"Sulada"

Wicked brilliant South-West wind.. wonderful afternoon.

Photos are worth a thousands words.. so let me share some with you.

Started the day pretty early to do some work. This is the view from my "home" office.

Then we had lunch were there was a scene that reminded me of this wonderful video by Tim Minchin:

A bit tiered of irrationality we quickly moved a bit North and West and to Riactiva for what was looking like a quiet sailing afternoon.

Well... the "quiet" part become a adrenalin pumping afternoon. The South wind picked up getting to around 25 knots so I was well pumped up with my 6.9m² sail (the only one I brought with me).

I'll let you enjoy some photos now…

My gybes are getting quite better. Board is flatter through out the entire gybe, speed is mostly maintained and it feel "safe". Time to move on to duck gybes now.

We windsurfed the entire afternoon. Only the sun setting and muscles aches made us stop.

Wonderful!

Surprise wind

You go into the water, thinking that it's going to be one of those lazy evening with 14 knots of wind, just doing some light air freestyle (nothing fancy) and...

A dark cloud approaches, the wind picks up, rain drops start to fall and all of a sudden you're planning like crazy, fully powered with the 5.0m² sail you took to fool around. That's bound to be fun. Except... you didn't bring a harness, the sail is rigged for light wind and you didn't even had time to warm up.

Planning becomes the only option - the sail is a lot lighter when you're not dragging over the water. Still your muscles cry in pain, your hands clenched like hooks fighting to keep the boom.

In front some small shops cries for some hip movement and you can't resit. Timing it correctly you take off, flying over the water, closing your body, feeling the balance. One moment that last hours.

Eventually it has to end. Hands no longer work. Adrenaline surpasses muscle pain only until a limit. The later then returns with a vengeance.

The cloud that brought this episode is also departing. At the west the sun rays of the end of the afternoon shine in between red clouds, in the east a bright complete rainbow shines over a dark background of gray clouds. You open your mouth and a shout of pure joys is release into the air.

What a great way to end the day. What a wonderful surprise.

Hot summer days at Egmond aan Zee

We went a bit to the North of Holand, to Egmond aan Zee, to relax and enjoy the very hot summer days that have been happening here.

The beach was crowded. It reminded me of those very hot days that sometime happen in the south of Portugal, when even the ocean looks lazy and flat.

If you follow the link in the image above and then press the small zoom in button you can have a better view of the beach. I didn't upload the full definition image, but the one at PicassaWeb is still 4096 pixels wide. The full one is 17766 pixels wide... I don't think I'm going to upload that very soon...