here’s another video put out by the Waterlust Project (I’ve blogged about the project before) this time showing off the making of an Alaia board and then kite surfing with the Alaia board. click through the video to watch it on Youtube.
go to the Waterlust Project for a .pdf with instructions on how to build your own Alaia board.
this is a sweet video project shot entirely using GoPro Hero 2 video cameras: the project is mean to “explore our relationships with water.”
there is some sweet shots of various on-the-water activities: sailing, swimming, diving, fishing, kite surfing, moth sailing (there is a sweet scene at about 4:40 in the video of a moth sailor “running on the water” along the side of his sailboat), wind surfing, and various other water sports.
[you'll have to click through to Youtube to watch the video.]
for more information, check out the project website: http://waterlust.org/Home.html
I found this video the other day of a pretty relaxing looking sail on a Sunfish on Sesachacha Pond near Nantucket, Massachusetts.
I really like the graphic of an American flag that he has between the daggerboard slot and the splashguard. that’s right where I put an inspection port on my old Sunfish, though.
I just saw this promo video for the new GoPro HD Hero2 video camera. take the time to let it load up in HD and enjoy – crazy Red Bull airplanes, surfers, snow skiers, base jumpers, and the like show off the newly updated video camera.
I didn’t see any sailors highlighted in the video, though! I’ve been loving using my GoPro HD Surf Hero on my Sunfish (here’s my video from Crystal Lake last fall), as well as random times swimming or playing in and around the water.
the new GoPro HD Hero2 video camera ($300) is out just in time for Christmas – put it on your list!
while up north for a long weekend at Camp Arcadia, I got in a bit of sailing Friday afternoon on Lake Michigan. the wind was pretty strong from the north/northwest (bringing the cold water with it), and waves were medium-sized – enough to be fun on the Sunfish, but troublesome for my brother-in-law on his windsurfer.
my brother-in-law tried windsurfing for maybe 15 or 20 minutes, but gave up as the water temperature was only 53 degrees, and even with a shorty wetsuit on he was just too cold. so I sailed in towards shore and picked him up, and he and I sailed together on the Sunfish for a while. I had on a long-sleeved rashguard under my shorty wetsuit, so other than the 1st couple minutes of cold legs while getting the boat started at the beach, it was really comfortable.
here’s a screenshot from my GoPro HD Hero camera as we are heading back in towards shore. North Bluff is to port and Arcadia is to starboard.
here’s another shot as we run south parallel to the beach, giving you a nice view (ahead of the sail) of Camp Arcadia‘s setting right on the waters of Lake Michigan.
here’s a short video from my evening sailing the other day with my oldest son, T2. the winds were very light, so it was really more of paddle a little…. drift a little… turn around… and paddle back to shore before it got too dark. but the sun was slowly setting, and it was gorgeous and so peaceful out on the water… a great way to spend some time with my son.
video is taken with a GoPro HD Surf Hero. music is by Cloud Cult, the last portion of their song “Son is Watching”, taken from their live Lounge Act session on WOXY.com.
last week, I tried something new for me – I trailered the Sunfish to work, and stopped by an area lake after work for some weeknight sailing. Walled Lake has a small public beach on the north side of the lake, and although I hadn’t been there, a few friends seemed to think I should be able to launch from that beach. parking was limited, so I had to park across the street, and use my Sunfish PVC dolly to go across the road.
after that, I pulled the boat on the PVC dolly down a sidewalk that turned into some kind of foam walking surface that led almost to water’s edge. this actually was a blessing – my PVC dolly’s wheels don’t always work well in soft sand, but there wasn’t really any other area for me to roll the dolly and boat down to the water other than this path right through the middle of the beach and swimming area.
after making it to the shallow water, I walked the boat out from the middle of the beach and swimming area to set up the sail (you can see my PVC dolly sitting on top of the boat).
I left the dolly off to the side a short distance from the beach area, and took off sailing. I hadn’t gotten very far, when I tried to tack over, and the old mainsheet snap that holds my mainsheet to the bridle at the back of the boat somehow came undone, and went flying forward following the boom and sail! you can see the blue rope flying with the mainsheet snap at the end of the rope in the picture below.
after I pulled the sail back in, and reset the mainsheet up as it should be, I sailed for maybe an hour in lighter winds, with a lot of shifts in wind speed and direction.
after that, I came back in to shore to pick up my friend Tyler, who joined me on the Sunfish. he had sailed on a much larger sailboat before, but never a Sunfish – it was fun to talk about sailing and life in general.
sailing with 2 adults can be sort of cramped on a Sunfish, but it wasn’t too hard to manage – before we started, I had shifted the halyard position on the upper boom to raise the sail up some, and I adjusted the gooseneck on the lower boom as well, to raise the back end of the sail up a bit, so we didn’t have to duck as much to get under the boom when we were tacking.
