Insane winds! 3rd Ave video footage

[whitecap]

There have been plenty of windy days, if you have perspective. Anyone around during the celebration of the Golden Gate? You know, they day the let guys walk across it? They did fireworks off of the bottom of the bridge that just blew horizontal....Another day of solid 30-40....They closed crissy, but John Chiles walked a long way with his rig to go windsurfing....

I will agree the ocean in big winds is a different animal. We had the boat ananometer (sp?) showing 45 going to the farallones, and 35 while we were doing around 15+ knts on leading lady downwind....in the 70's doing the waterhouse race...spindrift just looks spooky...

Props to you guys going out in that stuff.....looks crazy...

bob

[ramsey]

Sorry 5150, but you are wrong. 50mph is around 45knts. The video definitely didn't catch it, but there was spray everywhere out there. in fact at some points there were rainbows over the water. In the gusts i could let the kite go and it would still pick me up a little. And sorry to say dude but i've kited here for the past 5yrs and haven't seen it that windy anywhere in the spring. Also, comparing this to riding in a hurricane is not really fair. I will say i misjudged a bit taking the 6m. I really should have been on the 4m.

[robotvox]

chime. My humble camera is no hi-def machine, but it's true. my own eyes saw it; opaque water, the spray hovering everywhere, rainbows. It totally looked like windswept stormy mountaintops in the himalayas. (I did see some nice still cameras out there, maybe somebody could post some proof?)

on a side note, if the local kiting community wants to pitch in, we could buy a really nice camera to share. as a ball park, this video has had 355 views in two days. So lets just say we all watched it three times, that would be about 120 people. If each pitches in 10 bucks, that's a 1,200 dollar camera, Hello.

and of course, I'd be happy to be in charge of it :mrgreen:

[5150]

ramsey, i did the math and we're both wrong by approximately the same margin
50 * .86 = 43 kts

but i stand by my assertion that the wind only really touched forty and was more high thirties. which is damn windy. i agree that the six was a bad call- i was getting smashed around out there on my six and frankly wasn't having that much fun.

in any event, i hope we get some more clearing breeze soon!

[chwingman]

I'm not sure who 5150 is, where he kited on a 6m that day? if alemeda, most know that the east bay has less wind than pen when in NW direction. It sounds like you were not at third, coyote or on the peninsula from 4pm-6pm? its is not hyperbole. Was it the windiest day ever?, thats debatable but for sure a notch above what peninsula has seen in the last couple of decades. you may have been out in bigger coast winds or under the GG bridge or the gorge, not really sure what your point is (do you?), but we are talking about penisula on this day.

I was there and have been windsurf/kiting there for 20+ years and it was by far the windiest i have ever seen. i know what 50mph gusts look and feel like and it was more. while we kited closer to shore, as video showed (because we are not idiots), out in the middle of the bay, especially just north of the sm bridge it was wild. also, gusts would blow thru and then back-off, the coyote meter was reading average of low 40s mph (38 knots) with gusts to 60mph (52knots).
we saw a truck blow over on the sm bridge, with power outages all along the peninsula, fire trucks were roaring around town, non sailors all along the peninsula were talking about structures collasping and the sounds were something thay had not heard before. My nieghbor had a bunch of shingles lifted off his roof, trees fell, etc.

why do people who don't know what they are talking about pop-off on these forums?

[5150]

Well as far as "not knowing what i'm talking about", i have more than 10k miles on the ocean under my belt and have seen hurricane force winds at sea before. My miles all come on boats under 55', and the biggest blow i've seen was on a 40' canting keel boat.

It did think somebody's point that you get less surface effects inside the bay (just due to less fetch) than at sea was valid- and that could explain the lack of spume in the video.

The only reason i even spoke up is because i've noticed a tendency for kiters to exaggerate how windy it was- and some people who don't know better might get the impression that they were actually kiting in 40+ knots on that day when they weren't. This could lead to somebody actually pumping up on a 40 kt day and getting hurt, killed, and/or getting our sport regulated by killing somebody else.

But seriously. It gets this windy all the time around here- it's just only 2 or 3 systems in the spring, and the occasional southerly buster in the winter. I can think of a storm about 8 years back that registered gusts of 125kts at point blunt. That one destroyed a couple million dollars worth of boats at KKMI by blowing them off their cradles.

PS- i launched at alameda that day and kited out ~ 2 miles to the middle to get away from the death gusts working over the navy base. the breeze out there is usually consistent with the san leandro sensor, and is, as you point out, often about 10% less than the 3rd channel bouy. but when the breeze is more northerly, as it was that day, it's generally the same.

yes, it was windy. no, it was not the windiest day ever. was it the windiest day you've ever windsurfed/kited? sure, i'll take your word for it.

[ramsey]

5150, you definitely make some valid points. though you would need to kite more like 8mi from alameda to get the same wind that 3rd saw that day. Don't know why the spume didn't show on video. next time ill take the camera out there so you have some proof. :) Definitely no spring system that strong in the last five years.

[adamrod]

yah...i kited pretty far out in the channel at alameda and it was probably mid 30s...if you look at a map, given the direction of the wind, you'd have to go out a solid 8 miles (like ramsey said) in order to get a clean fetch of NW wind...and even then, since coyote/3rd is several miles south, it's got a lot less turbulence

5150 has a good point tho, we kiters do like to exaggerate on wind speeds and jump heights. pretty much any wind speed over 30 is really dangerous and anybody who claims to have jumped over 30 feet in 20 mph wind is full of it. (it makes for an interesting physics problem, but it basically comes down to that it's impossible)

[Sonny]

Well as far as "not knowing what i'm talking about", i have more than 10k miles on the ocean under my belt and have seen hurricane force winds at sea before. My miles all come on boats under 55', and the biggest blow i've seen was on a 40' canting keel boat.

It did think somebody's point that you get less surface effects inside the bay (just due to less fetch) than at sea was valid- and that could explain the lack of spume in the video.

The only reason i even spoke up is because i've noticed a tendency for kiters to exaggerate how windy it was- and some people who don't know better might get the impression that they were actually kiting in 40+ knots on that day when they weren't. This could lead to somebody actually pumping up on a 40 kt day and getting hurt, killed, and/or getting our sport regulated by killing somebody else.

But seriously. It gets this windy all the time around here- it's just only 2 or 3 systems in the spring, and the occasional southerly buster in the winter. I can think of a storm about 8 years back that registered gusts of 125kts at point blunt. That one destroyed a couple million dollars worth of boats at KKMI by blowing them off their cradles.

PS- i launched at alameda that day and kited out ~ 2 miles to the middle to get away from the death gusts working over the navy base. the breeze out there is usually consistent with the san leandro sensor, and is, as you point out, often about 10% less than the 3rd channel bouy. but when the breeze is more northerly, as it was that day, it's generally the same.

yes, it was windy. no, it was not the windiest day ever. was it the windiest day you've ever windsurfed/kited? sure, i'll take your word for it.

Don't kite at Alameda and claim that it was not that windy at 3rd.

[jrg]

have seen hurricane force winds at sea before

No way, the winds were no where near that strong. :roll: