Beside The Seaside

In the concluding episode on his guide to ocean windsurfing, Peter Hart tweaks your techniques and teaches us how to deal with this new, expansive, undulating environment.

- Peter Hart

After last month’s introduction to the joys of the ocean, I wager many are seething with the black and white inference that inland sailing is easy and sea sailing is hard. Let me quash such thoughts and state that from a technique point of view, inland can be way trickier. The water state in a big reservoir in a force 6 is hideous. Because of the short fetch, the waves are as close as they are steep. Gybing, or even just planing, across the deeply corrugated surface is a professional skill. And let’s not even mention the wind. Many sailing Olympians have emerged from inland waters. Born into flicky, puffy, swingy, holey, gusty breezes, they develop acute wind awareness to the point where they can spot, even smell, the strength and direction of gusts on the water, trim the boat/board and make smart tactical decisions before they arrive – skills that rest dormant in open ocean wind surfers as they lean against a solid wall of wind, settle in the harness and nod off.

However the malaise inland waters can foster is a certain ‘Groundhog-dayness.’ The water stays in one spot. In the various wind directions you know exactly what you’re going to get and can play out the same old routine – tack by the dam, gybe by the clubhouse etc.

What the sea offers, by contrast, is infinite variance. Wind with tide, wind against tide, wind blowing across, on or off the shore, the amount of water covering the seabed, these are all constantly shifting variables that influence the sea-state by the second. That flat patch behind the sandbar where you rolled out a sweet planing gybe, the next time round is a chop horror show as the tide piles in over it.