The Horse's Mouth has a regular Friday feature called Fish on Fridays, which is on the Peconic Puffin's required reading list. We like a good fish. But last Friday's FOF really caught our eye. Take a good look at the fish in the picture. Look familiar? For a number of Puffins and friends of Puffins, the answer may be Yes. It's a Sheepshead...Archosargus probatocephalus. A sheepshead figured heavily in a Puffin escapade a few years back...Slo and Jay caught it...Michael admired the character and countenance of the fish so much that he suggested we take it to a bar and buy the fish drinks (Radar Tom offered to get the first round,) but when it was all said and done Slo carved it into sashimi, which we washed down with a Viognier...at 10 o'clock in the morning.
We were in Cape Hatteras, which should be taken into account.
(Slo demanded that the tale of his sheepshead be immortalized in the Peconic Puffin, but at the time the print version had stopped being published, and the web version was still yet to be. Slo, here it is, 18 months after the last bite!)
The glitterati joined the winderati Sunday night at an exclusive bash at Sally and Michael's place. Advance word of the event was strictly hush-hush, and admissions at the door were kept strictly A-list Puffin celebrities.
Our photographers brought back evidence of a sumptuous feast followed by a private fashion show. Enjoy our photo spectacular...
Update from the edit room, where producer (and OG Puffin) Jace Panebianco and producer/director John DeCesare are combining presumably awesome footage with an equally awesome soundtrack (we hear it's all awesome, and we believe it.) A release date has been set: July 1st, in Hood River, at a special event hosted by Robby Naish.
I have been following this thing since its inception (I've known Jace, as many Long Island sailors have, since he was a skinny teenager working at the windsurfing shop) and I must say it sounds like it's going to be quite great. For myself, the idea of Robby Naish alone shot windsurfing for the big screen is...something I want to see.
Steve pulled this blue board from the insatiate maw of the local garbage dump several years back. He admired its beauty, but wonders, as do I, as to it's origins. It's manufactured, but by whom? Do you know? Can you help?
The first person who succesfully identifies the blue barge (I mean board) to our satisfaction will have their praises sung in the Peconic Puffin. So will the second and third...maybe more. So if you know, let us know!
Spooky, once considered by the Peconic Puffin to be an embarrasment to both dog and man (though a cute little thing you could put in your purse...YOUR purse, not mine) has managed to grow and mature to the point where even Steve says "he's a good little dog." The Puffin will accept this, as the going must have been hard for Steve, and we don't want an argument with Avery!
Spooky does not eat dog food. Here is a partial list of the things Spooky eats and drinks, according to Cindy, Jordan, and Avery:
Bones
Broccoli
Cat food
Chicken broth
Chinese food
Coffee (with milk and sugar)
Eggs (scrambled)
Oatmeal
Salmon
Steak
Tomatos
Four ripping days of windsurfing! It's been awhile since my legs ached from day after day of jumping and high chop jibing, what with Wednesday 5.5 at Mecox, then Thursday 5.5, Friday 4.7, and 4.7 Easter Sunday all at Sebonac Inlet.
The new 5.5 was broken in properly, a new toy...a boom mounted video camera made its debut, and I got the best jump of my life on Sunday (if only I knew what I did differently from all the mediocre jumps.) Anyhow, if you've got to hurt, it's a fine reason
Sailors included Scott, John V, Fisherman Bill, Peconic Jeff and one of my original and best windsurfing buddies (not to mention an OG Puffin) Steve, who got a session in just a few days before being sidelined with a bit o' wrist surgery.
Q: What do 10,000 puffins say when a few more puffins show up?
A: Great! More puffins!
Puffins like to be together. And so it was that when Sally and Michael planned a windsurfing trip to Aruba, soon Karin and Massimo decided to come, and Dana and Andy were already going (with Una and Kai), and then Greg decided to surprise everyone by showing up. We were all there for relaxation and the wind.
Relaxation we got.
Wind...not so much.
And we also had a mystery.
With the wind planable less than two hours each day, many of us started grabbing big boards to cruise around on. Michael found some Exocet Konas hidden in the back of Vela...he'd recently developed a Kona fetish after seeing them on Surfingsports' blog...and so immediately grabbed one and went out. Andy did likewise. But after awhile Andy went back to shore, and Michael went cruising off for an adventure. A few hundred yards past the reef towards the wreck, Michael espied a bright blue shape in the water up ahead, so irridescent he thought it must be a piece of plastic carried in by the ocean currents. He sailed right over it, looked down, and saw a beautiful blue ray, with large spots on its wings. Moving at a nice pace, he was not able to stop on a dime for a closer look, and when he returned to the spot he thought it was, it was gone. A few more passes over the area, but the blue ray was not to be seen.
