C-Street, Ventura
Saturday, April 17th, 2004
Saturday afternoon, been watching the iWindsurf website all day waiting for the clearing winds to start. Planning on C-Street because of the Long Beach Grand Prix, they're expecting 200,000 spectators, sounds like bad news traffic-wise.
It finally gets up to 16 around 1:15, Casey calls, time to go! Remarkably, I get on the freeway just as Casey reaches my on-ramp, I get on 3 cars ahead of him, nice coincidence. 35 minutes later, we're there, and just as we pull in, someone pulls out of the #1 parking spot, right next to the GRASS rigging area, cool! It's getting to be around 2:00 now, wind is up to 20, air about 65 (How did we live before iWindsurf?), & we rig among the palms, 4.7 for Casey, 5.6 for me, and head out through the rocks. It's low tide, of course, but the rocks are small & smooth at C-Street, not so bad on the feet.
We're both slightly overpowered, but not enough to re-rig, and we head out into the biggest 3-dimensional playground you ever saw! The point there is exposed to the open ocean, and there's no kelp bed or anything to damp down the swells, so we're sailing out through waves coming in at 3 - 5 second intervals, about 2 - 4 feet high. WooHoo! Of course, this makes it a lot of fun if you crash on the inside and have to waterstart with waves pummeling you every 3 - 5 seconds.
Casey & I are Hauling Ass back & forth, jumping going out and waveriding coming in, having a blast. At one point I was trying waterstart and dicovered that not only was I wearing my wedding ring, but it had turned around so the big part was on the inside of my hand. Ouchie. Took it off while being worked by waves and got it safely ($1000.) in my harness pocket. Think I'm going to take it off for the season.
So we're havin' a ball, jammin' around the waves, when I come in kinda close to shore and a little further downwind than usual. Well, it turns out that the wind gets blocked if you do that there, AND it also happens to be in the impact zone, AND all the waves are creating a downwind current of probably 5+ mph. After 10 minutes of trying to waterstart going out, then 10 minutes of trying to waterstart going in, then a few minutes of swimming to shore, all while being beaten by waves every 3 - 5 seconds, I'm over 1/4 mile downwind, probably 1/3 mile. Luckily there's stairs up to the walkway right where I land, so I de-rig and walk back up to the car.
Casey's still out having fun, so we watch him till he comes in (for safety), then head home for some well-deserved R+R on the couch.
Maybe it'll blow again today...................
--Spennie