Windsurfing in a squall

A squall is a sudden, sharp increase in wind speed that is usually associated with active weather, such as rain showers, thunderstorms, or heavy snow.

I recently windsurfed at my local lake (Siblyback) on a a cold winter afternoon where there was a whole series of squalls. During these the wind speed increased quite substantially.

The following two pictures were taken just 13 minutes apart and show how the wind and conditions can change very rapidly.

Nice and sunny, with a reasonable wind level, no white water.

 

Raining, faint rainbow on right, wind dramatically increased as evidenced by white tips on waves.

On this occasion I rigged a 7.5M sail which was great between the squalls, but overpowered during them. I would have been going well with my 6.7M had I rigged it. Instead I put a few extra cm of outhaul on my 7.5 to reduce the power a bit.

Dealing with squalls as a windsurfer will largely depend on your skill level and where you are sailing. Squally weather can also make your sail size choice more difficult. 

The downside of squalls

If you are a beginner, you could find that during a squall you are completely overpowered and unable to sail. Since squalls are temporary, providing you aren't somewhere with strong currents and the wind doesn't mean you are drifting into danger you could lay down your sail and sit it out, or you might be able to wait on the shore until the strong wind passes. The edge of a squall will be when the brighter skies reappear. Squally weather can also make your sail size choice more difficult.

The upside of squalls

Sometimes a squall can do you good. Early in my windsurfing career when I was learning to use the harness I was guilty of being overcautious with my sail size. One day whilst sailing a strong squall came through and made me realise I could cope with more wind than I previously thought. As a more advanced sailor, a squall could give you that extra bit of wind that you are looking for on a day when the winds are otherwise marginal.

Squalls are temporary and mustn't be confused with a general increase of wind strength that is going to last several hours.

Fanatic Shark 160 windsurfing board repair

As I am a heavier than average intermediate windsurfer, my Fanatic Shark gets a fair bit of use on days when there is enough wind for planing. I bought it second-hand from eBay at a good price. It's the 2009 model and at 80cm wide is very stable and easy to sail.

I noticed that my board had developed a bubble about 4 inches in diameter on the deck just forward of the mast track. I didn't want this to spread so the only option was to chop it out and repair it.

I carefully cut out the bulge using a hacksaw blade.

This revealed that the problem was caused by insufficient resin when the board was built in the factory. In order to achieve the "epoxy sandwich" the resin needs to actually soak through the matting and stick it to the foam core. You can see that in the factory, the fibreglass mat is stapled to the foam core and then presumably the resin is sprayed on. When you consider that new boards cost £1000+ firms like Fanatic ought to make a bit more effort to control quality.

Having cut out the bad area, I then sanded the edges of the repair to get the tapered edge that is essential for successful board repairs.

I then cut a piece of fibreglass cloth and a piece of mat to the correct size and epoxied these on using West System Epoxy carefully mixed in a graduated mixing cup.

I left this overnight to set and the next day sanded it off.

 The repair needed a small amount of epoxy filler to get it perfectly level.

Once that was set I gave the repair a final sand off ready for painting.

I sprayed the repaired area using a can of white car paint. I recreated the non-slip finish by sprinkling sugar into the paint and then spraying over that again with a few more layers of paint.

The repair turned out well and some months on, I haven't had any further problems with the board.

Epoxy pedal update and more Mistral Equipe mast track repairs

Cast epoxy Mistral pedals not a success!

I had high hopes that these replacement mast track pedals might offer a cheap and simple solution to the unavailability of parts without the work of my hand cut ones. But, it wasn't to be. This one failed on testing after maybe 20 uses so I won't be wasting any more time on them.

Read about the hand made nylon pedal 

More Mistral mast track repairs

A windsurfing buddy of mine has recently acquired an Equipe 2. He dropped the mast track around to me for repair as it needed a pedal and also repair to the white lever which releases the rope grabbers.

This is the other common failure and it is caused by corrosion of the "stainless steel" pin which attaches the foot pedal to this lever. The rust expands and bursts open the plastic part.  Mildly corroded pins can be cleaned up with sandpaper or if the rust is really bad you can make your own replacement pin from 3mm stainless steel bar which is readily available online.

I cut two small stainless steel rings from a Hep2O plumbing support sleeve.

It's very hard to cut these small rings off without using a wooden support inside the tube.

I carefully prepared the area beforehand with sandpaper to provide a key for the glue and glued these around the lever using epoxy as well as filling the crack with glue. Once the glue had set I ran a 3mm drill through the lever to clear the hole.

I hand cut another pedal from a solid piece of nylon and fitted that once the glue had dried. It works fine and should last reasonably well. I'm getting faster at cutting them out. The key is accurate marking and cutting.

