St. Lucie Estuary and Caloosahatchee Estuary - Mirror Images?

It rains a lot in Florida, at least in the summertime. It's certainly raining today, with 2013's first Atlantic Tropical Storm, Andrea, soaking us down.



What's peculiar here in Florida is where the rain goes once it hits the ground. Our state is so flat that the water doesn't cascade from rivulets to streams to creeks to rivers as it would in a hillier landscape. Rather, the water tends to flow slowly and spread diffusely over broad wetlands like the everglades- seeping, rather than running, towards the coast. At least that's what it did before Florida was "civilized."

Historic, diffuse pattern of freshwater flow across South Florida. Note that there was no link between Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries on the West and East Coasts of the State. The flow just went overland to the Everglades in the South.

Settlers of European descent found Florida's broad marshes, swamps, and seasonally-flooded lands rather inconvenient to build and farm upon. So the United States' Army Corps of Engineers sliced the land with deep, straight canals, and dammed it with dikes and levees to shunt the diffuse surface flows more directly to major waterways and the ocean. From a development standpoint, their efforts to reengineer Florida's water flow were an enormous success. Huge areas that had been too soggy and too frequently flooded to support towns and farms were now prime real estate, and the population boomed. The intensifying agriculture and development enriched our waterways with nutrients from fertilizer and human and animal waste. While nutrients are good for crops, they're a serious form of water pollution when present in excessive amounts, because they stimulate massive blooms of disgusting algae, which darken the water and putrify in death, sapping the dissolved oxygen that aquatic animals need to survive.



Florida's problem with excessive nutrients is exacerbated by our unnatural water flows. Instead of being filtered out by sponge-like swamps and marshes, the excess nutrients we dump take an express route through filthy canals to the bays and estuaries of the coasts. Giving our rainwater a clear path to the coast has unfortunately given our pollution a clear path to the coast, as well. The coasts are Florida's best feature, in my opinion, and I find it ironic that our efforts to improve the inland parts of Florida are resulting in degradation of the coastal ecosystems, seen as increasing red tides and fish kills, dying reefs, withering seagrass beds, etc.



In the Caloosahatchee Estuary, where I study seagrass health, the freshwater flows themselves, as well as the nutrients they carry, have become a form of pollution. It's because freshwater flow into the estuary is now an "all or nothing" event mediated by deliberate opening and closing of locks built along a canal connecting the Caloosahatchee to polluted Lake Okeechobee. In the dry season, the locks are usually closed so that more water can be shunted inland to big agricultural operations. This "starves" the estuary of fresh water and makes it unnaturally salty, to the detriment of organisms in the upper part of the estuary that prefer fresh or lightly brackish water. The opposite thing happens in the wet season- water is purged from Okeechobee to keep it from getting too high, and that water turns the normally salty parts of the Caloosahatchee Estuary so fresh that it kills the salt-loving organisms. We believe that these ups and downs in salinity are a lot more extreme now that when natural wetlands acted as a "slow release filter" for rainwater making its way over land to the river and estuary.



A very similar thing happens on the opposite side of Florida, where the St. Lucie Estuary has also been unnaturally linked by a canal to Lake Okeechobee. In fact, the seagrass research happening in the St. Lucie, funded by the South Florida Water Management District, is more or less identical to the seagrass research I am doing for SFWMD in the Caloosahatchee. Check out this short video from my East Coast counterparts...

St Lucie Estuary Seagrass Study from Stephan Nilson on Vimeo.

I'm eager to get some more of my Caloosahatchee data together so I can compare it with the St. Lucie data. I wonder if the whole system is a like a teeter totter- When the Caloosahatchee thrives does the St. Lucie suffer, and vice versa? I'll post more about my research as it becomes more clear.

You, Too, Can Do a Mast Mount Video

As many years as I've messed around with a GoPro camera I've never managed to build a good "mast tip mount" to shoot "bird's-eye view" windsurfing video. I finally got around to it this weekend, putting the camera mount on top of my 9.5 Ezzy Cheetah.

