Looking back 2019-2023

I've been looking forward to doing a deep dive into the data my Garmin watches collect about my windsurf (and other) sessions. I do try and record almost every watersports activity, hiking, running and walking too.

I'm not surprised about the first graph. In 2019 and 2020 I did over 1,100 km of windsurfing/windfoiling. I started wingfoiling in 2021 and started specifically recording which of the 3 sports I was doing. (I didn't separate windsurfing and windfoiling sessions back in 2019 and 2020.) I was pretty sure that wingfoiling was quickly becoming my main watersport from 2021 - 2023 and the graph confirms that trend. 

5 years of cumulative distance on the water
Averaging 1,000 km / year

I was a bit surprised that in my 3 years of retirement (2021-2023), my cumulative distance travelled on the water has declined annually. 

I initially thought that with wingfoiling being around 1/2 the speed of windsurfing - my time on the water would have at least been the same. But this summer I noticed that my foiling sessions get around the same total kilometers travelled per hour, since I am up on the foil through most jibes - whereas I slow down in most of my windsurfing jibes and slog a lot more waiting for wind. Looking at the data by hours, shows the least time on the water in 2022 at 64 hours and max 2019 with 92 hours.

Teaching more windsurfing lessons might be a small part of the decline. But looking at these charts makes me determined to get out on the water more often and even longer each session.

Hours on the water each year

Breaking the data into months, something else becomes clear: travel was a big deal. My biggest month for kilometers sailed in the last 5 years was in April 2022 - over 300 km which was due to a 2 week Hatteras trip.

April 2022 (Hatteras 2 weeks) was my biggest month!

While windsurfing is by far the most kilometers of all my sports, walking, other, cycling, hiking and running add up to a similar amount. Interestingly hiking has been steadily increasing, running is declining. Maybe not too surprising as I aged from 53 to 58 in this period - which means I'm basically 10% older than I was at the beginning!

I'm hoping Garmin or developers come up with some apps that let me track my sessions a bit better - I still have to manually categorize the sessions at the end of the year.

Overall the number of blog entries each year is interesting to see. It really correlates best with number of days on the water. My pre-retirement year 2020 had a lot of sessions due to covid lockdowns. 2021 had the most entries - retirement freedom plus covid lockdowns. 2022 was surprisingly low, but I'm realizing we travelled a fair bit non-windsurf related that year and sold our house! The one big windsurfing trip to Hatteras in April 2022 counts for almost 1/4 of the blog entries in 2022! 

Blog entries by year....

With two wind sport trips on the horizon already this spring I'm hoping to have a record 2024 on the water!