Yo-Yo Wind and Yo-Yo people

Perhaps Maui's wind read my last blog about my predicted strong winds for this week's upcoming US Nationals. Seems like the wind has been teasing and toying around, keeping us all guessing what it's going to do. I arrived at the beach Friday to what looked like strong 4.5 winds, rigged the 4.5 and started to head out, but the wind had cranked up another 10 knots. Sand was blowing so hard small dogs were tumbling down the beach yelping for help. I figured I'd wait on the beach a bit and wait. Half an hour later, I would have needed a 5.3. But, the wind teased and hinted at re-building and suckered me out, only to drop down again and leave me to slog thigh-deep in water back to the launch. After waiting around for another hour or so, I decided to show the wind who was boss and rig my 5.3, figuring that would surely bring the wind back to 4.5 levels. But no, the 5.3 actually turned out to be about right and I caught some fun little waves at Uppers - nearly had it to myself too.

Yesterday, I opted to stay away from the beach but I hear it was a bit up and down again.

Today started off with a pretty mellow 4.5 but continued to build. By early afternoon, a lot of guys were going down to their 4.0s. I held on to the 4.5 to take advantage of some occasional down the line sets, about waist high, that were rolling into Uppers occasionally. Kind of sloppy, but this time of year, we'll take any down the line action we can get.

Today was registration day for the US Nationals and the park was crowded. Kanaha is usually pretty crowded on weekends anyway with the local windsurfers out with their families, plus the local non-windsurfers out with their families BBQing, having picnics and birthday parties complete with those silly inflatable bouncy castles. Today took it up another notch as US mainland windsurfers arrived to register. The lawn was littered with board bags and sail bags and suitcases and rigged gear.

Which reminds me of one kooky episode today. Apparently not all windsurfers have been taught to never leave their rigged sails unattached to their boards (or tied to something). One kook today apparently thought it would be okay to take his rigged sail down to the beach and leave it unattended while he went back and got his board. Keep in mind the wind was blowing about 25 knots side-onshore. But our intrepid kook thought he would show is brilliance by throwing a bit of sand on the head of the sail to weight it down a bit. Too bad he still left the rest of the sail exposed to the wind and no sooner did he walk away, than a nice gust comes along and picks the sail up, extra sand and all, and carries it end over end into some trees 10 or 20 yards away. Fortunately, nobody was in the way and no one got hurt. Fortunately, he had a couple of nice new holes in his sail to perhaps reinforce the lesson a little stronger. NEVER LEAVE A RIGGED SAIL UNATTACHED AND UNATTENDED! IT'S LIGHTWEIGHT. IT'S GOT A LOT OF SURFACE AREA. IT'S A SAIL. IT'S DESIGNED TO CATCH THE WIND!!! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK IT'S GOING TO DO!!!! Sometimes it's more dangerous just hanging out on the beach than charging around in the wind and waves. We're all lucky it didn't bonk some poor local's kid. A lot of the locals already don't like windsurfers for taking up so much of Kanaha. Something like that would have the potential for the local parks department and harbor master (who hates windsurfers) to shut down our access. (Makani shakes his head and takes a deep breath). Sorry, I'll step down off my soap box now.

Anyway, wind continued to build, the parking lot continued to get fuller, people got more creative with their parking, "Hey, I've got a Hummer, I can just drive up on the sidewalk and grass and park wherever the hell I want to" kind of attitudes started to prevail. Can't help but think these kind of events today paint a very unflattering picture of windsurfers. Oops, how'd I get on that soap box again?

As, I've mentioned, US Nationals start tomorrow. Slalom is planned for tomorrow and Tuesday. Wednesday will be the long-distance race up to Hookipa (and back I think). Thursday starts the course racing. The forecast is for the winds to drop down to moderate levels, which of course means that it will either continue to nuke or drop down to very light conditions. I'm hoping to get down to get some video and photos this week so stay tuned. Ok, I'm outta hear before that damn soap box sneaks up on me again.