Ice on the shores - windsurfing March 11th!

3 days ago I brought my favourite windsurf board and 2 sails down from the Launch Pad via snowmobile. I hoped to maybe score a late March or early April windsurf session from our new Collingwood Snow Pad? After a day of skiing and a day of snowboarding I didn’t expect to get my earliest ever Ontario windsurfing on the third day back! And just 8 km from Blue Mountain...

Windsurfing March 11 in Collingwood Harbour

It was going to be warm and windy across Ontario. I spent Wednesday night loading up my windsurf gear and my 6/5/4 wetsuit and 1.5 mm gloves and booties. Lake Huron’s water temperature was showing as 0.4 c, with the ice mostly gone. I’ve never short board windsurfed in water that cold. I was worried that with the water being so frigid that my first try with those thin booties and gloves would leave me freezing. 

It was harder to find a safe spot to launch in the southwest wind and 1c water than I expected. First on the list to try was Sauble Beach. It would be slightly side/onshore there. I was a bit worried about using my fragile freestyle gear in the shorebreak. But I hadn’t figured on the massive shore ice piles that the waves were crashing into. One look at the warning sign made me decide to skip Sauble where the SW was definitely piling up the ice. Maybe there would be a launch near Southhampton?

Not looking promising

But I will come back to windsurf Sauble Beach someday!

Just a treacherous looking Launch at Sauble Beach

Not much better in Southhampton...

In Southhampton, the Saugeen river exits into Lake Huron. We could see the silty water and just a few chunks of ice as we came down into town. And then we saw the Saugeen. The ice floe must have just started and was amazing to watch. In the 30 minutes we were there, it went from huge chunks of ice some 1/2 the width of the river in size, eventually to a white slurry of ice moving slower but which was now visible making its way out into Lake Huron.

Massive ice floes on the Saugeen!

So it was over to Northwinds Beach in Craigleith and then Sunset Beach in Collingwood. Both were severely offshore and there was no way I was going out in gusty offshore 1c water. Off to Wasaga Beach where the wind would be side onshore.

Quite a road trip!
4 hours of driving to finally launch 7 km from the start point!

Wasaga Beach was more of the same. Huge shelf ice with ice chunks churning with the crashing waves. The same warning sign scared me away from there too.

Ok, I'll stay off it.

Nice view of Blue Mountain from Wasaga

So my last option was Collingwood harbour. Gusty and a small space but at least I had the terminal wharf to save me if there were any issues. I rigged at the Shipyards Amphitheatre - just 7 km / 9 minutes from our start location. Collingwood was once a major location for ship building, and they launched the ships sideways right near where I launched.

The wind was showing 20+ knots in the gusts and since I'd seen so much wind all day, I rigged the smaller 4.8 metre sail. I headed off and Jen got some nice video:

Video of my first ever shortboard launch from ice!

I got planing several times and the sun was nice and warm. It felt great to be back on a windsurf board for the first time in 4 months. My feet and hands weren't cold at all and I had very little 1c water get into my wetsuit the two times I fell in.

A nice guy named Duncan took some photos with his good camera and shared them with me. 

Thanks Duncan for the photos

This may well be my favourite!
Blue Mountain 8 km away to the west

Jen's photos from earlier in the session were great too!

Ready to go

Side launching

The front going through

Caught a gust

Semi - sinker

Heading back

An ice chunk floating through where I'd been windsurfing...

It was a longer session than Jen expected, and shorter than I wanted with the wind lull during the shift from SW to West. I only had to manoeuvre around two small chunks of ice. No tricks or even jibes, but overall a great first day of 2021 on the water. And my 10th wind-something session this year.

My GPS trail through Collingwood Harbour

Only a few planing runs, but enough to be fun!

I found the photo of the other time I launched a windsurfer from the ice. In 1999 I took a long board out in very light winds and floated around...

My other ice windsurf session in 1999

I do also remember one day in Hood River in the mid 1990's when I skied, windsurfed and then golfed all in one day. Maybe there will be time soon where I snowboard and windsurf on the same day?

Last wind wing ski this season?

Our month up north is coming to an end and the last day of predicted wind was dying off after breakfast. I got out to find the wind at 6-12 knots but lightening. I was able to get going in the gusts, as the snow was very firm. Just a few runs and I called it a nice end to great month long introduction to winging. 

Waiting for a gust

Post session pack up

Pretty much a due north wind!

At least there was a bit of wind for the first half...
5.3 km in 38 minutes - 27.8 km/h top speed

Next year I want to get the old school windsurf / ski contraption out and give windsurfing on snow another try. 

It is nice with the wing to already have scored 9 days on the "water" so far this year.

4 firsts in a day!

A whole bunch of new stuff this cold sunny windy day. After all the melted slush froze up, there were some nice flat icy parts in the river. We luckily brought skates with us so it was time to try wind skating. #1

What a blast! I spent an hour on the skates learning even more about how the wing works. With the skates it is easy to turn upwind and so I did my first tacks with the wing #2. I'm curious if I'll be able to tack the foil, but somehow it seems like it will be easier than jibing? Downwind was fun too, but you can actually get so much speed and apparent wind on the skates, that the wing pushes back and slows you down in the jibe. Is there a laydown jibe option? I wound up sometimes spinning the wing in the other direction in the jibe. Lots to learn there - you can tell from the video below.

