 17-20 depending how far away from the beach I was. Beautiful weather, plenty of people on the water (wind and kite). I started with the big lightwind kit and moved the the Goya Bolt and the 8.5 Lion. There was enough wind to go one sail size down but got lazy and was still handling it fine. This session ended up being 3.5 hours almost nonstop: belly fat is melting away!

Pretty cool, Greg. With those kits you've got you can sail just about everyday. That is neat when the wind comes up on Michigan before the swell has time to build.

Reid Fillman wrote:
Totally! When offshore wind starts cranking from nothing to +15kn in a few minutes, that’s just bliss!

Friday June 22. Sheboygan. NE 18-20kn. I got off work around 3pm and went out along the south jetty with the 125l Bolt and the 7.0 Ezzy Lion for a 1.5h session with the usual kiteboard crowed. Upwind against the swell, the Bolt is not the most comfortable but rolling downwind, the kit is a lot of fun. Got into the harbor where the Sheboygan river spew its brown and murky waters out in the lake for a back and forth at full speed on flat water. Nice! Then sever cramps in the calfs - what the hell? Time to fold and hit the local pub.
Tomorrow, about the same forecast.

Weekend forecast doesn’t look good anymore. The lawn needs mowing anyway...
Best next chance for wind here: Tuesday 26 - SE 13-18kn.

Sunday June 24. I had no plans to go windsurf. Forecast looked bad. But by noon, a slight NE breeze started to pick up. By 1pm, things started to become interesting with 11kn gusting 13kn. The windline was 200-300 yards out so no kites on the water! I pulled the big guns (Falcon Lightwind + 9.4 V8) and off I go. The wind had lulls here and there but started to strengthen a tad gusting at 14kn and moved to N. This filled the shore nicely and a few kites went out as well. This lasted about 2 hours max. but it was fun. Water was warmer than usual and the sun was out. Beautiful day on the water!

Thought I'd share this: I'm using a North Power.XT 2.0 extender with the V8. It does the job: no back-breaking effort downhauling and super-easy to adjust downhaul on the water if need be. This last feature came handy almost every time I went out with this sail. This thing is quite a piece of engineering and I don't know how long it will last but it makes rigging and tuning a little easier. At $150 for the aluminum version, I think it was worth a try, especially for high-tension sails.
See here: www.north-windsurf.com/hardware/extensio...power-xt-2-0-series/

Friday June 29. SE 15-22kn. Great sailing. This time the wind filled all the way to shore, but things didn't started all that good... Ever tried sailing with the protective sleeve of your fin on the fin! I did! At first I had no clue why I couldn't get the board to release. It took me a good 20-30 minutes of frenetically pushing water and useless pumping before I realized what was going on. I know, it's a long time to realize something was wrong... was zoning out I guess. And I didn't even lost the sleeve!

My first suspicion when struggling to plane is the fin. It’s amazing how much drag creates a little peace of weed for example . It’s not uncommon for me to dismount on the spot just to check it. Usually use most falls to check it also and I fall a lot.

Ha! I fall a lot too! Yes, amazing the amount of drag this creates. Thanks for the advice.

Saturday June 30. Sheboygan south beach SSE 20-25kn. This time I sailed the 115l Starship all day with the Ezzy Ion 7.0. This sail is so tunable that it didn’t felt too big - but I’m on the heavy side with my 190lb! These are days that makes our long winters more digestible. Great day but failed half of my jibes: kept bringing the sail too close and ended up rotating the sail in too small of a space... Fun day anyway except that once more, my impatience tricked me again when the buckle of my harness came abruptly undone followed by a nice plunge. ...Forgot to cinch it down!
Finally, for a word around safety, I was glade I was wearing my helmet. I took the mast on the head during a pretty innocuous fall and the impact was enough to have caused some damage if I wasn’t wearing one. First time that helmet has been used for more than holding a GoPro or protecting from sun burns!





Overpowered kiter? Switch to windsurfing! Ha!

Sunday July 1. Sheb. South Beach. Ahead of the storm front we had some gusty but well-powered conditions today. While yesterday there was more than 40 cars and vans lined up in 2 rows at the South Beach launch with kiteboarders from all around (Chicago, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, plus the usual locals), today it was mainly the locals. I was the lone windsurfer around as usual.
I also noticed over the last couple of years more and more people stoping by to watch the action on the water, and I cannot count the number of people (and not just millennials!) asking me "what's the name that sport?". I know that windsurfing is not very popular but under what rock did those people lived in the 80's and 90's when it was somewhat more mainstream?

Anyhow, for my records, I sailed the 115l Starship and began the session with the 7.0 Lion, which became a bit exhausting to handle. I switched to the 5.7 Revo which was nice and more manageable as the wind picked up in the 25-28kn. Can't say I did much better than yesterday in my success rate on the jibes with the Starship, but at least I left every kiteboard in the dust as far as speed is concerned! That's perfectly useless competition, but still a small source of satisfaction for me, the average windsurfer, ha!

For more pics of yesterday's session, see the album in the Photo section of the site.

That's it! My trusted SB 2016 AtomIQ 124l is gone! I sold it to a friends here in Sheboygan, the father of a young woman who is windsurfing on an old F2 long and narrow board from the 1990's I think. It's obvious she has plenty of potential and already great skills but her old equipment is not ideal for her to progress. She deserves something better! She gets in the harness and straps but the big board she has isn't releasing fully (kind of a log!) so she can't really experience planning and speed! So, instead of getting to the trouble of trying to sell the many-times-repaired Green Machine to someone I don't know, I thought I'd let it go for $600 to someone who I know and who will have fun with it!

So no coming back: So long, my fun green board! It's been the perfect gear to get me right back into the sport! The Bolt is now my only pair of windsurfing "sleepers"!