Christian was on an 8.0 and a big freeride board. I had rigged seven meters worth of stickers atop my freestyle 109, and Jeff was managing to plane in the gusts on his 4.7 and SUP board. The only thing we had in common as we windsurfed Tiana Bay was the desire to get some quality watertime, after Swell Info’s tease of a SUP-surfing forecast proved to be just that: a tease. And I had just been badgering Vulcan Rich Simmons an hour earlier about his lack of a SUP board…”Dude how can you NOT be SUPing?” telling him about the greater dependability of the forecasts. C’est la vie.
At least the lack of waves was accompanied by 10-14 mph knot winds from the NW, so we crossed Dune Road and launched from Tiana’s bay side parking lot, once the favored location for ABK and Dasher windsurfing clinics thanks to its friendly shallow waters (and still the spot of Southampton’s town windsurfing program for kids.) It was low low tide, and weedy, which didn’t disturb Jeff (miraculously planing on a 4.7) with his little SUP fin, or Christian (who sails Tiana Bay regularly and so knows to use a weed fin) but me…I was running aground repeatedly. I finned down to a wide shallow fin (Tiana Bay countered by letting several more inches of depth ebb to the ocean) and did manage to throw the occasional old school freestyle move (backwinded jibes, flip jibes, push tacks) along with old school futile attempts (I couldn’t get the 7.0 to carve 360 or duck 360) whilst Jeff was working on duck tacks. After about an hour my still-unhealed bicep (MRI results expected this week) tired of all the weeds and fin hits, and rather than do the sensible thing (switch to a weed fin) I called it a day.
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