Thursday 8th September - Windsurf *** - The Manor at Felixstowe – mainly cloudy with light showers.

 Fin – 25.52 knot max, 23.28 knot ave., 11.75 knot hour, 19.75 knot mile, 35.08 km., 15.67 knot alpha.

F2 282 Ride with Tushingham Thunderbird 6.5m and 36 fin.

A very sad day, whatever your views on the Monarchy the Queen has been on the throne since the year I was born in 1953 and as JK Rowling has just said she has been a thread running through our lives, she has been there in the background in my life for the best part of 70 years doing a fantastic job, end of an era – RIP :(

For the third day running we have a SW breeze, again a little up and down during the day with some showers but I give the tide a chance to drop before heading down once again to The Manor around 1.30. With over 20 knots on the gauge and after two days of foiling I decide to give the fin board a rare outing. I rig once again the 6.5 to go with my F2 Ride 282 launching at two. I get an OK hour doing long runs out to Wadegate post but the sea is once again pretty lumpy and a few more knots would have been nice. Then on my 7th run out the sky darkened, we had a few spots of rain and the wind dropped down to about 12 knots, I know I was in trouble, I tried to tun fell in and spent 15 minutes drifting with not enough wind to water start:( at least I was heading away from the Orwell! To my relief I got a gust and manged to get on the board to wobble to within 300m of the beach when I went in again, a little swimming, some more sailing then more swimming I ended up 10 groynes aprrox. 900m from my launch beach but I was just glad to be back on dry land! I sat on the beach for a bit working up to walking back to get my van, then after about 15 minutes the wind filled in again so I took a chance and headed out to see if I could sail back. I did 6 short runs and made it back OK as windsurfing mate Robert arrived for a chart.

So that’s three good sessions at Felixstowe, two on the foil, one on the fin covering 90 miles:)

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