Two more Wednesday night races in May

After the first very cold May 8th race, I managed to get out for two more Wednesday night races in May.

May 22nd was cold and surprisingly windy. The RSX sailors were planing upwind and I had a blast planing back and forth in between heats. I hit 35.3 km/h zipping back and forth between heats on the Kona in the northeast wind.

Windy races with some nice planing back and forth between heats

I even had a few races where I did two laps - normally the checkered flag goes up just as I round the downwind mark for the first time.

My 3rd race of the season on May 29th was a very light wind race, with only a dozen of us out. There were actually only two Kona windsurfers. So on one race I wound up coming in dead last. I think the results will look better for me later in the season.

3 light wind races near shore

My calendar for June won't allow for many races, but fun to have 3 in the books so far. It is always nice to get out into Lake Ontario and admire our wonderful city from the water. I look forward to future races, I'm going to try using a waist harness for a few.

First Kona race of 2019

I was pretty excited when my office moved up from the 15th floor and I now have a view over Lake Ontario and I can see the Toronto Windsurfing Club out the window.

This was the first TWC Wednesday race of the year and the weather looked good with a steady but 9c cool east wind.

View over TWC from my office window.

I got to the club by 5:15 and was rigged and ready and out on the water for the 6pm start. Amazingly around 30 windsurfers were out in the cold; in mid summer we average around 50.

The GPS trail. 3 races, 4 upwind legs to the mark (upper right corner)
Runs back and forth to the south were just killing time between heats.

In the first two races the checkered flag went up just as I passed the downwind mark so I only did one lap on each one. I'm getting kind of used to that.

Somehow in the third race, I was doing much better and wound up at the upwind mark both times with Kona expert racer Bob! So I did actually do both laps like all raceboard and good Kona racers do.

Overall 12 km over 1.5 hours. Top speed 18 km/h and max heart rate 103bpm. Glad I did have my Ripcurl dawnpatrol 4/3 wetsuit. Wished I'd actually brought gloves or a hat. With the air at 9c and the water at 4c the combined 13c would be below my normal combined minimum of 18c for shortboarding, but I didn't fall in at all!

Sad to see a dead Kona. (TWC school boards get pretty beat up.)

Looking forward to getting in a good number of races this year. Will be keeping track of my total days on the water this year!