Almost made is across!

There are roughly 4 miles between Lowman in West Seattle and Blake Island, across the Puget Sound. I've been wanting to sail across since I moved here, so today I gave it a shot. The wind was in the low teens out of the North, perfect for the longboard. I launched late, around 5:45, and 30 minutes later I had still not reached the other coast. I knew that sunset was at 7:25, so I headed back. There is a constant traffic of freighters going up and down the sound, and I didn't want to get in their way with low visibility and no wind. The rig felt OK, as good as a long board can feel I guess.
So I didn't make it, but I'll be back! In other news, the new suit (O'Neil Pyrotech) feels fine, but you need to Houdini your way out of that thing, so hard! Anyway, I hope there'll be more of these sessions during the spring...
The Chicago band is gearing up to the annual Texas trip, more to come about that soon, I wish I could join them!

Getting ready to launch

Missed it

Worse thing about missing a session? This terrible circumstance could have been avoided with some minimal planning. So many variables have to fall in place in order for guys like me and you to score a friggin session. If you're like me, you have a job, a family, there's the wind (usually there needs to be some wind to go windsurfing), etc, etc. And I don't count temperature and rain as variables, we can't afford to have them ruin our only windy day of the month. So as long as the water is not solid and there is no lightning, rain and temperature don't count for me. So today  I could have scored a beautiful sesh if I would have been super efficient at work, had my gear ready in the car, and checked more than one forecast, but I didn't. THE FORECAST SAID IT WAS GOING TO DIE BY NOON!!! What's all this wind doing at 4 PM? Oh well, live and learn... The forecast looks flat for the next week... Nice...

Who was at work from 8 to 4?

Alki's South shore

Spring is definitely here in the Northwest. The days are getting longer, it's sunnier and warmer. That's why we are trying to score as many storms as we can before we put our small gear away. We had been tracking today's forecast for a week (useless endeavor, but I digress). It looked like wind in the morning, or in the afternoon, or no wind at all, or windy all day. Yeah you've been there... So I planned to hit Alki South of the point early in the morning, and scored a 6.5 sesh in bump and jump terrain, with the sun shining through the clouds, terrific. The sesh was cut short though by a 5 inch tear in my trusty Bare dry suit. After all these years I am lucky the think didn't just desintegrate. Luckily the surfers have a shack packed with gear in North Lake Union, so I got a new suit, and rushed back to the beach. As I was driving I could see the whitecaps, even bigger than the morning, 5.2 at most! I rigged in 30 seconds, but the wind literally shut off the minute I was done rigging. What??? Where is the wind? Gone. Gone for good. So yeah it was weird, but the morning was superb, and this spot that I found kicks butt, so I'm pretty stoked about trying it again.