Steve's Windsurfing Journal

 I got a windsurfing session in today. I think I haven't sailed for about 7 years; last time was 2019 in Aruba.

Spent the morning with D. remembering how to rig a board. D. hasn't sailed in quite a while, either. It's amazing how much rigging knowledge just came back as I did it. The body remembers, as my yoga teachers keep telling me. Only had to rethread the downhaul once. Only made two assembly mistakes: the uphaul goes around the mast BEFORE the downhaul is threaded so as not to stress the downhaul line (I think?), and the boom was set maybe a few inches high, though maybe it was OK. I used to have a mark on my mast to help me set the height, but that mast is no more.

Took a little over an hour to assemble the whole rig. Used the Hi-Fly Magnum with the Ultra 5.5 sail and the North Sails 465cm mast. Same pin mast base as ever.

D. tried to rig the Neil Pride Zone 4.7 but the mast was too short without the a mast extension, and the only mast extension I have has a Chinook base but he only had a pin base. So we bailed on that effort. (Turns out that my mast base with a broken tendon is the Chinook base we needed -- I really should have fixed that and brought it with me, but I slacked. Next time!) So we decided to take turns sailing the Hi-Fly.

D. bought a used Bic 293cm board, with a mast and sail, etc. I think he said the sail was 6.0 and I think is some kind of North Sail. I didn't get a good look at it. Unfortunately, that sail is missing a batten and a batten cap, so it's less than fully useable.

The wind gods were messing with us a bit. The forecast had been for a 4 mph average until late afternoon, when it would go up to 7 for a while in front of a rain storm. So we were really thinking we'd just assemble to the rig to help us remember how and to validate that all the gear was present and serviceable. Just as I finished rigging the 5.5, though, I noticed whitecaps on the lake -- wind blowing more or less across the lake, neither onshore or offshore. I'd say maybe 10knots? Guess the front was coming in earlier than predicted. Sweet.

We had started our gear adventure maybe 930am. So I hurried up and and we launched around 11 or so. It still took close to 30 minutes to change and finish assembling and figure out how to launch the windsurfer off D.'s dock area. We decided to put the board in first, then attach the sail while wading waist high in the lake, as the launch area isn't wide enough for the board and sail together.

The wind miraculously held through all this, and I took the first turn. I paddled out so I wouldn't get pushed into the rockwall-lined shoreline while I figured things out. Slowly, slowly I remembered how to actually sail the beast. A slow uphaul raising and a quick angle upwind and off I went. The wind was strong enough I regretted not rigging the 4.7. Not that the wind was all that strong, but at 64 years old my muscles aren't what they were when I was sailing once or twice a month. There was enough wind that I could actually imagine getting close to planing, and after a couple of very sloppy tacks I could go sort of fast. I kept hearing Tino of Calema's voice in my head: "mast foot pressure!! mast foot pressure!!" and that stabilized the board and helped it start to take off.

Upper Greenwood Lake is not very wide. 100 yards maybe? 50ish? So the tacks where short but not uncomfortably so. I BAF'd maybe 3 laps and played with trying to sail downwind toward the dock. I think I forget how to sail downwind properly, so that needs a refresher. My tack footwork would make Andy Brandt very sad for me, but each time it got a little better. I managed a lazy jibe or two.

One tack was so integrated I did start to feel like part of the board attached to nature for a while. Bliss. I love this sport all over again.

So, after having tried to go downwind to get to the dock and failing, and decided to go downwind of the dock entirely (which worked somehow), and then tack upwind to land. No dice. Couldn't get back. I don't know if the wind shifted or I just couldn't reason it out, or I just got tired. My shoulders and lower back letting me know it was time to stop.

I started doggie-paddling the board back to the dock. D. came out in the kayak and towed me in, and I walked the board back to the dock from half a house downwind.

D.'s turn. He got up on the board and tried to balance himself to uphaul. He considered the unsteadiness of the board, the strength of the wind, the size of the sail, and perhaps his fatigue from paddling me in. He gracefully decided he'd try again with a bit less wind on another day.

