Oregon, Washington, Light Wind, Racing and Friends

It's funny really - I went to the Gorge and the Oregon coast, never sailed on anything smaller than a 6.0, sailed an 8.5 when it was the windiest and absolutely had the time of my life!  First up was the last race of the Gorge Cup series, I do love formula racing at the Event Site.  I had some good starts (finally!), used my 8.5 the whole time, realized that I need to learn how to jibe my formula board a LOT more aggressively and finished second to Gorge local Shelly Gimball in the women's class.  I learned several important lessons:

1) There is a submerged piling just upwind of the Event Site and in very close to shore.  I found the piling with the bottom of my board - oops.  Bruce Peterson (Mr. Sailworks) was luckily on hand with magic superglue and mad skills and I only missed one race.

2)Magic superglue is cool!  Ok, maybe it's not really magic - but a Hot Stuff Pro Kit (now on sale at Larson's for only $45) and some fiberglass cloth can probably fix anything.  The huge smack in the bottom of my board got permanently repaired in about 8 minutes and I was back on the water.  

3)Bruce Peterson is super quality guy.  He took time between races to fix my board (and explain what he was doing and what he was using so I could do it myself next time), helped countless other racers during the event who needed board repair, took sails back to the loft at night to fix them in time for racing the next day and spent the week before the race running a race camp for junior sailors.  I know new sails are expensive - but when you buy a Sailworks sail at least you can be 100% sure that you are supporting a really great person behind the brand.

4)I may finally need real race sails if I'm going to keep racing Formula.  So I got a new 9.1 Sailworks NX - I can't wait to use it!

Next was a trip to the Oregon Coast for a Starboard and Severne dealer meeting.  There are some great people involved in the windsurfing industry and we had a great time in a really pretty spot.  The 2009 boards and sails look awesome and sail great.  I'll have to be ordering for next summer pretty soon - so if you know of a 2009 board that you are going to want, let me know and I can try to make sure I have one for you in the spring!  The most fun of the whole week was wave sailing in small waves and light wind on the new Starboard S.U.P and brand new, old school, super light weight, Super Light sail.  I can't wait to get one of my own and work on the new tricks Andy Brandt was trying to teach me.  Next time you're bored at work search for "ABK windsurfing" on youtube - it's inspiring!  Or better yet - sign up for an ABK camp and find out all the cool new tricks Andy is teaching.