Interestingly, the early yellow coloured Equipe I have got had no corrosion to its pin. The pins that seem to corrode the most are from later boards. Perhaps the stainless steel was of inferior quality?

If you're struggling to get your mast track apart, this video is very helpful

Homemade windsurfing downhaul winch

Windsurfing downhaul winch

Downhauling large windsurf sails takes a lot of effort if you use the sit on the floor, foot on the mast base and pull method. I'd seen downhaul winches for sale online at what seemed like quite a lot of money so decided to build my own from scrap I had lying around.

The first thing was to get a Europin to fit into my mast bases. I had an old UJ which I would never use as it is pretty ancient and doesn't have a safety strap. So I scrapped it to get the Europin off. This also yielded a very nice stainless steel washer.

Once I had the Europin, I found a metric bolt that would fit it (M8 x 1.25 I believe) and welded that to a thickish washer of 30mm diameter.

I then found a piece of strong tube with outside diameter 30mm and 25mm inside. None of these measurements are critical, you could use a slighter smaller or larger tube. I cut a 250mm length off and welded the bolt/washer part to it.

Then I screwed on the Europin and the nice thick stainless washer from the old UJ.

The next job was to drill a hole through the side of the tube. My handle was going to be made from 12mm mild steel rod, so I drilled a 12.5mm hole.

I cut a piece of 12mm rod and marked with chalk where I thought the bends should go.

Then I heated the rod.

And bent it to shape

At this point I realised I had made the handle too big and that it would foul on the sail during use. Rather than start all over again, I just cut a piece out of the centre section of the handle and welded it back together.

I found two washers with 12mm holes in them and welded them onto the handle either side of the pipe.

The final metalwork job was to drill a small 6mm hole through the rod so that the downhaul line can be fed through to hold it in place. I was very careful to get rid of any sharp edges around the hole as I don't want to be buying any more downhaul lines than I already do.

I gave the winch a good clean up with a wire brush and a quick coat of silver paint to tidy it up.

It works well and I find it is easier to tune sails more accurately using it. It also saves a lot of effort.

• Total build time - 45 minutes
• Material cost - nothing
• Tools used - hacksaw, mig welder, grinder, drill, large blowlamp, hammer.

I enjoyed this project. Always nice to be doing something windsurfing related.

Mistral Equipe and One Design Mast Track Pedal Replacement

Mistral windsurfer mast track pedal repair

If you've got a Mistral Equipe or One Design windsurfing board, chances are at some point you will have a broken foot pedal. Without this, the mast base can't slide in the track while you are on the move. A search of the web will reveal that these parts are no longer available. A windsurfing buddy of mine even contacted Mistral by email and was told that the moulds had been destroyed and that they recommended cannibalising old boards to get the parts. However, all of the pedals fail in the same way so this isn't really an option.

Mistral Equipe Race Board

When my Mistral's pedal broke in 2016, I decided to make a replacement myself. I ordered a piece of nylon from eBay for £5.29. This was 10mm thick and 200m x 100mm in size which is plenty for a few foot pedals.

First I marked out the pedal on the material using my old broken one. This was easy enough to remove by carefully driving out the small pin that holds it onto the mast track.

Then I cut this piece out using a normal hacksaw.

Before going any further, I measured the size of the pin (3mm) and drilled a hole right through the material.

Having done this, I cut out the rest of the pedal using a combination of hacksaw, file and coping saw and some angle grinding too. This nylon is quite hard stuff to work with compared to other materials.

In the centre of the recess there has to be a small piece which is hard to recreate by hand. So instead on this pedal (the prototype) I cheated and used a small self-tapping screw. This is an important part as it is this which presses on the other part of the mechanism to release the mast track. The advantage of using a screw is that you can pack it with washers to get the clearance how you want it.

I test fitted the pedal on the board and adjusted as required to get it fitting well.

The next step was to make the red pedal retaining clip fit. 

This requires a groove to be cut so the the red clip will click into place. I cut this using a series of hacksaw cuts and a narrow wood chisel. Once it all fitted nicely I refitted the two parts to the mast track and it works as it should.

Since I made this first pedal, I have been asked to make some more for other Mistral windsurfing guys. I cut one more out by hand and on this occasion did not use a self-tapping screw as I managed to cut the shape out more accurately based on my previous experience. 

I have also cast two experimental glass reinforced epoxy pedals in plasticine moulds. If these prove to be successful I will add some more info to this page showing their construction in detail.

Left 2 - epoxy castings, original broken Mistral pedal, hand cut pedal made from nylon