Monday was a really wild windy night in Melbourne, gusts of up to 60knots and roofs blown off houses. Next day was forecast to be 30knots Westerly, well it wasn't that windy but man was the bay a chopped up bit of water! Made it very hard to catch anything with waves coming from everywhere.

Three of us went from Pt Cook across to Sandringham about 20k, we copped a rain squall that was fun - check out Pete doing a headstand right at the start! Crazy bugger, pissing rain and wild sea, hard enough to stay on your feet let alone your head

oh man, that looks like real fun- jealous as

i would be calling that a pretty good run on the goldie

whats it like steering with booties on?

i felt like i couldn't move on the board with booties on at training yesterday
cheers

JonathanC said...

Steering with booties isn't too bad, I've got some split toe O'Neils - much rather have bare feet but its too bloody cold! You lose a lot of the subtle little adjustments but I always find the steering system on the Glide to be a lot more difficult to use than the SIC boards

It really was very chopped up out there swells crossing all over the place, makes you feel like you've got no balance. I felt really heavy on my feet, hate that feeling of clumping up and down the board.

The day before was actually much much cleaner swell and a piece of cake in comparison, but hey, they are all great fun...even when you stuff the first three feet of the 17 into a wave and go over the handle bars

haha, noticed you were quick to get back after that

nice Vid JC, from my reckoning you have done over 55ks of D/W in the last few windy blown days good effort

jenkz said...

Man it must be bloody cold judging by all the gear your wearing. Had a laugh at Petes handstand especially with the sound up you can just hear him. Is winter a better time for strong winds on the east coast for downwinding compared to summer? Or do you get honking seabreezes like us in summer?

Hi Jenkz, yeah its getting pretty cold now, bay is 12.6 degrees and that day it was only about 11, theoretically warmer in the water....

I actually don't have a wetsuit top on, just a double layer of the new fleece products, really good, the goretex top stops the wind chill, 0.5mm neoprene long pants. So it looks like heaps but its actually really free to paddle in.

Our sea breezes only get to 18 or 20 knots - maybe 25. We are lucky that we get wind throughout the year, seems like we have had a good downwind wind every weekend for weeks lately. The northerlies we do most of the runs on are just part of the regular weather pattern, we have just started doing more of the south westerly and westerly.

Did a really brutal one a couple of weeks ago, theoretically south but too much west in it, 30 knots and the biggest most confused mother of a sea with waves wrapping and pushing us into the shore all the time.

We are very lucky in the downwind department

jenkz said...

Man it must be bloody cold judging by all the gear your wearing. ...

Captain Sensible here again.

I was kiteboarding on Monday in a mid-weight wettie and it was very pleasant (and I wasn't paddling to keep warm). There was a touch of north in the wind and that keeps things a bit milder.

It only gets really cold in frontal westerlies and SW.

In my opinion a decent wetsuit is essential survival gear when you go out in cold conditions.

In water 10-16 degrees you will be unconscious in 1-3 hours and dead in 1-6 hours. You only have to be 1.5-2k off the beach and you are an hour away from swimming to safety.

It's easy to cool off if you over heat in a wettie. It's impossible to warm up if you haven't got one.

Cool video Jonathan, very unique framing of the handstad, are you sure you and Pete didn't set that shot up