Yes, it was a glorious day in Melbourne yesterday. Nice vid.

Kenny,
As a newbie to this downwinding thing I can tell you it ain't that easy.
DJ just makes it look like it is. Don't be fooled by his cool attire and clever editing!
St.Kilda to Sandringham is about 164 degrees (thanks AlSup for his maps), and a northerly is 180 degrees. So there's a fair element of offshore in it for a start. The bullets come from the north east, so every good runner takes you further offshore. If you pig out on these (and it's really tempting) you can very quickly get well offshore. If you miss Sandringham the next stop is an extended trip down to Mornington, probably another 4 hours down the guts of the bay.
The last stretch into Sandringham is more easterly in direction, so you have to be well inshore by the time you get to Green point. And then you have to negotiate the Sandringham YC wave screen (why has no-one named this "the wall of death"?) which is a 100 metre long concrete wall facing north. If you've missed the chance to get inshore by the time you get to Green Point then it's a choice of the back-wash from the wall of death and then getting smacked up against it, or the afore-mentioned trip down to Mornington.
So for anyone contemplating a beginner d/w of this stretch without DJ to hold your hand, my three big tips are :
Don't!
Stay inshore.
stay inshore.

Thanks again to Al Fairlie and DJ for looking after me for my first few downwinders.

Yep, what Kathy and Helmy said. DJ's vids are awesome but remember they are 4 mins out of a run that takes an hour or more. It's very rare that a run lines up all nice and orderly the whole way (ie: almost never). There's lots of structure on our bay shore, man made & natural, that tosses up all sorts of crazy reflection, refraction & backwash...throw in some ship wake, some short-period cross-slop and then the real fun starts. I reckon we've all had to do some pretty undignified things to get ourselves home safe...but fark it's worth it, every time

Helmy said..

If you miss Sandringham the next stop is an extended trip down to Mornington, probably another 4 hours down the guts of the bay.

Well, not exactly. You have another 5km of coastline down to Rickett's Point as a get out option before the death-march to Mornington. But the real danger of missing Rickett's Point is not just the 26+km distance with the wind at your back, but the inconvenient fact that the depth of the bay drops quite suddenly out there and the run is more like ocean swells competing with longer fetch waves that have travelled 20km from Port Melbourne. Woo-hoo!

foamballer said..

DavidJohn said..

BruceT said..

Yes, it was a glorious day in Melbourne yesterday. Nice vid.

Great nose dive Bruce.. [at the 55 sec mark].. and almost as good as this one..
DJ

I thought he did pretty well not to take a swim on that one! Is that the 2011 glide?
Those guys in the boat stopped so quick that I reckon their eyeballs would be stuck on the front of their visors

Yeah he did well.. Surfing stance would have helped even more.. .. and yes.. The original 1st shape Glide.. I'm on the second shape Glide (with the new 2014 colours)

DJ