Wow, two months gone by since the last post, which means it sure has been a busy Autumn, and this is going to be a massive post.
It was windy nearly all the time (if you were willing to drive and find it), and it’s been the silly season competition wise – with back to back Wave, Slalom and Speed events for almost 10 weeks.
GROUNDHOG DAY
This meant that life took on a pattern of:
- Go to work
- spot a mid-week forecast and dash to West Coast to catch some epic swell / training
- try do some more work to justify the tank of diesel, and sail after work when it’s windy
- more work at night on computer, start to get ready for the comp at the weekend
- bail from work early on Friday and go and sail at the location
- compete all weekend
- back to work, while trying to recover from weekend
- start at beginning again…
And that’s just the windsurfing side, of course I have a real life too, and trying to squeeze it all in has been difficult/interesting/challenging/tiring. Of course a lack of time meant that blogging had to take a back seat while there was sailing to be done, and somewhere along the way Facebook took over… as it always does.
Resistance is futile !
Anyway, where to start really… there have been so many sessions.
(There is a video at the end, so if you are not into reading… just scroll to the end!)
WEST COAST WAVES
We hit Belmullet and Magheroarty quite a few times, as-well as some sick reefs in Sligo/Mayo that for now will have to remain unnamed. If you can find them, you deserve to be there. Most of the footage from this is on my hard drive from endless GoPro filming, so hopefully I have time now to go through it all and see if it’s good enough to put a video together.
Magheroarty Reef
SURFDOCK SLALOM EVENT
A slalom event….. in Dublin…. with WIND! As it was a Surfdock event…. I just had to enter 
The first day, we sailed in Poolbeg, with about 30 knots and small waves throughout the course. I absolutely LOVE surf-slalom and it was great to be fully powered on a real slalom board and normal sized sail (6.2), with the obligatory forward loop over the finish line in every race. Highlight of the day was back-looping the slalom board! Got to say it was a pleasure to do some slalom where you are rewarded for technique, rather than how enormous your sail is.
Salthill Slalom
The next day we sailed in Salthill, in pretty awful conditions. Still 30 knots (elsewhere), but very offshore and gusty bendy wind. Still won every single race and the event though… so I guess the saying is true: “you can take the racer out of the racing – but you can’t take the racing out of the racer….” or something like that :-/ (yeah OK, I just made that up)
NEW TOYS
Christmas comes twice a year, and this year is no exception. Plenty of new stuff to test and try out, it’s always the best time of year.
This year I finally got a 68litre JP Quad again, and God how I have missed it! My smallest waveboard last year was a 74, which worked well even with 3.2, but on a 68 everything is so much easier: better turns, effortless Takas, supremely controlable in bigger waves when it’s windy.
The new sails are so much lighter, yet so much stronger. They have launched a new material which is like XPly times two. Bombproof !
JP 2011 Twinser Quads
2011 Combat
SURFDOCK WAVE EVENT
With a rolling venue, the idea of Surfdock’s event is to make sure we score the best wind on the given weekend, and not be stuck somewhere windless, while another spot is firing. For our first choice, Belmullet was as usual ticking all the boxes for the weekend, and looked like the best place to be.
Sure enough, the day before the event it was howling already, and I went for a quick sail with Noelle on Louisbourg on the way on my 4.5m Combat, while Noelle got to try out the 4.2m FLY II.
Noelle in Louisbourg
I love the water colour in Belmullet
When I got to Belmullet that afternoon, it had kicked in, and as usual was blowing about 1 million knots !
There is now a name for that on the Beaufort Scale: Force Belmullet !
Surfdock Wave event Belmullet
Surfdock Belmullet Event
For the event we were greeted with nice side-shore conditions and wind for 4.5s again…. and SUNNY ! Can’t ask for more than that.
Everything ran smoothly, and we kicked off the Autumn Wave Series will 3 full elimination rounds completed over the 2 days.
I won one, Mikey won one, and Rob Jones won one. Belmullet never fails to deliver !
MAN DOWN !
Also during this event I had the worst case of man flu ever… didn’t sleep for 4 days 
Man down
I’m actually lucky to be alive ! hahaha….
In fairness, it actually turned into a 6 week sinus and chest infection, which didn’t make working or windsurfing any easier.
MUD SHARKS !?
In a previous post, I mentioned how I got into speed-sailing, after always borrowing Colman Phelan’s Jimmy Lewis Mud Shark. He saw that post, and dug the board out of the shed to bring to the next speed event we had. I think he said it was about 12-14 inches wide ? 30-35cms ?
Colman and his Mud Shark
Back then when we used this board there were no GPS devices, so it was impossible to know what speed we did, unless you entered an International speed event with video timing. Sailing on this board felt like 50 knots, but was probably 30! It would be funny to take this down a speed course now and see what it can do. I could probably go as fast now on my waveboard !
IWA SPEED CHAMP
Somewhere in the middle of all of this (it’s all a blur now), we also sailed a few more Speed rounds, one in Burrow, and a few in Dungarvan too. Most of it was in light enough winds, on 7.0m and a JP 92 litre slalom board (thanks to my team-mate Gareth Nihill for the lend of the gear).
The results are not yet official, as the Irish ranking takes into account your best 5×10 sec result, and 500m result logged on www.gps-speedsurfing.com in 2011 – so it is still open till Dec 31st.
Added my GPS speeds to my competition results (unless most of the fleet can beat my Irish Record), so I’m in an unbeatable position, and can safely say I have won the Speed Championship title 2011.
How flat is that water ?