My first wing skating adventure

A spaghetti of fun skating jibes and tacks

Moving well most of the time with the wing and skates

Max speed was 33.4 km/h - total 11.8 km in 53 very fun minutes.

After the wing skating, I took out my 2 metre Slingshot B2 (open cell) trainer kite. While I did get going eventually #3, I was amazed at how frustrating I found getting the kite flying (by myself - as it doesn't have an inflatable leading edge). A big part of that was that I was looking at the bar and somehow had red on the right - whereas the red part of the handle should be port / left. I won't forget that anytime soon. I had one fall on the ice trying to coax the kite into the air. I managed to eventually get good again at controlling the kite. I sat on the ground at the end and enjoyed flying the kite with my eyes closed. I even took my skates off with one hand while flying the kite with the other. But the wing easily wins the ease of use and fun contest.

Minimal kite action

Not a lot of controlled motion with the kite - just 3 good runs.

Later I headed out to the Launch Pad to try the wing again on skis. It was super windy, I'm guessing 25 knots. I hit a new speed record, 48.3 km/h #4, fully 20% faster than my Monday session. It was fun to be going up and over islands instead of having to jibe when approaching shore. No photos but a fun GPS track and speed chart. And 4 firsts!

Fun in the NW wind!
Fastest speed was in the SW corner just before I jibed

New record speed wind wing skiing! 48.3 km/h

Getting faster with the wing

After the warm weather and slush yesterday, this morning found strong NW winds and much colder temperatures. I headed right out the door, finished inflating the wing and set right off.

The gusty wind was strong enough to explore our entire little bay and I had a ball going back and forth. The cold hard snow and icy parts meant speeds were higher. My skill is improving even with the ice, and I only had one wipeout - still glad I wore my snowboarding body armour shorts.

Thanks Jen for the photos - and video

I had a great time building up speed and then going up the hills on my neighbour’s properties (shoreline road allowances?) and then back down.

Explored the whole bay!

40.3 km/h new record top wing speed

11 km in 50 minutes in our small bay and I pretty much sailed back up the hill to the door. Nice.

Slushy winging

My 6th wind wing skiing session was a mixed bag of adventure. The weather was very warm with a 5c SE wind gusting from 5-25 knots.

I set up the wing on the soft snow and had fun attaching my new GoPro Hero 8 to the boom. Easy mounting to a firm boom tube is nice advantage of the Echo wing over those wings with soft handles.

I got going right away but caught the tip of the wing and promptly wiped out on the wing. It continues to be quite robust when I fall on it, but I’m really working to stop doing that. Then I got going and am amazed by the quality of the GoPro video.

With the wet snow, it was a fair bit of work. I was getting warm and I went to change from my Skidoo suit to a lighter jacket. As I took my hand out of the safety leash and tried to reattach it with my thick glove on,  I managed to drop the leash and the wing took off. It tumbled quite a distance and I had to pursue it on the snowmobile. I caught up but the one downwind (NW) track clearly shows on my otherwise SW/NE GPS trails.

I want to figure out how to show my speed on the GoPro video and am a bit daunted by the file size and amount of editing I might need to do. So I’ll post this and hope to do a video later.

I got a few more runs but my top winging speed only once topped 30 km/h. Total 6 km in 45 minutes. More wind and faster, harder snow is predicted for tomorrow.

Until I compile an edit of my wind wing skiing wipeouts, here is a video of the skidoo ride back through the slush! 

Jumping for joy

I did my first jumps wind wing skiing! They were actually much smaller when I took the photo than in my mind. I hoped I’d jumped at least the 205cm length of my skis and realized I’d barely gone 100cm! But my sense of adventure was huge on this day.

Fun self portrait was a side effect of taking a photo of my tiny 1 metre jumps

Windy had predicted back on Saturday that it would be windy on Tuesday afternoon. I headed out to the Launch Pad after lunch. Indeed the wind picked up while I was out and the warm weather and sun meant my wife came out on snowshoes to take photos.

54 seconds of my session on Vimeo

I am excited that I am getting the chance to learn the wing on the snow. I think it will really help when I am using the wing to foil board in water. For example I have realized that holding back of the wing down during the jibe keeps it powered, better than just letting it float when heading downwind. It is also great to be on the snow and just stop wherever I want to make adjustments.

It is super fun to ride right over islands rather than turn up or downwind when there is a shoal in my way.

After a slow start, things picked up. Max speed 35.7 km/h was just .1 km/h faster than Sunday but considering the wet snow, I’m happy with that. I called it a session as a brief rain shower blew through after an hour and 12.5 km.

The sun disappearing...

We opened up the Launch Pad and had the hydro on for 1.5 hours. It heated up pretty well!

By the time I was packed up the sun was poking through again.