Bonaire Lac Bay. NP EVO5 7.8, iSonic 107, Drake carbon slalom 38. Wind: 15G17 ENE
Fun day today. Today was the day that I got a qualitative answer to the question of how much of speed is equipment and how much is skill. Equipment is necessary but a large percentage is clearly skill. Taty Frans was out on his 2017 iSonic 107 and Gaastra Vapor 7.9. Just the two of us on the water and he and I did some laps together, or rather I should say that he was lapping me while testing his gear 
. It was fun to have a few head-to-head drag races (didn't last long...) and then to sail behind him as he disappeared into the distance. I got an up-close-and-personal view of his sailing style. Clearly, I have no excuses except lack of skill since we had roughly the same equipment and when he was blasting past me we had the same water and wind conditions. I'm not a good judge of closing or opening speeds but would guess that most of the time he was approaching ten knots (maybe more) faster than I was when we were doing the beam reaches. And we won't even discuss my jibing humiliation 
. One thing that I noticed was that after a jibe, he would stop and look at his upper right arm (GT31) to evaluate his run. After the session, when I mentioned GPSLogit and the speed chat feature and waterproof Bluetooth earbuds, he was initially surprised and then very interested. We will see if anything comes of it. I showed him my GW60 and expect him to have one very soon .
. It was fun to have a few head-to-head drag races (didn't last long...) and then to sail behind him as he disappeared into the distance. I got an up-close-and-personal view of his sailing style. Clearly, I have no excuses except lack of skill since we had roughly the same equipment and when he was blasting past me we had the same water and wind conditions. I'm not a good judge of closing or opening speeds but would guess that most of the time he was approaching ten knots (maybe more) faster than I was when we were doing the beam reaches. And we won't even discuss my jibing humiliation . One thing that I noticed was that after a jibe, he would stop and look at his upper right arm (GT31) to evaluate his run. After the session, when I mentioned GPSLogit and the speed chat feature and waterproof Bluetooth earbuds, he was initially surprised and then very interested. We will see if anything comes of it. I showed him my GW60 and expect him to have one very soon . 
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