First Skate session of 2014

With the wind reports looking good I headed out in the rain and 14c weather to see if I could score my first "highwind" session of the year.

Pretty good looking wind forecast

My wind meter showed only 11-15 knots but I rigged up anyway. I was sure that there would be some gusts in the NW flow.

The Skate 108 looked small since I haven't sailed it yet this year and the 6.2 Duke rigged up ‎nicely. When I jumped on I was surprised that even slogging I was more comfortable than on the Ray 122 (which with a 9.0 sinks as much as the Skate).

My session log - the temperature was actually 14c.

I started catching gusts and was amazingly comfortable. Took some gopro footage of the first and last part of the session. Lots of nice jibes and decent speed. Heli tacks were pretty reliable except when I had the camera running. Here's the footage...

My first day of 2014 on the Skate 108 from Canadian Guy on Vimeo.

I had some fun doing upwind 360s in one of the lulls. That North Duke 6.2 is a very nice sail!

My gps trail of the upwind 360 circles is interesting - they just look like little spikes

A war canoe marked "Milan Venice 2013" went by - something I haven't seen before. (I've seen a bear swimming up here once years ago - that was pretty cool.) Here's an image of that canoe - luckily they were heading east so the NW wind I was enjoying was a tailwind for them...

An older photo of the war canoe that I windsurfed past

After 2 hours the weather started clearing and after a few more jibes right by the old coal docks I was ‎done. I need more days on my smaller gear for sure.

You can still see the old Key Harbour coal dock crib from the satellite image.