Lazy Weekend

Got a 5 mile paddle in on Saturday. Moderate North winds kept the paddle interesting (stop paddling for a minute and you just got blown 10' downwind/offshore). My left shoulder is wincing a bit - I was using the Shaka Pu'u - I need to get more shoulder workouts during the week (or drop down to the Methane for longer distance paddling).

Yesterday, I jumped on Roger's boat with Stan Wiles (the current Base XO). Good times had by all as evidenced by Stan-O's ear to ear grin. The wind at the first half of the trip was pretty good - just a hair under 10, but we were routinely getting boat speeds upward of 8. The second half saw a drop in wind speed and we were happy to get 5 out of what was blowing.

Lastly, I am a huge fan of anything with an ama (outrigger), primarily because of the physics and the greatly increased stability. Someone has this canoe parked at the Long Beach Yacht Club - interesting setup.

Stingray Mating Season

Make sure you shuffle your feet if you happen to be wading here on the Gulf Coast.

The latest plague beset upon us (after Hurricanes, Record Setting Oil Spills, hordes of jellyfish) is the congregation of the stingray.

Actually, SUPing has offered a ton of opportunity to observe the mating habits of this fish. They dig holes in the sand (I am assuming it is the male) and do their procreating. It is also interesting how they are converging on the lowest tide I have seen down here - I'm not sure of a correlation, but it is interesting.

Swim Call

An awesome lazy Sunday!

I went for a short 5 miler on the Glide - thought I was being smart by paddling upwind first (average 4.2 mph for the first 2.5 miles), but the wind shifted on me and even picked up (average 3.8 mph for the back half). Oh well - at minimum it was good exercise.

I got back and took the kids to the pool via bike ride. Marlon got a new bike on Saturday so it was a good trip to break it in.

Brought the GoPro cam and came away with some gems!

Tide pools

The tide was WAY out yesterday - lots of pools that we don't usually see.

As always - the kiddoroosters had fun. The tide pools were intertwined with a bunch of sand islands and it quickly became an expedition to paddle around them.

Another SUP Weekend

We did the same old routine again this weekend -

SUP, SUP-Sailed, Play in the sand, Hang out at the bookstore.

Eat out at Shaggy's, SUP, SUP-Sailed, Played in the sand, cleaned up.

Sounds routine, but we still had tons of fun.

The normal weather pattern has re-established itself. Calm in the morning with building SE winds 5-10 from about 1300 to 1900. Yup - same old, same old.

Something happened yesterday that made me laugh at life -
We were hanging out when a man jogging on the beach with two big dogs (one of the dogs had a missing leg) stopped to take a look at what we were doing. La ended up talking to him a bit and by the end of the conversation, we were accused of "being too sophisticated for being around here..." because we windsurf. We laughed about that the whole way home.

And yeah - that's my hot wife on the board!!!

Sunburnt

We spent the majority of yesterday at the beach (no surprise huh).

Tandem paddling, tandem windsurfing (in nearly zero wind - 5-8 mph on the Gulfport Harbor anemometer) and digging holes at the beach.

I nailed every jibe and made my tacks with the kids on board. I don't remember being able to do that when I was windsurfing back in Kailua. The Starboard Blend - a magic board!