Rough session with Kes. If Kes wouldn't have gone, I would have skipped this session after been looking at those massive gusts flying over de Gouwzee. But because Kes just rigged and jumped into the water with his gear I lingered also rigging, watching him first entering for some runs with his 5.5.
The first run I thought this is not making sense, there was so much wind and the water looked messy.
But in the second run I was kind of getting to know the watersurface strucere and found a way to fly over it and gain trust.
Kes gave me the tip to just let the board find it's way and trust it, instead of trying to force controle it over the sometimes pretty big chop heads.
This is what I since than focus on and it really works out. To really gain trust in letting the board find it's way ( towards 70 km/h in rough chop) it's also finding the right sail size, fin, fin size to board ratio and for me the bottom tuning really helped to understand the shape and have a board which reacts predictable. Now I only have to focus on getting the sail pressure as steady as possible devided in a certain ratio over both feet. Looking far ahead makes the chop look small and the board finds it's way.. just trust the board I kept saying during my run haha.
My fastest run was actually because I was starting at the same time as Kes from the shore. I was hoping to be able to follow him in a run. Because I know Kes is able to shuffle 10sec runs @ 70+km/h out of his sleeve I was pretty keen to give it shit when entering towards the gust.. Because I was upwind and my sleeve took him out of my sight I than gave it full truttle, expecting him to shoot in front of me... this could have been al really nice run together, but unfortenately he didn't take the gust. For me it turned into my new 10 sec record on the Gouwzee of 67,92...
Unfortenately Kes stopped pretty quick and I decided to also quit... I had gained a new 2 sec record and a new 10 sec run.... But now my 5th run was only 54km/h 10 sec.... This felt to shitty, so eventough Kes went home I dropeed back into the water and just found 1 more gust on my own to close the 5th run above 60. I trhink If Kes and I would have stayed a little longer and had shared some tricks how to get along with these conditions AVG of both of us would have gone a lot higher... W'll keep that for a next session ;)
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