Woke up bright and early - 11 hours worth of jetlag will do that to you! Went with Christina to Anthony's Coffee Shop for an omelette and a large cup of tea - very nice, and extremely filling. Other Cribby team members arrived after us, and the place filled up.
From there it was off to the Maui Surf Co, to pick up the already reserved gear, in our vans. My van buddy Jurgen went with Christina to save her having to drive. We stopped at Sprecks on the way back to Kahului so we all knew where it was as a rendezvous after getting the gear. The shop was pretty impressive, all our sets of gear were bundled up ready to go - new masts and lots of new booms too. The boards look pretty cool - all Goya twins and quads. The only snag was the footstraps on the racking in the van - they need a fair bit of pressure and wiggling to get them in!
Sprecks - a famous spot. But it's so small!! No idea why all the film and stills make it look so much bigger, but it's nothing. I had thought these beaches would be like Gwithian - really long, lots of space, but no. The wind was good, looked pretty brisk, but no waves to speak of, no swell at all. This is good for a low-key start to the week!
Rigged a 4.7 on the 84l board, Jurgen took 5.0 and the 94l. A bit of adjustment required but it was soon working well. Nice flatwater riding, and a few jumpy things. Cribby shortly had us doing various drills - acceleration, throwing the rig forward, and switching from an upwind direction to more downwind and getting that real jump of speed, then harness use and stance for increased speed and control. I spent a lot of time trying to ride in and out all the way without using my back hand at all, which was cool because it took the strain off my bad arm! I would have been much better off in CV if I'd done this more, because it would have really helped me in the overpowered conditions. Ah well. I certainly improved a lot doing this.
The day was pretty chilled all round though. At one point the JP team were out, doing various photo and video sessions, and Guy went over to do some interviews for the camera. Then Riccardo and Robbie Swift came over to say hi, which was pretty cool. Nice guys! Guy asked them to do some demo riding for us, which was pretty impressive - Riccardo landed a no-height forward loop right on the edge of the beach! Robbie Swift is a brilliant sailor - quiet guy, but very cool.
The last session involved everyone else buggering off upwind to the slightly wavy bit, but I'd already done that earlier, so I wasn't bothered. Graham and I hooned about just doing jumps and stuff, and I was using the smallest board, a 74l which was fantastically responsive.
On the subject of boards, the quads and twins are quite slidey, in a controlled sort of way. Normally if a board breaks away because the fin loses grip, it's quite hard to bring it back in line, but with these, it happens very smoothly and can easily be brought back in line. I guess this helps those cool rooster-tail things when making top turns :-) - excellent!
Dinner came from the Paia Fish Market, I had the seafood pasta, which was utterly enormous. This had the unfortunate result of causing me to pass out almost completely... so I went to bed. The only problem was that Greg the concierge guy decided that the damn van was not parked close enough to the wall, so I had to move it - this involved waking me up at 10.30 (bedtime was 8.30!), still slightly drunk, and very very very cranky...! Sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment