Friday, May 29, 2009 "Last Day, Lets Make it the Best!"
When we woke up, you could already see the palms waving in the moderate breeze and you could see the waves building and small whitecaps farther out in the ocean in front of El Magnifico. This was a very good sign. We headed out early to Cafe Pitu for the Omlettes we could not get enough of. $149 Dominican Pesos, thats about $4 bucks for the best Omlette you ever had. It is not as cheap as it was the first time I visited in 2000, but it is still very reasonable here.
Once at the Vela center, we could see it was going to be a very good day. We were the first ones there and we were ready for the wind. I started on a 122L Starboard Kode while Chris went w/ a smaller 107L JP FSW. I was ripping on a bigger board and a 6.9 sail. I was a bit board, so I decided to beat up wind out of Cabarete bay and found the wind changed direction slighly about a half mile out, with enough north in it to allow me to rip up the coast almost a mile or so to some unsailed territory. There was nobody on the beach and I sailed along until I reached the last building I could see along the beach. I was a ways east of the bay, way off shore and definitely out of site of the Vela Center. I decided to sail back down to the bay because an equipment failure would really suck this far away.
The down winder was full-on seat of my shorts sailing with big ocean swell and incredible speed down the faces. By the time I was back in the bay I was nearly exhausted from trying to keep it all together on the ride down the coast. Definitely a highlight of the weeks sailing! I could see things had also picked up in the bay during my two hours outside the bay so I headed in to get lunch and change to wave gear.
About 2:30pm, JAB showed up and went out with an 84L Twinser and a 5.4 sail. Chris was on the same sail with a Freestyle wave 84. I had enjoyed the speed earlier in the day, so I decided on a 6.2 Alpha for power and a 94L Kode. I mounted up the GoPro video camera on the booms and headed out. The waves were getting bigger and some of them has steep faces for big air. It was getting perfect for a few more loop attempts!
John was having his best session of the week on the twinser, working the waves like a champ and even pulling off some duck-jibes. Chris was 100% on his duck jibes all week and ripping the waves. I saw him slash the top of a wave and drop down the face of a nice 5 footer right in front of me while I was heading out...I wish I had a picture of that!
I returned the favor a bit later with Chris following me out. A perfect ramp set-up and I launched it into a backie at top speed. He got to see it all close up from 30 feet behind me. I got some still frames I pulled from the video so you can check out the action.
We continued on until the very end...6pm. We wre all completely exhausted, but we got it all on our final day of sailing. Nobody injured, no gear broken (except for Chris breaking the carbon tail on a pair of booms earlier in the week). A great session!
6pm stated happy hour so a small celebration was on order. We toasted to the best day of the week!
At 7:30 we meet Will one of the instructors at the Vela Center as well as Boris and JoAnn (from Austria) and Steve and Nichole (Steve a RAF fighter test pilot). The nine of us went down the street for a round of put-put golf before going to dinner. It was a spirited game of 18 holes and a value for the price of 50 pesos, about a buck-fifty per person. The winner was decided by a bet that Will could not rest the ball above a sloped hole on the 17th. By accident he accomplished it (on his fith stroke) and was given a "1" for the hole...which saved the game for him.
For dinner we walked back into town for Chinese...What? Yes, even a Chinese restaurant in Cabarete. Keep in mind all of these places are open air...which also means open to bugs, roaches ect. Who knows what goes on in the kitchen, but the food was good and substantial. One of the best meals of the week, with the exception of our first night at lax for pizza and spagetti!
After dinner we were full and exhausted. It was our last night and we had to get packed so we headed home. We wanted to get some sleep before our long trip back on Saturday. What a day it was!
