Blogs

When cruisers and sailors are asked why they choose this lifestyle, many answer with the standard and cliché “Because it gives us so much freedom”. True, your sailboat is your floating home and you can drop and pick up anchor in many places worldwide, giving you an immense area to explore or settle for a while. You have your belongings with you wherever you go and to “just be out there”, sailing on a massive ocean or smaller sea, gives you a tremendous feeling of freedom. Wherever you are, once the anchor is down, there are restrictions and rules you have to abide by. You can read up or learn about these places ahead of time and, because you are free, you decide whether to skip them or pay them a visit. Most things you do are entirely up to you, except when (boat) problems arise.

  A grey day for a sail on the ocean                                                                           © Liesbet Collaert

The sense of freedom disappears, however, when you take that one, all important thing into account; the thing that really decides when you leave and how the trip and the schedule turns out. It is called the weather and it is ever-present and not always very predictable. Every prudent sailor checks the weather forecast, via different sources at that, before heading out, especially on a longer trip. We base many decisions on how “it is looking” and pick days that promise to be comfortable enough, wind and swell taken into consideration. These periods are called “weather windows”. The amount of rain is less important, unless they are part of forecasted periods of heavy squalls.

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The annual cruiser’s migration in the Eastern Caribbean goes as follows: in the winter sailboats move inside the hurricane belt and explore the Leeward and Windward islands in a very comfortable climate. November 1^st to May 31^st is the high season in Caribbean waters. In the summer months, most sailboat owners travel outside the hurricane belt, north towards the United States or south towards Grenada and Trinidad. Or, they leave their boat somewhere safe and fly home, escaping the sometimes intolerable heat and humidity. Some sailors head further west, not being bothered by the hurricane season, which officially runs from June 1^st to October 31^st. Another Caribbean trend, weather wise, is that the wind blows from the northeast during the winter season and from the southeast during the summer season. What this means is, that whenever you want to follow the island chain down to reach the safer islands south, you have to beat into the wind and … when it is time to sail northeast again, the wind happens to exactly come from that direction as well. Ironic?

 Irie on her way out of Simpson Bay Lagoon in St. Maarten                                            © Liesbet Collaert

For this reason -sailing dead into the wind is impossible- weather windows are very important when you plan a long sailing trip. Not only are you looking for northeast winds or “better” to head southeast, you also desire a velocity of 10-15 knots. This keeps the waves at a reasonable height and brings the apparent wind to 15-20 knots (since you are moving into it at about 5 knots), creating a nice speed and pleasant motion to get somewhere. Of course, these are ideal situations and they are rare. If one can get winds out of the east as late in the season as June, one should be lucky and happy regardless. Sailing very close to the wind still beats motoring directly into it and the waves…

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There couldn’t be a better time to get away. With so many uncertainties in the world right now, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves ‘what is this life all really about?’ A little too deep? Maybe…but really, for us surfers it’s times like these that can draw us to the chase of surf across the globe, searching for those peaceful, blissful moments when we are nothing but one with nature.

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It has been one month now since Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) released their 6-9month cold shutdown plan for the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and not even the first stages of the plan have been put in motion. Perhaps the plan was only really published to the public for some peace of mind, but it seems since the start of this whole controversy TEPCO and the government have done nothing but feed the public false promises.

Kuni went up to the Fukushima area last week and was able to meet with some of the nuclear power plant workers along with local surfers and hear the real stories, the real truths. It was said then that the shutdown plans were totally unreachable and should never have been promised to an already wary public. According to the workers interviewed last week, areas outside the 30km exclusion zone have detected radiation levels higher than the evacuated zone of Chernobyl, and only now in various international news sources is this kind of information being made public. To the majority of the Japanese public, such honest truths remain hidden. The workers interviewed expressed their concerns for the health of women, children and each other, in both the short term and long term, within the 30km radius and throughout the rest of the Kanto area.

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If you've ever been in the water and had the privilege of watching an advanced surfer in action, you may remember it as being a pretty impressive thing to behold.

You know the kind of surfer I'm talking about – irritatingly good, somehow always knowing where the next wave will break and then proceeding to tear it apart as though he foreknew, even before the take-off, exactly how the wave would unfold. It's enough to make you hang your head in shame ...

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Paddling out to back line can be a daunting task if the waves are solid and you don't know how to push under the sets. Duck diving, the art of getting under approaching waves as you paddle, can be almost effortless if you know what you're doing. If you don't, however, it can easily ruin your session. Let's look at how to get this essential skill right...

(c) aquabumps.com

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Chasing Summer, or Swells?

I’ve come to realize that Japan’s seasons are difficult to adjust to. The hottest and longest Japanese summer to date was recorded this year and even the east coast with her usually friendly sea breezes was no escape from the heat. And then it was all over in a day. Sometime in early October, the summer switch was set to off, autumn on. I experienced this first hand, surfing quite comfortably in bikinis on a stinking hot morning only to be rugged up in a thick jacket and putting a beanie on my kid the next.

Japan’s weather is weird like that.

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This month celebrates the 40^th anniversary of one of Australia’s most celebrated surfing magazines. 40 years ago, 40AU cents would have bought you a copy of the inaugural newspaper TRACKS, a black and white surfing publication featuring a sky polluted by industrial smoke on the cover. Who would have known it had anything to do with surfing…? The commemorative edition of the magazine comes with a re-print of the original issue.

Read on into those early pages and TRACKS was a comical yet serious collection of editorials, photos and advertisements reflecting a very anti-authoritarian publishing house of surfers who were hand shaping surfboards, houses, and a political movement within the sub culture.

Somehow many of these ideals were lost and surfing has progressed into an elite world fuelled by desire to become the next Kelly Slater. Naturally, the pages of TRACKS have become filled with ads for board shorts that feel better and boards that claim to help you fly higher.

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There’s only so long a beach girl can survive Japanese mountain life. A year was the limit for me.

I was thrown into the middle of Japan when I first moved there for work 6 years ago. In the literal sense, the town next to me held a belly button festival every year as evidence to its central placement on Japan’s main island, Honshu. I pulled through thanks to rock river jumps, canyoning, hiking and snowboarding, but being the beach baby I am Japan’s waves were calling me.

12 months into my working holiday I set off from the mountains and toward the black sandy beaches of Ichinomiya, Chiba, to experience the Japanese surf scene. It didn’t take long to meet my new neighbors. My 1LDK (=as small as your bathroom) apartment was situated adjacent to a set of six beach-style cottages. The entire block was nicknamed mura by the locals, meaning ‘village’ in Japanese. Residents of mura included surfers who lived there full time, and surfers who came down on the weekends from Tokyo. We were all young, we all loved to surf. Every weekend was a party.

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