Even More Stuff!

Gosh, the weather is horrible. But the bonus is that I found some more PSC footage. Check it out:

There are bunch of other windsurfing and surfing clips at this link. This one caught my eye for some reason:

More Stuff

My last couple of posts were pretty me-centric. Have you ever done a me-gybe? It's a cool move. Do a carve gybe in the straps and when you flip the sail let go with both hands, point at yourself and shout "ME ME ME!!!".

Anyway, I wasn't the only person at Punta San Carlos. There are so many characters down there, both rough camping and glamping (glamorous camping) at solosports. But they all have one thing in common, a love for the ocean, waves and water sports.

My travelling bud on the trip was Jason. I've previously blogged about Jason and his stories of disaster. Suprisingly, this trip was incident free.

He just sent me some pics so I'm going to post a few. Jason can actually do real surfing, where you paddle with your arms and that...

Glassy wave

And racing down from the point

Which reminds me! I was sailing back out down by the chili bowl when I saw Jason take his first point wave of the trip. He came at it from upwind and all I saw was a logo high set engulf him and push him in to the rocks. You really don't want to find yourself down there. The wind is cut-off by the cliffs, the waves are relentless, the rocks randomly poke out of the water and the kelp wraps itself round your legs. Broken kit guaranteed.

I kept checking on him as he hung out down there, thinking I should probably be doing something to assist. Then magically, 30 minutes later, up he popped, completely unscathed. One more pic:

Setting up for the chili bowl hit

I think I'm all out of material now. Texas wave sailing season is approaching. Fingers crossed for some weekend cold fronts.

SUP and Stuff

Joey from solosports loaded a short video from last weekend onto youtube. Check out his aerial on the point. It is sick.

As well as great wind and waves, we had glassy surf every morning. Historically I have saved my energy for windsurfing but this time I decided to try to learn to SUP. Talk about perfect conditions!

Morning surf check

The first day I went straight out to the Bombora, which was a mistake. The take off is steep and I got worked, broke the leash, lost the board and had to swim in. It's a long swim! Thanks to Marty for rescuing my board. After that I stuck to the beach break and within a couple of sessions was getting long rides on super clean waves. So much fun!!

They found this litle critter in the campo. Glad it wasn't in my tent!

You can't see his stinger. But it was HUGE!

SOUTH SWELL ALERT!

That was the e-mail subject that got everything moving. 8ft waves at 20 seconds were forecast to hit Punta San Carlos Labor Day weekend.

A week later I found myself getting into this:

So what does 8ft and 20 seconds look like? Like this (all action shots courtesy of Clark Merritt):

After getting scared on the outer point the wave wraps round the point and cleans up. Perfect for a couple of nice turns, or lip smacks if you have the balls.

Next time I'm gonna go deeper.

And then you race down to the chili bowl for one or two last cracks. I spent a lot of time down there swimming...

When you've had enough of that. You head back upwind to the beach break where the more forgiving wave lets you push it a bit harder.

And the reward for all that fun? A round of ice cold Baja Fogs.

Fog you! You foggers!