On the Edge

Oh, another week is gone… I wanted to write this already last week, but my time is rare. Uni is taking most of it, since the end coming closer… and then there are some things, that just take all the remaining time away…
For example sailing… For those of you who might have forgotten, almost every second Saturday I’m on a regatta yacht cruising around Auckland. Last Saturday it was a little bit longer than expected and started already at 8 a.m.. I missed the regatta before by 5min because of a worse hangover and just 4h of sleep, but Scotty told me good stuff about it. This one started pretty amazing, heaps of wind, and we took out the Spinnaker and the Gennaker (those are these colourful massive 30m² sails) at gusts of up to 30kn (60kmh). Pretty scary feeling, when this sail stalls and fills with so much power up with air again, that an intense shock runs through the whole boat. Well, the wind was dropping in the afternoon and we all got a nice little sunburn, but Auckland was still far away. And then the sun went down, and Auckland was still far away. The wind was almost gone, but John, our skipper, is a tough guy who’s never giving up. Never? Well, since we were barely moving forward and we had still a couple of miles to Auckland, AND it was already 10 p.m. and really cold, he turned on the engine and we were finally cruising back home… after 16 hours and 150km we had our feet on the ground again, but totally exhausted.

The last couple of days were also pretty intense. Having worked on my project Thursday night until Friday 6 a.m. at the university, I went out for a late kite session at 6p.m… YES!, the winter is over… I was out just with my shorty, was a little cold, but it won’t take long and it’s boardshort weather
That night I was already a little exhausted, after kiting and just having slept for 5h, but there was the back2school party in the flat above us, so I thought I’ll just go there for some beers until I can sleep with the party still going on above me. But somehow I got kinda drunk and stayed much longer than I wanted to (had good intentions for the next day…). Instead, I suffered the worst hangover and didn’t get out of bed for half day, but was skyping home for 8.5h.

Well, and then there was a Sunday, which was planned to be our perfect kite day… Scotty and Cook picked me up in the morning, knowing that it’s pretty windy… Indeed, we had an intense storm. Having rigged up my sweet little 7m, ready to rock, Scotty launched my kite. I had to work hard against it, but it was just pulling so intense, that Scotty came just right grabbing me so I don’t fly away. When I tried to get into my footstraps, the kite stalled, unhooked, and I got pulled out of Scotties hands and was launched up into the air… with an overdose of adrenaline I’ve been spotting the beach coming closer while flying unhooked, letting the bar go at the apex of my jump… But luckily nothing happened, I fell feet first onto the beach and the kite landed surrounded by thorny bushes in the middle at a free spot. Letting the adrenaline come down again, I gave it another try a little later. And that was just epic… Had heaps of fun out on and especially above the water. A look at the wind measurement afterwards showed, that the wind was scratching on the 10bft.

But now it’s time for me to concentrate on some lower wind speeds, because I’m calculating the flow around a paper airplane. More about that is coming next week.

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