Waiting...

With a injury in the foot (heeling well), lot's of stress and work at my daily job and the assignments from a couple of classes from university that I'm doing I can't really get to do any windsurfing. That doesn't stop me from looking at videos in the net..

Now one of the things I wanted to have a good look is the light wind freestyle tricks. Check it out:

As the wind here in Aveiro has come to be rather light all the time this are the kind of tricks I can try to learn. They look fun anyway.

I have to get back in the water...

Cracked bone

Wind has been missing at Aveiro. Since my last post we didn't have any properly good session. So you can probably understand how eager I was to get on the water on Sunday, when the wind as rather gusty with speeds of 18 and gusts of 25 knots.

The problem was that I was quite far from home as I was at a wedding on Saturday in the far away Bragança city. Partying until 4:00 in the morning, then going to sleep, wake up at 8:30 and 4 hours drive back home. Fast lunch and off to the water.

In the water I could feel that my body was reacting in a sluggish way. The toll of partying hard, no sleep and driving for several hours was claiming payment... and pay I did have to. When doing a tack (so nothing special) my left foot managed, some how, to hard hit the mast. I heard and felt a crunching noise but no real intense pain. So I just kept sailing.

After a while my little toe on the left foot was feeling strange. It was as if something was wrapped around it and was dragging in the water but whenever I look there was no weed of anything else attached to my foot. I decided that a quick check was needed so I grabbed the finger with my hands to feel about a bit. When what would you know: my little finger was the thing that was dragging in the water! The joint was out of place so the finger was moving about. When the water pushed it it would just go with the flow.

I don't know exactly why but I decided to give the finger a bit of a pull. There was a bit of pain but the finger stopped moving like a dead fish. Then I made my way back and with the help of some friends (thanks guys) I took all my gear and put it inside the car and drove home. At home I took a pill and put some ice around the finger (that by then it was starting to hurt) and went for sleep (I was really wasted).

Morning I finally toot the advice of friends and went to the hospital. Nothing bad was going on. A cracked bone and the ligaments probably suffered a bit but two or three weeks should have me back on the water (according to the doctor, I think one week at most will do).

So today while I was reading news on the windsurf blog-sphere I saw this video and the beginning made me smile. I too have a injury in my foot. Now I just have to learn how to windsurf like this guys:

Board is as good as new

It has been some busy buys days but I found the time to finish repairing my board and get back in the water. I was craving for some wind and today it was delivered: average of 20 to 24 knots with gust getting close to 30 knots. Good fun, as you can see in the photo, taken by Andreas (thanks man!) (the original photo is much better, but I cropped it quite a bit).

As you can see my board is now totally recovered. I fix the nose crunch and now I think it's even better. (I polished it a bit too).

Windguru is some what optimistic for tomorrow. Let's hope it will be windy.

Repairing the board nose

In my last post you can see some pictures and a description of what happened to my poor board. It was a sad moment indeed.

Being a let's give it a try kind of person I decided to repair the board by myself.

One of the hardest moments was when I used a electric grinder. The view of that fast spinning disk approaching my board was as if it was getting close to my own skin.

In the second image you can see my very focus and concerned face. I use the grinder to remove the outer skin from the board (the fiber/carbon glass) so that it can be replaced.

This is how it looks like after using abrading away the skin from the around the injured part. You can't see it in very well in the photo but the foam inside suffered compression and is a bit smashed.

To fill the hole left by removing the parts of the foam that were smashed or ruined I did a mixture of epoxy with fiber glass. This mixture has a really easy consistency to work with. One can just apply it in the hole and it will harden there without running away.

You can see that I used some pain tape to protect the board and keep the area "isolated". After the filling is hard then it was time to grind it down to a smooth surface.

When grinding it I found that my inexperienced had led me to create some holes. Fortunately abrading the filling brought thous holes to my attention and I could fill them (again with a mixture of epoxy and fiber glass).

After the second filling and grinding the board nose starts to look a lot better. Even if there is a lot that still need to be done:

1. use fiber glass to recreate the board skin at the nose;
2. grind it down to s smooth surface;
3. paint it (spray painting seams to be the best option)
4. polish it.

Until now I can't say that it was a hard task. It is a bit time consuming and the time waiting for things to settle or harden is quite long. The feeling that you're taking care of your own board makes it worthwhile.

When I get the fiber glass I'll continue... as I'm still waiting for it to arrive to the shop.

Crashed the nose of my board

It's been one year since I bough my RRD freestylewave board and yesterday I crashed it's nose. I have no idea how - I would guess either a jibe or a helli-tack that didn't go well. This are the results:

The mast hit the nose with enough energy to smash it. The impact made the nose bend and the lower side took the grunt of it. The result is quite visible. Now everything inside is probably smashed and dislocated...

I try to follow the advises and tips from The Board Lady regarding fixing nose crunch. Let see if I can fix it in a reliable way.

For now I still have my old slalom board to play (the one on the right). Let see if I can still ride it.

2 more hours

A after work session, starting at 18:20 and ending at sunset. Lucky lucky me. Around 20 knots, a bit gusty, some nice small waves at the Ria de Aveiro.

I have no photos or videos of yesterday but here is a nice video by Gollito at El Yaque:

At 01:01 there is a rather, how can I say it, back to the basics move.

Music interlude

N.O.H.A., Tu Cafe