THAT WAS AMAZING.
So each race is ~40km long with 4 runs being each about 10km long. On the first reach, I went **way** to much downwind (due to the amount of people around me limiting me in speed, thus not getting into planning and thus having to go downwind in order not to sink), but after seeing the first yellow buoys in the distance, I went as far upwind as possible in order to reach the first jibing mark. That mark was filled by an aweful lot of people that had fallen trying to jibe directly around it (which is so dump tbh., like you just rode 10km, jibing 100 or 200m further out won't make a difference for the mid to late field).
The second reach (back from the first jibing mark to the start) was AMAZING. Like: on the first reach, I thought about just riding back the the beach and calling it a day, but the second reach with a slight broad reach course keeping close to the beach was insanely fun. Just blasting seemingly downwind just limited by yourself (Like: I could probably have gone faster, but I felt fast enough and didn't want to loose control, this is a marathon like event in the end, so a "slow" (it wasn't slow) and steady ride is prefferable).
- 95l nove nove slalom board
- 30cm fin
- 4.7m² gun sails yeah freestyle sail (I tried the 5.6m² slalom sail, Just to much for my 60kg).
- the noerstick helped nicely swapping the sails out, first time I tried it and worked really well!
So there really is 20 knots of wind down there. By 20 knots, they mean 20 knots. In Angermund (north of Düsseldorf) at the small lake, when the prediction says 20 knots, there aren't 20 knots reaching the lake, more like 16. Now 20 knots of wind are amazing, but the round about 10 knots extra you get at port-la-nouvelle are insanely fun (and terrifying). As you start realizing the jibe mark is coming up soon, the wind starts to pick up, you overpower and just go into the jibe with SO MUCH pressure.
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