Friday 6th November – Windsurf *** - River Orwell - Levington – cloudy start then sunny.

F2 Zantos 295 with 36 fin and Tushingham Lightning 7m.

Fin – 26.16 knot max., 24.12 knot ave., 10.59 knot hour, 18.68 knot mile, 38.30 km., 16.27 knot Alpha.

With a good breeze and temperatures increasing to a balmy 12 degrees I had been looking forward all week to today even if the local tides were not very helpful! With the wind WSW I waited until it was an hour or so before low and headed over to Levington Marina arriving around 11.30. The wind was cross on from the left gusting to 20 mph so I took a chance with my 7m and a large 133 lt. board to help me in the lulls. By the time I had found Jamie to zip me in my winter wetsuit the wind seemed to have dropped but I decided to give it a go and set off out of the marina entrance out into deeper water, you always have plenty of water to sail in even at low water so set off across Levington Bay but the wind had dropped and was very patchy. Despite the gloom, it rained briefly too I stuck at it for a couple of hours, only planing in brief patches but I wanted to get at least one session in December to say I had sailed every month this year, been a good year too:) The nice thing about sailing here is you turn in shallow water so you can take a break and wait for the gusts. I don’t think I had broken 20 knots but then with the tide now turned and more water in the river the wind swung a touch more to the west and picked up and I was getting some 25/6 knot runs and the river which had been pretty lumpy smoothed out especially towards Felixstowe docks! The sun even managed to break through making it a nice end to the session. So, in the end I was out for three hours and not being the slightest bit cold and as usual I had the river all to myself, just a few birds and only one boat out! Sunday is looking promising but a named storm is approaching so it might get too windy, will have to see. I am a little late posting this as when I got home I discovered I had lost all my saved track from Google Earth, sadly for the second time, so we took the laptop into the repair shop, sadly although our hard drive is fine the gps track seemed to have gone:(

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 http://mkwindsurfing.co.uk/booms/