windsurfing party (and more)

The Maui Makani AWT windsurfing contest is coming up and there will be a few parties/activities that will go with it.

Here's the banner of the one organized at the Hot Sails Maui headquarter. The band is a hip one so don't miss out!!
And if you think you'll go, please RSVP on the party facebook page, so that they can have an idea of how many people will show up and where to optimally place the band.

Since I got back from Italy, I pretty much surfed and/or sailed every day. Between south and north shore there has been abundace of waves. As you guys know, I've not been reporting on these sessions, also because I've got my backpack stolen and with it my loved Sony camera.

Now I bought a new one (or more exactly, I'm trying out a new... love the return policy at Costco). It's a Nikon Coolpix P5000 and these are the first shots I've taken. I haven't even read the manual, so I can't really say if it's a keeper or not.
There seems to be a much better mega zoom one on the market: the Sony DSCHX100 DSC-HX100VB, but there's two things that makes me prefere the Nikon (at least based on the specs):
- the equivalent 35mm optical zoom of the Nikon is 840, the Sony "only" 810
- the Nikon can take photos at 1280x960 (which is exactly what I was taking with my old Sony). The Sony's lowest resolution is still a big 3M and that will generate much bigger files than the average 300K I prefere.
That is a classic example of how everything in this world seemes to be dictated by the philosophy of MORE.
What is people going to do with MORE pixels if most of the times the way you show the photos is through webs, pc's, phones? You can tell the difference only if you print them!

Shot of the post goes to Josh Angulo who is back in town. His aerials are always fantastic.



Ah, to be a just few years younger... like 30!

This is a sequence of Levi, who's back in town too.
Sequences are another feature that really doesn't interest me. It completely kills the fun to press the shutter at the right moment. Where's the challenge?
You're not going to see many more of that.

Kai Katchadourian flying over a barrell.

My coworker Russ usually sails more uncrowded spots. But with the contest coming up, he's been sailing hookipa more regularly in order to get the timing down.

Hot Sails Maui sale manager (or is that sail manager?) Chris goes into a goiter attempt that will cause him a slight ankle injury. I've tried the new Firelight sail and fell in love with the extremely light weight of it.
2.7 kg for a 4.7 is pretty much 1 kilo less than most other wave 4.7s in the market!
Only Severne comes close, as this boardseeker test shows. No Hot Sails on that test unfortunately...
So I think that my love story with the Superfreak is close to an end. I still love the soft feel of it, but for me weight is THE most important feature in a sail.
Unless is blowing more than 25 knots, of course. In fact, I'll keep the 4.2 Superfreak.

Russ's timing getting better...

Morgan's timing is already very good indeed.

Technical difficulties encountered during the editing of this post:
- the mouse froze and I had to reboot (fortunately a draft was saved by blogger)
- in "compose" mode, the cut and paste of photos didn't work
- when I tried to publish the post with IE, it just didn't do it. So I had save it as draft, open a Mozilla window and publish it from there. I didn't do the whole post using Mozilla because there the links don't work.
I don't know if it's my new pc or Windows7 (probably a bit of both), but these technical difficulties are sure one of the reasons that makes blogging less appealing for me.
Also, I noticed the blog has been hijacked. Once in a while there's a pop up window that asks you to download something. I don't know how to fix that. Any help from the readers?

Uff, 'bout time to go the beach!!!!