Sterkies weekend windsurfing report
As I mentioned before I was at Sterkfontein Dam on the weekend for some sailing. Here's how it went down:Saturday
I got up early and was on the road by 5am to arrive at Sterkies around 7:30. Along the road I could see the wind was getting stronger the closer I got to the dam. When I arrived and drove down to the water's edge it was already blowing about 20 knots NW. If you know the dam, that means there's really long stretches of water to build up huge chop. I soon discovered that my 133 litre Xantos with 6.6m2 and 40cm fin was just too big to sail in those conditions. I was getting lifted off the water on every wave crest and totally overpowered. Most of the other sailers were on 5.8m2 or smaller.
There were quite a few windsurfers there for NVL Champs racing (I have no idea what NVL stands for?) and lots of kiters too. I'm not sure how many slalom races were run (at least 8 on Saturday), and there were a few people there for formula racing that didn't even go near the water for the whole weekend.
In the evening we headed to the Caterpillar and Catfish for a braai hosted by Hans with good food and flowing drinks. At around 9pm there was some nasty gusts of wind and reports arrived in from the campsite of some tent damage. Naturally I knew that I had just sacrificed yet another tent to the Sterkfontein wind gods, which was confirmed when I arrived back at the camp. I thought that it might have stood a chance as I had anchored the tent to the ground with 4 tie-down straps that I use to attach boards and things to my roofrack. Although the tent was still firmly attached to the ground, it had gone from dome-shaped to bowl-shaped as the wind had bent some poles the wrong way and snapped the rest of them. Needless to say I didn't sleep much on Saturday night.
Saturday's conditions can be summed up quite well by these pics:
Sunday
I crawled out of busted tent on Sunday morning to see the wind already blowing about 20 knots at 6:30am and if it was anything like Saturday the wind would get stronger by the afternoon. Not to be beaten and waste my windsurfing weekend swimming around in 4 foot waves all day, I packed up my stuff and high-tailed it back to Jo'burg and went to sail Bronkies.
What an awesome day of sailing we had. winds ranging from 20 knots up to 27 knots for the whole afternoon. NW winds at Bronkies means the chop is not too big and we spent about 4 hours blasting up and down. Malcolm kindly donated a 34cm fin to me which made sailing in those high winds much easier because the board was not lifting out the water so much. Amazing what the right equipment can do. I spent the whole weekend sailing my 6.6 Ezzy infinity and I'm really glad I didn't sell it a month ago.
Unanimously agreed to be the best sailing day of the year at Bronkies. I'll get around to uploading the couple of minutes of video I have, and perhaps the "Commodore of the flying clog" Adrian will get organized and send me his vid too
