Our good friend and correspondent, Dmitris Savidis, has put a wonderful recap of the recent Red Bull Storm Chase event in Ireland as well as an overview of the Chase. He includes some wonderful pics that illustrate the hurricane-like conditions.

Victor Hernandez going big. The sequence goes left to right. He was blown that far downwind during the jump.

Best of Ireland Video

For some of us, we automatically know where that is. It's our windsurfer's A1A (which runs the length of Florida's east cost all the way to Key West). Highway 12 runs the length of the NC Outer Banks from Corolla to Ocracoke. Below Nags Head, it's the only thoroughfare.

Highway 12 is also the famous highway that overwashes in storms and has been cut during hurricanes. Nature loves to make new inlets during storms. The road north of Mirlo Beach has suffered brutally from the ravages of recent hurricanes. Hurricane Irene did the most recent damage in 2011 when it cut a new inlet and effectively cut off road access to areas below for several months until a temporary bridge could be built. Still, today, access is across quickly installed and temporary bridges which bring traffic to a craw.

Mirlo Beach March 12, 2013

Hurricane Sandy, last fall, continued the process. The road has frequently closed this winter because of storms although traffic crews quickly remove the sand and get things moving again.

The NC Governor has just (yes, just)declared a state of emergency in an effort to speed up efforts to make the road less vulnerable to weather and water.

The NC DOT has traffic cams if you need to know if it's open or just curious. You'll have to pan way to the east, of course, to get to the cameras.

Highway 12 traffic cam

We found this interesting document discussing the damage from Irene with an annotated aerial photo. We can't vouch for its scientific validity, though.

Click on picture to read more

Several weeks ago, I came across this article "Announcing a Brand New Breakthrough in Windsurfing Your Sup Board" which had been posted just this past summer. Visiting the page is like a time warp to the pages of Wind Rider(RIP), Windsurfing(RIP) mag's, predecessor.

It's new! We think...

Yep, as we predicted here, paddlers are rediscovering having a sail on the board can be a handy thing. To be fair, the new rig collapses and fits all into a bag about the size and shape of a slalom boom. We windsurfers have had a few innovations over the last few years incuding clamp-on booms, two piece carbon masts and sails that don't suck as much even lacking battens.

We've covered elsewhere music about or inspired by windsurfing, but we'd missed this gem, a windsurfing movie. No, not one of those with Robbie Naish sailing around but a real movie with plot, actors, kissing (actually, more than kissing) and dialogue. It was made in Australia in 1986.

"Recommended for Mature Audiences" ... ahem.

"The 'ride' of a lifetime" ... We see what you did there.

So what, you ask. Well, some of you might find it interesting that it was Nicole Kidman's first 'adult' starring role and it includes several nude scenes.

The plot:

A google image search revealed this clip for the movie:

Intense scene in Windrider, we think. We've never seen the movie.

What, not the clip you wanted?

Okay, this one then

Intense scene in Windrider. Yeah, we are pretty sure this is an intense scene.

If you want to see the whole pic, you'll have to smut up your own browser history.

NSFW (breastly barely)