Sitting at home...bored, procrastinating about doing uni work, then i look at seabreeze and suddenly the easterly forecast for today and tonite and tomorow had dissapeared and been replaced by a crankin seabreeze direction wind.

I send the message to a mate, half joking, saying why dont we go windsurfing, then i actually realise that its a great idea and so we talk about it and decide to go, it was already 9:30pm at this point.

We went to peli point, its a nice 22-25 knots, rig up the 4.2, and mate has Cyalume Sticks, red and green so we put them at the back of the boom and there you have it, safe-ish pitch black windsurfing. Even landed a couple of vulcans in the dark haha

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awesome fun and crazy wind!

Respect.

I'd do it myself but... sharks.

I've been thinking about this lately as some southerlies come through at night and in the off season I can't afford to be too picky about when I sail.

A good waterproof LED bike heard-light strapped to your head/helmet. Two Red LED bike tail lights with the fixed-on mode, and replace one set of LEDs with green hi-intensity LEDs should do it. LED lights should give you many hours of sailing time.

The main problem I would see is the insecurity of sailing by yourself.

cool. Thought about it, never done it (except on boats). All you need is an all round white light on top the mast. bit worried about sharks thou in Moreton Bay.

Check this...

http://www.boardseekermag.com/moves_and_movies/MOVIES/_023/Fat_Face_Event_Movie512K_Stream.wmv

(or this one for mac users):
www.boardseekermag.com/moves_and_movies/MOVIES/_023/Fat_Face_Event_Movie512K_Stream.mov

The video is about 16MB so it might take a little while to stream...

Its from the FAT FACE Night Windsurfing Event run in the UK last year sometime. Racing in pitch black in 2m waves with 25-30 knots of wind. Just with glow sticks on the buoys so you could see them.

The first part of the movie shows them warming up with some wave expression sessions in the late afternoon, then its fully pitch black at night and they begin running 2-lap SuperX races...

Pretty cool. Must've been f'king FREEZING sailing there... guess they don't have sharks in the UK.

Cheers for that Gestalt.

No ???

Doesn't April Fools stuff have to happen before midday?

firiebob said...

Any thing to do with April da 1st

i'm thinking that too fb.

my last attempt at night windsurfing was at lake cootharaba. it was soooooo difficult. you can't see the chop and i stacked it all the time.

i figured it was verging on impossible until i saw the stuff sean posted.

those guys are doing forwards in 2m waves in the dark....

no worries sean, you must have the subscriber version.

Gestalt said...



my last attempt at night windsurfing was at lake cootharaba. it was soooooo difficult. you can't see the chop and i stacked it all the time.

i figured it was verging on impossible until i saw the stuff sean posted.

those guys are doing forwards in 2m waves in the dark....

no worries sean, you must have the subscriber version.

No subscriber version (there's far better content on the web for free than Boardseekermag; and I'm interested in other sailors other than GBR!), for some reason after about 4 tries it let me play that video without subscribing...

Anyhow, back to topic. Back in the day trying to break Vando's 1-hour gps record I got stuck out behind Green Island in a big storm and with 15 mins still to go in my 1 hour I was running in at Manly in the pitch black (about 7pm). Managed to line my run up with the channel markers (which are lit at night) but I went from trying to do full planing laydowns to absolute SAFETY gybes and this was in barely 1ft of chop... no idea how anyone could be doing forwards through the shorebreak in the pitch black.

Ps. I think they run that event annually now, although last season's one had light winds so they were doing oldschool freestyle on longboards etc. Would be great to check it out (will bring my 6mm semi-dry suit) one year.

Never mind windsurfing in the dark; I would like to see a lot more kiters going out at night, especially in strong onshore winds...

evlPanda said...

...

Pretty cool. Must've been f'king FREEZING sailing there... guess they don't have sharks in the UK.

Was reading an article in the UK windsurfing mag (Windsurf/Boarder? whatever). Going on about wetsuits for winter: 5mm+. Air temp is 5 degrees plus windchill factor. Think I caught a cold from reading it.

Probably shrink your equipment quite a bit too.

Does anybody else get really, really sore ears & jaws in cold water? Seems to get worse and worse each year for me. Bit like an ice-cream headache. Thought I might have "surfer's ear"/cartilage build up but doc says nay.

i wear a surfers cap in winter keeps ears and head warm