Since then, my mission has been to help my mates Noelle (Ladies Champion…. more about her in a minute) and Keith Gorman, beat and exceed their personal goals. In fact, I have trying to get most of my friends out speedsailing in the ideal conditions with a GPS to have a blast in windy stuff.
KERRY WAVES turns into PUPPY PEE
It was all going so well, I was leading the championships heading to Kerry, though the pressure was on though to do well. After all my port-tack practice leading up to the event, we ended up in Kerry sailing in an EASTERLY wind. No-one saw that coming !
As a result, it was starboard tack, and we competed on the reef at Hells Gate.
It was good fun, though very offshore so catching the right wave that had a peak to it, and not too chopy and unsmackable once it passed the reef back into deep water was tricky enough.
Hells Gate Kerry
The heats went well, getting into it and winning my semi against Rob and Niall (who almost denied Rob a place in the final by 1/2 a point).
Then we came to the final… To sum up, I sailed probably the worst wave heat of my entire life, just when I needed it the most.
Rob won it, and won the Champs too as a result….. CONGRATS ROB !
I packed up from the Kerry event in lightning speed time… no I wasn’t happy, but the early finish meant that if I was quick, I could dash over to Dungarvan a day early and collect this bundle of joy – who has taken up all of our time ever since.
Our New Puppy !
CHASING RECORDS and THE ANGLE OF THE DANGLE
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Anders Brindgal for Boardseeker Magazine. Anders has just smashed the Windsurfing World Speed record for GPS peak speed 50.72knots, and GPS average 48.03knots, while hurtling down a sandy ditch dug into the beach at Luderitz. Check out the video of his runs on Boardseeker…. just nuts!
If you have read this blog before, you will know that since setting my own Irish record back in February, I have spent a lot of time hunting down the ideal day to get another crack at going faster. I have been to Dungarvan quite a few times, and Sutton has been re-disovered too. Frustratingly, the wind has occasionally been the right strength – but has ended up too square or too broad to make it work properly.
It’s all about the angle of the dangle!
COULD THIS BE THE ONE?
Our latest session to try and get perfect Dungarvan was on Thursday 8th, with a very early low-tide.
First off, my Vito was in Annesley Williams getting serviced, but luckily they gave me this lovely luxury barge as a replacement, perfect for an early morning run to Dungarvan.
My E class
And certainly it was early… up at 3am ! Then head to Keith’s house to borrow a tiny speed sail for Noelle, and then on the road in a howling gale down to Dungarvan. The low tide was at 10am, and the wind also due to swing to Westerly (no good for speedsailing) and drop mid-morning, so time was of the essence, which meant being rigged and ready in the dark, so we could sail as soon as it got light, and hopefully get a few hours of magic.
This is me ready to go – at 5.45am !!! Noelle couldn’t believe it when she turned up at 6am, and I had all my gear ready.
rigged and ready
It turned out to be the ideal direction – SW and super flat, probably about 30 knots. The first few runs were hitting 43-44 knots, and I thought things could only improve, though I wasn’t massively overpowered on the 5.5 and looking for more and more wind. I think I must be getting better at holding the bigger sails in more wind now after all this practice.
Noelle started on the 4.2 custom Stealth that she borrowed from Keith, and after a few runs, already beat her goal, which was to peak 35 knots. At only 55 kgs (I think) she is hardly your typical speedsailor size, and felt a bit out of control, but bearing in mind I was on a 5.5 and looking for more wind… I pointed out what Anders had said (actually quoting Farrel): “You have to be lit like a banshee”. So I went and got my 4.7 RS Racing, and told her I would refuse to let her leave this place without at least doing 1 run on it, and seeing what her limit really is.
Sure enough, the very first run, and she hits 37knots ! (and we got it on GoPro) and a couple more and she’s down the beach screaming with fists in the air. I had to run down and see what she had done… pretty hard with a weight jacket on. But sure enough, now she was upto 38.17 knots! Awesome !!!
She took the camera off me as we got a squall, and I got one good run that felt right on the edge (they way it should be), and all of a sudden I’m at the end of the course, fists in the air too! New PB for me: 47.89knot peak on the display ! Woo Hoo !!
Max display on my GPS
Getting home that evening, the computer showed that I hadn’t beat my GPS average or 500, but still absolutely delighted to get that bit nearer to 48 knots, which is my goal. I want to be hitting these speeds if I have any chance of raising my averages on the 5×10 into the 45 knots mark.
K4 SPEED
My good friend Steve Thorp, the mastermind and designer behind K4 fins has also been hitting some incredible speeds in Kirby these last few days, and it would be really cool to get him over here onto the Dungarvan course… which is about 4 times as long as Kirby. Plenty of space to build up some speed here, rather than bear away in Kirby, count to 10, and then try and stop before you die !
Big thanks too to Steve, whose awesome K4 fins I use in all my wave and freestyle boards, and also this beauty below, an asymmetric 20cm speed fin, which Steve himself has peaked over 50 knots on!
k4 speed fin
No. 1 IN THE WORLD !
On checking all Noelle’s speeds, she has beaten all of the Irish Fleet to land in 2nd overall for 500m speed in 2011 after me, and jump a few places into 4th overall.
Best of all though, she has BEATEN THE REST OF THE WORLD !!! in the 2011 Women’s ranking for 500m speed !!!!!!! WOO HOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also puts her in 3rd overall for GPS average in 2011, and 5th overall for GPS average (any year!)
Noelle No.1 for 500m in 2011
And finally to end this epic post, here is the video of the few runs we got on the GoPro for your viewing pleasure:
IS THAT THE END?
I don’t think so, check out next weeks forecast !
Dungarvan Forecast
