Down Winder

I paddled my first down winder the other day and what an eye opener that was!  I did ok for a first attempt but using my flatwater board for a down wind run was WORK!  Not that a proper downwind board wouldn’t have been work but with limited nose rocker in my flatwater board I had to be really quick in stepping back to the tail in order to keep the nose from pearling.  Most of my efforts were successful.  The efforts that were not were, well, humbling.  I consider myself a decent paddler and surfer both, but dealing with the short period chop left little time to get things sorted and organized for the next little wave train I wanted to go for so I found myself paddling “catch up” a lot and being slightly behind the curve.  So I learned a lot, had fun and now know what the right board should be and have a design started for the next racing season.