Friday 30th September - Windsurf *** - River Orwell at Levington – cloudy and pretty breezy!

Foil – 20.16 knot max, 18.63 knot ave ., 13.46 knot hour, (spot PB) 16.63 knot mile, 40.47 km ., 16.07 knot alpha.

Starboard Freeride 150 and an Evolution Freeride foil with a Tushingham Storm 5.2.

Had a bit of a disturbed night with a touch of tooth ache but missed the emergency dentist appointments but with some pain killers the pain eased. After doing wordle, we do it each morning I looked out of the window to see it was very foggy with light winds I decided to get up and quickly drive down to Felixstowe Ferry and was very pleased I did as it was absolutely amazing and I managed to get some nice pics:) The fog cleared on the way home and the sun came out for a while before it clouded over. I then had breakfast and sorted out my photos and was hoping to go windsurfing before the big winds and rain arrive late in the afternoon!

With the wind rising I decided to head over to the River Orwell at Levington to check the conditions, thinking it was the safer bet with winds set to gust to 40 knots later! I messaged Robert to say I was going and arrived at the marina around one with loads of water and a good breeze so I quickly set up my foil, then put my wetsuit on to give the wind time to settle. In the end I went with 5.2, pretty small by my usual standards and was pleased I did as there was some massive gusts, at a guess close to 30 knots at times! Robert had arrived now and rigged 5.3, bigger than me which was probably a mistake and he could have got away with 4m! I had an interesting couple of hours, to be honest it was a little windy to go too fast as it was scary but had some nice long runs up towards Pin Mill. I did hit a few fish including one that had me in over the front, it was definitely not the bottom as I was in the middle of the river at the time. The best bit about the two-hour session was the gybing, I had some crackers, really nice when windy with a small sail!

I managed to pack up, shower and drive home before the rain arrived, September has been another good month for windsurfing with 12 sessions most on the foil covering 510 km. Tomorrow is looking very promising for the first session for October but I have a double covid/flu jab in the morning so I hope I don’t have any side effects and that my tooth behaves itself!

I also had a pic in the local paper, the Star, the first for several days and I got one of my morning fog pics on BBC’s Look East, that 10 for the month a record, well chuffed:)

https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=stephen.squirrell.1&set=a.10224094620605938