Looking at the Herber airport, the steady west wind let me think there could be some potential. Showed up , rigged, by 2:00PM I was hitting the water in between fishermen to get was was now a steady but fairly strong (more like 6.5) wind under a beautiful sun. I put in a solid hour plus of non stop planning getting used to my 8.0 which after some tweaking and flattening was nicely handling the breeze (did almost a full reach no handed!) except for the gusts when my arms were getting seriously stretched.
50 jibes or so later (ok maybe not quite
I decided to call it quit as my arms were wasted but definitely a good one! derigged under the sun and left as it started to drizzle.It seems the island would also have been a good place to stop with much more of a reach (the sailboat beach is fun but the reach is really short!)
PS: I had forgotten how much of a pain it is waterstarting big sails especially when the boom doesn't touch the tail of the board!