Finished moving house today and headed to the lake at about 2pm ... one weather site was forecasting 8m/s from 12 and another 6 from 3. Turned out the latter was correct.
Waited around will about 2:45pm and the wind was starting to pick up. I launched ol' Relentless and waited on the beach while Grandad and the guy in the helmet tested the waters. Eventually decided to give it a shot and hit the lake myself about 10 minutes later.
Underpowered at first, but as I tacked out away from shore and the LEI users :D the wind picked up and then we had a good long run of I'd guess 2 hours ... just a tad underpowered for most of the time but very comfortable conditions, especially compared to yesterday. Good time cruising around, boosting "big" jumps and playing silly buggers. Not really enough wind to ride toeside (why do I need so much wind for that?!?) and I had to keep an eye on the kite.
I did my first 720! Left the board behind though which was a problem ... went floating downwind spinning around with my bum tea-bagging. That was when I bowtied the kite and spent a few minutes getting it back in the air again - much less than the guy with the F-One trying to relaunch :D had a long body drag upwind to get the board though ... have to say though, that without my experience with foils on land, I can imagine how tough it'd be for someone with only LEI experience to cope ...
Wind slowly died off around 5pm by my guestimates, and as the LEIs started dropping like flies I headed to the shore. left it a bit long and had to walk up the beach ... I'd nearly forgotten how to do that :D Reverse landed the Silberpfeil, and waited for a bit. Wind picked up a bit so I had another few runs out and back, mowing the lawn; getting annoyed at Lil Grom who has NO FUCKING CLUE about the water rules let alone basic politeness like RAISING YOUR KITE WHEN YOU'RE PASSING UPWIND and STOP WALKING OVER MY LINES you little maggot.
Packed up just on sunset. Satisfying day!
What I learned today ...
• A good springy carve sets up the best jumps!
• It is possible, like the archetypal cartoon, to jump straight up so fast that you just leave the board behind, floating on the water.
• 270 degrees of rotation does not a back roll make :( over-cooked an edge-load and as I took off, realized I was going to spin to tried to turn it into a 360 ... didn't work :D
• If you gotta bail, either ditch the board completely or lift your feet and land on your ass ... trying to get your feet under you when there's no hope of riding it out is bad for the ankles.
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