Maui board test : Day 2

Ah! This is just what I needed! Ripped on a 5.3 all day and back in the groove. Everyone was on fire and there were plenty of smiles all around. Dave Combe gets the "waterman" award for his surfing, kiteboarding, kitemaring and capping the day of with sailing in the afternoon. Dave also gets the award for the most breakdowns in one day in multiple sports. Lets hope he sucked all the bad karma out of the team and nothing bad happens on day 3. (and I need to get a shot of his new harness. Who would have thought a harness would have bling? Then again, it IS a kite harness. Go figure.)

Chris and I did a sesh together just blasting back and forth on the inside in the afternoon. Even though everyone is on their own gear, its amazing how social sailing is and when you're out with a good friend tearing it up, there's nothing better. Chris and I were having an absolute blast weaving in and out and charging hard.

Back on the beach, Barry Spanier stopped by for a while. He's like a walking history of windsurfing and is always fun to talk to. Aaron was under a lot of pressure rigging a new Maui Sails wavesail right in front of Barry who was looking on with interest. Matt Pritchard passed through on his way out to get some Uppers action. I've never seen him not smiling. He's truely stoked on life and sailing. Speaking of smiles, I think there wasn't one sailor who I saw on the water that wasn't smiling. (cue the Fantasy Island music - "Smiles everyone, smiles!")

Uppers was really washed out and confused, but still you could get some decent waves. The backside hits were really sweet and I spent some time on the wavetwin 99 in Uppers in the early afternoon. Dude, every time I'm in waves on that board I like it more and more. Even though I was overpowered on a 5.3, you'd think that 99 liters would be a handful, but no. This board is some sort of sweet! It devours short steep waves and while most boards wouldn't be able to turn quick enough to nail the super fast changes of the cornering windswell at Uppers, the 99 just kills it. While this board isn't in the test, its spending a lot of time on the water with the testers and even the smaller/lighter testers like Jenny are all smiles and amazed with it. Of course Josh loves it for its float, and who can blame him. It sucks to have to sail with a snorkel on all the time. (wink)

Oh yeah - and my knee. My freakin knee. Gonna have to work on it this morning to stem off the impending infection. After what happened to a Josh last year, its on the top of everyone's mind and my recently arrived nurse can't wait to take care of it (read : cause me pain).

Aloha!