But such a win. A day on the water is better than a day not on the water. D. and I high-fived and hugged it out. Big smiles. We are back!!

Tear down and stowage took longer than I remembered, as I neglected to factor in the time to let things dry out. I scrubbed down the 4.7 for mildew (the 5.5. is miraculously unmildewed after 28 years!).

We put the stuff away eventually, and the rain started falling right around 2pm, earlier than predicted but it made sense given when the front came through, The wind died down before the rain fell. The wind gods were with us; we had accidentally timed the sail perfectly.

A Hobie Cat showed up as we were eating lunch. Dude got up on one hull a couple time, and had no problems sailing up and downwind. Show off ! :-) Time to review my notes and practice up.

I was so pumped after the sail. I had almost forgotten the sheer joy of it. My muscles will speak to me tomorrow, I'm sure.

Feeling horribly guilty that I hadn't repaired and brought the Chinook mast base to the lake this weekend, I resolved to fix it so that D. and I had it available for next time.

It's a truism in windsurfing that no matter how hard you try and prepare, there's always one missing piece  and yesterday this was it. No more!

I used @windsurfcoach's YouTube short to give me enough information and confidence to do the repair. His mast base in the video is different than mine, but close enough. My guy here did the replacement in 2 minutes but I figured it would take me a half hour, and it did.

As I got into the tendon replacement work, it became more obvious why the tendon hand just broken on its own. Every time I tried to pull the broken pieces out of the base, bits of the tendon crumbled off in my fingers. At one point, an entire chunk just sheared off.

So the hard part was not putting in the new tendon -- it was getting the old one out. It was in the base pretty tightly and wouldn't pull out easily even after I removed the retaining bolts. Every time I pulled on it, pieces came off and what was left was stuck.

I took a wood screw and drove it into the tendon on the board side of the base. Magically, the screw had enough purchase that it lifted the tendon piece out completely just before the material holding the screw gave way.

No such luck of the mast side of the tendon. The screws just slid right back out. So, having a nice hole now through the center of the tendon, to took an Allen wrench, poked it in the hole, angled it slightly to provide resistance against the crumbly material, and gently pulled out the tendon from the base. Took a couple tries as the tendon crumbled before the whole thing cleared the base, but rotating the Allen wrench about 90 degrees to get a fresh surface did the trick.

The next fun was getting the retaining bolts back through the horizontal holes in the new tendon. I at first thought the holes were to small and that I would have to drill them out. But I was able to push the bolt into the hole using an Allen wrench to provide enough pressure. Aligning the tendon holes with the bolt holes in the mast took some precision but I got there.

I had taken enough photos beforehand to realign all the pieces in the same way as they were. Bolts tightened, line re-threaded and re-tied and off we go.

Good as new!!

 It’s been 15 years since I posted here. Superstorm Sandy in 2012 marked the end, more or less, of my Long Beach Island windsurfing era. My ardor for windsurfing had been fading. Not for sailing itself — my love has not diminished — but I increasingly noticed that no one else in my family was ever going to participate with me, and I re-centered my weekends at my parents’ place on things more of us enjoyed doing together. Windsurfing inevitably dominated an entire day of a two day weekend. My kid was only going to be young once, my wife was left to take care of things, and my parents weren’t getting any younger.

For some reason, Sandy and the subsequent raising and renovation of my parents’ house after the flooding took almost 5 years and during that time all the windsuring equipment was also less than convenient to access.

In November 2019, my parents sold their Manahawkin house at moved to very inland and land-locked retirement community in Marlton. My board went into their garage to become a source of amusement for the maintenance guys: “You guys preparing for a flood?” And there it has remained until today. Almost all of the rest of the gear has been languishing in the basement storage locker of our Manhattan apartment.

Forward to today, my parents are getting ready to move out of the house and into smaller units where they can get more active care. Time to empty out the premises.