To start with, I drilled holes in the corners of a GoPro base plate- just wide enough to put a piece of coat hanger wire through. Then I snaked bits of coat hanger wire through the holes, through the slot in the top of the mast cap, and around the base of the mast cap, bending them so that they would hold securely. I cropped the ends of the wire and wrapped bits of tape around them so they wouldn't scratch the sail. It wasn't pretty, but it held securely, and I got what I think is some pretty good footage.

The session was at Wiggins Pass State Park, in offshore winds gusting around 15 knots, on my Bic v1.2 Formula board with a 58 cm fin. The song in the video is by U2.


Mast Mount May 2013 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

New New Old Formula Board- Bic FV.12

Here's a video of a typical Florida Gulf Coast Windsurfing session. It's a "windy" 9-12 knot day, providing planing conditions for my formula board with a 9.5 sail. The music in the video is by the Cure and by the Strokes.

Old Bic Formula Board Sesh in Bonita Springs, FL from James Douglass on Vimeo.

A little of this, a little of that

Dear Blog Readers,

Needless to say, it has been a while since I've posted. Work has left me with enough time to do a few fun and interesting things, but no extra time to write about those things. Now that the academic semester is over, though, I have a little more freedom and flexibility. Here's a brief rundown of recent events that didn't quite make it onto James' Blog:

1. My employer, Florida Gulf Coast University, gained national recognition due to the unexpectedly high performance of their men's basketball team in the NCAA tournament. I'm generally cynical about college sports mania. Indeed, I find it ironic that the fleeting athletic achievements of a small group of tall boys garnered more attention for FGCU than the ongoing hard-work and diverse scholarly activities of thousands of students and faculty over a dozen years. But, as the saying goes, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The gift of national attention could benefit all aspects of the university. For example, the widely broadcast footage of our undergraduate dormitories along the sandy beach of a palm-lined lake will probably entice more students to apply to FGCU. That means we can be more selective about admissions and we can raise tuitions, eventually raising the overall quality and academic reputation of the University.





2. In March I went to the “Benthic Ecology Meeting” for the first time as a professor with students in tow. The meeting was in Savannah, Georgia- a cool city that I hadn't visited previously.



My students and I presented marine biology research related to a seagrass project I'm doing in the Caloosahatchee Estuary in Fort Myers, Florida. After the meeting I got a lot of emails from prospective graduate students inquiring about working with me at FGCU. So that was cool.

3. I had a good time and a good challenge teaching “Marine Systems,” an introductory marine science class with 72 freshman non-science majors. In comparison to my fall semester experience teaching junior and senior marine science majors, the freshmen were harder to manage and motivate. For the most part they seemed not to have learned any science at all in their first 12 years of Florida public education. I had to teach them that molecules are made of atoms and dolphins are air-breathing mammals- stuff like that. As a prelude to a mid-semester “pep talk,” I asked the class to write down the best academic advice they had ever received. The first girl I called on to share her answer said, “C's get degrees!” (Sigh...) That was a good segue for me to go into my pep talk, where I gave her and the rest of the class a lot better advice, such as, “If something is worth doing, it's worth doing WELL.” Anyway, by end of the semester the students had shaped up quite a bit, and I was proud of how most of them did on their final exams and nature projects.

4. I traded my old Starboard F135 formula board for an equally old Bic v1.2 formula board. The latter has 25 liters more volume, 6 cm more length, 2.5 cm more width than the former, which makes it more comfortable to shlog. Other than that, I don't think there's much difference in the performance of the two boards- just a slight difference in feel. I'm happy with the switch, and I've had some awesome powered-up freeride sessions on the new board in both onshore and offshore winds.



5. Poor Rhonda re-injured her bum foot while bravely attempting to sail the WindSUP 11'8” over a sandbar with steep breaking waves. She was doing great, but the daggerboard rubbed the bottom, putting her off balance, then a wave knocked her off and she twisted her leg around weird when she hit the bottom. Now she's wearing a boot cast and fighting to stay positive while mostly confined indoors during perfect beach weather. She says she can't wait to windsurf again, though, and we're talking about a honeymoon in Bonaire. Send her your collective positive healing vibes. (I love you, Rhonda.)



