A fun couple of hours at the Ray with Simon Harris, Matthew York and Phil Lewin.

I started the day by forgetting to put my harness on and did a 2km round trip back to the van in order to fetch it! What a place to do something so damned stupid. Oh how I laughed (not) when I couldn't hook in and realised I wasn't wearing a harness!

Fortunately I didn't miss much because the wind was quite light at the time - around 15 to 20 knots. The first hour (with harness) was pretty light but by 10am the wind was increasing so I headed upwind for a nautical mile attempt. My previous PB was 32 knots and I thought there was enough wind for around 35 knots. My run turned out to be 36.38 knots so I am happy with my new PB... I wasn't close to being fully powered either!

After my mile attempt the wind was building quickly and was touching 25 to 30 knots. With a strong current fighting against the wind it started to get very choppy in the western course and 3 foot waves were a pita whilst sailing back upwind on speed kit! It was during this time that I decided to forget further mile attempts and focus on 10s runs. I didn't manage to get a 10s run over 40 knots but I did manage a couple of peaks over 40 knots and a few more over 39 knots. I had to work pretty hard for those speeds!

All in all a fun day and I felt like I was sailing pretty well. The conditions were no epic but  it was one of the best days that I've had at the Ray and I made small improvements to a few of my Southend PBs.

my second favourite place the ray southend , i do like it here

not my best day for me wind didnt arrive till late on in the session ,had an hour at most before the tide was in totally , very choppy by then

still was very warm for the time of year ,great to see mike and simon , well done to my mate phil , best crash ive seen in a while :)

well done mike on the mile pb mate

nice way to finish off the year 2012 has been a good one ,until 2013 :)