Excitedly, Michael sailed back to the launch at Vela and walked up to Dana and Andy to tell them. Dana replied "we saw that earlier...it was too blue to be real. Maybe it was a kite?" Michael says he's pretty sure it was a blue ray, but D&A are skeptical. "We'll sail over there and search some more" they say. The truth must be ascertained, they agreed. And so they searched. But they found neither blue ray nor blue kite or anything like what we'd all seen before.
What became of the blue ray? Had it swum away? Had its plastic ray-ass been dragged out by a phantom current? Nobody knows.
Except possibly Una. Una, who sat on the nose of the board Dana was piloting had the best view of any of us. When asked, she gave a mysterious look and just smiled.
In 2003 some friends and I drove down the East Coast for a ten day windsurfing tour. Three days were spent in Dewey Beach, Delaware, sharpening our skills in an ABK camp, and then we continued on to the Outer Banks, to spend a week sailing brilliantly out of a rented house in Avon.
But of course, it didn't turn out that way.
On our first day in Hatteras it blew with gusto, and as I sailed overpowered on a 4.1, ABK-meister Andy Brandt swooped in behind me to encourage me to jump jibe, a move I'd learned two days earlier in somewhat lighter conditions. I jumped, I jibed mid-air, I didn't get my foot out of the strap, and I came down badly.
It was the only time I ever gave a "thumb's down" signal to other sailors.
I spent the rest of the week learning Apple's iMovie software, and making this clip. The sailors are Steve Marks, Jay Edson, "Transition Tom" Hazel (a brilliant freestyle sailor whose home waters are Marsh Creek PA) and myself.
The ankle, originally thought to be broken, was just a bad sprain. Eight weeks of physical therapy to fix, which in my book is a slap on the wrist!
We're not talking Gekko Flakas or Spock 540's. We're talking much cooler than that. When the wind dropped to subplaning in Aruba last week, Dana Tang and Andy Darrell showed the crowds how they do things back on their home waters. Daughter Una ("I'm not as good as my mother...yet") showed off her noseriding skills. It was impressive, it was cute, and it drew more sailors out on the water.
When the wind gets light on those summer weekends, some of us still like to get out on the water and have some fun. Props to ABK for spreading the lightwind gospel on Long Island (where we surely need it.) And check out a nice selection of basic nonplaning tricks on ClewFirst.com.
Windsurfing hasn't done too well in movies. There is the outstandingly bad "Wind Rider" best known for the half-second of Nicole Kidman naked. Then there's "No Way Out" in which Kevin Costner's car is followed by a station wagon with an original Windsurfer and rig on the roof. That's about it. But soon Jace Panebianco (pro windsurfer, newlywed, and old-school Peconic Puffin) plans on completing a film we've all been hearing about, in his role as co-director of the windsurfing movie titled "The Windsurfing Movie". The Peconic Puffin pestered the following out of Jace:
"Things are going really well. Johnny (DeCesare) is in Africa with the crew filming in Cabo Verde and Morocco. They have been scoring every day! He's been shooting on 16mm film and with the new HVX200. I've been taking my HVX200 in the water with a housing and have been getting some great shots of Robby Naish and Kai Lenny."
"We're working on doing a release tour stop in NY. Jon Ford of Windsurfing Hamptons is helping to organize it with Red Bull and Naish
International. We're shooting for the last weekend of May."
The Peconic Puffin will keep you posted on Long Island tour events. Meanwhile check out www.thewindsurfingmovie.com for updates.
(An impending trip to Aruba after six years away has brought past adventures to mind. In that spirit, Peconic Puffin Classics presents:
Why I Really Love Aruba
The Unexpergated Version, for the Discerning Puffin
(In the summer of 2000, Windsurfing Magazine asked the editor of PP to write an article entitled “Why I Love Aruba” and provided a basic description of what they were looking for. PP happily complied. Upon receipt of the Puffin piece, an editor decided to “improve” the article to make it “more suitable” for their readers. Horrified by the changes, PP felt it crucial to get the Original Words out to fellow Puffins. Here, for the first time, is presented the original piece, Puffin-style, and all the “more suitable” stuff left out. But I am using the magazine photo that accompanied the article, showing someone getting fine air off of nonexistent chop. I hope everyone thought it was me. It was the amazing Jason Voss).
Why I Love Aruba.
