This is a ramble on about safety, for the actual punchy details and a checklist, see below links
I’m probably not the most safety conscious person in the world, I pretty regularly take risks.
However I don’t like blind risk, and I think a lot of people may blindly be venturing offshore into downwind conditions without quite knowing what is in store.
Granted this is all relatively new, but I think many people may have spent their lives in the water already without ever taking into consideration how they would self support a long distance solo offshore adventure.
Shouting this from the audience seats, as my only successful downwind run thus far is as tame as the following, which resulted in the lifeguards to come and investigate us on the jetski. Pretty tame by all measures.
Check out the run on map.dwfoil.com
There are many things, minor oversights, technical glitches, mistakes, mast too far forward, bad nutrition, overshooting a headland. Josh Ku in an interview with James Casey described how disorienting navigation can be in familiar areas that become unfamiliar from the sea.
cellular apple/watch: I have had shitty experiences with these, really difficult to send texts with the watch, siri doesn’t work at all in strong wind. I’d suggest the RYA app as a better alternative to Find My for shore crew to track you. Find My on iphone usually stops updating when I need it.
I'm very wary of relying on cellphone having spent many hours offshore and coming within line of sight of towns and having cellphone signal but no messages going through. I do rely on cellphone for safety but am wary of beyond horizon safety... which I plan to seldom if ever push that boundary.
offshore wind conditions: Listening to the Casey catchup describing ideal conditions 25-35kn made me think that there is a very real risk of people getting themselves deep into trouble. Agree with you about this being sketchy, I think the primary risk is a big windshift, or getting headed by a localised wind direction quirk, and ending up in 35kn gusts straight offshore. The bit of time on boats offshore I’ve spent means I definitely do not want to be in that situation. Properly fucked if you don’t manage to make headway against the offshore.
This clip of Cape Town (which is a super popular downwind spot, the takeoff for a good downwind is in the background) has a quirk where the wind goes from 2kn to about 45kn in the space of about 200 metres, and catches a lot of surfskis out who launch and then get blasted out to sea and disappear