We have friends (D and M) who have a have a house on Upper Greenwood Lake, NJ. D windsurfed on Lomg Island decades ago. I’ve been threatening to take my gear up there for a few years, but never executing. Now is the time.

So, I rented an SUV, loaded all the gear but the board into in Manhattan, and drove to Marlton. Put all the gear on the lawn to photograph it as an informal inventory. The Chinook mast base tendon mysteriously and spontaneously broke just sitting in a box somehow, but everything else looks none the worse for wear besides the usual rubber and elastic degradation that happens just by time passing.

Rental companies dont’t love you tieing stuff to the roofs of their vehicles, so softracks it was. The trip was 2-3 hours possibly on the NJ Turnpike and similar high-speed roads. I spent far too much time mentally over-preparing my tie-down strategy, even buying multiple hood straps that it turned out I couldn’t use because the rental SUV used so much plastic under the hood. So I tightened the softrack straps as best I could, and carefully positioned the board to not bounce onto the roof wart antenna.

Given the lack of stabilizing ties, I decided to take the less intense roads north. I-295 is not exactly a back road but it’s fine. Ended up going through downtown Princeton and all that. Trip took close to 4 hours including a few stops to check on things and get snacks. I listened to huge chunks of a book about Steely Dan all the way. This experienced launched me on a month-long Steely Dan obsession once I got home.

Got to D’s house as scheduled, actually, and D was there to greet me. He had come out from the city for the day. I guess he wanted to be there to figure out where to put the stuff. I told him many times that I consider this to be an indefinite loan of the equipment. Maybe I’d ask for it back if I ever won the lottery amd got a beach house but otherwise I’ll almost certainly want it back. I encourage everyone there to use it and abuse it; just have fun and don’t worry if you break stuff.

D. graciously BBQ’d me dinner on the deck. We had a beer and a great chat and I headed back to the city.

Can’t wait to come try out the gear on the lake. I have a standing invite to come up whenever and use it. Realistically that’ll be a couple times a year.

Small lake sailing ain’t bay sailing, but it’ll be nice to putter around.

This post created August 15 2026, and backdated to date of occurence.

All strapped in and ready to roll. Photo by my Mom

Labels: upper greenwood lake

Sheraton Nassau Beach, Cable Beach, Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas

1:30-2:30pm

Well, Sunday I was sorer than I should have been from needlessly fighting the sail. And by the time we got back from exploring the island, the wind was blowing around 20. So, I thought that hanging by the pool with the kid was the better part of valor.

But Monday was our beach day, and it was just gorgeous again. Today the wind was sideshore blowing to the left, 10-12 knots. I was heading for the 4.5, but then a teenage girl joined in the windsurfing fun. I asked her a little about her sailing and since she had not too much experience I took the 5.5 instead so she'd have a better day. I helped her and the beach guy out with the assembly. She swam the board past the ropes and off she went. But she headed downwind initially, so I'm glad I gave her the 4.5.

Launching was easy of course, though I didn't beach start initially. The wider, shorter board than mine made it a little squirrelly for me. But sailing today was easy. Jack was still in my head. And the tide was higher, so I didn't have to avoid any shallows. The water was a little wavier, but nothing tough. And the wind direction made for long reaches, though I think the Wyndham towers gave some wind shadow and things were a little shifty around them. But I was reaching nicely even if my takes weren't confident -- darn foot straps! But the port tack toward shore gave the nicest combination. I managed to plane a few times, wishing for a harness even. Yay.

And on my final reach in, the green water just sparkled at me, as I gazed in happily toward the Sheraton.

The water always sparkles, but it's me that doesn't notice it unless I've found balance and stopped fighting myself, nature, and the equipment. So that sparkle means I'm in the zone.

I figured that was the best run of the day, so I came in. I noticed the girl on the other board blown downwind past the last resort. I briefly thought about going over to coach her back upwind but knew I was too tired to pull it off. And she was heading in toward the beach, so she was probably too tired too. After I landed, I saw her Mom run down there, but the girl was fine. Nothing a little walk of shame couldn't cure. She was sailing well - just a little adjustment and a better plan going out is all she needed. But I had given enough advice getting her out, and she was in no danger. So I left her to figure it out, as we all sometimes must.