As the plane banks towards final descent, my wife and I have our faces pressed to the window. "Look at everyone on the water!" We’re giddy…we can’t wait to Get There. What did we check a bag for? We’re idiots! We could have easily brought everything as carry on.
We land. We pick up our bag. Emerge from the airport into the breeze, grab a cab. Fifteen endless minutes until we get to our room. Drop everything on the floor, change to bathing suits, grab the harnesses, race to the beach. Get a 45-minute session in before the day ends, then grab a beach chair for the question and answer session with instructor Eddy Patricelli. With a Polar beer in tired hand, I glance at my wife, who is reflecting my own huge stupid smile. We are Happy. We are back in Aruba.
Five days later it’s Judgement Day. All week it’s been blowing a beautiful 5.5 with three-to-six inch chop on the inside. My jibes are getting wired, I’m ripping upwind, my wife has elatedly hit her first waterstart, but still, today is the Day. The day the instructor Dasher videotapes everyone sailing, and edits it into his weekly windsurfing spectacular, complete with soundtrack, to be shown to any and all at the Thursday Night Party. If you sail well for the camera on Judgement Day, you feel like a million bucks. In my four previous trips to Aruba, I’ve always been so exhausted by Thursday that I, well, felt like 1000 bucks…good but not great. But this time I’ve planned. I’ve rested for this day. I want to see myself on the small screen sailing like I sail in my Aruban dreams, the way I’ve felt all week.
I get to the beach early, check out a board and sail, and take a quick run to get the harness lines and footstraps dialed in. I make peace with my maker, accept my karma, run through my lessons in my head, and hit the water.
Cameraman spotted. I’m flying across the crystal clear water, seeing the shadow of my rig zipping over the undulating white sand four feet below. It feels so great just to be Here, Now, that all of a sudden it doesn’t matter, I’m just going for it, and so bank the board and rig hard over…switch feet…flip the sail…catch rig on broad reach, sheet in…and complete the best jibe of my life. I look back and Dasher’s lens is locked on me…he got it! I howl, tear back from whence I came, jibe (well again!) and return.
More great jibes. This is unbelievable. I’m having the best session of my life, and it’s just too easy. Teacher is smiling. Okay, let’s get wet…let’s try a duck jibe.
Earlier in the week I’d taken a duck jibe lesson, and had even succeeded in catching the rig on the far side of the duck without falling, but with the board dead in the water. Ugly, but the first step. Now I’m flying again towards the camera, the board and sail just perfect for the perfect wind and perfect water, bank in, flash back to lesson (don’t think about the sail, just keep carving) and catch the sail on the plane. Don’t switch the feet too soon! I don’t, and come ripping out of the duck jibe, and look back.
Dasher’s jaw is dropped…I am sailing way too well.
That night in the video, I get my own montage.
We’re booked for next year.
(the following excerpt is from The Peconic Puffin, Volume 7, Number 4 originally published August 1998):
"Adventure on the High Seas
Steve buys a Kayak, but will Jordan get the paddle for “oh sh*t”?"
PUFFIN ON THE WATER
Sailing News Plus!
It may have started when Michael bought MisterAl, all 260 liters of him, a board bigger than Steve’s Pandejo. Steve, the man who has everything, a windsurfer who admits to riches beyond our wildest dreams, may have looked at the new old longboard, and heard Sally’s words ringing in his ear: “Size Matters! Size Matters!” We suspect that Steve meditated on Michael’s long thick waterwagon, and finally raised his head saying “Liters? I’LL SHOW YOU LITERS!” and went and bought a Pongo. Ladies and Gentlemen, Puffins of every stripe, we have a kayak in the house!
After scooping up said kayak at the Main Beach swapmeet (it looks like Lars is getting out of windsurfing, by the way...the showing was pitiful) Steve soon launched his new craft and began paddling southwestward. Michael, declaring that a centerboard and 260 liters was as good as a paddle, launched on MisterAl and a 7.5 in the 6 knot zephyr. The adventure was on.
It quickly became apparent that the kayak paddled well made upwind water at about the same pace as the tacking longboard, and our Puffins spent quality time moving through the western reaches of the Wee Peconic Waters. While originally no specific goal had been set, Steve selected the landfall to be the tip of Cow’s Neck. Approaching the point, our adventurers discovered a venturi effect accelerating the wind, and a fair bit of chop between the Neck and Robins Island, which Michael sailed out into before landing alongside Steve.
Cows Neck revealed itself as a strange and interesting landing...silvered and smoothed driftwood piled high against 25 foot cliffs. The cliffs were dotted by dozens of holes, thought to be birds nests. What could be on top? Steve spotted a rope fence just in view, and a climb was clearly necessary.
