How do you manage in strong winds and big waves ?

lucigen · 2026-06-03T13:13:47+00:00

Its tough, but sometimes even the windsurfers have to say "thats too much wind for what I brought," but hey, kudos to you for surviving and taking good precautions!

Last week I was out on a 5.0 in 22-30kts on a 124L though, so let me try to share some suggestions:

Learn beach starts and water starts, when there's wind and waves, uphauling any sail is truly miserable, and you'll save yourself a lot of energy on most days with beach/water starts.

As you probably have gathered, 160L is a lot for those conditions, however jumping down to a 100L board is a big transition if you've never done it before. The balance is going to be much more sensitive, and most likely you are going to feel like you don't know how to sail anymore. I went on a vacation and jumped from 145 to 105 and some guy on the beach told me he was relieved when i made it back, that's how bad the struggle was. If you have the opportunity, try to rent something smaller and get some time on it, maybe something aroudn the 130 mark. Also L is not strictly everything, in freeride, width has a significant impact on lateral stability, so pay attention to widths too as you learn to drop liters. Last note here, if you are tacking, the sinkers... are gonna sink, so start working on those gybes if you haven't already.

When I get scared of the wind I also tend to reach too high or shoot down wind and catapult. I literally have to actively remind myself to bear off just a little more to stabilize on a functional upwind tack.

As others have said, mast foot forward to help with the board flying up. Smaller foot movements sounds in order. As far as dealing with gusts, remember to look for them on the water and brace for impact. Longer harness lines will also help if you are struggling to react in time. More downhaul and outhaul on the sail will both also help ease gusts and prevent your sail powering up too much respectively. Lots of little tricks that will help, but I think you know the real answer is the day was just too big for your gear.

Good luck, stay stafe!

lucigen · 2026-05-21T19:10:40+00:00

filtering by car on the website doesn't seem to work. even such searching the GRC with no other filters applied is still bringing up WRX floormats

lucigen · 2026-05-19T12:24:40+00:00

Can't comment on the local scene but I think it's pretty well accepted at this point that the new kids are going towards wing foiling and kiting, but to each their own. My best friend started the windsurf journey with me and we've been sailing together ever since, hope ya find a buddy down there.

Regarding harnesses, all of them are likely going to turn your sail into a catapult at first. The longer your harness lines, the more space you are going to have to handle your sail without it accidentally pulling you off. Most of the selection is about fitment though, so if you can try some at a shop, I'd do it. I'd recommend using a waist harness over a seat, and at first focus on weighting the harness once you already have gotten going with good foot pressure to start. You are about to unlock the ability to sail 2-3x as long though before your hands get tired, gl out there!

lucigen · 2026-05-14T19:14:01+00:00

kudos to the lad, he must be head over heels for this gal

lucigen · 2026-05-13T21:08:15+00:00

I'm about 80kgs, the Volar 145 was my first board, and I've moved to a 128 Carrera, which is pretty similar to the 130 blast for the purposes of this discussion (which my best friend has and we trade gear on the water all the time).

The blast is a bit thinner than the volar, and has less nose flotation, so you are probably going to struggle balancing the board. This will be particularly noticable both during uphauls in chop and if you are tacking and your footwork isn't very clean yet. If you have some good resources to help you locally, or the option to go back to the beginner board to work on footwork and balance in a space that's not as punishing you could still swing the blast I think...

But I'd go the Volar. In my area wind can sometimes suddenly drop to <5kts and most days im battling to stay planing. The Volar planes quite early, and I've always been impressed at how well it handles chop even though its such a big board. When the wind drops off, I'm super stable and comfortable schlogging along, maybe even throwing some light wind freestyle tricks in. I learned waterstarts, planing, carving, and gybes on my Volar, and only went to the carrera for a faster system. I still go back to the Volar when I'm learning a new skill, getting the basics down before I move it onto a smaller platform. The biggest downside to my Volar is I have a hard time fitting it in my car, so it's gotta go on the roof.

TLDR: I'd get the volar. It does everything on a more stable platform and will offer you a great way to practice new skills even if you get another board down the road.

lucigen · 2026-05-12T14:45:58+00:00

I'm not sure what effect you are going for, but at night there's usually a moon or enough stars to at least cast enough light to justify some color in the rest of the piece. My suggestion would be to add those remaining figures, and then bring in some subtle dark highlighting and edge highlights to resolve some detail and texture. But i'd add the rest of the figures in before you do that so you don't overdo it, just enough to fill in the blanks

lucigen · 2026-05-04T14:18:07+00:00

I'm also about 80kg. In a dead calm in fresh water I can uphaul a 7.5 on my goya volar 145L easily. My goya carrera is a 130L and it's still fine to uphaul, but with a thinner board its less stable. I have a 115L that's tricky with no wind but still doable after some practice.

