Feb 8

3364km

Bonaire Lac Bay. NP EVO6 7.0, iSonic 90, MFC KP-RC 36 Wind: 19G22 knots ENE

Got a late start today but that was OK because it didn't take long for me to get worked over by the chop and the gustier winds.

The bay had a different personality today. Add 5 knots of wind with gusts and change the wind angle slightly and my mellow sailing spot became decidedly more feisty. My normally 'slightly choppy' southerly speed run now had washboard chop - no coasting here... The northerly cant to the wind, different board and fin, and beating into some rather large chop made it difficult for me to point high enough to get to my desired mangrove shallows area which was packed with freestylers anyway. This meant only one run into the shallows (first run when tide was barely high enough).

The 36 cm fin solved the spin-out issue from yesterday. Next time we have similar wind I may plug the Drake 38 cm fin in and see if that improves upwind pointing,

From a 'numbers' standpoint, even though the wind was stronger, the increased chop cancelled any speed hopes I had for today. As Roo is fond of saying, 'HTFU Princes Mangrove', and he is correct. Today started to remind me of the Gorge on a mellow day - boy do I have some work ahead of me before I'm 'Gorge competent' .

Roo commented:

I'd call that progress Princess M. You are starting to read the wind and water conditions to understand how to sail them. Now it's time to start tuning for the conditions, every day is different. When it's choppy add more downhaul to get the upper portion of the sail offloading so you can stay sheeted in and loaded up, that's the fast way through chop. You also need a bit more fin in chop so you don't get bounced into spinout. I prefer big sail small board in nasty stuff.