Wednesday 2nd February - Windsurf *** River Orwell at Levington – mainly cloudy.

Foil – 16.97 knot max, 16.00 knot ave., 9.60 knot hour, 14.00 knot mile, 39.55 km., 11.92 knot alpha.

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

After yesterdays full on 40 knot wind session things were set to calm down today but still remaining fairly mild:) With my laptop running much better I was able to post yesterdays session before heading over to Levington marina arriving just before 10.30 with super keen Robert already there! Loads of water but there did not look a lot of wind but with it WNW it can be hard to gauge? With foil boards set up we both decided to rig big, I went for my Lightning 8.5 while Robert went for his 7.5m. This direction is not the best for here as it can lump up the river and getting down to Felixstowe docks can be difficult because of the gusty winds! It was a little patchy to start with but things improved with lots of flying with some really big gusts coming through but it seemed difficult to go fast today for some reason? I defiantly not keen on my old Tushingham Lightning 8.5 as it is so heavy to use and gybing is also challenging, just don’t like using big heavy sails anymore, it can be very tiring especially if you have to uphaul it a lot! It took me ages to fall in but then I started to get tired and went in a bit so was getting cold, not helped today by the lack of sunshine! Ezzy have just combined their two foil sails into the Cross which goes up to 8m, a lightweight fin/foil sail with no monofilm sounds perfect but sadly way out of my price range, one day hopefully! So, after two hours out and getting cold, with the tide also now going out it was time to beat back. I again got my picture taken by Swainy as he headed out in a rib! There is more wind coming but it is set to get colder so will have to wait, and see??? Packed up and showered I had a quick chat with Jamie and picked up my board bag lost yesterday from the same man who came out to help me the other day when my mast base broke! So home at a decent time and was treated to a fantastic sunset here in Felixstowe:)

https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=stephen.squirrell.1&set=a.10223112790940810