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Is Australia really all that?? 5-May-2007 At 12:32:33 AM AlanD

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It should be made mandatory that each American guy landing in Australia brings two American girls with him, they keep running off with our girls ;)

I suppose I should talk about Port Phillip Bay and windsurfing, even though I've only ever sailed on it. I'm sydney based and haven't windsurfed in years, but I compete down in Melbourne every few years at major regattas.

You're looking at about 40-50km across in either the N-S or E-W directions and fairly shallow. There is a wide range of wind strengths and directions, which means depending where you are on the bay and the wind direction you might be in flat water or 0.5 - 1.0 m chop. It's important to keep an eye out for any approaching weather fronts, because of the shallowness, flatness of the surrounding land and the area of the bay, when these fronts hit they tend to come in pretty strong, I've sailed on the bay in 50 knots and it would be easy to get in trouble and start drifting across the bay for a few hours. There is a tide in the bay which is really strong at the heads, which can be frustrating in light winds.

I haven't experienced any surf in the bay, but with a big chop you can still do some wave jumping. In general the surrounds of the bay is fairly flat, so in theory it would be reasonably suitable for speed record attempts if any was really keen, there are better spots in Australia for this, but it does indicate that you can sail in highwinds, close to shore in extremely flat water. I'm not sure what the course type racing in Melbourne is like for windsurfing, from my perspective (Lasers) it seem the club sailing is pretty poor and regattas are very poor (I've had to many bad experiences with regatta management in Victoria), but the YV does seem to have their act together with youth coaching.