BATTLE OF THE SAILMAKER COOKS
by Sam Moses, Senior Editor
The wind just keeps coming. We're 26 for 28 now. The last two days have been the strongest yet. Wednesday I went from 5.0 to 4.7 to 4.5 to 4.3 to 4.2 and was still overpowered at the end of the day. Much of the time I was on the new AHD 257 Wave, a fast, slippery and tough board, already adored by three of our best sailors. Its stiletto shape looks so distinctive in '63 Sting Ray steel blue.
Thursday's wind picked up where Wednesday left off, but at 3:00pm it mellowed, beautifully. Small waves, no chop, big swells turning gusty outside, light cloud cover taking the glare off the wonderfully warm water. I got a good session on the RRD 266, a board I adore, with three wave sails: Neil Pryde Soul 5.4, Hot Sails Maui Fusion 5.2, then Gaastra Grind 5.4. Enjoyed both the Soul and Grind, and despite the Soul's being rigged on a $600 Fiberspar Reflex 6000 all-carbon mast, the Grind had a lighter feel. As another sailor said, "It's there but it's not there."
Don't worry, the test results will reveal which sails were ringers, as delivered to us with these Fiberspar high-end masts.
At about noon, when the howling was heavy, Robby Seeger came over to put on a show. The '99 winner of the Indy 500 of freestyle contests, King of the Lake on Italy's Lake Garda, he's accepted as the world's best pure freestyler. Club Paradise spectators gathered at the edge of the yard that touches the beach, and he did his high-speed stunts within 20 or 30 feet of them. Using an RRD TwinTip freestyle board and Simmer sail (his sponsors), he came screaming straight toward the beach and let fly, literally. Somehow (power, is how) he can turn an eight-inch swell into a ramp that sends his board eight feet (no exaggeration) into the air. Backwards. Landing, skidding to a stop, sailing away again. Or maybe a 360 in the air, landing about 10 feet from the beach and touching the nose of the board to the sand as he steps off, smiling with white teeth as powerful as his upper body. Somewhere there is a glossary and description of freestyle tricks, the comprehension of which could only make one realize what babes in the water the rest of us are. The difference between Robby Seeger and the average sailor is like the difference between a little old lady bicyclist and a Chinese acrobat.
This week we've been having the Battle of the Sailmaker Cooks. Bill Hansen of Windwing started it, by cooking stunning shrimp linguini for our crew and guest testers, in the Club Paradise kitchen. The Gaastra guys, Barry Spanier and Haymish Bayly, responded the next night with pizza from
Costco. Sometimes, in the face of nuclear winds, you just gotta recognize that discretion is the better part of valor. Still, the pizza vanished awfully fast.
And last night Monty Spindler of Loft brought out the big guns: bags and bags of groceries, wielded by his 92-pound (just a guess) Italian wife Robbie. With our Swiss equipment manager Andy Gurtner helping with the chopping and chattering in Italian with Robbie, the three of them steamed up the kitchen with wonderful Italian aromas for two hours before the pasta was served. Appetizers, salad, wine. there wasn't a restaurant within 2400 miles of Maui that served a better or more original Italian meal on Thursday night.
One of the many nice things about this test is that egos are almost totally absent. They don't fit in, on American Windsurfer's beach. The downplaying of strengths and self-effacing of skills is contagious. Actually, that may describe windsurfers in general. Well, many of them. And on Maui, the elements are so powerful, so humbling, that anyone who thinks he can kick nature's ass here is a fool.
But we do have one guest tester who's more macho than the others. Very quietly. Well, make that macha, not macho.
For the last three super-windy days, Jackie Butzen has had us all shaking our heads with her endurance. She has barely left the water-first in, last out-and her smile out there, when others are getting worked and whipped, seems attached to her diamond earrings. The only time she stops is to smell the roses. She's the only sailor who records turtles and rainbows on her ratings sheets. It's a measure of her appreciation for the full experience here.
The girl just loves to sail. And use of the word "girl" is just an expression. How does a guy say this, nowadays? Put it this way: one of the younger women here underestimated Jackie's age by about 18 years.
Jackie owns a shop in Chicago, Windward Sports, and has been sailing for 20 years. On the technical side, she's gone about her role here seriously, and has been a wealth of input. For example, we have a Starboard Diva board, intended for women, as well as a Starboard 72 Wave. Jackie sailed them both and liked them, but found them to feel identical except the 72 was faster and jibed more easily for her. We compared the measurements that Glenn Fuller has so diligently recorded. There's virtually no difference between the boards, down to the last 2 mm of tuck at the tail, except the footstraps on the Diva are slightly farther back, and the rails are everso slightly thinner. Starboard claims the Diva has 3 liters less volume, but it's hard to see how, being the same size and shape, and 1 pound heavier.
The biggest difference between the two boards is that the Diva is painted pink. So it appears to be mostly a marketing move. And ironically, for Jackie the Wave 72 works better, because it's lighter and jibes better. Hedy Gurtner, our other highly accomplished woman sailor this week, also prefers
the faster Wave 72.
It's Friday 2 p.m. as I send this out. The waves have been huge since morning, and they're mostly churning whitewater. We've got no pros sailing here today, because they're all at Hookipa, where the waves are humongous. In fact, there are only a handful of sails on the water here. The intimidation factor is high.
But I see Jackie out there, sailing steadily back and forth. I'm sure there's a smile on her face.
