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With a Bounce in His Step and an Eye Like a Hawk
by Sam Moses, Senior Editor
Saturday was the lightest day so far, but we're still riding a swell of good fortune because Saturdays are the best days to be light. It's the transition day for guest testers: out with the old on morning flights, in with the new on afternoon flights. So when the wind filled in at 3:30 it was perfect timing, and for two hours the new guys blew off their jet lag by blasting back and forth with 6.0 and 7.0 sails on calm water. If they had slowed down long enough to look up, they would have seen stunning rays from the low-hanging sun breaking through the clouds over the verdant mountains to the west. A hazy broad beam spouted downward on the steep-walled Iao Valley, creating a Magic Kingdom kind of scene.
There can be real advantages to blowing your jibes and going down in the water. It gives you an opportunity to stop and appreciate the scenery.
It was also a great day because the Red Sox won a big one, and my mom was jumping up and down cheering, on her hospital bed.
On Sunday, the waves rolled in. It was gentle on the inside (gentle enough for Eric Beale to get out there with his skinny speed gun), but over the reef there were some four- and five-foot breakers. The new group got a great initiation. The wind was a little bit up and down, but by late afternoon it was solid 5.0/5.5, and in the day's final session there was more whooping and hooting on the water than I've heard yet. Tony Barbieri was looping like he was bucking for a promotion from Sargeant Loop to Lieutenant Loop.
And Boston won by 23-7. They had to turn up Mom's oxygen to keep up with her enthusiasm.
It was a big weekend behind the scenes, too. We got eight new boards-the Bics and Tigas, everything from a slick 251 Wave to a tidy 152-liter-and Randy French came by to fit his four boards with the correct fins. We'd been sailing them but not rating them, because they hadn't had the fins of choice. I scheduled an interview with Randy, parts of which will appear in a future Postcard from the Water's Edge. He's been shaping boards for many years with as much success as anyone in the business, and his new line incorporates everything he knows about how to give sailors what he thinks they want nowadays.
That's the trick to board and sail design today. All the stuff is good, and most of it probably does what it was intended to do. The differences in performance lie mostly in the designers trying to guess who you are.
The biggest event of the weekend was the arrival of Andy Gurtner, our equipment manager. We missed him, the first week. Andy and his wife Hedy (who will be coming later, as a pro tester) own Swiss Swell, a mostly rental shop tucked against the side of the big Windance building in Hood River. Andy brings a vast amount of professional experience, including participation in the huge and very technical annual board and sail test done by the German magazine, Surf.
He grew up in the same Swiss town, and at the same time, as Peter Thommen, the famous F2 designer who is interviewed in the current issue of American Windsurfer. Andy came out of the womb skiing, and was literally a bouncing baby boy; he was both a trampolinist and professional freestyle skier before he moved onto the water. Working with the German windsurfing industry, he helped teach European instructors how to instruct. Later, he coached and trained World Cup pros, including Robby Seeger and the current women's world champion, Karin Jaggi. He takes nationalistic pride in the fact that Swiss sailors do so well. "It's incredible," he says, "because Switzerland has no ocean."
But Andy's greatest contribution to the American Windsurfer test might turn out to be his Swiss approach to organization. Our first week was not bad, but there were minor teething problems as we searched for system details. The needs have been identified, and the list handed over to Andy, who added some more things with his own sharp observations after just one day. Examining the rigs on the grass, he noticed one Neil Pryde sail that
didn't appear right, even though it was rigged to the specs stamped on its foot. He tore it apart and found it had been rigged with a gap in the two-piece mast. Oops. Quite an eye, Andy.
I have no doubt he'll soon have this place running like a Swiss watch. In the immortal words of Teddy Roosevelt, slightly twisted, Andy speaks softly and carries a big clipboard.
In the next Postcard, we'll finally get to Bill Hansen of Windwing.
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