Disclaimer: this blog is about my adventures windsurfing yesterday. It may not be of interest to the average reader unless you care to hear about how I caused a goose to commit suicide.
Yesterday was one of the worst windsurfing days in my life, and that's saying something because there's a lot of competition for that distinction. Let's begin with the forecast....Saint John southwest winds, 30-50 km/h. That's good. Fredericton west 20 to 40 km/h. That's dodgy. Southwest is a great wind for where I live. West is a disaster.
The wind appeared to gather strength as the morning progressed. It appeared that I was getting the coveted southwest wind so I was happy. By noon the wind was really riled up and it was looking like it was going to be a corker of a session. Cool windsurfers never talk about sessions. They talk about having a good sesh. As I was saying, it was looking like a promising session was about to happen. I debated what sail to rig. I writhed. I spun. I hummed and I I hawed, and then I decided to rig my 5.9.
The 5.9 was actually too big a sail for the current wind. Sticks were falling out of trees in the gusts, yet I still had that gnawing feeling in my gut that I was doomed somehow. I got my windsurfer ready, donned my wetsuit and then I did something that I rarely do....I put on a helmet. Feeling that I might be grossly overpowered in the gusts, I decided to err on the side of caution. I think I may have worn a helmet on my lake once before in my life, though sometimes I wear one on the gnarly ocean days in the Magdalen Islands.
I walked my windsurfer down to the lake, surveyed the situation and thought to myself 'I'm screwed'. Screwed because the wind had magically dropped and apparently shifted to west. This meant that there was very little wind in front of my house but I presumed that I would be able to slog down the lake to where the wind was more concentrated. Wrong!
Of course there was enough wind to take me 150 feet offshore from my beach, but then the wind died and the current was taking me toward the bridge where a work crew was making repairs. I'm sure they wondered what the hell this idiot was doing. I was wondering the same. The wind died. I fell in. There wasn't enough wind for a waterstart and there wasn't enough wind to uphaul the sail. I floundered for a few minutes and then decided to swim my windsurfer back to shore. It was pathetic. I'm an experienced windsurfer who never does the 'walk of shame', but the walk of shame I did.
The walk of shame, in windsurfing terms, is when you walk back to the point from where you started because you can't get there by windsurfing. It is the territory of beginners....and the damned. I'm not a beginner. I made it back to my beach and 'assessed the situation' as any elite athlete would/should do in this situation. It looked as though there was wind blowing from the west. I saw whitecaps, or 'moutons' as the Quebecois windsurfers call them, down the lake. There was one problem....there was absolutely no wind where I was standing so I walked my windsurfer, in chest deep water, past disGraceland (my neighbour's estate) and all the way to the mid-point of the MicMac Trailer Park. From there I managed to find a bit of wind and I stood proudly on the board, launching myself into the lake.
Slogging: the act of moving forward almost imperceptibly, while half sunken on a $3000 toothpick, usually accompanied by generous amounts of swearing at the skies above, heaps of self-pity and self-loathing, and general physical discomfort.
The wind didn't amount to much so I was slogging again. I was temporarily distracted by a bird swimming in the lake ahead of me. At first I thought it was a loon but as I drew closer I could see that it was a goose. We'd had Canada geese on our lake all summer so it's not unusual to see a flock of them cruising along the shoreline, but this was a lone goose in the middle of the lake. Rather odd, I thought. With very little wind in my sail I didn't have the luxury of controlling my course with any great certainty so I just carried on toward the goose, trying to stay slightly upwind of it. The goose started to swim away from me, and then it faked a broken wing to lead me away from its young.
Canada Geese don't have young at this time of the year, and there were no other birds nearby. The goose then did the broken wing thing again. At this point it occurred to me that the goose probably had a broken wing. When I set out on my secondary walk of shame in front of the Micmac, I did see an eagle circling high overhead. Perhaps it was watching the goose, knowing that lunch was almost ready. I was about 30 feet from the goose when something very unexpected happened....it dove under the water like a cormorant does. I didn't know that geese could dive. I watched for it to surface and it never did.
I watched for about five minutes and I never saw that goose again. It dove under and never re-appeared. I'm still baffled by what I witnessed but believe that I inadvertently caused a goose to commit suicide.
Albatross: The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse.
It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship — being followed by an albatross was generally considered an omen of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (which indeed suffers terrible mishaps). Even when they are too thirsty to speak, the ship's crew let the mariner know through their glances that they blame his action for the curse. He feels as though the albatross is metaphorically hung around his neck - that is, when people look at him, they see him as the albatross killer and that weighs on him. Thus the albatross can be both an omen of good or bad luck, as well as a metaphor for a burden to be carried as penance. (from Wikipedia).
The rest of my time on the water was a total disaster. The wind never got strong for more than five second bursts. It sometimes would die down to almost nothing. I fell in repeatedly. I could barely uphaul the sail as I would sink the board without any wind in the sail. As limped home under the least amount of wind imaginable that would still allow forward progress, I was unable to steer clear of a mooring ball and, you guessed it, keplunk(!), I went in again. To add insult to injury, the very second I made it back to my beach the wind started to build again. Ack. I carried my windsurfer back up the boardwalk to my lawn. If felt heavier than normal, but whether it was due to physical/mental exhaustion or the burden of carrying a goose around my neck, I may never know.
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