With 2 months + 1 week till Hatteras and no ski time in sight...I am bored and thinking about things to try when the 2010 open water season gets here:
1) Try some new (to me) spots - Allenwood, Sandbanks and some L. Erie launches (suggestions?)
2)Start attempting forward loops

How about you guys...any 2010 windsurfing resolutions?

I resolve to sail even closer to Fathom and spray him with my wake and to jump over JetMech every time he falls near me.

I resolve to sail MORE! Last year sucked for me.

I would like to try kiting. Did I just say that?

You're going to Hatteras in a week?

Same as the last 5 years - either pushies, flakas or shakas. At this stage, I'll take any one of the above. I need to focus on one and give'r. Time to get this old body a bit more forgiving. Yoga time.

Hey Fish,
Can you do push loops? I'e been trying to land a backloop for a while and it almost looks like a pushloop would be easier.

For me it's the sameold, commit to flip...forward!
hey rinr, check out this site: http://www.wavesailingsecrets.com/ .go to preview DVD and on the left there's a good tutorial on both the push and back loops. Hope this can help!

Hey RINR,
Nope, can't do them. I've tried a bunch but just haven't had the conditions to try a few in a row, with a consistent looking wave. I've always let go, even though I think I have the rotation sussed. The closest I came to landing one was in NZ, when I unintentionally hooked in mid-rotation and couldn't bail.
Backloops are apparently a lot harder to land than pushies. I've been trying them for about 10 years now, and landed about 5 total. Again, I think the biggest detriment to progressing is lack of consistent waves to try them from.
Great that you are going for it!
Mike

I've found that I tend to almost flat spin and not apex and then spot my landing. I've found that backloops require and nice verticle face wave with the wind blowing almost perpendicular to the direction that the wave is moving in. Unfortunately this is rare in swells / waves generated by wind. Jackson's Park on Georgian Bay is about the only place where I have come full way aroudn but was wussing out on the landing.
Maybe my WS resolution should be to head out to SBX more often to get some of those nice fatties you guys were killing in the fall time. Somehow I think I would have been doing a lot of swimming on that day.

I am a firm believer than with dedication, you can land any of these tricks in any conditions. and the Gorge videos and others prove it. Pushies and backloops are the realm of any bigger chop places, almost regardless of directionality. In the Gorge, waves are all coming from upwind, totally perpendicular to those in Maui. They can be landed in both those spots. All (5) of my backloops were landed in Kingston, in largely 'onshore' type conditions - a testament to me repeatedly trying them in those conditions. No success in more side-shore conditions, say at SBX, or in NZ. The conditions were just a bit too different from what I was used to.

Anyway, I think the most important criteria to progressing is consistency. It is so hard to find around here. If you could go out 5 days in a row in the same wave conditions, I bet a lot of progress could be made to the point where you learn the feedback from small variations in the attempts. Freestyle is no different - it's hard to progress when we only get to sail a handful of times per month.

No question though - you guys should come and give sandbanks a shot when it is going off. It is very fun! ... and there is lots of space for everyone!

I'm not sure why you are being so modest Fish, I know you already throw the forwards - I saw you forward loop on the first of those really big days at Mac's last fall. I couldn't even hold my 3.8 down and watched you loop about ten feet out from the launch - awesome.
When I was back in T.O. and Whitby, we sailed Sherkeston Beach and Turkey Point on Erie. You should save the drive - the County is better. You should resolve to sail some of the big east days out at the lighthouse more often so I'm not alone out there.

I resolve to not wait until the ice is out around Sandbanks and travel to Ajax to sail where I started out. I notice there are a couple of you out there who sail Ajax/Whitby on the lake. I'll let you know when we are coming - probably the first reasonably warm (5-10 degrees) easterly. I was in Ajax the other weekend and there were some beautiful waves coming in at the bottom of Shaol Point road (where I sailed back in the 80's on my 40 pound beast)
Anyone interested in trips to Sandbanks should post when they are coming - I can show you the good Pubs and could even manage beers on the back porch (I am about 7 minutes from the front gates)

Hey Fish,
I guess I have to agree with what you are saying. No shortage of guys banging out loops in the Gorge. The consistancy of conditions is really a thing I've really never though of much. I know that last time in the Gorge and sailing pretty much the exact same conditions for a week straight I was definitely in a groove by the end of the week. I started going for lay down jibes and shove its (not that I nailed any) only to come home not able to sail for a while it felt like it went to waste.

The far side of Swell City is sooooo perfect for lay down practice, and just ahead of the far side is picture perfect for shove its. The middle is just plain old perfect, period! I love sailing there.

Old Whitey,
Come on out this way. Fathom, JetMech, and I are all regulars at Ajax, and the bottom of Lakeridge Rd. but the bottom of Lakeridge is a beotch when it shuts down. Not a friendly place for walks of shame. I've had some of my best and worst days there.

> I am a firm believer than with dedication,
> you can land any of these tricks in any conditions.

This is an interesting point. I do a different kind of sailing, but I always wondered about that very statement.

I have seen extremely skilled guys try this-that one move for months and years and end up stagnating (at different kind of freestyle, but I've seen it plenty in waves too). I think that applies to me too for many aspects of windsurfing.

