June 24th, 2009

It was a battle, all right. While I was windsurfing today, there was more falling off than standing up. At five o’clock, I went down to the ELC for a windsurfing lesson with Matt Emery, the flight coordinator at Ambergris Cay. We dragged out the large, wide beginner board and small sail (so the wind didn’t overpower me and make me topple off more than I had to). Then, he showed me what all of the board parts were, like the uphaul, which is used to drag the sail up when it falls. Following that lesson, he showed me the basic steering maneuvers, like which direction you will go when you point the sail a certain way. Finally, we were going. I stood up in a balanced  position on the sail, pointed it in the right direction…and…fell off. It continued on that way for quite a while, including when I fell off right onto the rocks and the sail fell on top of me. I made some progress by the time we finished, including doing a full tack and jibe without falling off (woo hoo!). If you’d like to, you can also watch the video below to see for yourself just how hard it is to windsurf.

Windsurfing from Shelley Vohr on Vimeo.

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