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.