In my long-gone competing days, I always wondered: "is it so that if one tries hard enough?..."

My take is that for freestyle we need out-of-body experience, some sort of outside introspection. The ability to ponder and visualise what went wrong last fall. Trying blindly over and over may work for skillful guys, but sooner or later we all hit a level where thinking must take over raw skills.

And like Phil was saying last September (but at a much lesser level in my case), I do believe some complicated moves require xx hundreds of tries before it works consistently. In my experience, there are more moves in the hundreds and not the tens.

This is an interesting question though.

In my experience, Phil is totally right. New freestyle tricks can take ages to learn. No doubt some people stagnate from that, and those types typically switch to kiting. It seems that most parts of windsurfing require a lot of work and dedication and I think that is what draws a lot of people to it, since the reward for finally sticking a new trick is huge! Obvioulsy, the 1000 tries it might take you to nail a trick goes by a lot quicker when you live in a windy and consistent place!

I think your point is bang on too though, and there is a lot to be gained for stepping back and thinking a trick through, start to finish. It doesn't always help, but that just means that you need to think more. I am at that stage with flakas. I am so far from making them work that I need to rethink how I am initiating the move, since i am not trying enough variations, or trying a different method that is a big enough departure from what I am trying... Oops sorry, - That doesn't make any sense - What i am trying to say is I am in a rut with that move, and I need to figure out what it is I am doing wrong before i keep whacking away at it. Maybe working on some different tricks for a while will also help.

I think keeping up the variety is a good way to get rid of the stagnation. Try something else!! There is an endless supply of tricks to work on, and at any given time, there are probably a handful that are within grasp at the skill level you are at. Try to snag some small victories before heading back to work on the big one. Not only will you have fun doing it, but you are learning and improving all the time.

Resolutions:
- Sail away from a forward (keeping the sail dry). About 80 attempts in and I'm so close yet so far. Have pushed the sail clear of the water and water-started away from a few now but the running bet on our end is that the sail stays dry for the whole thing.

- Put in 200 vulcan attempts (and hopefully get one at some point)

- Build the courage and body-heat to sail in a Cape Cod storm when I move Boston come Sept.

- Get my girlfriend comfortable and planing in the straps... and find her a board so she doesn't always steal mine!

I agree on the lots and lots of attempts.

Thinking through things helps out heaps and where possible, getting a feel for things does even more. Whenever possible (i.e. when I'm teaching here in Vancouver), I'm trying all sorts of light-wind tricks* and it pays dividends on those harder moves. After about 200 heli-tacks, first on big floaty plastic boards and small sails, and then on my 99L board in 5.0 conditions, I managed to get a gecko! Had not been really trying em but got put on the spot and did it. A buddy and I told a pseudo-competitive friend that I had pulled them off effortlessly while he was away at the Gorge and one day at the beach in the fall he called me out on it. I tried, I commited, and it worked. The body knew what to do with the sail from the hours spent backwinded with the sail in my hands.
Sailing alot clew-first in light wind let me get my first clew-first waterstart on the first try (when I finally tried) just because I knew what to expect (I think I bailed on the rig flip though).

* - a big thanks to the Tricktionary for giving me lots of ideas for things to work on

Thanks for the invite to Ajax. I'm wondering if any of you guys that sail Ajax were some of the guys I used to sail with/see at Frenchman's or Lake Scugog. I know what you mean about walks of shame. I learned at the lakefront right by what is now the pumping station and spent many an evening dragging a twelve-foot monster back from either Shoal Point or Rotary Park depending on the wind direction. Does anyone still sail Rotary? We used to get some great days there in both E and W days.

With everyone talking about the repetative nature of learning moves - I thought I'd throw out there that here in the County, West Lake (at Tubbs) is a great place to practice the early season moves. It works in most wind directions SSW through to NW is best but it is an easy launch and essentially waist deep all the way across at the launch. You can try all your freestyle and never have to waterstart to get back on after a spill. (nice for when it's cold too) It is a lot like Pamlico Sound in Hatteras except for water temp and atmosphere. The chop is never too big but allows you to pop for freestyle moves easily. It also blows when the Big Lake is doming because the wind comes back down (most days) as it comes over the big dunes in between . Would love to learn Vulcans with a bunch of others stupid enough to be addicted to this sport.
O.W.

No one seems to really sail Ajax until last year when we restarted visiting since they took down many of the cottages between Pickering Beach and Shoal point and put in a nice grassy patch for rigging.

Rotary tends to be quite dirty because of all the water fowls.

I stopped at what I think was Tubbs last Fall when it was blowing 40 on the lake, however, it was gated for a windsurfing rental company and I did not bother trying to sail there. Can you sail there even if you don't rent?
I had fond memory of West Lake warm shallow water and great wind.

As for moves, I find that since I don't get to sail enough, when out, I tend to do the pleasurable stuff I know and don't try for new stuff (same goes snowboarding, takes a while until I start trying new stuff until the carving becomes routine).
Video review is always very helpful as I always think I am better than on video (hate to watch them but best way to improve IMHO).