Monday, January 28, 2008

winter training

While there was a break in the winter storms pounding the west coat, I got out for an hour on Saturday @ crissy field- catching a light south easterly breeze. More importantly I lined up with several high tech racing multi hulls who were out for the 3 bridge fiasco race for a photo-shoot for windsurfing mag Look for the article later this spring or summer!
As usual, Shawn Davis was on the beach to capture the action.
Its amazing to see the similarities between the trimaran rig and the formula board.
The fat heads and deep twist.
I wasnt quite able to match their angle of the D cat upwind but had a few knots of better overall speed in the 10-12k puffy offshore breeze.
Here's an idea of the speed big cats and formula gear can achieve:

The new North 11.8 has some real impressive pull at the low end. Im contemplating to going to the on the water downhaul system form north. I think it could add a lot of range to the sail- especially on the water.On Sunday, we hit the slopes at Kirkwood to find some of the deepest powder this year. With almost 5' of fresh powder this week, it was just EPIC. Half the mountain was closed to high wind but you could traverse from Solitude or the Ruet to find great some unbelievable tree runs. My heart rate was off the hook from the adrenaline factor + the effort it takes to ski in powder.
The grin was ear to ear @ the bottom of each run.
Good training indeed!

4 comments:

PeconicPuffin said...

Are you referring to the crank adjustment on North's downhaul, or have the created an in-flight adjustable downhaul?

USA-4 Steve Bodner said...

I dont think an inflight adjustable downhaul would take the load the north sails generate. I am referring to north poerxt mast extension shown at http://www.north-windsurf.com/en/rig-components/POWER.XT-Advantage

PeconicPuffin said...

Ah, I've seen those...a friend has two. It seems to work well on the beach, but I don't like that it's impossible to inspect the line inside the mechanism without taking it apart (unless my buddy didn't read the instructions and I couldn't intuit them.)

USA-4 Steve Bodner said...

yes- the newer power xt mast extension comes with formuline- one of the better downhaul lines so you wont need to replace it.