Sunday 31st May - Windsurf **** - The Dip at Felixstowe – sunny and warm!

Starboard Formula and Slingshot Hover Glide F/Wind with Tushingham Lightning 7.8.

Foil – 16.93 knot max, 15.63 knot ave ., 9.15 knot hour, 13.09 knot mile, 30.50 km., 10.09 knot alpha

                 Yet another fantastic day here in Felixstowe with wall to wall sunshine and I was secretly hoping the forecast wind would not arrive after three hectic windsurfing sessions in a row! It was looking promising with light winds in the morning, so after a nice garden visit from our son Dan, I did my exercises and tried to sort out a 2003 North J – Type 6.5 after Swainy had given me some battern ends and I was hoping to replace a missing camber with an Ezzy or Tushingham ones, so if anyone has one gathering dust at the back of their garage can you please let me know? If you follow the Facebook link below there is a pic. Then after a late lunch of scrambled eggs on toast I checked the web cam and the wind had filled in and the kiters were going well. I already had my trailer hitched so headed down to The Dip and Felixstowe was absolutely heaving with cars parked all along the grass and duly all got a parking ticket, that was an expensive day to the seaside! Our little windsurfing car park was jam packed but I managed to drive down on the prom and quickly set-up my foil and rigged 7.8 as the wind looked like it was building nicely with several foilers out flying and windsurfers on big kit going OK. I had to park across the road in Western Ave which was only 200m away so not too bad! Back at the beach it looked like I had rigged too small but tried it out anyway and flew away from the beach and the 7.8 was pretty much ideal for the hour and half plus session:) In the end the breeze build nicely and the fin sailor’s loved sailing past to show they were faster than me but I just wouldn’t believe you could have so much fun sailing at 14 knots and when I pushed it really broad trying to sheet in hard I still only did just under 17 knots, it just felt like 30 knots!!! but with absolutely no bumping on my poor old knees:) I am still a bit of an open sea novice foiler and am still getting the feel of flying over swell, trying to move the board up and down to miss the waves, I touch down a bit but that is not a problem and if heading upwind I often sail the board low and it still goes well upwind but I need to be well powered up! With the wind ENE there were loads of kiters out even if it was not their favourite tide, much too high and coming in to! I decided to head up the River Deben in search of some flat water but was nervous of running aground. I got in the entrance OK but it then turned into a dead beat in a very narrow section of river with kiters everywhere, choppy too with the tide running hard! I had one OK run broad back but I had to be careful to head to the green channel bouy and out into open water again, only running aground a couple of times, I cant wait to foil right up the Deben, I will have to get David Coles to show me the ropes! I then had some great runs out towards the moored coaster and then flying back going up and down the swell, I even tried a couple of gybes and that’s defiantly a work in progress, I will have to have a few sessions on the Stour practising that! Getting knackered and I was running out of beach to land with the tide coming in I decided to call time on another good session and my open sea sailing in coming along nicely:) Then for the second time in two I pack up when the wind was at it’s strongest. I quickly got the van returned to hitch the trailer and took some pics of Swainy’s son Ed windsurfing and he is coming on in leaps and bounds!!!

https://www.facebook.com/stephen.squirrell.1/media_set?set=a.10218848818184156&type=3

 http://mkwindsurfing.co.uk/booms/