to reply to a question I was slow to get to ...

we were down there 3 weeks and the first week was frustrating for me in particular. I was the heaviest guy around and the lightweights got out in the 15-18 we got for 4 days while I slogged or sat on the beach. Apparently this has been a very bad year for El Norte (except for November) since El Nino has been sending system after system to break the normal pattern.

It definitely got better and there were days where I was on 5.4m2 90l board but for the most part I was sailing 6.0 and 6.5 and 115l boared (I'm 103kg). Rhonda's go-to rig was the 5.4 90l and would get down to 4.2 70l on the two or three big days.

La Ventana gets a nice thermal and our best days were pure thermal with little Norte. The Norte kicked in hard the last few days we were there and it was much gustier than the straight thermal. All in all, I was fully powered-up about half of the days we were there. One local heavyweight was saying that he had sailed 2 in 7 days this year whereas he normally sails 5 in 7. Having said that, I looked at charts of Hawaii, Barbados and Cabarete and they all looked worse this year.

Peter