I used the little remaining time to work on the beach start. Only took a couple tries, though without enough grace.

So, this is a nice spot. Easy access, good beginner equipment. The beach guys say it blows between 10-20 every day, usually stronger in the morning. On some tides, there are chest high areas and waterstart practice would be possible. Recommended.

Supposedly, this resort will be no more in a few years. There's a new project starting up called "Baha Mar" that will re-develop the core Cable Beach resort area to better compete with Atlantis, which is eating their lunch. The "grand opening" ceremony for the project is tomorrow. The locals I talked to say "wait and see." It's a big project, and could go in a lot of different paths before it is done, if it ever is.

All the more reason to go now. It's a standard big-chain resort experience, but understated (compared to the Atlantis) and the pools and facilities and beach all well done. And, the sailing is effortless and there for the asking.

Labels: bahamas, cable beach

Sheraton Nassau Beach, Cable Beach, Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas

Camp Caribou, Winslow, Maine

If anyone every wants to know why on earth anyone would have a kid, the answer is this: if you don't have kids, you have no chance to be invited to Father-Son Weekend at Camp Caribou.

Needless to say, this is where my kid spent 7 weeks of his summer, and this year I went to Father-Son. A perfect weekend. The weather was perfect. The camp was perfect. The kid was perfect.

Well, OK, everything was perfect except the windsurfing, but it was close. Saturday on Patti Pond was one of those gorgeous mid-80s blue-sky, puffy cloud days where nothing can go wrong. We were only missing one thing: wind. But, undaunted, I grabbed one of the underused camp windsurfers and went out for a spin while the kid kayaked around me. Was on a very wide 9 foot HiFly something or other. The biggest sail with hardware that worked was a 4.4 ("hey mate, getting an 11-year old to hold a 3.5 is hard enough," said Miles the waterfront guy), totally un-downhauled, so I fixed that up as best I could with no downhaul cleat around. Screwed around a bit, a little freestyle when there was breeze. Fun for a while.

Patti Pond is a little lake that's narrow enough that the kids can swim all the way across it in about 45 minutes, at least on their branch of it. Camp Caribou exists on a peninsula that juts out into the pond. A magical spot. "You don't get this kind of beauty at Andro," camp director Bill gruffs out.

But better than sailing on such a day was jumping off the water trampoline, onto The Blob, and then running down the "Log" and into the water with the kids.

But, hey, I just windsurfed in a new state! Another notch on the belt.

OK, never mind all this. Gotta go play paddle tennis.

But oh my goodness, what a perfect day to spend with a kid who will probably never be 12 again.

Sunset Park, Harvey Cedars, NJ

Finally got on the water this year. Spring was dedicated to Little League, and early summer to travelling elsewhere and attending to family.

Laurie came down and sat with me, and help haul some gear. Wind blowing down the canal, but not hard to get out. Maybe 12 knots at the peak? Enough for me, as I'm out of practice. Was there early enough - 9:30ish - that the motor boats weren't out much and could cruise the channel unperturbed. Managed to plane a bit, but couldn't hook in to save my life. Felt good, but never got really in sync.

The park is still fine for sailing. The grass area is unkempt -- I wonder if it was Jack that mowed it? But the erosion hasn't gotten any worse.

It's really time to get a new sail. But sailing - what? - twice a year? Hard to justify.

Sunset Park, Harvey Cedars

A very quick session between 10:00 and 11:00, crammed in before leaving for a flight to Toronto. iWindsurf reported winds in the mid-teens and seduced me, but when I arrived they were around 10 and falling. Lots of pumping. Still, "a day on the water. . ." so I worked on jibe technique in the light air.

With Laurie helping ferry the gear from car to beach and back, possibly the fastest setup and tear down time in memory -- 20 minutes in, 15 out.