6. My Macbook died, possibly due to a “liquid incursion” (don't ask). The geniuses at the Mac store in Coconut Point were able to resurrect him relatively cheaply via a keyboard replacement, but they completely erased his hard drive during the resurrection. So I lost all my iPhoto pictures and all my GoPro movies and stuff, along with Microsoft Office and whatever other non-Mac applications I had installed. Oh, well. At least all my important work files were stored safely “in the cloud.” I couldn't find the install disks for Microsoft Office, so I'm trying out “Open Office” now. We'll see how that goes.

7. For Valentine's Day I bought Rhonda and myself tickets to see an opera in Fort Lauderdale. The show, La Traviata, didn't happen until last week, so we had a lot of time to anticipate and prepare for it. Rhonda booked a pet-friendly hotel in Fort Lauderdale (the La Quinta), so we could bring Grace and Gertie with us. I think Grace was nervous that we were going to leave her in Fort Lauderdale, but both girls behaved well. I.e., they didn't leave big dookies on the floor or tear up the pillows or anything. La Traviata was really quite good, with fantastic singing, a live orchestra, cool costumes and sets, and a plot full of good emotional drama. Plus it was cool being in a fancy place with a hot date.



8. My Aunt Laura-Jean and Uncle Craig from Seattle, whom I rarely see anymore, visited us as one of their stops on a long, cross-country road trip. One of the highlights was going stand-up paddleboarding in the Imperial River near my house with Uncle Craig. He's in his upper 60s now but it only took him a few strokes on the WindSUP before he looked like he had been doing it all his life. Laura-Jean also gave me a big jar of raspberry jam from the berry bushes in her rainy Pacific Northwest garden. Whenever I put the delicious jam on pancakes I'm transported back to my cool and verdant rainforest home. 

Anyway, I'm going to try to blog a little more regularly this summer. Some potential blog posts that are brewing in my mind are:

1. Windsurf stuff I wish they would invent.
2. How Florida's pollution-control wetlands have become pollution-producing ponds.
3. A beach access manifesto / rant.
4. The science of picking the right swimsuit for windsurfing.

Let me know in the comments section if you want to vote one or the other of those up or down.

Waveboards- 83 liters versus 220 liters

About two weeks ago I had an funny wavesailing session at Wiggins Pass in Naples, Florida. Most of my wavesailing there has been in Northwest wind, but this time the wind was from the South. It was strong enough for me to use a 5.5 sail but it was a bit inconsistent- perhaps because of the direction. Anyway, I started out with my little waveboard, the 83 liter Starboard Evo, and had some good runs on that. After a while, though, I started having trouble staying planing and staying upwind against the longshore current. I considered switching to my larger shortboard, the 106 liter Exocet Cross, but then I said to myself, "Aww, heck. Why not switch all the way up to the 220 liter Exocet WindSUP? That way I'll still be able to catch waves even if the wind gets really light."

The huge board certainly had a different feel. On the way out a shortboard skitters and jumps over the waves, whereas the WindSUP whomps over the waves like a destroyer battleship in an open ocean storm. On the way in, either board is happy to ride a wave, but the two boards require drastically different kinds of input from the rider to make turns. The 83 liter board carves squirty little turns with subtle motions of my toes and ankles and moderate repositioning of my sail and body. The 220 liter WindSUP swerves from its momentous path only in proportion to how strongly and deliberately you stomp your weight around on it. But if you really exaggerate your commands it carves awesomely. As per typical, my video doesn't quite capture how fun it was out there, but here it is anyway. The song is "My Body" by Young the Giant.

Wiggins S Wind Shortboard and WindSUP from James Douglass on Vimeo.

Sarasota Winter Classic Regatta

I had a great time last weekend at a windsurfing regatta (pictures here) in Sarasota, which is about two hours North of where I live in Bonita Springs. The regatta had all the right ingredients for greatness, including:

1. A big grassy parking, rigging, and launching area.
2. An expansive flatwater sailing site exposed to good wind from all directions.
3. A cool yacht-club style event building provided by the Sarasota Sailing Squadron.
4. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and beer on tap included in the cheap registration.
5. Great organization with lots of helpful volunteers running the show.
6. Free camping and shower facilities right at the site.
7. A good number of both young and old participants in longboard, formula, and Olympic RSX classes.
8. Sunny, warm, windy weather.
9. The right blend of relaxed friendliness and competitive seriousness among the other racers.







