Tuesday 30th August - Windsurf **** - River Stour at Wrabness – sunny periods.

 Foil – 19.42 knot max, 18.32 knot ave., 12.68 knot hour, 15.68 knot mile, 77.80 km., 14.38 knot alpha.

Starboard Freeride 150 and Evolution Freeride foil with a Sailworks Retro 7.5.

We are again having a run of East to North east winds here on the East coast but we had the Grandson visiting at the weekend I missed a couple of sessions on the Stour, we did have the most wonderful time though so I was keen to get out on the water today. With high water at Mistley at 14.49 Mag and I drove over to Wrabness leaving Felixstowe at 10.30 which gave me enough time to do my exercises in the back garden:) Parking easily I took my board over the sea wall to set up the foil but it did not look overly windy out on the river, it is difficult to judge as you are pretty sheltered here so I rigged my 7.5 once again. I waded out at 12.15 and it was windier than I expected, with the tide still fairly low it was nice and flat, I thought it was going to be a great session as I did some fast reaches upriver to Bradfield getting my best speed of the day. I then started to beat back and was joined by Robert, Ian and Michael who had launched from Bradfield but the wind started to go patchy with the river chopping up too:( You would be going flat out one minute and then floundering about waiting for a gust, very frustrating! I gave up beating down the river and just stayed in font of Wrabness trying to improve my gybing, it is going OK, much better when the wind is up when I have a real chance of some faster flying turns, things are getting better as I only went in once in four and a half hours! I nearly called it a day but the wind filled in around high water so I had some lovely fast runs up to Bradfield where the wate was nice and smooth, there was even a couple of fin sailors out! At this point it would have been better with 6.5 but no time to change so stuck it out! So, the 3-star session went to 4 with an excellent last hour, then it was time to beat back before the level dropped too much! Back to the van to see Mag who once again had been collecting blackberries, it certainly has been a good year for them!

With a couple more days of NE I am not sure what to do, with the tides getting later each day for the Stour I might check out The Dip at Felixstowe tomorrow?

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