Sport Today

Just curious. What's the strongest wind any of you folks have sailed
in and what board / sail were you on?

Endo

60 MPH at Hatteras in April..I was overpowered on my 2.9. My rig let go
once and flew through the air..maybe 100 ft..only reason I attempted it
was due to shallow sailing..Crazy but wicked fun..Annie

..gusting to 60 knots... but I would say that what I was doing could'nt
really be called sailing...

..more 'crashing and burning' would be closer to the mark, I believe.

R.

Website: www.botanybay.cjb.net

: Just curious. What's the strongest wind any of you folks have sailed
: in and what board / sail were you on?
:
: Endo

45 gusting to 60 (hurricane touched down 20 miles away). Pretty darned
fun, we sailed for 5 hours!

um it was 40 knts gusting 45.. i was in a laser 2(sailboat not a board)
with another person. i was crew and was on trap... w had waves completly
swamping us it was insane.. anlomst wrecked the rig.... but good fun
none the less..... and for windsurfing only 30 knts.. but this was on a
5.0 i didn't not have very good luck with that only one good speed run
then i bailed and decided to head in

RE/

Hatteras at Emily's.   Sound had blown over toward's Frisco Woods so I had to
walk out about a quarter mile to get enough water.

Took a couple of runs on a 3.9 - not even *thinking* about trying to make a
jibe....until everything went white several times and a little voice said
"you're gonna get huuuuurrrrt....".

Walked back to the beach where my Dwyer said it was gusting into the low
sixties.
-----------------------
Pete Cresswell

Average 45 mph with higher gusts. Naish Nalu 3.7 on a 73L Fanatic Mosquito.
Buckroe Beach. Hurricane (fill in your favorite). About all I can say is that I
DID make it out at least once during each one I sailed. Sometimes once was all
I made because the shore break was so gnarly.

I once went through my whole quiver trying to catch a rapidly building wind.
On each fresh rig I got about one run out, followed by a survival trip back
in, followed by a down-rig. Ran out of sails before I ran out of wind. Soon
the big swell flattened right out, leaving nothing but a blurred air-water
interface about a meter thick. My meter stayed pegged at 65 mph from then
... late morning ... until supper time.

I was astounded to see some boats out in that until I found out why;
professional bass tournament, and that body of water has 60-pound stripers.
There's ***$$$*** in that sport, as in scores of thousands of bucks just for
the local winner that day. (They lost some boats that day, but everyone
survived.)

Presuming it would taper off in the evening, I left my small stuff rigged
for some evening sailing. WRONG! The meter dropped from its peg to <10 mph
inside of 10 minutes. Seems the jet stream hit the suface, stuck for 6-7
hours, then lifted off again even faster than it hit. That happens often
there, but not often at that wind speed. The airport a mile away clocked the
wind at 70-80+ mph with peak gust at 98.

Where? Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico.

Strongest wind sailed? All at near a mile high, so speeds can't  be compared
directly to sea level speeds. But I've never seen too much wind on the
Columbia for my 2.8, but have been blown off NM lakes on several occasions
on my tiniest gear, even on my board that handles stronger wind than any
other board I've ever sailed.

To reply directly, remove the SpamDam.

What a great week that was.  I was on my 4.1 holding on for dear life.  There
were about 10 of us nuts actually on the water that day.  The next day there
were at least 75.

Mike

P.S.  See you guys next weekend for the King of the Cape

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- - Well, there was one time at Fort Collins when the wind was
blowing straight from Greeley... [1]

- - Actually, I think the worst stench I've ever encountered
windsurfing has been the "walk of shame" at 3rd Ave during low
tide. Several hundred yards of walking through 6 inches of water
and two feet of "mud"[2]. No, there was someplace worse, but
I'm too traumatized to remember it clearly...[3]

- - Booker C. Bense

[1]- For the non-Colorado sailors, when the wind is right you
can smell the stock yards in Greeley from Fort Collins. Greeley
is at least 20 miles away.

[2]- The "mud" is just down the bay from a former landfill/dump
and just up the bay from the outlet of a "water" treatment
plant.

