Sunday, October 21, 2007

Houston, the stoke level is rising!

Check out this video that Glenn just received by the videographer and posted on the 08 HSM website.

I don't quite like a couple of things in it:
1) I don't remember if I put it wrong or it slid down, but I had the boom extreeeemely low for most of the session. I wanted to stop and fix it, but the waves kept coming and there was nobody in the water, so I kept going... I didn't think it would look so bad in the video...
2) it was the first time on the Starboard 12.2 on the steep waves at Hookipa... I wish I had the board knowledge that I have now...

...whatever! I'm stoked!

To thank Glenn, here is a photo of him in a killer jibe on the wave... quite some spray there!


The tension is down at Hookipa and the windsurfers seem to have had quite some epic conditions last Thursday and Friday.
Here's a young one rigging a 4.7


I don't have any action photos, because I was scoring some waves at Kanaha myself.
Here's a little three days mini report.

Thursday 10-18: waves of all sizes at Lowers from chest to almost logo high or should I say dolphin high? ;-)
I had two sessions with the 5.0 and loved both. Not too crowded, plenty 5-6 turns rides... a five starts day. Got some footage from an interesting new mounting point... one day I may even find the time to edit it!

Friday 10-19: the waves were a bit smaller and Lowers didn't look as good as the day before (too windy and choppy). I drove to Hookipa around four and got in the water with the 4.7 just when the wind decided to go superlight and offshore. Caught a big glassy one (Levi was almost on it on the outside, but he couldn't quite catch it, so I could sneak it from him and that felt kind of cool...), too bad I had no wind at all on it and I could only ride the face down the line without doing any turn... After that, I had to go in, because my arms were just going numb.

Saturday 10-20: new pulse of the swell, waves from head to almost mast high at Lowers, light wind good enough for slogging with a 5.5 and my custom SOS (which I guess is somewhere around 75-78l). Caught a huge number of waves, most of which going upwind and jumping on back side of the sail... I learned that on the longboard (as you can see from the video) and now I'm trying it on a 7.10... what a blast! So much fun... I sailed 2.5 hours from 11 to 1.30. Then at 2 I was in front of a TV watching the italian soccer game Roma-Napoli (the latter being the team of my home town). 4-4 the incredible result of a game with some serious emotions. Here's the goals.
Right after that I went back to the beach (I had left board and sail there, just in case...). No more sailing, but a fun Standup session with whatever energies I had left.
This morning (Sunday) it must have been epic surfing conditions with no wind at all, but my old body told me to stay in bed and rest... Good idea. Feeling better now, let's see what's gonna happen in the afternoon.

First though, I got to post this...
Last week I had a few kitchen visits by some kind of banana eating rodent. I bought a trap that would catch the invader without killing it and here's the result. Such a cute little one!!!


He probably had the worse couple of hours of his life in that cage, also because I called Monica (the girl next door) to check him out and she came with her cat...
The poor little mouse freaked out and was going to die of a heart attack if I didn't kick them (Monica and the cat) out...
I brought him to Baldwin beach and released him in the grass. He looked happy to run free again...

PS. For some reasons, I can't see the video with IE (it stops after 1 second... I can see all the other videos, though), but I can with Firefox. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the quicktime player. Does anybody have the same problem? Does anybody know how to fix it?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Link isn't working! URL not found...and I'm on Firefox

cammar said...

thanks, it should work now

fswp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
fswp said...

it works in both browsers with me (fox and ie 7)

in IE it just's takes forever to load

--
are you using ie 6 (or older) perhaps that's the problem (it wouldn't be the first time..)

Anonymous said...

Hi GP,

I watched the video before I read your comments and didn't notice the low boom height at all, I was too busy watching the waves and the backwinded rides (and that you had the waves to yourself).

Looked like fun to me ....

uglyjiber said...

Nice video GP!

For your next trick, I wanna see a sail-body 360 while backwinded on the wave face ;-)

cammar said...

Wally, the lack of crowd factor was huge... it lasted almost one hour before the wind increased and it got crowded.

Josh, I'd be happy to just be able to end the backwind ride with a 180 body/sail (clue through the front of the board) and flip the sail and keep sailing towards the beach... like the second half of a Heli tack.
That's a much cooler way of ending the ride (other than getting into a regular tack), got to start trying...
Absolutely loving the backwind rides on the shortboard. I'm on my natural goofy surfing stance, and now that I managed to move both feet behind the mast, I can really turn the board up and down the face of the wave! It's almost better than down the line riding!!! Or at least it's a great alternative to the backside riding when the wind is too light to go downwind...

uglyjiber said...

Cool! Send more pics more pics more pics.

My leg has almost healed!

cammar said...

Your leg? Didn't you hurt your arm?