After getting a puncture in my trailer yesterday I wasn’t sure about risking driving 40 miles to Point Clear today but we got a text from Neil Hurrell at 6 in the morning saying he was going to be there at 10:30 that made up my mind to go. So we were up early and I made a couple of salads, hitched up the trailer and loaded Mag’s bike, dropped off my tyre to be repaired and headed slowly out on the A14 toward Ipswich – I take it easy as my poor old trailer’s welding is hanging on! I get to the outskirts approx. 10 miles when I realise that I have left my wetsuit/harness etc hanging on the washing line in my back garden!!! :( I have no choice but to turn around to get it wasting 30mins and adding 20 miles to the trip! We finally get to Point Clear at 10:30 with Neil and Linda arriving just behind us, we park by the first green and a local tells us off as she has trouble reversing out of her drive so we move up to the big car park further along – a top spot to park and rig. There are a couple of sailors there that Neil knows and Steve Carter arrives. There is nearly enough water to sail but getting the sail right is the first problem – standing on the sea wall I register winds gusting to 30 mph but standing on the beach it’s closer to 20 mph so I take a chance on the x-15 7m and it was more or less right for most of the session. My plan was to sail the mile and a half to the Jaywick end seafront and then try the lagoon for some speed but the wind was coming a bit from the left making a trip along the coast difficult, I tried but the wind went very light and I even considered coming in and rigging 8.5 but I sailed over to Mersea Island and the wind returned :) so I sailed back into the lagoon to see if I could break 30 kts and just missed it, but enjoyed trying in winds that were never strong enough in the lagoon, I got some cracking gybes but the alphas didn’t show how fast they seemed on the water!!! After a couple of hours on the water I returned to the van for my salad and a top one it was too! Mag and Linda had been putting the world to right in the Hurrell campervan and then went on a 14 mile bike ride to Clacton. Dave White’s gang had arrived and were out on the water in force including our gps team captain Michael George so I got a few pics before heading out again. The wind was now at it’s strongest gusting to over 25 kts but the 7m was fine. The wind had swung a little so you could sail from the end of the lagoon over to the beach at the end of east Mersea, it was confused chop on the Point Clear side but there was a top spot over by the Island of great rolling waves :) I had another top hour before heading back before the tide dropped too much and I was knackered too. Linda made me a cuppa and Mag provided some top Lidl chocolate biscuits – great end to a five star day :) Things went a bit wrong on the way home with an accident on the edge of Ipswich causing chaos !!! but we made it home an hour late after a 12 mile detour !!! Mag made fish and chips for tea – yum and we had a phone call from Rob, our son ,who is off to Ecuador and then the Galapagos Islands tomorrow – what an adventure!!!
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