Thursday 5th September – Windsurf ***** River Stour at Wrabness – cloudy and breezy.
Foil – 18.84 knot max, 17.46 knot ave, 13.23 knot hour, 15.49 knot mile, 44.29 km., 14.67 knot alpha.
Starboard Freeride 150 and a Severne 1000 with a Tushingham Storm 5.2.
Despite two poor visits to the River Stour at Wrabness this year I decided to give it another try today with tides and wind direction not right for The Dip. With high tide on the river around 2.30 I had time to do my exercises, load my gear in the van and still leave Felixstowe at 10, it was cloudy but luckily the rain stayed away:) Once again there was no one at Wall Lane so got prime parking, the Environment agency were cutting the grass on the sea wall but there were not in my way. The foil board was quickly set-up on the lovely small beach and it did look pretty windy in the middle of water so took a chance with my 5.2 which proved OK for the session although there was some good gusts, probably over 25 knots! I launched at 11.30, quite a bit earlier than you can launch at Bradfield and was soon up and flying thinking perhaps I should have rigged 4.7! This was definitely the Stour back to its best with a good wind from maybe the NNE easily gusting over 25 knots at times so I didn’t push the speeds too hard as it was fairly lumpy in places. I did 13 runs diagonally across the river slowly making my way upwind getting some nice gybes considering how breezy it was! I then had a clear run down the river and beat up the middle of the river turning just short of Parkstone, I did drop my only gybe here and ended up in the water but I was soon up and flying broad downwind, such fun:) I spotted another foiler heading towards me and passed Neil H going the other way so I gybed by the large channel marker post and had another run down turning in the same place near a small boat with some anglers in and it was bouncing about! I then had the most amazing 5 mile broad run all the way back up the river turning just short of Mistley as the wind went patchy, the wind was better at Wrabness and in Holbrook bay. I then beat back to my launch beach absolutely knackered as it had been a pretty full-on session so I decided to go ashore. I headed back to the van, Mag was out on her walk so I decided to call it a day and took my wetsuit off, 27 miles was enough for me on a windy Stour,, the only thing lacking was the sunshine but at least the rain stayed away! I then had lunch with Mag before heading for home stopping off at Mistley Quay to take a couple of weather pics to send to the TV, lucky for me Mag drove home meaning I could have a little rest!
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