Ahhhhhh, the last day of winter 2008 brought balmy 60 degree weather and the promise of strong southerlies. Ken Kellar and I choose Assateague as the venue. The waves where the best I’ve ever seen there…. Over-head to logo high, with an occasional bigger set.
Unfortunately, those warm winds conspired w/the colder ocean temps to produce that hated no wind layer just above the surface. De-coupling. We started with 5.0 sails, and had a pretty fun session. But it was also a short session because as the late morning gave way to an increasingly sunny and warm afternoon, the wind began to get fluky. Oh, and the waves began to get bigger, and they were more often than not closing out. Pretty intense stuff. I myself yesterday rode maybe the biggest cleanest wave of my life. I wanna say it was about 10-12 foot, but you know how that goes. And much to my chagrin, no one saw it to back my story up!
So unusual to not have to deal with an 8 knot side shore current. Its like, I carry my stuff down into thigh high water, and just naturally brace myself for the pulling/sucking of the current. It was so refreshing to have ZERO current. That being said, the heavy shore break more than made up for the lack of current. If it isn’t one thing, its another right? So different than Maui (except for Hookipa) where you can just step on your board and sail away. I tell you, Hawaii has nothing on the east coast, at least in terms of trying to GET OUT CLEAN.
After lunch we re-rigged 5.8. Don’t think I even made it out past the break with the 5.8, but I still had a blast. No dues to speak of really, and I learned a lot.
It was great to have James Roe and Dave Coyle there. Ken and I have sailed Assateague maybe a dozen times, and its always been just the two of us, so it was great to have new faces there to experience the ocean with us.
From left to right: Dave Coyle, Ken Kellar, George Markopoulos
Ken and I are both continuing to go thru and edit our go-pro on the water video footage. I hope to have that posted here later tonight so check back. For now, I have a couple of still shots from the go-pro that show me going over some pretty big white water, and also show Ken about to get worked by a big one.
I’m eyeing a trip to Hatteras this weekend. I live2sail, and cant wait to get back out there.
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