[3]- All I can remember is being totally overpowered and blown to
the other side of some small lake/estuary after a hour or so of
struggling. At this point the wind promptly died and left me
slogging through hundreds of yards of thigh deep muck. I remember
that it took a week of washing and sailing before I could stand
to bring my wetsuit in the house.

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Wouldn't have been much fun for other windsurfers if they would have been
within 100ft downwind of you ;-)

Steve.

--
 "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is
that it has never tried to contact us" (Bill Watterson)                    

Madison Wis, the local wind readout for 4 hrs was gusting to 63mph. A huge low
went thru Nov 98 and it was a hurricane on lake Superior (over 100mph) to mark
the same day the Edmond Fitzgareld went down in the same type storm
     My smallest sail, a 3.75 Nalu that had never been used in Madison was way
to big.     Still an awesome day though.
         Dave

RE/

I was sailing off a local spot called Kennedy Park one day.   Dunno what the
wind speed was, but I was overpowered on my 4.2, the rain was coming down
sideways, and the drops felt like somebody had a BB gun on full automatic aimed
at my face.

And wouldn't you know it?   There were actually some fishermen out there...and I
remember thinking  "fishermen must be nuts...*anybody* who goes out in this
stuff must be nuts.....oops!....uhhhhhhhh"
-----------------------
Pete Cresswell

Well, how about the strongest wind I didn't sail.  

It was at Seneca Lake in the finger lakes of upstate New York, years ago.  The
weather radio was reporting gusts up to 75 mph and I was ready to go.  I called
up my sailing buddy Dan, hoping he might be stupid enough to join me.  Well,
Dan (who has infinitely more common sense than yours truly) wasn't exactly
jumping at the opportunity.  I explained that we would probably never have the
chance to sail this kind of wind ever again.  In my mind, this was a once in a
lifetime proposition.  But, Dan wasn't budging and in my desperation, I was
getting increasingly obnoxious. Finally, his girlfriend got on the phone and
explained that a 60 foot oak tree had just been blown down in their yard and
that he wasn't going anywhere.  Exasperated, I gave up on Dan.
        Well shit, if he wasn't going to join me, I'd just go it alone.  I was not
missing a day like this.  So, I packed up and headed to the lake.  When I
pulled up to the park, the wind was absolutely howling. It was coming out of
the west straight onshore.  Just standing along the shoreline was a painful
proposition as I was being pelted by a barrage of wind blasted spray.  All I
was thinking was "oh man, this is gonna be good !"  Scared ?, no way, I was too
stupid to be scared.  
        So I threw on my wetsuit, got my Tiga Slalom 280 off the car (the wind clawed
at the board, nearly ripping it out of my hands several times). With some
difficulty, I rigged my smallest sail, a Simmer 4.6.  Given the now nearly
hurricane force wind, I decided I'd better outhaul my sail totally flat.  As I
reached for the clew of the sail, the wind picked up the sail and slammed it
into me, pinning me against the side of my rusty station wagon. There I was
flailing helplessly as the wind drove the sail against me w/ the power a
freight train. After what seemed like minutes of getting thrashed against the
side of my vehicle, I escaped w/ my life, if not my pride.  I quickly looked
around and realized there were no witnesses to the carnage.  Undeterred, I
checked my sail-no major damage- time to sail (this was BM -before monofilm).  
        All that was left was to drag my rig to the water and rip it up ! Tucking the
board under one arm and the sail under the other, I tried to walk upwind toward
the water.  I went nowhere, the wind was so strong I couldn't make any
progress.  Determined, I would lower my head and take a couple steps forward
just to be hit w/ a gust that would send me reeling back to where I started. I
struggled for nearly 10 minutes just to reach the water.  
        Suddenly, I had a brief moment of clarity (maybe sanity is the better word).
The wind induced fog, which had enshrouded my synapses, began to lift and I

going to sail ?  
        That was as close as I came to sailing that day.

Just thought somebody ought to expose the ugly side of wind ***ion.  8^)