Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Long Island is back!!!

After the past 2 relatively windless years on Long Island, I was beginning to think that the good old days of day after day of Southwest thermal action were long gone. I was beginning to think that the only time we'd be getting wind again was while we were wearing drysuits. But this spring and now start to the summer has been more than making up for the windless years of the past. I just hope I'm not jinxing everything with these comments. Official spring on Long Island starts for me when we get back from Cape Hatteras at the end of April. Last year and the year before we found ourselves writing about how long it's been since our last session. Last year I went a full month to the day between sailing sessions in June. This year however is totally different. Not only is there more wind, but it's really close to being able to plan a trip to the beach to windsurf like you would any other sport. In may we had two different 6 or 7 day consecutive stretches of 5.0 and down sailing with many more days in between. I counted 20 days of 5.0 and down at Heckscher in May of which I managed to grab 11 (would be 6.0 without the Fanatic skate and Northsails idol combo that I'm using) June hasn't been quite as windy, but 12 or 13 days of sailable days wouldn't be a stretch. Unfortunately most of them were days I was working but I still have 5 days in June under my belt and the month isn't over! It's been blowing since last thursday and has been blowing 5.0 for at least a couple hours every day since. And it looks to be windy for as far as the forecast can see! Also, I should mention that to catch these windy days at Heckscher, one needs to totally disregard iwindsurfs botched forecasts. They don't have any local forecasters and are spread too thin as the forecaster is doing the entire eastern seaboard. They haven't called for 20 mph winds a single time in this last stretch of 5 or 6 windy days in a row. 10-14 is usually their call. Best bet is to check windfinder for a good forecast and compare that to the NWS marine forecast. Joe's beach is right on windfinder now for one of the forecast spots and the forecast is really, really good.