Monday 28th February - Windsurf **** River Orwell at Levington – sunny.

Foil – 17.44 knot max, 16.47 knot ave ., 9.85 knot hour, 12.77 knot mile , 37.00 km ., 12.70 knot alpha.

Exocet RF AST 91 with Slingshot Hover Glide 76 with Tushingham Lightning 8.5m.

The month just keeps on giving, this must be my best ever February with 12 sessions covering 365 km. and I have never done so much gybing as in the last couple of days and am now officially knackered! With another sunny day, a fraction warmer than yesterday and a good southerly forecast I headed over to Levington once again arriving just after 10 with high water being 9.45. The huge crane was about to move some pontoons so I had to park 100m from the launch beach but the wind looked pretty marginal so I walked over to the river to check. It was very marginal so I took a few pics of the Harwich lifeboat and then decided to give it a go as there is some rain coming over the next couple of days. Foil board set up and carried to the launch beach, knackering too and decided to rig big especially with the water looking pretty flat, I went for my heavy 8.5, not the easiest sail to gybe with and a pain to uphaul if you drop in but I thought you needed a large sail to fly, I love the look of the new Ezzy Cross 8m, a very well-made lightweight foil/fin sail but at £790 I will have to continue to dream! The tide was dropping when I eventually launched at 11.15 but got away easily and was soon up and flying, in fact I again could have used a smaller sail perhaps 7.8 but it handled the bigger gusts well. South is a nice direction here with it being strongest on the corner but it meant sailing fairly short runs as I beat down river trying to improve my big sail gybing which has improved a little but it is tiring using this heavy sail:( After beating a little way down river I had a bice run upriver sailing really broad, nothing fast just cool sailing in the sunshine, just me and the odd yacht, pretty quiet here today! With the water state improving, getting flatter my speeds increased a little as did my gybing and after a couple of none stop hours, I decided to call it a day, pack up, shower and home. I got another pic in the local paper, its been a top month for published pics with 21 :)

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