And this is the video that Windwiner linked in the comments:
Boom height.
Remember that sequence of me doing a couple of bottom and top turns and looking with the boom way too low in the shots right in the transition between the two? It's just two posts down.
I met Tormod and told him that I would have liked to check some sequences of the good guys to see if it happens to them too.
Didn't have to wait too long... he was nice enough to send me the link to some of the sequences he collected.
Let's have a look at:
- Keith Taboul
- Robby Naish 1
- Robby Naish 2
- Robby Naish 3
So, I was right. There is a moment in the transition between bottom and top turn in which the sailor is standing straight up (Robby's 1 and 3 in particular caught this moment perfectly) and has his arms bent so that the boom is quite close to the body. In this position, of course, the boom appears to be too low... but it's not.
In the bottom and top turns, as I said, in fact the sailor is coiled (sorry, using Kelly's words.. see below) like a cat and in the regular sailing the sailor is leaning upwind forming a triangle with mast, body and straight arms and so the boom is not upper belly high anymore, but between nipple and shoulder high as it should be.
Cool, I'll be happy to go back to exactly were I was putting my boom before Tormod took the sequence, because that one inch higher that I was trying didn't feel good at all.
Waves are up here in Maui and will be up for a while. The wind should be blowing today and the weekend, but right now (6am of Friday) it's calm and I'm going surfing. Let's see if I feel like trying a carving 360. Kelly Slater just explained me how... yeah, right.
Not too exciting weather maps in the next week in the north pacific. There will be a strong high pressure NW of Hawaii and that's a very bad (and unusual) place for it: north onshore winds will prevail and no major NW ground swells (there might be stormy N windswells though). Nice long lasting south swell around mid next week though. Could be worse... could be a lot worse!
12 comments:
good morning cammar,
with a higher boom you can go much more vertical.
Check out keith boom hight. I think its aprox 10cm higher than yours in relation to body hight.
Have a nice day!
GP I'm feeling very guilty.
Though I'm aware of these problems and worried and try to change my polluting habits... its hard to change some things.
For example I use my bycicle for dayly home-work conmuting. But when the wind comes I have to use my car to get to the beach with my windsurfing gear. Guess you guys have to do the same at hookipa. Shouldnt we have some kind of board/rig storing places at the beach so we can get there by bike too?
Cheers
Magnum
GP,
I am very worried with all this plastic. After I read your blog I want to quit plastic bags. But what do you do for garbage? How do you throw it?
Also, how do you buy fruits and vegetables? Here in Israel everybody uses a lot of plastic bags for both those two things.
Adi
GP,
Robby is old school and uses his boom lower than anybody else (except for maybe Mark Angulo). All the new guys (Polakow, Levi, etc) use much higher booms.
Anon, no doubt Keith's boom is higher and no doubt Keith goes more vertical than me. I highly doubt that if I put the boom higher I'll go as vertical as him though...
I tried, it doesn't feel good. With light wind I keep my harness lines at 28 (and I don't have long arms) and still with a higher boom it's kind of awkward to hook out...
I like my boom shoulder high.
Magnum,
the fact that you're aware of these problems and trying to change polluting habits is great.
Here's a couple of things you can do:
- minimize your electricity consumption. Here in the States everyone dries the laundry with high energy consuming driers... even in Maui! If it's not raining, just hang them on a wire! Little things like that will make a big difference if adopted by everyone.
- spread the word and make others aware.
Adi,
thanks for your comment, it made my day. The reason why I publish posts like this, in fact, is to make people aware and hopefully change their habits.
Garbage: I don't have a solution. I still use plastic too. The industry needs to come up with a biodegradable kind of plastic... and hopefully producing it won't be too polluting.
Vegetables: don't put them in those small plastic bags they want you to use! I just put them in my shopping basket. The cashiers don't like you because then I have tomatoes, papayas and other vegetables rolling out of control all over the counter, but who cares. After she weigthed them, you just collect them and put them in your reusable big shopping bag.
Mmm, I guess if you are supposed to weight your own vegetables in a plastic bag that won't really work... well you can always reuse the plastic bags you used in your previous grocery shopping!
Anon, Robby and Mark are old school while the new guys put the boom higher? And what school do you think I am at almost 47?!! ;)
GP thats true, spread the word is important, but the CO2 problem the video shows is too big to do only that.
I think we should start thinking about replacing our vehicles with electric ones.
Good winds
Magnum,
that's true if the electric car produces the energy by itself (like with solar panel), or if it's recharged by CO2-free electricity (like windmills, water, etc).
But unfortunately most of the electricity is still produced burning coal...
Most likely me and you are producing CO2 right now just because we have our computers turned on.
Cars are bad, but we really need more CO2-free electricity.
GP,
Thanks for taking some time to point out the garbage problems. In my mind this issue should receive much more attention than many of the issues we hear about every day - including the global warming thing. Before everyone jumps all over me, we can stop dumping garbage in the ocean TODAY if we choose, while many other issues will take much more time and money to correct. Have you ever seen the garbage barges that leave NY city every night and go out into the ocean and just dump the garbage? Can you imagine the amount of garbage that a city that size generates each day! This is truly sickening.
Nah, that can't be true!
I googled it and all I could find was stories from the past. There's no way that such a thing like that would still happen today. Please provide some evidence of that... I'll make a post about it and start a petition to stop that.
Anyway, true or not, it doesn't change much. Humans are killing nature and they don't understand that they're killing themselves.
Okay, now you got me wondering. I saw a show on TV about this recently - maybe a national geographic special? - and didn't think that it might have been an older show. Just did a quick google and saw the older links too, including one that talked about booms to control the floating garbage. I guess I better verify that the practice is ongoing. It was so disgusting - I hope it's no longer practiced. Sorry!
Cammar,
Its seems there is a lot of controversy between scientists about the ocean acidification effects, check this page and links in it:
http://www.eur-oceans.eu/research_highlights/index.php?num_information=910#top_info
All the best
Great post and I'm glad you're drawing attention to the environment - I feel very strongly about it too.
Here in Cayman the shops provide recyclable shopping bags for 99c, but hardly anyone uses them because they are still offering free plastic bags. It makes me angry when I go and buy a sandwich (wrapped in a plastic container already) and they want to put that one item in a plastic bag for me to carry - where is the logic in that???
I always tell them at the counter - "no plastic bag please", in the hope that they will stop doing it. I use the recyclable bags for doing a big shop, but I think the only way they will stop people using plastic bags, is to start charging 50c per plastic bag, which will make people re-consider. Then use that money raised from the plastic bags and put it into recycling or some program to benefit the environment.
Even better, stop supplying plastic bags at all, so that shoppers need to remember to bring the re-usable bags.
It is sad to see that people are so oblivious to the environment. Us humans won't realize what we've got until we've destroyed it.
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