Tuesday 10th January – windsurf *** sunny periods

I missed a session on Felixstowe seafront yesterday as I haven’t got a big shortboard at the moment as I am still looking for a replacement Xantos 310, can anyone help? And it rained all afternoon in the end so didn’t miss much really! With me giving blood tomorrow and having a haircut today was the last chance before it gets cold, so with the sun out and fairly mild I headed over to Levington Marina as the wind was offshore. The tide is not ideal for the River Orwell today being high on arrival and with the breeze on the light side I rigged big with 9.4 on the longboard. Then as usual I had to walk back towards the marina looking for someone to do my wetsuit up! Zipped up and with the tide just turning I decided to beat two miles upriver to Pin Mill which was good fun even if the wind could have been a bit stronger but I managed to get up on the rail a lot of the time and I saw many hundreds of water birds including a big flock of Avocets:) I turned by the old barges moored at the jetty and started reaching back, hoping I could plan and get a 20 kt. average but the wind didn’t play ball. I only reached 20 kts when I made it back to Levington Bay where the wind was at its strongest, I got 21 kts but ran out of wind as I sailed towards the docks so tacked and tried several more runs but couldn’t find any more really good gusts and just failed to make a 20 kt ave:(

My feet were now getting cold as I had been out the best part of three hours and I fall in and had to swim after my hat!!! so I headed back to the van. With diesel heater on I had to walk miles to find someone to un-zip me! It would have been a 4-star session if the wind had been a little stronger but 3 stars and it was great being out on the river in the sun with loads of birds :)

https://www.facebook.com/stephen.squirrell.1/media_set?set=a.10209424026010242.1073741881.1012660562&type=3&pnref=story