Windsurfer in a windstorm: Wild ride

Just got this uploaded; we shot it at the height of the wind craziness:

12 Replies to "Windsurfer in a windstorm: Wild ride"

  • chas redmond October 18, 2007 (10:21 pm)

    That’s awesome. I didn’t get down to Alki but could easily see the 3 and 4-foot seas on the Sound between me and Blake Island. Great whitecaps – really made me feel like I was on a coast. Love this kind of weather. The black walnut tree behind my house spent the day dive-bombing its fruit on my lower roof – thump, thwamp, thud. When I last looked there were about two dozen walnut fruit lying per square yard behind the house. The squirrels will go nuts with a harvest like this. Anyway, what a day – had electricity the whole time but lost cable/internet for about 5 hours. Cell phone service was spotty at times (Cingular/AT&T).

  • grr October 18, 2007 (11:24 pm)

    (edited by WSB at commenter’s request, to add NOT) I sure hope that was not the person that died while out windsurfing off of Kirkland..Just saw the story on the news. 44 year old male.

  • WSB October 18, 2007 (11:34 pm)

    Seattle Times refers to the person who died as a kite surfer … whereas (someone correct us if we’re wrong) this video showed someone more conventionally windsurfing, or sailboarding. Our videographer was out somewhere in the 3:30 pm-4 pm vicinity – would have been a mad rush for this person to get out of the West Seattle water, zoom over to Lake Wash, get out on the lake and get into deadly trouble there.

  • Jiggers October 19, 2007 (6:27 am)

    Did I read you right…..grr

  • RobertSeattle October 19, 2007 (7:22 am)

    I believe I read about this in the book, “How To Get Yourself in the News in a Storm 101”. :-)

  • *t* October 19, 2007 (8:51 am)

    Nice. But…
    You guys need a tripod pretty badly.

  • WSB October 19, 2007 (9:21 am)

    We have one (albeit the budget version) but it wasn’t much good in 40 mph wind.

  • Jan October 20, 2007 (1:51 pm)

    Jiggers….I noticed that, too…I’m hoping that it was just a mis-typed comment, and that they meant “I sure hope that WASN’T the person”…

  • grr October 21, 2007 (8:49 pm)

    Oh good lord…SOOO sorry for my typo.

  • grr October 21, 2007 (8:52 pm)

    wsb…feel free to correct my original post.
    Wish we could go back and re-edit our posts..

    sadly…this is the only info I can find on the person who died during the storm.

    http://www.komotv.com/news/10605932.html

  • WSB October 21, 2007 (10:44 pm)

    Grr — sorry we don’t offer user log-ins which is the only way to make those corrections, but we’ll go in shortly and fix yours. There was actually an entire obituary on the kite-surfer who died on Lake Washington – you couldn’t tell from the headline, it was a standard “person who died” type headline, but it was about him (click here).

  • grr October 21, 2007 (11:13 pm)

    thanks WSB….Mr. Bergin sounds like he was a hell of a guy. I’m sorry for his family’s loss :(

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