Leo Goes Off!

Leo Goes Off!
August 24th, 2011
by Spennie & Dave Freeman; and a special ‘Thank you!’ to Mitch K., photos.

Summer finally comes to SoCal at the end of August, and with it the wind at Leo Carrillo. Wednesday the 24th I tell the boss I have a dentist appointment so I can leave work at one, but I go home and watch iWindsurf. Oh, like you’ve never done that! 17, 17.5, 18 and I’m in the van rolling. By the time I arrive it’s 22, and I get a really good parking spot, amazing! Pull out the 5.6 Hucker and walk it down to the sand, go back up & get my 84 liter board & a weed fin. I start to sleeve the mast when some guy comes down the stairs and says “It’s 26, 20 to 34!!” Great jumpin’ catfish, 26??!! Not on a 5.6 Hucker! I roll it up and go back up the stairs, come down with a 4.8 Hucker, and rig that.

You know how big I am, right? 6’4″ and 205 lbs.. On a 4.8. Look up the chart on iWindsurf & see. Meanwhile my sailing buddy Dave Freeman is out on a 5.2, and he weighs 40 pounds less than me. Don’t know how he does it, it’s really a testament to the range of Sailworks Revos.
Leo has a blast zone just offshore about 50 yards, and that’s probably where they got the 34 reading, ‘cos it was blasting! I was lit, really lit, and found myself wondering if it had picked up even more and if I was going to get beat up out there. Luckily it was a little tamer on the outside, and for a while I was having a blast, but soon after it backed off slowly, and got to the point where I was schlogging 90% of the time, so I came in. No broken gear, no broken body parts, overall a pretty good day!

– Spennie

As Spencer was having his rigging fiesta on the beach, I was out in the best of the wind. The graph shows 26 average, gusting to 34 and lulls at about 20 and the reality was that it was all three depending on where you were on the water. 26 average was the wind speed right off the beach and before the inside buoy, 34 was the blast zone wind along the buoy line and about 50 yards outside and it was a really pleasant 20 on the outside with pretty small swell. So, how did I handle it on the 5.2 Revo? Blast off the beach nicely powered, hold on through the blast zone, play in the outside swell, hold on, again, through the blast zone and rip turns right off the beach in the smooth water. Helping me out was the fact I was on a sub-75liter bump board with a really sweet new Choco “WeedSpeed” 24cm weed fin. This is my first adventure into weed fins and this is a performance fin and weed fin in one. Over 4 days this week I did not pick up one blade of grass! I am not a wave guy so the fact that the swell was down and the wind was up made this the best sailing day at Leo that I have ever had… and I did not have to drop once to clean my fin!

– Dave Freeman