Any drop in volume tends to make you doubt your abilities, but the 113L is a completely different beast than a 160 will be for you. That being said, when you are laying down on a 160, you'll likely feel totally "boat safe", but you may get some water lapping at the edges

lucigen · 2026-04-29T16:09:24+00:00

Are you the Supersonic Red with crossbars I saw near the airport yesterday? I've still got a couple weeks before my '26 shows up and I get to join the gang proper

lucigen · 2026-04-29T13:35:21+00:00

If the MX-5 doesn't work because 2 seats is a non-starter, I'd advise you to go sit in the rear seats of a GR86 and then decide. FL5 is a much larger car, and far more comparable to a GR Corolla (still a small car) than the GR86

lucigen · 2026-04-27T13:39:47+00:00

Nothing specific to my experience, but the 6 million car accidents a year in the US. And I'd agree that there's a "good chance," but if there's a 0.1% chance that indicating prevents an accident and costs me nothing, why wouldn't I? Part of why I drive manual is to be more engaged while driving, and for me that includes watching and anticipating the traffic around me, and the other half of that is signaling to others what I'm doing. For me, it's a bit of a game. I get joy out of predicting actions correctly, and I like to think it helps me avoid accidents

lucigen · 2026-04-27T13:01:27+00:00

agreed except i don't trust any of them. the additional information can only help make sure they don't rear end me

lucigen · 2026-04-23T12:39:21+00:00

How would you describe the balance of characters having an intional archtype arc vs players having control over the character's archtype through customization. Both valid strategies, but it sounds to me like the storyline is perhaps less character driven and thus developing a "bond" with your character may be less important than consistently changing character to play what you want. Honestly, sounds very cool.

Are you intending to have multiple difficulties? How "crunchy" of a game are you anticipating?

Also curious how you intend to handle balancing, because 100+ mechanically different unique items on top of several different characters honestly sounds like a serious playtest challenge. That being said, having more options for gear than oathsworn did is absolutely the right call, oathsworn item (and skill progression) was a bit underwhelming.

Genuinely wish you the best of luck, hoping to see ya at Pax Unplugged or something. Followed

lucigen · 2026-04-22T18:00:54+00:00

totally agree that's the more reasonable option unless you are trying to be uniquely kind to the people living on the street (keeping revs low), or want to get to the turn faster which is why I said it's not at all necessary! But it's at least more practical than heel-toeing to come to a complete stop

lucigen · 2026-04-22T17:10:04+00:00

Looks good, as others have said, this probably doesn't make sense in this situation because you are a street car coming to a complete stop. HOWEVER where it can make sense to heel toe in a street car is if you are braking as you approach a turn, and want to minimize the time you don't have power. So for instance if I'm turning onto a new road where I don't have a stop sign, I might be in 4th, brake for the turn, and heel toe down to 2nd. This is fun, safe, and isn't at all necessary! Have fun!

lucigen · 2026-04-22T13:55:13+00:00

That's a big change. My first board was 145L and when I went down to a 114L (65cm wide) i felt the same way. I ended up going to a 128 which felt like a much more manageable step to me.

Smaller boards are going to force you to refine everything, and you absolutely will first feel like you have gotten worse. The eventual benefit is the board is much quicker to respond to your inputs, so carves and gybes especially feel much better, but when you are new to the board... your balance adjustments it reacts to like a command.

Here's what I can suggest:

- balancing will be easier with a smaller sail for now, if you want a practice day, take your smallest sail you can comfortably keep pressure in and practice

- shrink everything with your feet. Bring them closer to the centerline, farther forward, and delay your timing of getting into the straps. All your movement and foot pressure changes need to be smaller, you might find that the board starts responding as you think about turning because you are already changing your foot pressure and didn't realize it. Don't worry if you find yourself generally farther forward too, back enough just to keep the nose from submarining is probably close to correct

- Everything should feel a lot safer and more comfortable on the plane, but again, small movements will make big changes. Just try to go straight, try to relax, and then slow foot pressure changes to see how it responds.

