Sunday 23rd - Windsurf **** - The Manor at Felixstowe – cloudy and cool.
Foil – 16.45 knot max, 14.43 knot ave., 0.00 knot hour, 11.09 knot mile, 7.57 km.,0.00 knot alpha.
Exocet RF AST 91 with Slingshot Hover Glide 76 with Tushingham Thunderbid lll 6.5m.
Fin – 25.81 knot max, 24.38 knot ave ., 10.86 knot hour, 22.86 knot mile , 31.60 km., 14.56 knot alpha.
F2 282 Ride with Tushingham Thunderbird lll 6.5m and 36 fin.
Another miserable day on the coast, cloudy and cool, will summer ever arrive??? I gave the wind a chance to build and the tide drop before heading down to The Manor around 1.30 hoping to find a free parking space, being a Sunday, it was still busy in Felixstowe despite the poor weather! After a bit of a wait, I managed to get a double place and was checking the conditions as Robert and Michael arrived and they were keen to foil so I took both my foil and 115 lt. fin board to the beach and took a chance rigging my new Tushingham Thunderbird 6.5 although the other two rigged much smaller around 4.2 I think! I decided to take the foil out first but was nervous I had way too much sail and that proved to be right as the wind had increased with the sea becoming big too! It didn’t take any effort to get up and flying as I ran deep downwind towards the pier not needing any sail at all! I had planned to sail to The Dip to see who was sailing there but I had way too much sail, my 5.2 would have been ideal, one day I will rig right for foiling at Felixstowe. I decided to turn just past the pier and had an exciting beat back through a large sea, great fun! All three of us came ashore at the same time due to the strong winds and getting ashore was challenging but we helped each other so nothing was broken! We all swopped to our fin boards but I thought I might need a smaller sail too but had some exciting runs out the mile and a half to the Wadgate post with it being on the limit for this sail at times. I tried a fast mile run back ending up by the Coastwatch Martello tower but getting back upwind was no problem. After several fun runs, even managing to gybe too the wind went a little patchy with the others switching back to their foils, I came ashore to do the same but by the time I had switched my GPS the wind had returned as the tide turned. As the Robert and Michael decided to call it a day, I had a couple more long runs out, getting my fastest mile of nearly 23 knots, not too bad considering now lumpy it was!
So, a fun afternoon in winds robberly gusting over 26 knots with 26 miles covered it was time to call it a day. I think the three of us are heading over to Levington early tomorrow to make the most of the wind, tide and rain is expected in the afternoon again. What a country we live in, April was one of the driest months on record with May being one of the wettest!
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