VANCOUVER ISLAND WINDTALK

Sorry if you thought I had some tips for you on wave catching here, quite the opposite infact. I thought I would ask for some wave catching advice. I have sailed Maui a few times and CB quite a bit more. I SUP surf a bit too and am prett comfy on my sailboard (I sail through more than 50% of my jybes), I sail pretty comfy down to 4.5 and I can survival sail 4.0 when needed.

When I sail CB or Maui my approach to catching a wave is similar to SUP surfing, I see what is building up behind me and wait for it to catch up, when the wave catches up my board speed is quite low making it hard to enjoy some turns. When I sit on the beach or am doing the walk of shame I watch others catch waves (and I notice you all catch way more than me) that the approach is to speed up to a wave in front of you and drop in on it. How do you know what is worth catching from behind be wave, I can't distinguish much from behind the wave and am wondering how you all do your wave selection. Any other tips will be appreciated, lookin forward to some CB time soon, I am healing up from a broken arm in August, apperantly to old to skate board, will stick to the water and snow sports.

for wave selection, i look upwind to see if something is breaking up the beach (towards the jetty), that usually means a set is on the way. if nobody is around, i will sometimes stall and wait for it. If there is a good group though you just need to take your turn. if you missed a set just jibe outside and try again.
as for catching the wave, it can help to push the nose down with a little MFP to get the board accelerating down the wave face. once on a wave stay with it, don't skooch out in front or you loose your speed. see you at CB soon! i hope

Or, you can try this technique which may or may not make you friends.

Follow another sailor in, if your wave doesn't happen but your bru ahead of you has one, sheet in and power over the backside of your bru's wave, scooching over the top of the wave and doing an epic bottom turn beneath and in front of him. Be sure to snicker and look his way for extra style points. I saw this occur at the Cape this summer with varying degrees of friendliness!

Well I'm not a windsurfer, but I did surf for many years before I started kiting. Used to do a lot of things before I started kiting... Anyway, one of the main things to think about when it comes to riding waves is the period between the waves. A 3ft swell at 20s will often have more power behind it than a 10ft swell at 10 seconds. I don't think I've ever seen the windswell at CB at more than 5-6 s. Which is not even close to surfable from a shortboard surfers perspective.

A The beauty of windsurfing and kiting is we can enter 'waves' early and with speed. Crusing until the wave gets critical enough to drive the board up to planing speed. Most of the waveriding you see at CB or SP is more wind driven than wave driven.

So start studying CBTV for wave periods, then learn to read sets, the last wave of a set is usually the most powerful. As far as what is worth catching goes, just keep catching as many as you can. Every wave will make you a better surfer. And if you feel one driving you forward, then release some wind and use that power do a big carve.