The first day was quite breezy, averaging 15 knots or so. The race organizers set up two courses; a big windward-leeward course for the A Formula and RS:X classes, and smaller but more complicated trapezoid course for everyone else, including Kona One-Design, and Open Class. Below is a GPS track from one of my races on Saturday. You can see there were two laps around the trapezoid. The wind was from the South, so Buoy 1 was the upwind mark.



I sailed in the "Open Class" because:
1. I figured my 85 cm wide, 58 cm fin length, 135 liter volume formula board from 2001 would not be competitive with the 100 cm wide, 70 cm fin length, 160 liter volume formula boards from 2012 that everyone else would be riding.
2. I figured my 9.5 meters squared camless freeride sail would not be competitive with the >11.0 meters squared cambered race sails that everyone else would be using if the wind got light on the second day.
3. I wanted to be able to race my WindSUP 11'8" longboard if the winds got too light for formula, and the Open Class was the only one that would accomodate multiple boards.

It would have been a perfect choice except that only two other guys were in the Open Class fleet, and they were on very different gear, so I was mostly competing with myself. It still felt like a regatta, though, because our 5-minute starting countdown began right after the Kona fleet started, and because the two-lap course was long enough that we would start passing the Kona boards before the end. My best race was one where I passed ALL the Kona boards, including the famous all-around windsurf racer Nevin Sayre, who has lots of impressive racing records, like fastest time in the Gorge Blow-Out and fastest circumnavigation of Martha's Vineyard.

The racing was even more interesting on Sunday, because they lumped the Olympic RS:X boards in with the Open Class and ran us both on the trapezoid course. Since I was riding the WindSUP longboard Sunday I was more closely matched with another Open Class competitor, Dieter, who rode an F2 380 racing longboard with a 7.5 Severne Glide sail. My downwind and reaching speed was similar to Dieter's, and I planed a bit earlier, but he had better upwind speed and angle so he beat me in most of the races Sunday. Both Dieter and I were in the middle of the pack of the RS:X boards, though they would get past us if a puff of a wind came through the course that allowed them to plane upwind.

This video is of one of the higher wind races on Saturday. The song is by King Crimson.

Sarasota Schizoid Man 2013 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

There's another big regatta in Florida this weekend, the Calema Midwinters, near Cape Canaveral. Lots of the Sarasota folks were going, and I really wanted to go, but I just have too much work to catch up on. Oh, well. I'll still sneak out of the house for a bit to sail some waves at Wiggins Pass this afternoon.

Dusting off the 3.5 Sail!

Here in SW Florida we get excited whenever there's enough wind to use a windsurfing sail smaller than 9.5 meters squared. So imagine my excitement the other day day when a cold front made it windy enough to use a 3.5 meters squared sail! That's 6.0 meters squared smaller than what I usually use.

It was a weekend that Rhonda's Aunts were visiting from New Hampshire. I felt sorry that the ladies didn't get to experience the mellow, 80 degree beach weather that had characterized most of our "winter" here in Bonita Springs, but at least I got to show off my windsurfing skills for them.

I started the session with an 83 liter Starboard Evo and an old 4.5 Ezzy wave sail that I got to replace the 4.7 Northsail that I busted in the fall. This was my first time using the Ezzy in real conditions, and I was pretty pleased with it. The wind gradually rose during the session as dark clouds approached. When the clouds arrived I got VERY overpowered. I tucked-tail back to the beach and helped some kiters make emergency landings. For a minute I wasn't sure if I would go out again, but the idea of getting a 3.5 session was impossible to resist.

Often using a super small sail like the 3.5 is uncomfortable and "twitchy." You alternate between being annoyingly underpowered and bouncingly overpowered on the steep, short chops characteristic of 30+ knot winds. Somehow, though, on this day at Wiggins Pass, the 3.5 felt just right. I had an awesome time playing in the choppy onshore swells. The very windy conditions seemed to make the onshore wave-riding easier, because there was still ample wind in the sail when turning downwind on a wave. I made a helmet camera video of the session. The 3.5 part is not until the end of the video. The song is by The Who.

Wiggins Cold Front 16 Feb 13 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

PS- Not to knock big sails, I had a great time sailing in sunny flat water at a windsurfing race in Sarasota last weekend. That's going to be my next blog post.