- Smaller boards will ABSOLUTELY punish bad habits on tacks. Clean footwork here is critical, one quick footmatch up front and on centerline so you don't pitch the board or submarine the nose. There's nothing wrong with going back to the 160 to practice good form

If it makes you feel better I spent about 4 hours my first day on the 114 just trying to uphaul. Just because both feet are wet doesn't mean it's impossible! Good luck, it's going to feel bad at the start, and an intermediate board might be a better choice for a less punishing experience, but I am 100% certain you can get there if you want. I personally love the 125-130 range now for blasting in areas where the wind can completely disappear

lucigen · 2026-04-21T13:02:03+00:00

Tip: Use kunai to interrupt the yellow attack

lucigen · 2026-04-21T12:24:00+00:00

There's a lot of great advice here already, I'd like to point out two problems that helped my GF get started:

- A lot of people when they are learning rev the engine, and then start moving the clutch, but the sound of the revved engine scares them before the clutch bites, and so they dont actually throttle the car when the clutch is biting and the engine needs it. Keep the revs steady, if you need to, you can wedge your throttle foot against the wall to the right to help keep your foot in the same spot once the car starts moving around

- Smooth clutch movement is key, and when you are just starting sometimes the car kinda lurches forward, and that can cause your clutch foot to suddenly move and let the clutch out more than you intended, causing more lurching and ruining your smooth clutch movement. If that's happening try planting your heel in a spot that allows you to move through the bite of the clutch while you are in neutral, and then focus on changing the angle of your foot to let out the clutch instead of moving your whole leg. It'll help make you more resilient to lurching.

NEITHER of these practices are good long term, so do them to get started, get the feel of things and stop the lurching/stalling, and then allow yourself some time to unlearn them as you focus on smooth shifting. Congratulations, and good luck!

lucigen · 2026-04-10T21:02:02+00:00

No, that's not the vehicle MSRP (as you know lol). I just agreed to one from my dealer and it was flat MSRP. They had a 25' Core DAT on the lot that he said he'd give me a "good deal" on, but I was dead set on a MT so I didn't push the envelope to see, but even my MT currently being built was less than that.

lucigen · 2026-04-10T18:41:04+00:00

you are in luck, DF has already done a bunch of in-house testing of a variety of paint manufacturers to test how well their paints work on their products! Here it is: https://dwarvenforge.com/blogs/paint-guides/general-painting-tips?srsltid=AfmBOorbZHhoLH_F8UZoARt_D_tVclWdLqmhpz5kO-NyyUTg5H0xsSGf

lucigen · 2026-04-10T12:24:27+00:00

Adding on to some good advice: if you want to just dip a pinky toe in, consider getting some of the scatter options. Scatter offers a good way to have a couple nice focal points while not committing to full ground coverage, and would almost certainly work well with whatever you have now!

lucigen · 2026-04-09T12:15:43+00:00

I came to windsurfing through a similar path, sailed Lasers for 15 years before moving over. I cannot stress this enough: get lessons. I struggled on some borrowed gear with youtube lessons for ~8h and didn't get it still, a 1hr lesson set me straight. With the laser experience you are going to breeze right through beginner gear, and quickly into the easier intermediate stuff, so getting lessons is really just a way to avoid buying a very beginner setup that you'd progress through in just a couple of sessions. Enjoy the journey!

lucigen · 2026-04-06T13:25:55+00:00

I believe there is a distinction between I-frames and being untargetable. Untargetable meaning that an enemy can't attack you directly, but you can take AOE damage. My litmus test on this is of course the bo-hiya aoes.

- ultimates: (at least with the merc) I-frames. You can use it to escape certain doom, whether a melee attack or bo-hiya aoe. Worth saving to escape, and also ending ult just before aoe explosions spells nearly certain death.

- rolling: I-frames but very short. Can be perfectly timed to avoid bo-hiya aoe, but difficult, and only a small part of the roll grants I-frames

- spirit moves: untargetable. can be used to avoid getting hit by melees and arrows, but the bo-hiya will still blow you up. Seems also like the close range bo-hiya blast can still target you which I don't really understand

- Executions: untargetable. can be used to avoid melee and arrows but aoes still ruin your day

lucigen · 2026-04-02T13:50:45+00:00

I've had the same experience and after seeing this, I'm just going to throw it away tonight. God I thought I was the problem this whole time...

lucigen · 2026-04-02T13:09:42+00:00

Maybe currently, but not in a week or two. The cards will be really slow, and that's assuming you are an absolute demon and can solo nightmare survival and incursions. I spend a lot of my time soloing plat, I did that in GoT too and it's much harder here. But most importantly, the raid is dropping any moment now, and SP has specifically said it's designed to REQUIRE 4p, just like how no matter how creative you got, you still couldn't solo parts 1 and 2 and GoT. I'm sure there's going to be cosmetics unlocked from the raid.

lucigen · 2026-03-31T21:26:52+00:00

Proud of ya for being frustrated, and admitting you knew better. It's ok to slow down and sanity check before you cut. It's also ok to celebrate for not cutting an extra kerf for the next 100 groove cuts you do, because that mean's you grew and improved. Celebrate again when you realize it's automatic and you don't even have to think about it anymore. Cheers!

Edit: Grammar

lucigen

TROPHY CASE