Saturday, September 30, 2006

Crissy field redux

I finally got the nerve and time to try to ride Crissy again. This time however, I had a support team: Chloe on shore with binoculars and the Coast Guard on speed dial. Things got off to a rocky start, as I found a knot in one of my center lines, and I realised that I had forgotton my helmet. After just hearing a story about a guy getting whacked by his board and spending two days in the hospital, I wasn't going to take any chances. Chloe very nicely drove back up to our apartment to grab the helmet, and I spent the next twenty minutes chewing on the knot to try to get it out: lines breaking in the middle of the bay were the last thing that I needed! After Chloe got back, I headed out.

The wind had filled in to the beach today, which made getting up a lot easier, and I was even making a tiny bit of upwind progress, when I saw that the locals seemed to be heading back in. The combination of the 1.7 knot flood tide and weak winds was making upwind progress almost impossible. Because of this, I started heading back in as well, and had to stop for a Blue and Gold ferry, a smaller tourist boat and a few other watercraft. I ended up at the very end of the Crissy field beach, but not on the rocks! Heres a GPS trace of my brief outing.

All in all it went well, and I feel much more confident about riding Crissy. Unfortunately, it looks like the season is over!

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