Happy ending of my 10 days off. My off days started on saturday 04/05 and the first 5 days there was no wind at all. From thursday till sunday we had family trip planned and guess what... It was blowing from thursday till sunday... So afterall happy that I could catch some wind today before going back to work.

The forecast was strong wind in the morning, decreasing during the day and increasing again in the evening. Didn't hurry at all and arrived at the spot ard 16u30. Quite surprisingly the wind didn't decrease during the day, in fact it was almost steady since the morning. 

Still with the forecast in mind I rigged my 7.0 and Falcon 85. Used the Crosfire 29 for the first time. The wind was almost square (ard 15° offset during the first 30 min and turned almost full square later on). Too bad I decided to start with some alpha training in the beginning because I did 4 of my fastest runs during 15 min (from 17:44 -18:00). The plan was to do the 10sec runs later with a few knots more wind... But that wind never came !! In fact the wind slowly decreased untill we had only 16 kts wind. The wind also became more square so did some runs up and down the dam. In the remaining 4 hours I only went 3 times barely over 60 (10sec). 

7.8m² should have been the prefect sail for todays conditions.

The wind strength finally started to build up around 22hrs and turned SW. Did my last runs at 22u30 in complete darkness. It's a special feeling when you cannot 'read' the water surface. The obstacles in the water were just visible. You couldn't see the gusts coming, you could just feel it when they arrived ;-)

Never had spinout with the Crossfire and happy with the downwind characteristics but more testing is required to have a complete view. 

During the session I had the feeling that my sail had less downhaul then in the beginning. When i de-rigged my sail, I found the downhaul rope that slipped 1cm through the clam cleat. Also my alpha's didn't went as fluent as with the 7.8 on the Falcon 85. However did 9 alpha's above 44, but there is still alot of room for improvement. Min speeds during gybe were all around 20 kmph, should be at least 25-27 for descent alpha's...

Afterall with 100km on the gauge it was a nice day with Regi (only in the beginning), Raymond and the usual late night surfer Pat Erauw.

Arrived at home at 01u15 drinking a well deserved beer now.