Lynn reached out looking for windsurf lessons after finding my website. In particular she was intrigued by the Duotone iRIG. We booked a date that I would be in Collingwood and lucked into nice warm weather. She was so keen she actually stayed at a hotel overnight in town to make sure she would be fresh and ready for our 11am session at Northwinds Beach.
As we talked about goals for the lesson, she let me know that she had taken three windsurfing lessons before in Pembroke on the Ottawa River. She very much enjoyed it with her knowledge of sailing. But she found the 3m and 3.7m rigs she used on those lessons to be too big and heavy. Lynn definitely had an asset with her sailing background understanding where the wind was coming from and in terms like up wind and downwind.
We started on the lawn near the beach and she quickly liked the lightness of the iRIG as we took it from the car to the lawn. I had her pump it up and she was surprised at how easy it was to pump up! I set up the Viper 80 board on a board bag on the lawn to use that to practice uphauling and then steering the sail on land. We practised tacking on land as well.
Luckily there was around 2 knots of wind from the south while we were on land so we had a decent sense of keeping your back to the wind and having the board at 90° to the wind with the sail fluttering straight downwind. I pumped up the iRIG Large and determined it is WAY too big for her. The iRIG medium or even the small will be the right size for her.
After 40 minutes, it was time to head to the water. I had the large Kona available for her with its big soft deck. We put the small iRIG small on it. We then proceeded to have her try sailing but the wind come up from 2 to 10 knots while we were getting out to the water. The waves were already getting bigger coming into shore and thus making standing on the board a real challenge.
Lynn did amazingly well eventually adapting from her ingrained habit of constantly looking at her feet while getting up - to instead staring at a point on land. Once she started having her “steely eyed focus” on the horizon, things got better. I would remind her to either stare back on shore or out to Georgian Bay and an imaginary boat on the horizon.
As her concentration on the horizon improved she was able to get going. Then she put her back hand on the 2nd boom handle! I had to swim frantically to keep up with her: cheering as she started heading out into the now much bigger waves. She could actually feel the results of leaning the sail back to go upwind and forward to go downwind! We turned around and she got going back to shore under her own power. I got a tiny bit of video of that!
We had been on the water for an hour and she was satisfied with her accomplishments. We sat on the long Kona board and had a debrief to go over everything that we had learned. Lynn has her own windsurfing board and in lighter wind and flat water, I think she will be able to manage sailing an iRIG confidently on her own board in the future.
I went out for a quick sail to take the gear back downwind to where we had parked. It was fun doing some sail / board 360s and almost got the Viper planing with my 5.6m sail.
After the session, I was grateful for Lynn’s donation which I will forward to the Toronto Windsurfing club "level the playing field" windsurf program.
A fun coincidence: That morning as I was packing the windsurfers onto the car, a pick up truck slowed down driving by. I nodded to the driver and a moment later the gentleman returned and introduced himself as neighbour, Mike. He had been looking for wing foil lessons in the area and my site kept coming up. He has a wing already but hasn’t decided if he’s ready for the full foil kit. I’m looking forward to getting Mike out on the water sometime in the future - I’m having so much fun teaching!
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