Michael scrambled to the top, employing a big stick to help gain the summit. As his head went over the ridge and Steve asked “what do you see,?” Michael raised an eyebrow and announced “a skeet shooting launcher”. This was a place where people brought guns. But there was nothing else in sight, so when Steve came up the two crossed the rope and began walking down a trail, which was increasingly and puzzlingly manicured, but for what purpose? It certainly didn’t seem like a golf club.
Michael mentioned a fear of being attacked by dogs. Steve pointed out that Michael was still carrying his climbing club. Finally the path opened into a groomed and designed green area with shrubs, benches, swinging vines. Still not a golf course, Steve opined that the area felt like the playground of the extremely rich and secretive. And they had yet to see anybody. Finally we spotted the back of a sign. Information was at hand! Steve walked over and read the sign. He did not smile as he read aloud “Shooters and Spectators are responsible for their own safety.” Not good. Apparently this was a place where some people shot guns, and other people watched them shoot, and they were concerned for the safety of one another. Unwritten on the sign was any warning about strangers arriving by sea, scaling the escarpment and popping up in the woods unannounced. It seemed clear that we could be either accidentally shot, or shot intentionally as trespassers on the private land of well-to-do gun nuts. Steve said “that’s about as bad a sign as we could have found.” Time to go. Steve wanted to try a different path back. Michael wanted to take the known path back, quickly. Steve then decided he wanted to swing on the vine. Michael suggested that since sneaking onto a shooting range unannounced had potential health risks associated with it, that perhaps they should get the hell out of there. Steve gave in to his cautious friend’s wishes, even though nobody had been seen or even heard. Michael felt a bit the wimp.
But after walking back down the path (with Michael positioning his stick behind his head to deflect bullets) climbing down the escarpment and launching their craft, shots began to be heard. Many shots. For the next twenty minutes as our Puffins cruised away with hides intact, guns were easily heard going off as the shooters apparently returned from tea to fire away. Now content in the knowledge that they’d done something sufficiently stupid to tide them over for a year at least, it was time to respectably paddle and sail along the western shore in search of less lethal discoveries.
Who amongst the Puffins doesn't remember young Jace Panebianco when he was the kid working at Windsurfing Hamptons? Who doesn't remember when they were taller than Jace? And who could forget the Puffin Party in 1993 when sometime after midnight Jace showed up at the back door of the Puffin House in his wetsuit, having just sailed the length of the bay to say Hi?
Jace is taller than all of us now. He's been a gin-u-wine pro windsurfer for quite some time, and the now-resident of Maui is even married. Jace reached out to PP with the above photo and this message:
"Love the peconic puffin in web form. Attached is a
photo of me and blue dog for the next issue!
I get married in January, and will be out here for the holidays. The family
and horde will arrive after the new year.
I thought of you guys the other day, there is a cereal out there called
'puffin's and its got a great logo. I saved a box and have it here
somewhere. I'll send it to you if you send me your address.
Lastly, we hope we can get your Hawaiin ass on Peconic waters over the holidays. It's time to get back to your roots! Hopefully your hair won't ice up.
The driveway at Chateau Marks ranneth over with the cars of happy guests. Downstairs, the floor was runneth over by Sasha and the Speed Mob. But upstairs, all was calm and collected as Puffindom engaged in studious partying.
While Steve was conducting vodka tests with experts and Michael (“his opinion matters not” said the good doctor) Nanette oversaw a grand cru hot cocoa that Cindy was seen to gaze into dreamily. Sanity was the domain of Irene and Ivette (I & I Bob Marley would say) whilst Sally kept an eye on the kids downstairs. All in all, a happy scene, but what was learned?
1. Steve can hook up a home entertainment system
2. Popular games to play include “Teenager” and “Heiress.”
3. Hot cocoa over ice cream is very good.
4. A decent vodka comes from Texas.
The Horse's Mouth has a regular Friday feature called Fish on Fridays, which is on the Peconic Puffin's required reading list. We like a good fish. But last Friday's FOF really caught our eye. Take a good look at the fish in the picture. Look familiar? For a number of Puffins and friends of Puffins, the answer may be Yes. It's a Sheepshead...Archosargus probatocephalus. A sheepshead figured heavily in a Puffin escapade a few years back...Slo and Jay caught it...Michael admired the character and countenance of the fish so much that he suggested we take it to a bar and buy the fish drinks (Radar Tom offered to get the first round,) but when it was all said and done Slo carved it into sashimi, which we washed down with a Viognier...at 10 o'clock in the morning.
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