overall, Walled Lake was a pretty nice place to sail, at least on a weeknight… I’m not sure how busy it would be on a weekend. the lake is fairly shallow, but I think I heard that they actively control the weed growth, so I didn’t notice any stalling due to weeds (although I frequently raised the daggerboard to make sure it was clear). launching from the middle of the beach is a little awkward, but manageable – and it gives me a nice sailing option for days with good wind forecasts during the middle of the week.
all pictures are screenshots from the video I took with my GoPro HD Surf Hero video camera while I was sailing. I’ll try to edit it down to a short video clip to share later.
here’s a short video I put together from my sailing adventure a few days ago on Kent Lake at Kensington Metropark in Michigan. you can see the frustration I was having with the weeds, see a few dead fish go floating by, but also at least a decent bit of sailing that afternoon.
this is my 1st time mounting the GoPro HD Surf Hero video camera out on the lower boom – I kind of like the perspective it gives. watching the video, I can also see that the camera angle/view gives more of an idea when I was getting into the weeds, as there were times out on the water that I didn’t even realize I was getting close to a weed cluster.
so Saturday was like a trifecta for sailing – it was Father’s Day weekend and my wife was encouraging me to go sail, the weekend also happened to be the Summer Sailstice, and it was going to be my 1st chance to test out the new (to me… it is a 2000, so 11 years old or so) Sunfish I had picked up off of craigslist. the weather report was for a chance of showers and light winds, but after doing a few things in the morning and afternoon, the rain hadn’t started, so I took off for the lake to get out on the water.
I decided to try Kent Lake at Kensington Metropark again, which has been pretty hit or miss with me, and even though I’ve been frustrated with the weeds there before. this time, I was going to try out the west boat ramp, which would put me closer to the wider and deeper portions of the reservoir (for hopefully a less weedy experience). I was looking at some stuff on the Michigan DNR website about lakes and public boat access points, and saw they are warning about spreading these weeds (called Eurasian milfoil) to other lakes.
after scoping the boat launch area out a bit, I decided the light winds were hanging around enough to get me moving across the water some, so I backed up the trailer near the boat ramp, and started to rig my boat up. the first thing I noticed was a strong odor of rotting fish. sure enough, as I started sailing, I kept seeing huge dead carp floating in the water. I’m not sure what caused it, but they seemed to be everywhere.
and once again, I had trouble with the weeds at Kent Lake.
here is a screen shot from the video I took – I had just hit a nasty weed bed, and the boat had come to almost a dead stand-still, but the back end was still swinging around to the right. I noticed that the camera shows the weeds really well, but sitting down at the boat level, I couldn’t always see them (until too late). also note the nice floating dead carp off to the right side of the boat, towards the little island in the upper left.
trapped in the weeds with a dead carp floating nearby
the light winds didn’t help either, as I had trouble building up enough speed to plow through the weeds when I did encounter them. I got stuck again, and drifted up near that little island, and had to break out my collapsible paddle to push away from shore, and paddle the boat a ways out.
it wasn’t all for naught, as I did have a few stretches of nice sailing. I was testing out the GoPro video camera mounted on the back of the lower Sunfish boom, and am pretty happy with that location – I’ll try to edit out some of the rough parts from the day and get it down to a manageable file to upload soon. here’s another screen shot from the video when things were going a bit better.
the other thing I found out is that the wooden daggerboard from my old Sunfish doesn’t fit down completely into the daggerboard slot on the new Sunfish! it is about as deep as it can go in the picture above. the fiberglass daggerboard I bought will fit just fine, but I didn’t want to drag the new daggerboard through the muck and weeds of Kent Lake.
I got frustrated with the light winds and weeds slowing me down, and called it after about an hour of sailing. I headed back to the boat ramp, and packed everything up to head home. once I got there, I re-set up the whole boat, and washed it all down with soap and water – hoping to get the weed scum and dead carp juices off as best I could.
I was pretty annoyed with the whole thing – and am pretty much done trying to sail on Kent Lake anymore. Michigan has so many lakes, I just need to find one nearby that will work out better (with some type of public access). still it was nice to try out the new(er) Sunfish, and great to get out on the water (even though it stunk a little bit).
UPDATE: okay, here is a short video from the sailing on Kent Lake.
I finally got around to editing down video from one of the great days of sailing that my wife and I had together during our vacation this August. this is from our 3rd day of sailing – and it was the day with the most wind.
we sailed on Crystal Lake, launching from the free public ramp near the public beach right in downtown Beulah, Michigan. over the course of about 3 hours that afternoon, we sailed approximately 5 miles west across the lake, and then turned around to sail back to the beach. the video is mostly shot as we are sailing west across the lake, as either the memory card or the battery in the GoPro camera seem to max out at about 1.5 hours of video.
a few things I’ve now learned – I really need to get the Rain-X (that GoPro recommends) to put over the camera lens – it is supposed to help a lot with the water drops that get on the camera lens housing. second – water drops, combined with sailing directly towards the sun don’t make for good video. there were some great parts that I didn’t include in the video where my wife was hiking way out to keep the boat flat, but the video was all washed out due to the glare from the sun. lesson learned (hopefully!).
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