What a strange day. Went to Centennial at 8:30 and it looked bad, onshore and super light so I took the dog for a walk instead. Gave up on sailing for the day so I got back to work and of course it kicks back in. Went to the boat launch rigged up and realized I'd left my wetsuit at home.
Left my gear on the beach and rushed back home, changed and came back. Wind looked like it had dropped off again, all the kites were back at the beach but I went anyways. By this point the tide was low and as I was walking out I was thinking this was a bad idea. Wind was almost gone, I got out far enough and got up only to hit a sand bar, back to walking a bit more, then tried again. Surprised I was able to get up on the foil but I had rigged the 5.3 and was thankful for that at this point. Wind was east and I as I headed towards Point Roberts things started to pick up. I sailed up past Maple beach and here I realized the wind was actually SSE. I headed back towards the mile marker and I was able to stay up wind of it and I sailed out into the bay. Out there though the wind was still East and much lighter. It stayed like this for about a half hour. East in the bay but SSE out at Point Roberts and much stronger. Then it shifted SSE everywhere and cranked. This created an absolute mess with the swell. Still swell from the East and now converging SSE. I was overpowered and getting thrown all over the place with the waves crashing into each other. It stayed like this for about a hour and I almost gave up. Then the SSE swell cleaned up and it started to get fun. Of course then the wind tanked.
I was way out in the bay and there was nothing. I was just bobbing around thinking it's going to be a long slog back and an even longer walk as the tide had dropped and I couldn't foil back to the beach. After about 10 minutes of slogging thankfully things picked back up just enough to get foiling. I decided to take a few more reaches, which was the best part of the day. You know when the wind dies at Centennial and you're slogging around trying to catch the nice clean swell and you're wishing there was just a little more wind to get you going. Well with the foil it was perfect I managed to hook into a couple of really nice clean swell trains and ride them from the boat launch down to Centennial. Just enough wind to foil back up to the boat launch and do it again. That's the first time I've been able to ride the swell with no power in the sail, just pumping the foil. I've tried it before but couldn't get the rhythm. It just clicked today and it was so much fun. I did this 3 times and was so tired I had to call it a day. Foiled back to the beach with very little walk at the end. Perfect way to finish off a very strange day.
edit/Forgot to mention at one point it was so windy when I would try and water start the foil would just come straight out of the water before I could get up and balance things out. The board would just launch and I would bail. I wasn't sure how I was going to get back in but after a few attempts figured it out.