San Francisco

I was at Coyote Point near SFO on Saturday afternoon. The wind was almost happening then backed off. Still some people mucked about in the lighter wind and I got a chance to catch up with the south bay sailors at the NEW STORE there. Sergey Menshikov even had me sign his sail!
Yes, Jane and Rebecca (Boardsports School)have taken over the Coyote point lifeguard building and turned it into a great demo center and shop. If your flying through SFO, it is 5 minutes from the airport, so stop and by for a sail on your next layover. They have a full selection of Super Freaks and some Fluids and Divas rigged and ready to go, wetsuits included!
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I am not a city person, but San Francisco rocks. Water everywhere, topography that thrills, and WIND. Oh, and WINDSURFERS!
Sunday was a late start at Chrissy Field after a beating of a run my friend Ben took me on in the hills of Marin. At 4:00pm the wind kicked in and sailors were scrambling to rig down from their biggest sails to smaller ones. There were a lot of Hot Sails on the water which I was stoked to see.

Here Rebecca and John Newman look on as I offer some rigging tips. It was good to be able to help sailors tune up their rigs. It seems nearly everyone needed a batten tensioning, so please remember to keep those battens snug and taught!

Ross Libenson had never tried a Super Freak, and spent the whole day on the 6.3, and then the 5.3 and was stoked enough to buy one that day. As he had never thought of sailing one he had a lot to learn on the subtleties of tuning them across the wind range.

Under the Golden Gate bridge on a 5.0m Super Freak. Nothing shows up more than a Freak from a distance.
Special thanks to Jane, Rebecca (Boardsports School) and Abilgal for helping this weekend come together, even it was 2 years later than planned! Also to the host of San Francsico, John Newman who took me out for an awesome dinner at La Traviata in the Mission. Killer food, great prices.

California dreaming

Mike Higgins on his new 6.3m hits it backside.

(Jeff reporting in)
I took the red eye to the west coast and arrived Thursday in a dream state. On the drive over I was so sleep deprived I had to pull over on 17 and pass out for 30 minutes so I did not crash. Beat, but was welcomed by master of sail repair, Joe Dihl. The cool Pacific water and a hot chocolate at the roadhouse woke me right up though!


Joe hooked me up with a nice Quatro 76 (or similar) and we hit the small but very fun waves at Davenport.
I was on a new 09 UL 5.3m tester and it loved the glassy slightly onshore wave there. Not as cold as I expected, did not even go numb! Highlight of the session was the otter who was munching just outside the break. Really beautiful, wild spot.
Thanks to Joe who sailed into the sunset for the great loaner!







That is me in a 5/3 wetsuit! Brrr, but only a little.

Photoshoot Frenzy

Post by Tom

The last week has been crazy with both the Starboard and Mistral photoshoots going on.

The Bonaire kids Bjorn and Jurgen flew over accompanied by their father Patton, and have been staying with Jeff. Below is a couple of shots from one of the shoots at Jeff's house. Note: these are not the actual pictures for Starboard just some snapshots we got.



Bjorn on a 4.3 DD




Bjorn spinning on a Crossfire



Ida jumps from the nose of Jurgens board.



Bjorn gets massive air off nothing!

Meanwhile Taka and Diony have been ripping it up for the Mistral shoot. I don't have much in the way of pics right now unfortunately.





The boys from Severne Sails were also in town and it was good to catch up with Ben Severne. He is an old friend of mine and actually worked for me at one point in the mid-nineties doing sail repair. We got to hang out at Jaques and complain about eveything windsurfing industry related and remember the "good old days". Jaques was a who's who of windsurfing last Friday night and it was great to see so many old friends.

In other news, I managed to post my fastest single speed run ever on Sunday hitting a peak speed of 39.1 knots. I know everyone is bored with all the speed postings so if you are interested check out my session at the link below, if you are not interested then just skip it!

http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/gps.asp?mnu=user&val=29222&uid=2626&cnt=United%20States

Sailboat Racing

Post by Tom
Pics from: http://www.mauisailingnews.com/ courtesy John Pope

The weekend usually finds me on or in the water in some way. There are many ways to enjoy the ocean apart from windsurfing. Last Saturday I went to Lahina to race in the Maui Boat and Yacht Club's Lahina inshore races.

I crew on Mike Moyers Express 27 "Lono". I had the pleasure of sail trimming, which consisted of winching in the genoa and flying the spinaker on the downwind runs. Our club is quite small and there are only a handful of boats that race regulary. Snickers an Olson 30 and Boondoggle a ridiculously quick J80 were the only other boats racing.



Lono (left) tacks, crossing in front of Snickers (right)



The fleet sails downwind under spinnaker. Lono has the brand new blue spinaker being flown by yours truly.

We had some very good racing with only one cock-up on our boat when we had the spinnaker on the wrong side of the boat to launch. We thought we had won the last race, but as we race under handicap we had to wait for the numbers to be crunched to find out the final results. At the end of the day Boondoggle beat us by 10 seconds sweeping the day with three victories. We finished with three second places. It was a fun day on the water and I am sure we will get Boondoggle on the next race!



The great thing about MBYC races is the Pizza and Beer after!

Best Speed So Far

Post by Tom



I meant to post this a week ago, but I got busy. So here it is now. I just copied from my GPS Speedsurfing session page:

Profile
Name : Tom Hammerton
Sail number : K75
Sponsor(s) : Hot Sails Maui
Home spot : -, -
Height : 175 cm
Weight : 91.0 kg
Age : 37

Session info
Date : Monday, March 31, 2008
Spot : Spreckelsville, Maui, United States
Board : F2 Missile
Sail : Hotsails GPS 6.0
Fin : Vector Fins proto speed 26
GPS type : Navi GT-11
Average speed : 36.08 knots (36.6 36.4 36.0 36.0 35.4)
Max. 2 sec. (software) : 37.5 knots
100 m run : 37.2 knots
250 m run : 35.7 knots
500 m run : 31.2 knots
Distance : 18.0 km
Windspeed : 27 knots
Windgusts : 4 knots
Remarks : This was a bit of a suicidal session. The tide was below 1 foot and I don't normally sail the lower reef less than that. But the wind was steady and the direction perfect so I gave it a go. It became apparent on the first run it was very shallow - but I started so I wanted to finish. I did my best to dodge the coral heads but I still hit my fin 3 times. Luckily no serious damage was done. I did my 5 runs then packed it in as the tide was still dropping. I was happy with the results as I had put in four good runs and a fith that was still fast despite being a little underpowered. Overall about another 5 knots of wind would have been better as these were more finese runs than I normally do. Still that leaves something on the table for next time!
Best 5 x 10 speed so far so I can't really complain! Might be time for a new fin though.


36.1 knots is the second best (5 x 10) speed posted in the USA so far this year! I will enjoy boasting about this while I still can, as I know that will slip somewhat when the fast guys start posting!