JWSP - Tuesday

[Alton]

Perfect balanced day in my books Alton! You going to try again tomorrow afternoon ?

Too busy tomorrow for a 2 hr trip to JWSP. Maybe sometime local but probably not enough for my 10m.

[Alton]

Alton, can you pass this on to Chris ... Went to JWSP, blowing 20+ to start on my 9.5 then it came up a little to 35-40 and I downsized to my 7.5. Best hang time ever, could count slowly to 10, sometimes three or four elevator rides higher! Good day for strong wind but water very disorganized. Sometimes riding parallel to shore, other times straight offshore. Mostly west with some south thrown in to keep you on your toes.

[Chris Klohn]

Alton, can you pass this on to Chris ... Went to JWSP, blowing 20+ to start on my 9.5 then it came up a little to 35-40 and I downsized to my 7.5. Best hang time ever, could count slowly to 10, sometimes three or four elevator rides higher! Good day for strong wind but water very disorganized. Sometimes riding parallel to shore, other times straight offshore. Mostly west with some south thrown in to keep you on your toes.

Thanks Cash & Alton. I can't imagine 10+ second jumps Cash You must have been kite looping like crazy to get step ups like that. Good to know the low tide is no good for waves. I have zero experience there when it's down that far. Every session I had there had water right up to the beach. That exposed shelf that C36 had in one of his pictures was usually 8-10 feet deep. Stoked you got wind and a good session Cash Tomorrow afternoon should be a repeat with about 10mph less wind.

Cheers,

Chris

[Alton]

Cash initially was way overpowered on his 9.5m so those wild gusts gave him the elevator lifts without even looping.

Now I agree with Dave/C36 (and Jon) that low tide levels can create some of the worst sea state. These last 2 Whidbey sessions has been low tide levels and both times (including today) I could not get past the impact zone riding strapless. This was one of my motivations to going down today - to learn how to get out of the impact zone strapless ... but no such luck. Cash says I'm not missing much because past the impact zone, the waves were super disorganized. Fortunately the inbound waves rides are as awesome as ever.

Previous Whidbey sessions when tide levels were higher, the impact zone was more manageable - even riding strapless.

[Alton]

Sounds like perfect weather for the 5M! The strait is cranking gosh darnet! Must be some serious waves!!

When the wind started to ramp up to SW 20 the waves were clean and breaking nicely (shown below). When the wind got gnarly so did the waves - head high but disorganized.

Whidbey_Waves_SW_Wind.jpg (156.91 KiB) Viewed 5834 times

[AdrienGrelon]

Damn that looks nice!!

[Alton]

Wow, what a workout. I kept getting lulled to a dead stop (windsurfing) in the impact zone. In spite of being ludicrously overpowered on the inside and the outside. I would gently glide to a near stop right where the whoppers were breaking. I would then wait patiently for a big breaking grinder to cartwheel me and all that gear back towards the beach. A flailing 2-minute, underpowered waterstart later, I'd be 200 yards downwind, freezing, and hyperventilating. Totally worth it, though. After quite a bit of waterstarting and pinching up wind, I'd occasionally find myself in the sweet spot for a juicy breaking wave. Unlike Post Point or Roosevelt, they seem weak, but get steep as they approach shallower water. Suddenly I'd go from barely planing to the front 60% of my board drying off as things got suddenly vertical. The sensation of going from 5 knots to 30 straight down the face is worth the chilly wrestling match.

Guess I wasn't the only one struggling with the impact zone.